Jeff Beck, the famous guitarist who played with the Yardbirds and led the Jeff Beck Group, has died at the age of 78, his representative has confirmed.
Beck died Tuesday after “suddenly contracting bacterial meningitis,” the rep confirmed. “His family requests privacy as they process this tremendous loss,” they added.
Often described as one of the greatest guitarists of all time, Beck, whose fingers and thumbs were insured for £7 million, was known as a great innovator. He pioneered jazz-rock, experimented with fuzz and distortion effects, and paved the way for heavier subgenres like psych rock and heavy metal throughout his career. He was an eight-time Grammy winner, received the Ivor Novello for his outstanding contribution to British music and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame both as a solo artist and as a member of the Yardbirds.
Musicians and longtime friends began paying tribute minutes after the news broke. On Twitter, Jimmy Page wrote: “The six-string warrior is no longer here because we admire the spell he was able to weave around our mortal emotions. Jeff could channel music from the ether. His technique is unique . His seemingly limitless imagination. Jeff I will miss you along with your millions of fans.”
“With the death of Jeff Beck we have lost a wonderful man and one of the greatest guitarists in the world,” wrote Mick Jagger. “He will be greatly missed by all of us.”
With the death of Jeff Beck we have lost a wonderful man and one of the greatest guitarists in the world. We will all miss him dearly. pic.twitter.com/u8DYQrLNB7
— Mick Jagger (@MickJagger) January 11, 2023
Gene Simmons called it “heartbreaking news… nobody played guitar like Jeff. Please get the first two Jeff Beck Group albums and see the greatness. REST IN PEACE.”
“Now Jeff is gone, I feel like one of my brothers has left this world and I will miss him dearly,” Ronnie Wood tweeted.
Ozzy Osbourne tweeted: “I cannot express how sad I am to hear of Jeff Beck’s passing. What a terrible loss for his family, friends and many fans. It was an honor to have known Jeff and an incredible honor to have- I played it on my most recent album.”
Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour wrote: “I am devastated to hear the news of the passing of my friend and hero Jeff Beck, whose music has moved and inspired me and countless others for so many years… He will be forever in our hearts.”
Johnny Marr called him “a trailblazer and one of the all-time greats”, while Whitesnake’s David Coverdale wrote: “Oh My Heart… RIP Jeff… I miss you already.”
The Kinks’ Dave Davies tweeted: “I’m heartbroken, he seemed in great shape. Playing really well, he was in great shape. I’m shocked and bewildered… it doesn’t make sense that I don’t understand. He was a good friend and a great guitar player.” .
Jeff Beck’s group in the late 1960s: (L-R) Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood, Mickey Waller and Jeff Beck. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Beck was born Geoffrey Beck in 1944, in Wallington, south London. As a child, he sang in a church choir and started playing guitar as a teenager, getting his first instrument after trying to con a music store in a rental scheme. “There was this guy, he wasn’t old enough to be my dad, but he offered to be my guarantor. He said, ‘I’m going to tell them I’m your stepdad,'” she told the New Statesman in 2016. Within a month, they knew it had nothing to do with me and got my guitar back. My dad went and explained that we couldn’t afford it, so they waived the rest of the payments and I got the guitar.
After briefly attending art school in London, Beck began playing with Screaming Lord Sutch until, after Eric Clapton left the Yardbirds, Jimmy Page recommended Beck as his replacement. Although already successful at the time, the Yardbirds had many of their biggest hits during Beck’s short tenure in the band, including the 1966 album Yardbirds and the No. 3 single Shapes of Things. Beck was only in the Yardbirds for 20 months, leaving the group in 1966 due to interband tensions that had arisen during a US tour. (He would later say that “every day was a hurricane at the Yardbirds.”)
In 1968, Beck released Truth, his debut solo album, which drew on blues and hard rock to form a prototypical version of heavy metal. A year later, he released an album with Jeff Beck’s group, Beck-Ola, but his solo career was derailed after he suffered a head injury in a car accident.
In 1970, after recovering from a fractured skull, Beck formed a new incarnation of the Jeff Beck Group and released two albums, 1971’s Rough and Ready and 1972’s Jeff Beck Group, which featured his first forays into the jazz fusion sound that would be known. for
In the mid-1970s, Beck supported John McLaughlin’s jazz-rock group the Mahavishnu Orchestra on tour, an experience that radically changed the way he viewed music. “Looking [McLaughlin] and the saxophonist trading solos, I thought, ‘That’s me,’” he said in 2016.
Inspired, Beck fully embraced jazz fusion with the George Martin-produced Blow By Blow. A platinum-selling hit in the United States that peaked at No. 4, it was Beck’s most commercially successful album, but he later expressed regret. “I shouldn’t have done Blow By Blow,” he told Guitar Player in 1990. “I wish I’d stuck with earthy rock’n’roll. When you’re surrounded by really musical people like Max Middleton and Clive Chaman , you’re in a prison and you have to play with it.”
Jeff Beck on stage in London in 1972. Photo: Fin Costello/Redferns
Despite his later feelings about Blow By Blow, Beck continued to experiment throughout the 1970s, releasing another platinum-selling jazz fusion album, Wired, in 1976, and There and Back, in 1980.
Beck’s output slowed dramatically in the 1980s, in part due to his tinnitus. His projects throughout the decade were sporadic but notable: in 1981, he performed with Clapton, Sting and Phil Collins at Amnesty International’s Other Ball benefit concerts, and returned with his first solo album in five years, Flash, in 1985. Produced by Chic’s Nile Rodgers, it marked a dramatic shift for Beck, featuring mostly vocal-led pop tracks, a shift from his mostly instrumental output of the 1970s. People Get Ready, a collaboration with Rod Stewart, it became one of Beck’s rare hit singles under his own name, charting in the United States, New Zealand, Sweden, Belgium and Switzerland.
The 1989 album Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop was his last solo album for a decade, but he remained active throughout the 1990s, collaborating with Jon Bon Jovi, Kate Bush and Roger Waters, among others; in 1999, he released Who Else, which incorporated techno and electronic elements.
In the 2000s and 2010s, Beck released only a handful of albums, but began to settle into his role as elder statesman and hailed influence, performing with the likes of Kelly Clarkson and Joss Stone. He has lived on an estate in East Sussex since 1976 and married his sixth wife, Sandra Cash, in 2005.
Beck’s most recent project was last year’s 18, a collaborative album with Johnny Depp that features original songs written by Depp and covers by Marvin Gaye, the Velvet Underground and other classic artists. The album was widely criticized; in a two-star review, Michael Hann of The Guardian described it as a “quirky, wildly uneven record”, while noting that “it is to Beck’s credit that only among the guitar heroes of the Kingdom’s R&B boom United from the 60s, it has not retired to the cafe.-table blues.