Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop

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George is almost like a dad: relaxed, very focused on the sound. George Martin was probably the best producer I’ve had – the guy who could framework what I do without interfering.” When you’re in the studio playing all this amazing stuff on guitar, are you totally blasé about it? Or do you surprise yourself as much as you surprise the rest of us? Yeah. I thought, if he’s not afraid to stand onstage with me, I’m not ashamed to go anywhere. There was such a contrast between the way he was onstage and the way he was offstage. He spoke in whispers. He would never raise his voice above a whisper. It was all in his expressions, in the hands. Unbelievable comedy and profound statements just by the raising of an eyebrow. This is not the only ES-175 Jeff played. There’s a video of him playing “Matchbox” on a tobacco-burst Gibson ES-175 with The Big Town Playboys. There are quite a few accolades accounted for this particular guitar and its orange sister. He played it during the ARMS Charity Concerts in 1983, and during the studio sessions of the “Flash” album. As well as for solos on “People Get Ready” and “Ambitious”. He also used it in 1984 during the legendary CBS Records convention in Honolulu, when he played on stage with Stevie Ray Vaughan for the first time.

There was another one he wanted me to go on, but I was too out of it to play. A bunch of us dropped by [New York City recording studio] the Hit Factory one night when Stevie was there.Jeff used the Tele-Gib on “Blow by Blow”, and he recorded“Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers” on it. It can be seen in the music video for “Secret Policeman’s Ball”. Some of my favorite solos got trashed because he thought they were hideous – not musical. He’d say, ‘That’s really the most dreadful noise I’ve ever heard.’ And I’d say, ‘That’s what I want!’ But I’d usually come ’round to his way of thinking. But we’d really been out on the, uh, cold drinks, so I declined his offer to play. I couldn’t bear to disgrace myself in that state. I was pretty bad. We really could put it away. I said I never did take drugs, but we did lube up occasionally.” 1975-'77: The Fusion Years This guitar was the second Strat Jeff received from John, with the first one being stolen. He used it on the “Wired” album, and since then he keeps it safe at his studio, considering it to be one of his most prized possessions. I was looking to George sort of as a parental figure: someone to help me present some of my more outrageous visions in a way that would be acceptable to the general public. And he did it quite well.

There was a guy called Mike Pinera [guitarist for Iron Butterfly, among other acts] who had one, and he used to do just bass-riff noise and guitar lines with it. It took me about three or four days to get some of the vowel sounds out. On the song Pork-U-Pine it’s amazing how you use the Strat’s vibrato arm to emulate the vibrato trills in Middle Eastern vocals. That was the most ponderous time in my life: what to do now that that guy’s done what he’s done? And when I found out that people still wanted to hear what I had to say, I carried on.

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But it was still traumatic leaving the Yardbirds. Because I just walked out on the one thing that gave me life, gave me recognition. It was pretty tough. I didn’t feel proud about dumping them in the shit. I got home and faced a bleak winter in England with nothing to do. So I must have been desperately unhappy to do what I did. Yep. That’s how I do it. It’s not easy. Especially when the harmonic isn’t in the right notes. You know, when it’s a semitone sharp [i.e., from a natural, open string harmonic]. So rather than tune the guitar down, I’ll just bend the string down before I hit the harmonic and just guess at it. Or I’ll hit it and bend it up. Whatever it takes. There are no rules in that.” Jeff played this guitar onARMS Charity Concerts in 1983, and duringthe studio sessions of the “Flash” album for solos on “People Get Ready” and “Ambitious”. He also used it in 1984during the legendaryCBS Recordsconventionin Honolulu, when he played on stage withStevie Ray Vaughan for the first time.

The guitar was stolen from Jeff during one of the first tours with the Yardbirds, but it was fortunately recovered a week later. Jeff claims that the fingerprint dust from that day is still present on the guitar. He put me on one of his songs on the Talking Book album, Lookin’ for Another Pure Love. I couldn’t care less if the solo stank. Just the way he said ‘Do it, Jeff!’ on the record, that meant a million quid to me

Actually, I hate that tune! It’s pretty awful. I could care less if people still like it. It felt like a slowed-done Irish reel to me.” No. It was my melody over his rhythm. He came up with the bolero rhythm on the 12-string. But it’s my riff in the middle. I’d decided that the Yardbirds’ trademark was to stop in the middle of the song and come into a completely different rhythmic thing, like they did on For Your Love.

Anoushka,’ she’s called. Because Anoushka Shankar [sitar virtuoso and daughter of Indian music patriarch Ravi Shankar] signed it for me. She’s divine. I said to her, ‘Just please sign this.’ And she did. She couldn’t believe I asked her. So now that guitar is Anoushka. While working in the studio Jeff was approached by a guy willing to give him his 1954 Stratocaster as a present. Jeff, of course, accepted it, but as a kind gesture, he left it in a studio for a couple of days to see if the guy will change his mind since this guitar is one of the most expensive and sought-out Stratocasters out there. Yeah. And some of them were pretty memorably horrible. I think they were going in for a huge arse contest or something. Badly camouflaged.” He’d come onstage and completely overshadow and undermine what we’d done. But nobody cared; it was so great I don’t know – maybe we would have worked something out. But I said, “Wait a minute. I just got my best mate in on guitar. He’s gonna see me off up the road if I’m not careful.”So I decided to go in and see what I could come up with without any chordal support, without any of that direction, because keyboards tend to determine a direction almost immediately. You hear a chord and you’ve got one foot in a certain direction. Then we found out it was too long to be hogging that much space on an album. So we edited it, and it lost a lot of the frightening immediacy that the original jam had. Maybe some day I’ll release the unedited version. It’s really crazy. A bit wild. Like Mothers of Invention wild.” Regarding the very high pitched melody sections in the song Bulgarian , are you playing those with harmonics and using a wang bar to shape the melody?