Beck ranked in the top five of Rolling Stone and other magazine's list of 100 greatest guitarists. He was often called a "guitarist's guitarist". Rolling Stone describes him as "one of the most influential lead guitarists in rock". Although he recorded two hit albums (in 1975 and 1976) as a solo act, Beck did not establish or maintain the sustained commercial success of many of his contemporaries and bandmates.
Beck earned wide critical praise and received the Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance six times and Best Pop Instrumental Performance once. In 2014 he received the British Academy's Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. Beck was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice: as a member of the Yardbirds (1992) and as a solo artist (2009).
Beck was born on 24 June 1944 to Arnold and Ethel Beck at 206 Demesne Road, Wallington, England. As a 10-year-old, Beck sang in a church choir. He attended Sutton Manor Schoo and Sutton East County Secondary Modern School.
Beck cited Les Paul as the first electric guitar player who impressed him. Beck said that he first heard an electric guitar when he was 6 years old and heard Paul playing "How High the Moon" on the radio. He asked his mother what it was. After she replied it was an electric guitar and was all tricks, he said, "That's for me". Cliff Gallup, lead guitarist with Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, was also an early musical influence, followed by B.B. King and Steve Cropper. Beck considers Lonnie Mack "a rock guitarist [who] was unjustly overlooked [and] a major influence on him and many others."
As a teenager he learned to play on a borrowed guitar and made several attempts to build his own instrument, first by gluing and bolting together cigar boxes for the body and an unsanded fence-post for the neck with model aircraft control-lines and frets simply painted on.
Upon leaving school, he attended Wimbledon College of Art, after which he was briefly employed as a painter and decorator, a groundsman on a golf course and a car paint-sprayer. Beck's sister Annetta introduced him to Jimmy Page when both were teenagers.
Beck stopped regular use of a pick in the 1980s. He produces a wide variety of sounds by using his thumb to pluck the strings, his ring finger on the volume knob and his little finger on the vibrato bar on his signature Fender Stratocaster. By plucking a string and then 'fading in' the sound with the volume knob he creates a unique sound that can resemble a human voice, among other effects. He frequently uses a wah-wah pedal both live and in the studio. Eric Clapton once said, "With Jeff, it's all in his hands".
Along with Stratocasters, Beck occasionally played Fender Telecaster and Gibson Les Paul models as well. His amplifiers were primarily Fender and Marshall. In his earlier days with the Yardbirds, Beck also used a 1954 Fender Esquire guitar (now owned by Seymour W. Duncan, and housed in the Cleveland Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) through Vox AC30s. He also played through a variety of fuzz pedals and echo units along with this set-up and has used the Pro Co RAT distortion pedal. The pickup was based on a Gibson pickup rewound by Duncan and used in a salvaged Telecaster dubbed the "Tele-Gib" which he had constructed as a gift to Beck. Scott Morgan of the Rationals, who at one point shared a dressing room with the Yardbirds, recalls how Beck amplified his lead guitar through a Vox Superbeetle while using banjo strings for the unwound G string on his guitar because "they didn't make sets with an unwound G at that point."
During the ARMS Charity Concerts in 1983 Beck used his battered Fender Esquire along with a 1954 Stratocaster and a Jackson Soloist. On Crazy Legs (1993) he played a Gretsch Duo Jet, his signature Stratocaster and various other guitars. In 2007, Fender created a Custom Shop Tribute series version of his beat-up Fender Esquire as well as his Artist Signature series Stratocaster.
Described by Rolling Stone as "one of the most influential lead guitarists in rock", Beck cited his major influences as Les Paul, the Shadows, Cliff Gallup, Ravi Shankar, Roy Buchanan, Chet Atkins, Django Reinhardt, Steve Cropper and Lonnie Mack. Of John McLaughlin, Beck said: "[he] has given us so many different facets of the guitar and introduced thousands of us to world music, by blending Indian music with jazz and classical. I'd say he was the best guitarist alive."
According to musicologist and historian Bob Gulla, Beck is credited for popularising the use of audio feedback and distortion in rock guitar. Prior to Beck's arrival, guitar playing generally conformed to the "clean, bright, and jangly" sounds of early-1960s British Invasion bands or the bluesy aesthetic of 1950s African-American performers like Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley. During his short time with the Yardbirds, Beck's experimentation with feedback, distortion, and "fuzz" tone "pushed the band into directions that would open the door for psychedelic rock" while "jolt[ing] British rock forward", according to Gulla. While Beck was not the first rock guitarist to experiment with electronic distortion, he nonetheless helped to redefine the sound and role of the electric guitar in rock music. Beck's work with the Yardbirds and the Jeff Beck Group's 1968 album Truth were seminal influences on heavy metal music, which emerged in full force in the early 1970s. Gulla identifies one of Beck's characteristic traits to be his sense of pitch, particularly in exercising the whammy bar to create sounds ranging from "nose-diving bombs to subtle, perfectly pitched harmonic melodies".
According to guitarist and author Jack Wilkins, Beck is regarded alongside Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton as one of his generation's greatest guitarists, receiving praise for his technical skill and versatile playing. Stephen Thomas Erlewine finds him to be "as innovative as Jimmy Page, as tasteful as Eric Clapton, and nearly as visionary as Jimi Hendrix", although unable to achieve their mainstream success, "primarily because of the haphazard way he approached his career" while often lacking a star singer to help make his music more accessible. On his recorded output by 1991, Erlewine remarked that "never has such a gifted musician had such a spotty discography", believing Beck had largely released "remarkably uneven" solo records and only "a few terrific albums". In Christgau's Record Guide (1981), Robert Christgau essentialised Beck as "a technician" and questioned his ability to "improvise long lines, or jazz it up with a modicum of delicacy, or for that matter get funky", although he later observed a "customary focus, loyalty, and consistency of taste".
In 2015, Beck was ranked No. 5 in Rolling Stone' magazine's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists". In an accompanying essay, guitarist Mike Campbell applauded Beck for his "brilliant technique" and "personality" in his playing, including a sense of humor expressed through the growl of his wah-wah effects. Campbell also credited Beck with expanding the boundaries of the blues, particularly on his two collaborations with Stewart.
Haunted
Jeff Beck Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Haunted haunted haunted
Did the clock strike thirteen and I imaging things
It must be late but I sit here in the gloom
A voice seems to call I must be dreaming
That's all there's no one here but a solitary fool
Still I'm haunted by your love heavens above
I guess I learned something how to get myself straight
Till then I'm haunted by your love heavens above
Haunted by your love haunted by your love
I'm blinded by tears ever since you disappeared
Hoping we rarely loved or am I losing my mind too
Shivers down my spine it's kind of scary
Each time I feel the ghost that once was you
Still I'm haunted by your love heavens above
I can't hide from this feeling way down inside
I guess I learned something how to get myself straight
Till then I'm haunted by your love heavens above
Haunted by your love haunted by your love
Haunted haunted haunted
Haunted haunted haunted
Haunted by your love heavens above
I can't hide from this feeling way down inside
I guess I learned something how to get myself straight
Oh I'm haunted by your love heavens above
Haunted by your love haunted by your love haunted by your love
(Haunted by your love)
Haunted by your love
(Haunted by your love)
Yeah
(Haunted by your love)
Haunted by your love
(Haunted by your love)
The song "Haunted" by Jeff Beck is a ballad that describes a feeling of being tormented by the memory of a lost love. The lyrics suggest that the singer has been deeply affected by the breakup and cannot seem to let go of the love he once shared with his former partner. The opening lines of the song, "Haunted haunted haunted," create a sense of foreboding and set the tone for the rest of the song.
The singer seems to be caught between the world of reality and fantasy, unable to differentiate between the two. He wonders if he is simply imagining things when he hears a voice that seems to call out to him. He is haunted by memories of his lost love, described as a ghost that he can feel shivers down his spine when he senses it. The feeling is overwhelming and has caused him to cry so much that he is blinded by tears. The singer suggests that he has learned something about himself since the breakup and is trying to get himself straight, but it seems that he is not yet capable of dealing with the emotional turmoil that comes with heartbreak.
Overall, "Haunted" captures the pain and despair of a broken heart while highlighting the struggle that comes with trying to come to terms with a loss. The lyrics are melancholic yet resonate with anyone who has ever experienced the loss of love. The repetition of the phrase "Haunted by your love" reinforces the idea that the memory of a lost love can be overpowering, taking hold of one's thoughts and never letting go.
Line by Line Meaning
Did the clock strike thirteen and I imagine things
The singer wonders if something impossible has happened, suggesting they are feeling confused and disoriented.
It must be late but I sit here in the gloom
The singer is sitting in darkness, and is likely feeling lonely and isolated.
A voice seems to call I must be dreaming
The singer is hearing something that may or may not be there, and is questioning if it's real or not.
That's all there's no one here but a solitary fool
The artist dismisses the voice as nothing more than their own foolishness, reflecting some self-doubt and low self-esteem.
Still I'm haunted by your love heavens above
The artist cannot forget about someone they loved, and it is haunting them to this day.
I can't hide from this feeling way down inside
The singer is unable to suppress their feelings, no matter how hard they try to hold them in.
I guess I learned something how to get myself straight
The singer has learned to be okay with themselves and to work on their personal issues.
Till then I'm haunted by your love heavens above
The artist is still haunted by the memories of the person they miss, despite trying to move on from it.
I'm blinded by tears ever since you disappeared
The artist is feeling intense emotions since the person they loved left, and may even be crying about it.
Hoping we rarely loved or am I losing my mind too
The artist is unsure whether their relationship was real or just a figment of their imagination.
Shivers down my spine it's kind of scary
The singer is feeling scared or nervous about something, and the unnamed person is something of a ghostly presence that provokes these emotions.
Each time I feel the ghost that once was you
The artist is experiencing feelings of longing for the person they miss, as if their memory is haunting them.
Oh I'm haunted by your love heavens above
The singer repeats the chorus, indicating that they are still haunted by the person they loved, and that the memories of them will not fade away easily.
Yeah
This line is simply an interjection that adds emphasis or emotion to the previous line.
Contributed by Kayla M. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
Brian Davis
Oh, cool! Did some googling and found it to be a Langston Hughes piece. Here's another of his that they taught us way back in grade school:
“Harlem
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it.. explode?"
Jamie Smith
Jeff Beck. Two Time Hall Hall of Famer!!
Jeff will always be an iconic guitarist, producer, arranger, performer, & humanitarian.
Jeff single handedly changed the guitar contribution. Strong words. (Everyone knows Jimi's short but profound contribution is what it is)
My first Jeff Beck experience was with his "Wired" recording. I purchased that recording 3X! LP, CD & Remastered CD on Epic. I simply was amazed by All the sound tracks being great in their own right.
Ofcourse, I had to purchase and wear out the grooves of "Blow By Blow" as well.
There are so many Great recordings by Jeff. He was ahead of his time as a guitarist. Ahead of Great Carlos Santana. Ahead of Great John McLaughlin. Ahead of Great Al Di Meola. Four of my top five.
Jeff Beck has transcended and left us all so much material to binge on and appreciate and enjoy. I've been binging on Jeff Beck since our tremendous lost.
Thank you Jeff. Thanks for the great contributions to my Soundtrack of Life.
R.I.P brother. Job well done.🙏
Ned Nobody
I'm 71 and been hearing this man since the Yardbirds, Truely a Master of his Craft. Leaves a Big Hole With His Passing.
Christopher Davis Francis
Same here! I am 71 also and saw Jeff with the Yardbirds and with Rod Stewart. What a loss. RIP Jeff
Christine Lloyd
I am 71 too and have been listening to Jeff Beck since his Yard bird days. So very heartbreaking to lose such a mighty talent, (possibly the greatest guitarist in the world ) and all round nice guy. Jeff will always be remembered.
hansel celmare
Im born in 71
Anthony Michael Hall & Oates
Same here brother, and it seems like yesterday that I was hearing For Your Love on my little AM radio. Thank you KRLA for that.
Like so many, I followed his playing. Which evolved like no other. Yes, a big sorrow hole! A hole in my heart full of soul.
Karen Lantang
One of the greatest guitarists of all time
R.I.P Jeff Beck 🕊
jelena jelenić
Yes he played with all best bands in the world.Sandra ,just be like a steel
gardensofthegods
NO ... Jeff Beck IS the GREATEST of ALL TIME .
godloveszaza
@gardensofthegods as long as theres a jimi hendrixx and Jimmy page he cant be.
Parallax Continuum
@somewhereonlsd " The Strat, has a spring loaded bridge ?? There goes Hendrix's little secret.Jeff was the GOAT.