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.
Lost Woman
Jeff Beck Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Don't know where to hide.
See my future coming,
Like the rising of the tide.
But I lost you,
Lost you woman.
The only woman,
Made me lose my money,
You made me lose my mind.
It's people like you, baby,
Going to rule mankind.
But I lost you,
Lost you woman.
The only woman,
Woman who was my kind.
But if you come back,
I won't be the same.
What you did to me,
You can hardly call humane.
But I lost you,
But I still love you.
The only woman,
Woman who was my kind.
The lyrics in Jeff Beck's song "Lost Woman" convey a sense of desperation and loss over a woman who was once the singer's partner. He feels like he has hit rock bottom and has nowhere to turn because he doesn't know where to run or hide. Despite his despair, he can predict what's coming next in his life, much like the rising tide.
The singer expresses how this lost woman made him lose everything, including his money and his mind. He blames people like her for one day ruling mankind. Despite his negative feelings towards this woman, he still yearns for her, referring to her as the only woman who was his kind. If she were to come back into his life, he claims he won't be the same, and what she did to him was hardly humane. Despite all of the pain and suffering she caused him, he still loves her.
The song's lyrics speak to the devastation that can come from losing someone you love, and the internal struggle of wanting them back but knowing it may not be the best thing for you. The combination of the melancholic lyrics and Beck's guitar work make this emotional song a standout track in his discography.
Line by Line Meaning
Don't know where to run to,
I feel lost and without direction, uncertain of where to turn.
Don't know where to hide.
I'm feeling so exposed and vulnerable, I don't know where I can go to feel safe.
See my future coming,
I sense that what's to come will have a meaningful impact on my life in some way.
Like the rising of the tide.
Like the unstoppable flow of the ocean's tide, my future seems certain and inevitable.
But I lost you,
I'm grieving the loss of something important and valuable.
Lost you woman.
I feel like the woman who I loved and who was once part of my life is now gone forever.
The only woman,
She was a unique person in my life and held a special place in my heart.
Woman who was my kind.
She shared my values, my attitudes and my beliefs in a way that was special and unique.
Made me lose my money,
Her actions had a financial impact on me and I lost money as a result of what happened.
You made me lose my mind.
The emotional toll of our separation had such an impact on me that I was struggling to keep a clear head.
It's people like you, baby,
I'm identifying the kind of behavior that has caused me so much pain and recognizing similar patterns in other people.
Going to rule mankind.
I fear that this kind of behavior will continue and have an impact on the world at large.
But if you come back,
Despite all of the pain, I still long for the return of the person I lost.
I won't be the same.
I know that even if she came back to me, things would be different and it's possible we could never go back to the way things were.
What you did to me,
I'm acknowledging the pain that I've experienced and attributing it to the actions of the person I lost.
You can hardly call humane.
I'm suggesting that her behavior was cruel and inhumane, and that it's difficult to justify what she did to me.
But I still love you.
Despite all of the pain and the difficulty we've been through, I still have love in my heart for the person I lost.
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Written by: CHRIS DREJA, JEFF BECK, JIM MCCARTY, KEITH RELF, PAUL SAMWELL-SMITH
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Ted Hofland
This is Fantastic!
R.M. van Heuvelen
it's impossible to find any real yardbirds footage of this song or guitar tabs at that...does anyone know the tab? plus their both GODs!
iluvjackwhitemost
HELL YEAH!
Viktor Kovalchuk
i want that drum head
R.M. van Heuvelen
if it's so easy, then why aren't you on that stage ....? i know how to play songs, i know a lot, trust me. i just want to play this ok? don't think you're superior to everyone just because you've mastered a scale....we all know scales, improvising, and playing by ear, i just didn't want to go trough the trouble of finding out every friggin note myself ok? i'm not stupid, just lazy, if that's ok with you of course, grand master of guitarscales.......
Tad Somato
I ought to like Jack White more than I do. But I don't.
Adriana McGee
He’s an annoying narcissist, but he has done some cool things! 😊✌️
Sublime Music Channel
@detoth67 It's creepy that you know that. Ugh!
Mike Gonzalez
Man, this is bad - compared to the original.