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.
Mockin' Bird Hill
Jeff Beck Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
And kisses the roses 'round my window sill
Then my heart fills with gladness when I hear the trill
Of the birds in the treetops on Mockingbird Hill
Tra la la, tweedle dee dee dee
It gives me a thrill
To wake up in the morning
Tra la la tweedle dee dee dee
There's peace and good will
You're welcome as the flowers
On Mockingbird Hill
Got a three-cornered plow and an acre to till
And a mule that I bought for a ten-dollar bill
There's a tumble-down shack and a rusty old mill
But it's my Home Sweet Home up on Mockingbird Hill
Tra la la, tweedle dee dee dee
It gives me a thrill
To wake up in the morning
To the mockingbird's trill
Tra la la tweedle dee dee dee
There's peace and good will
You're welcome as the flowers
On Mockingbird Hill
When it's late in the evening I climb up the hill
And survey all my kingdom while everything's still
Only me and the sky and an old whippoorwill
Singin' songs in the twilight on Mockingbird Hill
Tra la la, tweedle dee dee dee
It gives me a thrill
To wake up in the morning
To the mockingbird's trill
Tra la la tweedle dee dee dee
There's peace and good will
You're welcome as the flowers
On Mockingbird Hill
The lyrics to Jeff Beck's "Mockin' Bird Hill" speak of the simple joys of life and finding happiness in the small things. The song starts with the singer waking up in the morning as the sun rises and hearing the birds chirping outside his window. This brings him a sense of peace and joy that he can't help but express in the form of the "tra la la" and "tweedle dee dee" phrases that follow. He sings of the peace and good will he feels in this moment and how just like the flowers on Mockingbird Hill, anyone is welcome to share in this happiness.
The second verse takes us deeper into his life as he speaks of having a small farm with a mule to till the land and a rundown shack as his home. Despite the lack of material wealth, he still finds joy and contentment in the beauty of his surroundings and the sounds of nature. The final verse speaks of his evening routine, where he climbs up the hill to admire the view and listen to the whippoorwill sing as the sky turns dark. Through all of this, the singer finds happiness in the simple things in his life.
The lyrics can be interpreted as a reminder to appreciate the beauty around us and find joy in the small things in life. It serves as a reminder to not be so focused on material possessions and instead appreciate the beauty of nature and the happiness that comes from within.
Line by Line Meaning
When the sun in the morning peeps over the hill
As soon as the sun rises over the horizon
And kisses the roses 'round my window sill
And illuminates the flowers near my windowsill
Then my heart fills with gladness when I hear the trill
Then my heart becomes happy upon hearing the joyful sound
Of the birds in the treetops on Mockingbird Hill
Of the singing birds in the trees on the hill referred to as Mockingbird Hill
Tra la la, tweedle dee dee dee
A cheerful singing exclamation
It gives me a thrill
It excites and energizes my spirit
To wake up in the morning
To arise in the morning
To the mockingbird's trill
To the pleasant and lively song of the mockingbird
There's peace and good will
There is harmony and friendliness in the surroundings
You're welcome as the flowers
Everyone is welcome as warmly received as the flowers
On Mockingbird Hill
In the region recognized as Mockingbird Hill
Got a three-cornered plow and an acre to till
I possess a triangular farm tool and an area of land to cultivate
And a mule that I bought for a ten-dollar bill
I obtained a mule for ten dollars
There's a tumble-down shack and a rusty old mill
There is a decrepit shack and a mill covered in rust
But it's my Home Sweet Home up on Mockingbird Hill
But I consider it as my pleasant and intimate residence in the location identified as Mockingbird Hill
When it's late in the evening I climb up the hill
In the evening hours, I ascend the hill
And survey all my kingdom while everything's still
And observe all of my territory while all is calm and peaceful
Only me and the sky and an old whippoorwill
Just myself, the vast sky, and an aged bird called whippoorwill
Singin' songs in the twilight on Mockingbird Hill
Singing songs during the gloaming-time in Mockingbird Hill
Lyrics © Peermusic Publishing
Written by: Vaughn Horton
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@gabbyg7315
Oh, my goodness. I had lost faith that this kind of female singer still existed in this day and age - joyful countenance; sartorially feminine, glamorous, and dignified; and reliant simply on a gorgeous, pure voice.
I woke up this morning with this song swirling in my head and found this video (thanks for posting). When Les Paul and Mary Ford sang it, I was 6, living on an Ontario farm and missing terribly my father who had died two years earlier. It was the music flowing from an old butter-coloured radio (which I still have) that brought me solace. And this was one of my favourite songs. I would clamber up a big old rock in a field by the house (it's still there, too) and "survey all my kingdom' while singing this song.
I'm embarrassed that I didn't know until now of Imelda May. Oh, and she's Irish. How fitting; so were my parents. Lots of potatoes grown on that farm.
@hermitatpeace
then you should also check out the "Postmodern Jukebox" and see those women
@rfalv
find the emotion and commotion album and hear their Lilac Wine ... as great as Nina Simone's classic ...
and check out Jeff's Nessun Dorma ..
@opposmart668
Rest In Eternal Peace, Jeff Beck. Thank you for this rendition.
@cindye7916
RIP, Jeff Beck. This is lovely. Imelda did a lovely job singing.
@sharonsiba553
Beautiful. I love how they do this song.
@lindasantangelo6950
Incredibly beautiful rendition of a timeless classic.
@marktappenden1858
Voice of an angel and such a beautiful lady
@markwall4532
Superb and very well sang. Great to see a younger singer singing a classic. Thank you
@epipick
Les Paul was one of Jeff's heroes and an inspiration so its no surprise he excels at this material. Imelda clearly holds Mary Ford in high regard, too.