Jeff Beck, the blues-steeped guitar hero who shaped the Yardbirds’ iconic sound, pioneered jazz-rock, and influenced generations of musicians, died Tuesday, his representative confirmed on social media. He was 78.
The Grammy-winning English rocker’s death was attributed to bacterial meningitis, which he “suddenly” contracted, according to a statement. “His family ask for privacy while they process this tremendous loss,” it added.
Before he became “the guitarist’s guitarist”—the legendary figure whose fingers and thumbs were insured for £7 million—Geoffrey Beck was a kid from South London. Having fallen in love with the electric guitar at 6 years old while listening to Les Paul on the radio, Beck was a burgeoning musician by 1965 when, at 20, he was recruited to join the Yardbirds.
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Already a rising name in England’s blues and rock scene, the group had just lost their commercially disinclined guitarist, Eric Clapton, who’d recommended a session musician named Jimmy Page as his replacement. Page in turn endorsed Beck, a childhood friend, for the gig.
Speaking to Rolling Stone in 1971, Beck remembered the invitation to join the Yardbirds, to which he claimed he’d initially replied: “Naah. Fuck off, man.”
He was thoroughly unimpressed meeting his future bandmates for the first time, too. “They didn’t say ‘Hi’ or anything,” Beck said. “They were pissed off that Eric had left, they had thought that the whole Yardbirds sound had gone. That was the impression I had got.”
“They said, ‘Can you play blues?’ I said, ‘Wot, slow blues? Chi-ca-go blues?’ They said anything. So I honked around,” he continued. “They said to get rid of the echo… you don’t use an echo in Chi-ca-go blues… yeah, that’s just what they said!”
A scruffy experimentalist, Beck played with riffs studded with fuzz tone, distortion, feedback, and reverb. Under his tenure, the Yardbirds had several of their greatest hits, including No. 3 single “Shapes of Things,” one of the first charting psychedelic rock songs. But Beck lasted just 20 months with the band, which sacked him in the midst of their 1966 U.S. tour, having had enough of his high-strung perfectionism and unfortunate habit of disappearing from shows.
Yardbirds bandmembers (from left) Jeff Beck, Jim McCarty, Chris Dreja, Paul Samwell-Smith and Keith Relf pictured in 1965.
Charlie Gillett Collection/Redferns via Getty“I have done other music after the Yardbirds,” Beck joked decades later, standing onstage as the group was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. “Anyway, somebody told me I should be proud tonight, but I’m not—because they kicked me out. They did. Fuck them.”
Next to him, Jimmy Page, who’d eventually come aboard, sharing lead guitar duties with Beck during his final months with the band, burst out laughing.
Page was tapped to induct Beck into the Hall of Fame as a solo artist in 2009. “He’d just keep getting better and better and better,” Page said, recalling the records his friend began cutting after striking out on his own. “And he still had, all the way through. And he leaves us mere mortals, believe me, just wondering.”
In his own remarks, Beck said, “I play the way I do because it allows me to come up with the sickest sounds possible. That's the point now, isn't it? I don't care about the rules. In fact, if I don't break the rules at least 10 times in every song, then I'm not doing my job properly.”
The formidable pair then reunited on stage at the ceremony, dueling through “Beck’s Bolero,” an epic rock instrumental Page had composed to be Beck’s first solo recording 43 years earlier.
On Wednesday, marking Beck’s death, Page tweeted, “The six stringed Warrior is no longer here for us to admire the spell he could weave around our mortal emotions. Jeff could channel music from the ethereal.”
After the Yardbirds, Beck wielded his firepower to form the Jeff Beck Group, and was improbably joined by two more giants of rock history—singer Rod Stewart and rhythm guitarist Ronnie Wood. Even more volatile than his previous band, the Group lasted all of two albums before imploding on the eve of Woodstock.
Later came Beck, Bogert & Appice, a supergroup he created alongside bassist Tim Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice. The power trio produced one stripped-down record termed “docile” by Rolling Stone before Beck decamped. He cut an all-instrumental solo album, 1975’s Blow by Blow, which quickly went platinum.
Over the course of Beck’s solo career, seven of his 10 albums went gold. He was nominated for 16 Grammy awards, winning eight. In 2014, he was honored with the British Academy's Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music. A year later, Rolling Stone gave him the No. 5 spot on its list of 100 greatest guitarists.
He also collaborated with the likes of David Bowie, Tina Turner, Mick Jagger, Stevie Wonder, and Jon Bon Jovi.
Though his discography output slowed considerably in his latter decades, Beck released his final album in 2022. Titled 18, the project was a collaborative effort with Johnny Depp, with whom Beck had been performing live in the months before his death.
Also released last year was Ozzy Osbourne’s album Patient Number 9, which boasted two tracks featuring Beck. “What a terrible loss for his family, friends & his many fans...” Osbourne tweeted on Wednesday. “Long live #JeffBeck.”
