Recorded in 1991, Steve Vai’s Gash is an homage to his rock-and-roll past. It’s also a passion project celebrating the life of friend, Johnny “Gash” Sombrotto. Reminiscent of his guitar work with David Lee Roth, Gash is Vai at his most raw. Long on riffs and short on wankery, Vai gets down and dirty, but more importantly, pays tribute to a departed friend.

Gash sounds like it was taken from a time capsule marked “Steve Vai 1991.”
When I was a teenager, I led a dual musical life. One side of me was composing music for my high school orchestra. The other side was listening to Led Zeppelin, Queen, and rock bands of the ’70s. I was also into motorcycle culture. My brother had a Harley, and I used to hang out with him and his friends. Later when I was working with David Lee Roth, I jumped into Harley Davidson culture and got a bunch of bikes. One of my friends was a biker named John Sombrotto. When he was 21, he was riding a dirt bike along the power lines in Long Island. He got lost and climbed a high-tension wire to see where he was. Electricity went through his body, and he fell 60 feet onto a barbed-wire fence and caught fire. Sixty percent of his body was burned. Miraculously, he survived. That was when he donned the nickname “Gash” because he was all gashed up.

He was one of the most interesting people I knew; he had a great sense of humor, amazing charisma, and was completely unpredictable – total lead singer DNA. Riding with him gave me a wonderful sense of freedom and expansion. We listened to music while riding, and I thought, “I’m going to write a record I’d like to listen to when we’re riding our Harleys.” High-energy, uplifting, empowering, a sense of freedom, and a good melody. No wanky guitar solos.

I went into the studio and blasted this record out. I laid down a click track, improvised bass parts, and put guitars on it. I found a drummer in Texas named Tiffany Smith, who was an outstanding rock drummer. She laid this stuff down, and the whole record took a week, but I didn’t have a singer. It was too much of a pet project to find some great lead singer, so I thought I’d sing it myself, which was an abysmal disaster (laughs). So I thought, “I gotta get Sombrotto in the studio and see what happens.” He nailed the stuff like a boss! He had all this charisma, authenticity, and joy.

At the same time, I was working on Sex & Religion. My plan was to return to Gash after that because I only had eight songs. One I’d written was with Nikki Sixx called “New Generation.” When I went to finish it up, Sombrotto was killed in a motorcycle accident. I was so disheartened, I shelved the project for 30 years. I started listening again around the anniversary of his death, and I liked it. I thought, “I have to put this out.” The music on this record is part of my musical DNA.

It has a Roth-era feel.
The Roth stuff was very West Coast – California rock, very colorful. Gash is New York to the bone – East Coast! Also, with the West Coast bands I was in, everything you do has a committee involved. Everybody has a say, and I had to compromise. With this record, there was no committee. There was me and, “What do you want to do this morning, Steve?” I was my own committee for every aspect.

How was Sombrotto to work with while recording vocals?
A total dream! I didn’t realize he had so much control. I’m impossible when it comes to producing vocalists. It’s like a gauntlet getting stuff past me. But Sombrotto came in and owned it. All this great stuff came out of him. He loved me and respected my production skills and musicality. He was perfect to work with.

Do you remember what gear you used back then?
It happened so fast. All roads point to my Ibanez Jem EVO and my Bogner or Jose Arredondo-modded Marshalls. I wanted it to sound loose, free, and rock-and-roll.

Will there be a tour with Gash?
There is an expectation for a tour, but I don’t have any plans for that. There are great lead singers who could sing this stuff, but there’s a difference between an excellent lead singer and a rock star. You can feel rock-star DNA. Sombrotto had it above and beyond. To replace him, I’d have to find someone extraordinary. I’ll be going on tour in Europe, South America, and the rest of the world. After that, a solo acoustic vocal record with me singing.

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This article originally appeared in VG’s April 2023 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

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Denny Laine, best known for his affiliations with the Moody Blues and Paul McCartney and Wings, died  December 5 after an extended battle with interstitial lung disease. He was 79.

Raised in Birmingham, England, Laine was the founding guitarist of the Moody Blues and sang lead on the band’s first hit single, “Go Now,” which became his signature song. He left the group after its debut album and was a member of Paul McCartney and Wings from 1971 through ’81, where he played lead and rhythm guitar, keyboards, bass, and woodwinds while also singing lead and backing vocals. In concert, he often played an Ibanez doubleneck, and when McCartney moved to piano, Laine switched to bass, typically an early Fender Precision or Mustang. With McCartney, he co-wrote and arranged “No Words” for Band On The Run, the U.K. hits “Deliver Your Children” and “Mull of Kintyre,” and the title track to 1978’s London Town.

“Denny was Paul’s right-hand man,” said Laine’s friend, Laurence Juber. “When I was a session musician in London, Denny recruited me to replace Jimmy McCullough as Wings’ lead guitarist in 1978. He was a compelling songwriter and performer – a rock authentic, having a deep soulfulness infused with a folk sensibility.”

As a solo artist, Laine recorded 10 albums between 1973 and 2008. From ’97 through ’02, he played in an all-star aggregation called World Classic Rockers. He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth.

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The years leading up to CBS Musical Instruments’ 1985 sale of the Fender brand were fluid times at the instrument maker’s headquarters in Fullerton. Faltering in a market death struggle with imports from Japan, in August of ’81, the company hired John McLaren and Bill Schultz – both poached from the guitar-making sector of Yamaha – and charged them with saving Fender from extinction.

With Schultz (1926-2006) came a new marketing team led by Yamaha cohort Dan Smith (1946-2016), who was keenly aware of why Japanese guitars were eating Fender’s lunch. Though Schultz and Smith are rightly credited for their roles turning the company’s fortunes, part of the story has gone untold, including how Freddie Tavares, John Page, and Paul Bugielski were taking steps to cure Fender’s ills prior to the arrival of the supplants.

When hired in May of ’78, 21-year-old Page was a neck buffer on the production floor. Having DIY’d guitars and amps for his band since his early teens, he envisioned himself doing bigger things, so he kept a close eye on internal job openings, and within a few months was a model maker on the research-and-development team.

One of Page’s early assignments was to design a new method of hanging guitar bodies for transport through the production facility; the result was a vertical conveyor to hold them as their finishes cured. Once it was in use, the sight of hundreds of bodies hanging in a straight line made it glaringly obvious there were inconsistencies with body contours. Page tried to address them.

“I went to the wood shop and found that even though they had templates and tooling, they weren’t being used,” he said. “That meant quality depended on which guy was carving, and their mood. So, contours were all over the map. I had to tell shapers, ‘You’ve got to use the templates and tooling.’ Some guys had the attitude, ‘Oh, that’s too difficult’ or ‘That would take too long.’”

Just one of many quality issues that had gone unaddressed during the CBS reign, it was resolved by adding new technology in the form of a mechanical shaper.

In late 1980, Page became a guitar-design engineer, working alongside Tavares.

“My first project was the Bullet guitar, which to me was the coolest thing in the world, and the assignment came from Paul Bugielski,” he said.

Prior to his stint at Fender, Bugielski was Director of Marketing at Shure Brothers’ Illinois headquarters, where his professional circle included Norlin Industries’ marketing director Roger Cox and Ed Llewellyn, director of CBS Musical Instruments’ corporate offices in Chicago. Cox was hired away by Fender in early 1980 and recruited Bugielski to join him in Fullerton to lead the marketing of Fender’s guitars, amplifiers, and sound-reinforcement gear. Part of that job included addressing quality control.

“Myself, John, Freddie, and Ed Jahns, who was Freddie’s counterpart for the amplifier line, regularly picked a dozen of whatever was coming off the line and we’d carefully look them over,” Bugielski recalled. “Being no stranger to monitoring product quality – in MI, Shure was widely known as top-notch – at Fender I was immediately made part of weekly quality evaluations. Some weeks, we met twice, and our goal was to have the vast majority of product be in a range of good to excellent – accepting only a small amount of ‘good.’”

For more than a decade before Bugielski arrived, CBS had viewed Fender as a mass-producer of product more than an instrument maker. Quantity mattered, quality did not. And because CBS failed to invest in technology that would have allowed for high quality along with high output, every aspect of guitar building – from shaping necks and bodies to drilling, routing, and mounting hardware – suffered greatly.

Beyond being pushed to increase output, the attitude among workers was impacted by chatter about the company’s future and how CBS was trying to dump Fender. Bugielski, though, was focused.

“I just kept trying to make things better,” he said. “I’d been a musician since high school and played in bands. So did John, and of course, Freddie was a star. We were all musicians, and we had a feel for quality. The last thing we wanted was to be part of tarnishing the Fender name. And to be clear, none of what we were making by then was terrible, even if we had a sense that things could be better.

“We were in a period of fundamental change in the guitar market, technologically and psychographically, for dealers, our competitors, and the buying public,” he added. “The synths were coming! That sort of change usually brings unrest, and that brings change to business; as the saying goes, evolve or die, and Fender’s product line needed to adapt. And without John, Freddie, and a few others explaining to me how to make our ideas work within Fender’s structure, my insights for the guitar line would not have been possible.”

Working under the supervision of Cox, one day in the summer of ’81, Bugielski told him about a marketing strategy that he and the group conceived for guitars across a range – low-cost, middle, and high-end.

“We wanted to offer decent quality at every point,” said Bugielski. “The line would start with the Bullet guitar, the Standard line was middle ground, and the ’52 Telecaster would be an instrument for pro and semi-pro players that would be the ultimate in quality, priced accordingly.

“After we got a cautious go-ahead from CBS Corporate, Freddie was put in charge of quality for the midrange line, where things like the three-bolt neck with Micro Tilt adjuster were unpopular.”

Page recalls he and Bugielski discussing the Telecaster reissue with Tavares, including details about the finish, with Tavares lobbying for a white-blond instead of the familiar buttersctoch, and a few others.

“Some of the first prototypes were rock-heavy ash bodies with a polyester white-blond finish – they were just s**t,” he laughed.

With a plan officially in place, wheels began to turn. Within a few months, though, fate intervened when Llewellyn was replaced by McLaren, Cox by Schultz and Smith; the new group fired the existing marketing team and every brand manager, including Bugielski. In early ’82, Fender entered agreements to have guitars made in Japan, after which it dramatically scaled down production at the Fullerton plant. For a time, most Fender guitars were made – ironically but strategically – in the factories of its Japanese competitors, the intent being to have Fender-branded instruments beat those competitors’ copy guitars on their own turf, in turn forcing them to raise the retail prices of guitars sold in the U.S.

Domestically, the focus turned to a line of Vintage reissues, including the ’52 Telecaster being developed by Tavares, along with the ’57 and ’62 Strat as well as Precision and Jazz basses, with Page as lead designer. The groundwork included a lot of legwork.

“Dan and I flew to dealers around the country to buy old guitars and basses, mostly from Larry Hendrickson at Axe In Hand, in Illinois,” he said. “We disassembled them, noted points we thought were important, then passed the parts along to design draftspeople for detailed documentation.”

While they had all the real-deal bits and pieces, and could have accurately reproduced vintage models, dealers were adamant that players wouldn’t respond.

“There ended up being a lot of things that were not very accurate, by design, because players at the time didn’t care about deep-V necks and dot spacing – at least that was the feedback our marketing department was getting,” Page said. “Dan had to decide on things like neck shapes based on that, which is why we came up with the medium-C shape.

“Another issue was finishes,” he added. “We started with 100-percent nitrocellulose, but when the first Vintage models came out, dealers complained about grain shrinkage and irregularities showing through. We told them, ‘Well, it’s lacquer, like vintage…’ But they said, ‘Yeah, but we don’t wanna see that.’ So, we started doing urethane undercoats with nitro top coats.”

Adding more pressure was continued competition from Japanese instruments.

“Hanging on the walls in guitar stores, too often we were told, ‘You guys lose,’ and we needed to change that,” Page said.

Those concessions for the sake of marketability helped make the Vintage line successful.

“Dan’s attitude was that sales of those guitars afforded us the ability to develop the Standard line and the Elites, which pushed the envelope with modernism and ultimately led to creation of the Custom Shop,” said Page.

Launched in 1987 under the guidance of Michael Stevens, who’d been hand-picked by Schultz, the Custom Shop was a stand-alone entity, in theory unbound by rules or the bottom line. Stevens’ first hire was Page, who fondly recalls its early heyday.

“We were all surrounded by incredibly creative people working insanely long hours,” he said. “You didn’t clock out at a certain time. I loved that atmosphere, that craziness.”
Relatively unrestricted, management considered the Custom Shop the company’s wild frontier, and Page said Schultz was consistently pleased with the results.

“We made really good margins, and I battled a bit with Bill because they always wanted more,” he laughed.

Some of those low-key battles involved Page’s decisions regarding personnel and other factors, but they didn’t impact the shop environment.

“We were allowed to do our work. I was trying to gather the best builders in the world, and Dan was doing his job as a marketing guy. We were dealing with the best artists in the world, and my approach was we had to listen to them, not our own opinions of what was the best pickup or neck shape. But in the eyes of management, that didn’t always apply.

“For Dan and I, the difference was between thinking big numbers and little numbers. Nobody was wrong, we were just dealing with a different customer base and the fact I always wanted art to win. Art and business always reach an impasse; Dan was a very artistic guy, and he understood that. But I didn’t want to give in to the business side. Still, I credit Bill and Dan for allowing us to do what we did.”

Another discussion that stands in his memory involved Schultz and the company’s broader use of the Custom Shop logo.

“Bill allowed Fender Japan to use our original oval-shaped Custom Shop art for their decals,” he said. “I felt it furthered confusion when rumors on the street were already erroneously saying that Japan was making our Custom Shop guitars. So, I started using a new V-shaped logo that I’d developed with Pamelina Hovnatanian. Bill wasn’t too happy with me on that one.”

On the flip side, some of Page’s fondest memories include working with Bugielksi and Tavares.

“In my opinion, Paul has never been given proper credit for what he did at Fender, especially the concept of the Vintage reissues,” he said. “And, it was always great when Freddie would come by the Custom Shop. One day, he and I were standing on the mezzanine, looking down on the floor, when he said, ‘This is exactly like when I started with Leo. It feels like that.’ That was the biggest compliment in the world.”

Though his time at Fender was brief and ended mid-stride, Bugielski also enjoyed his time there.

“John, Freddie, and I were best friends in those two years,” he said. “Schultz, Smith, and all of the people they brought in had to address a lot of factors quickly; they did what they had to do, and it worked out. I knew all about corporate reorganizations, so there was no skin off my back. I wound up at Mattel Electronics, where I helped develop the first generation of video games, the Intellivision game console, a line of handheld video games, and handheld musical games. My brand group, Synsonics, was charged with bringing electronic musical instruments and music-learning/gaming software to the home-video-game market. Those games were precursors to Guitar Hero and Rock Band.”

Page stayed at the Custom Shop until November of ’98, having built instruments for Eric Clapton, David Gilmour, Pete Townshend, Elliot Easton, Cesar Rosas, and others, along with developing high-profile custom models for Harley Davidson, Jaguar, and Playboy magazine. He then spent four years helping establish the Fender Museum of Music and the Arts before moving to Oregon, where he designed and built custom art furniture. One day in 2006, on a whim, he sketched a guitar design that proved to be the first step toward John Page Guitars, a one-man shop where he creates guitar and bass designs, along with functional art. In 2014, he and business partner Howard Swimmer began marketing small batches of select Page designs under the name John Page Classic.

Bugielski worked for Mattel Electronics until 1984, when he founded PSC Management Consultants, where today he serves as Managing Principal Partner.

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Special thanks to Richard Smith and Dave Hunter. Watch for a review of the John Page Classic T-Style guitar in a future issue.

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Take Two

Fender’s Siegel, Norvell on Creating American Vintage II

By Ward Meeker

More than most, guitar builders know you can’t please everyone, especially when offering “reissue” instruments to customers whose tastes revolve around details like the space between dots at the 12th fret of a Strat and know the number of screws on every “golden era” pickguard or the width of an old neck with just one touch.

At Fender, the concept of making guitars that looked and played more like beloved ’50s and ’60s models was born in 1980/’81, as CBS teetered toward dumping Fender from its corporate portfolio. The idea gained steam after new president Bill Schultz and V.P. of marketing and sales Roger Balmer wearied of hearing about the “pre-CBS” glory days and how its current instruments paled in comparison – worse yet, how they were inferior to instruments being made in Japan.

Seeking wisdom, they gathered a small group of employees who’d been at Fender since the ’50s and ’60s, including designer Freddie Tavares (co-designer of the Stratocaster), pickup winder Gail Paz, and final-assembly inspector Gloria Fuentes. They also hired Dan Smith, who’d been key in guiding the guitar division at Yamaha.

In 1980, Tavares started work on what would become the Vintage ’52 Telecaster, built with specs taken from a ’52 owned by jazz guitarist/educator Ted Greene (“Fretprints,” January ’22). Under Schultz, Balmer, and Smith, production started on the Vintage ’52 Telecaster as well as the ’57 Stratocaster, ’62 Stratocaster, ’57 Precision Bass, ’62 Precision Bass, and ’62 Jazz Bass, which were offered in a late-’82 catalog that described them with enticing phrases like “a faithful replica” and “a remarkably detailed tribute.” The basses were called “painstaking replicas” (see sidebar on the creation of the original Vintage line). Today, they stand as a desirable subgroup in the collectible market.

Last October, Fender announced the American Vintage II series, listing qualities such as original build specs (“all of them”), nitro-lacquer finishes (where applicable), vintage-style neck profiles, year-specific pickups, ash and alder bodies, and vintage-style hardware. Where reissues have traditionally keyed on cut-and-dried classics, this time Fender is venturing into its debated (and derided) ’70s guitars, intent on righting a few wrongs.

Guiding the effort are Rich Siegle and Justin Norvell, whose combined time at Fender adds up to more than a half-century.

As a kid, Siegle’s love of guitars started when he’d sit with his brother, John, and gaze at instruments in the Sears catalog. Seeing The Beatles on Ed Sullivan cemented a fascination and he learned to play on John’s Gibson SG.

“I’d open the case and just gaze at it,” he said. “Whenever he wasn’t home, I’d pick it up and strum. It was crazy how good it felt (laughs).”

That infatuation led to a life immersed in music and instruments; in 1996, he was hired as Advertising Manager at Fender. Today, his job title is Director of Branding/Fender Academy, but Norvell points out that Siegle is also, “… our resident historian and archivist.” He still loves to play, write, and perform.

Norvell, Fender’s Senior V.P. of Product Development, was raised by devout music fans.

“My dad had a thousand records,” he said. “From age four or five, I’d sit with the coil-cord headphones in front of the console stereo and listen to Cream, Zeppelin, Allman Brothers, Steely Dan – all that stuff; Hendrix, the Doors. I really soaked it in.”

Though his first instrument was drums, bandmates would leave gear at his place, and (with permission) he’d pick around on a solidbody or his dad’s Yamaha acoustic.
In 1996, he was hired to work in Fender’s parts division.

“I had to know what everything was, from all years,” he said. “It was my crash course on product and the history of Fender. Like Rich, I’ve remained very steeped in not only what we’re doing now, but everything that came before it.” Also like Siegle, making music remains an important pastime for him.

We talked with both to learn what went into the American Vintage II line.

Reissues have traditionally focused on “peak” examples, like the ’52 Tele or stack-knob Jazz Bass. How did you decide on models for AVII? 
Justin Norvell: After the American Original line (launched in 2018) highlighted features of a certain decade, a lot of people wanted us to go back to year-specific reissues. We had to consider whether to try the same models again or take on something different, and there were things we wanted to do.

Many people look at a ’54, ’57, or ’59 Stratocaster and go, “Yeah… sunburst Strat.” But of course there are those who know how it went from ash to alder, two-tone to three-tone, U to V necks, Alnico IIIs to Vs – all that stuff. The first Vintage Tele was arbitrarily chosen because Dan Smith had Ted Greene’s guitar handy to use as the prototype.

It was a simple matter of accessibility.
JN: Yes, and that’s part of why we wanted to celebrate the ’51 this time, because that’s really the first-year Telecaster. Plus, on the original reissues, we weren’t able to do round-lam rosewood fretboards on the production line – that was only available in the Custom Shop. But we now have capabilities to do more. We wanted to play with other ideas and reappraise the CBS era. People have come to look more fondly upon a lot of those models and designs. One could argue the execution wasn’t always perfect back then, but the designs were pretty good. And there’s so many flavors of Telecaster from ’51 to the double-bound ’63 Tele Custom with the mahogany body and round-lam, and on to the ’72 Thinline, ’75 Deluxe, ’77 Custom.

The ’62 Jazzmaster – the first version – is cool, but to my mind, the quintessential. Jazzmaster is the mid-’60s, with the blocks and painted headstock cap. That is what people really gravitate toward.

Did you have an original ’66 Jazzmaster to use as a reference?
JN: We have some archives, but we spent a lot of time at the Songbirds Museum, in Chattanooga, going through their collection and looking at models we felt were interesting.
Given that manufacturing can now make things closer to original-spec, do you think AVII could be viewed as more collector-centric than previous reissue lines?

JN: In some ways, yes, but it’s more about how the original Vintage series was trying to benchmark that late-’50s/early-’60s grouping of the “golden era,” and this time we wanted to widen the aperture to offer interesting transitional examples; a lot of people have a ’60s-reissue P Bass, so a ’54 should be interesting to them. Same thing with the ’70s Teles – they’re just flat-out fascinating instruments – a bit left of center, but in the collector’s market, esoteric or transitional stuff is highly desirable because it was made for a shorter period of time and wasn’t the most popular or longest-running spec.

Rich Siegle: I think AVII instruments bring an obvious appeal for collectors, players, and anyone who appreciates a great-playing, great-sounding guitar. They’re made in our U.S. factory and garner a pretty good price, so people who are serious about playing and serious about Fenders will love them, hopefully.

JN: If you went to buy a ’66 Jazzmaster with a painted headstock, you’d be over 10 grand, easily. And a ’51 Tele or ’57 Strat isn’t attainable for a lot of people. So, putting all that design into these and making those accessible was really important to us. The other side is, especially with the mid ’60s to early ’70s instruments, a lot of people like the aesthetics or concepts of those instruments, but in the vintage market it’s a real gamble in regard to the quality of materials, construction, weight, and tone, plus condition after 50 years.

Over the years, I had many conversations with Dan Smith and George Blanda about how the three-bolt neck design was a great idea but was executed poorly; the fixturing was off, so the bolts and two screws didn’t always line up perfectly. But when done right, those guitars are amazing.

So, AVIIs are not copies of ’70s guitars, they’re a refinement of the designs. With CNC and the handwork combination, we have a level of quality like the best possible vintage examples.

In the vintage market 30 years ago, most CBS-era guitars were $400 pieces.
RS: Right, nobody wanted them. And now, people are paying top dollar for those. Maybe the market evolved, or maybe, like Justin said, they really were great designs that weren’t built properly. But bringing those back is one of the coolest things about this new line.

Another factor is that in the last 10 years, ’70s guitars have made it onto big stages – it’s now cool to play a humbucker Tele, and a ’73 Deluxe is a $4,000 guitar.
JN: The collector’s market changes and turns; it’s now driven by Gen X and bands that were picking up pawn-shop guitars in the grunge and punk scenes. In the early ’90s, Jazzmasters and Jaguars found their way into a lot of hands because they were affordable, which brought them to a world stage. Now, people can get a guitar like those and know it’s going to be well-made.
RS: Those ’70s guitars are very underrated. Yeah, there were some bad ones, but the designs were solid.
JN: Early-’70s Fender was Roger Rossmeisl and Seth Lover. There were great names in the stew. It wasn’t just about the Coronado (laughs).

It’s also a reality that many ’70s Fenders were very heavy.
JN: Because they switched to Northern ash or Big Leaf maple; I have a ’79 Strat that’s 9.3 pounds. On ash-body AVII models, we made some judgment calls because we didn’t want to reissue 10-pound guitars. They’re where you want them to be.

What are some other refinements?
JN: With the AVII ’73 Strat, the main one was whether we should cast the block saddles again then spend money re-tooling a bridge that most people think was inferior and was often switched out. But we didn’t do that. So, there are areas where we made decisions in favor of playability, quality, or tone over authenticity. It’s not always a strict reissue, but it made sense to do it.

Did you find or do you make the Cunife for the new Wide Range Humbucker in the ’70s Teles?
JN: We made it. After car tachometers became mostly digitized, Cunife went away because factories stopped making it. Tim Shaw, our Chief Engineer who’s been in the pickup business for a very long time and is very knowledgeable, was talking to magnet suppliers and found a place willing to make it to our spec. We had to go in for a certain amount to make it worthwhile, but we figured it’s got enough vibe and a cult following that it would be cool to move beyond what we lovingly call “Cunifakes” that approximate the look or tone but really aren’t it.

The new humbucker occupies interesting sonic territory, with its wider bobbins and weak magnet; underwound pickup tones are de rigueur these days, so it fits nicely. And we’re exploring new pickup styles with Cunife magnets. It’s been fun.

Have you made Strat pickups with it?
JN: Yeah, Tim and his team have been playing with it for the better part of five years.

Does history tell us why Seth Lover used it in the first place?
RS: Because it’s machinable, where Alnico is not because it’s brittle. Cunife could be machined into screw pole pieces, and he probably liked the idea that you could directly adjust the height of the magnet. I assume that was the idea – and it sounded good, so away he went.

Do you have personal favorites among the AVII line?
RS: I like Telecasters, so I really dig the ’77 Tele Custom. I have an old Tele with a Cunife humbucker in the neck, and love it.
JN: I was going to say the same, having been imprinted by the Rolling Stones while growing up. But I also really like the ’66 Jazzmaster because it’s just so quintessentially mid-century – the angles and the blocks. Fenders aren’t fancy, so the Jazzmaster with painted headstock, block inlays, and bound fretboard is about as adorned as a Fender gets. It looks like an old Cadillac with fins.

If you talked to someone who was trying to decide between an AVII instrument and one from the Custom Shop, what would you tell them?
JN: AVIIs are made on the [production] line, so while it goes through 150 hand processes, it goes through different hands in the mill, in sanding, in paint, in subassembly, and final. In the Custom Shop, it’s shepherded by much fewer people.

At a very base level, AVIIs are like a brand new ’77 Tele Custom or ’57 Strat in terms of what it would look and sound like, while the Custom Shop is more for people who go for the NOS and Closet Classic finishes, where it’s more as it would be today if you found a really good well-used one; maybe the pickups have lost a little top-end and things feel a bit more aged – there’s the “then versus now” vibe. From an overall quality standpoint, both are stunning. AVIIs are made on the line – but still by hand – and we’re still stamping out saddles and stamping out jack ferrules. We have the old tooling and old machines. We’re not assembling from purchased parts. It’s the real stuff, with all the mojo.

RS: An AVII is going to sound and feel great, but there’s something magical about what comes out of the Custom Shop. You can feel it, and you can hear it. And the other thing is you can customize; if you want hand-wound pickups or something special, you get that in the Custom Shop.

After launching a new line, what do you most look forward to in terms of feedback?
RS: I love seeing them played live. With the American Pro and American Elite, anytime I saw video, a player onstage, or someone on “The Tonight Show” playing one, I’d get a real buzz.
JN: I agree, and with AVII it’ll be great to show that we are reverent toward the original recipes and want to retain the magic that is Fender. Nobody is immune to that feeling; even to someone who likes a very-modern guitar, a ’57 Strat is iconic. And just because you have a ’57 Strat doesn’t mean you have to play 1957 music on it. You can come up with the next cool thing.
RS: There’s a ton of credibility, too, to say that we’re making these just like we did in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s. That’s a bold statement, especially to collectors or vintage aficionados.

Ever since we started doing this in the ’80s and into the ’90s, when Mike Lewis first coined the name “American Vintage,” it’s been a point of credibility to our legacy.

JN: And it’s important that we make them in the old way. We’re cutting the cold-rolled steel bridge blocks and using old tooling and putting bridge assemblies together. It’s not super common in the business where someone does it all from tip to tail. There’s something beautiful and magical about that.

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See our review of the American Vintage II ’57 Strat in the February issue, and watch for reviews of the ’54 Precision Bass and ’75 Tele Deluxe.

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This article originally appeared in VG’s March 2023 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

Jeff Beck, the guitarist who pushed the ’60s British Invasion band the Yardbirds from its electric-blues roots to a contemporary rock-and-roll sound before becoming one of the most-influential musicians of his generation, died January 10 after being stricken with bacterial meningitis. He was 78.

Born Geoffrey Arnold to Arnold and Ethel Beck on June 24, 1944, as a young boy, his mother forced him to play piano for two hours every day. At age six, he grew keen on the guitar after hearing Les Paul’s “How High the Moon” on the radio; by his teens, he was listening to other American artists including Gene Vincent and Buddy Holly; Cliff Gallup’s guitar backing Vincent proved especially captivating, as did blues guitarist Lonnie Mack, followed by B.B. King and Steve Cropper. Motivated to take a turn, he learned to play on a borrowed guitar then built his own by gluing together cigar boxes and bolting on a fence post for the neck.

While attending art school in London, Beck worked odd jobs while playing in local rock-and-roll bands. In 1963, he formed an R&B unit called The Nightshift, which recorded a version of “Stormy Monday.” In ’63/’64, he was a studio guitarist for the pop-focused Picadilly Records and gigged with The Tridents until joining the Yardbirds following Eric Clapton’s departure from the band in ’65. While Clapton was a blues purist, Beck brought an adventurous guitar style that moved the the band beyond the form and served as the starting block for his unequaled career.

In the ’80s and ’90s, Beck went through long periods of musical inactivity, saying he was sometimes frustrated, even depressed by his lack of inspiration, but not to the point of desperation; at times, he maintained perspective by recognizing the privileges in his life, and fostering his hobbies including building hot-rod cars.

In a 2010 interview with National Public Radio, he recounted being hired to play guitar for Stevie Wonder during the making of the Talking Book album. One day at the Electric Lady studios in New York, Beck was noodling on a drum kit, waiting on Wonder. When he finally walked in, Wonder told Beck, “Don’t stop [playing]…” as he went to his clavinet and, on the spot, created the melody that became “Superstition.” The song was intended for Beck as part of a three-song exchange for guitar services, but producer/label boss Berry Gordy recognized it as a potential hit and put it on the album.

Discussing his then-new Emotion & Commotion album, Beck explained his preference for the Stratocaster, citing a “purity of tone” that recalled the intent of the electric guitar created by Leo Fender and Les Paul. And while he remained a fan of the Les Paul for its richer, thicker sound, inspired by Jimi Hendrix, he adopted the Strat full-time and referred to it as an “Olympic runner” that allowed him to do more “gymnastics.”

Beck’s playing style went beyond unique. With a keen ability to manipulate the instrument and his amplifier, he became an idol to guitarist of all ilks and skill levels for the way he used the fingers of both hands to pluck and bend strings while heavily employing the Volume knob and vibrato arm. For most of his career, his amps were driven hard even when he was rendering gentle notes and melodies, the technique allowing for wide dynamics and the use of feedback as a musical element.

Throughout his life, Beck played guitar nearly every day, keeping one near his bed because he was often awakened by inspiration. His practice routine included figures, phrases, and picking at all speeds. But, too much technique, he argued, could overtake the soul in one’s playing. In his mind, any day he did not come up with a lick or melody was a failure. And, despite coming of age in the first wave of British “guitar gods,” Beck didn’t view the instrument as a source of competition, or even bother with comparisons to his countrymen Clapton or Jimmy Page.

Beck’s playing was profound in its ability to infiltrate the way other guitarists make the brain-to-hands connection; perhaps no guitarist has ever been better at creating a melody or using a simple-sounding phrase to build a tune. Generations have learned his licks – at first by picking up and dropping a turntable needle, later by creating a loop in software.

Beck received six Grammy Awards for Best Rock Instrumental Performance and one for Best Pop Instrumental Performance. In 2014, he was granted the British Academy’s Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music, and he was twice inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, first as a member of the Yardbirds, then as a solo artist. He is survived by his wife, Sandra.

Here, we pay homage to the legend with an overview of his life and career by VG editors Dan Forte (who interviewed Beck for Guitar World in 1993 and for VG in 2011), and Pete Prown, who founded the ’90s guitar-gear periodical Guitar Shop Magazine, its moniker inspired by Beck.

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The Early Years

By Dan Forte

When Jimmy Page gave the speech for Jeff Beck’s induction to the Rock And Rock Hall Of Fame in 2009, he said of his former Yardbirds bandmate, “He’d just keep getting better and better, and he still has, all the way through. You know, he leaves us mere mortals – believe me – just wondering and having so much respect for him.”

Thirteen years later, Beck was still improving, charting new territory – remarkable for a 78-year-old. But when he was just 20, his emergence with the Yardbirds broke all kinds of ground and set a new standard for all rock guitarists who followed.

At the time of his arrival in ’65, there was George Harrison adapting Carl Perkins licks to the Beatles and Keith Richards’ Chuck Berry imitations with the Rolling Stones. To be clear, his Yardbirds predecessor, Eric Clapton, displayed stinging blues licks on “I Ain’t Got You” and fat, almost unheard-of tone on “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl,” but Beck threw down a new gauntlet. There was the vocal-like tone of “Evil Hearted You,” the dynamics of “You’re A Better Man Than I,” the Indian-influenced hook in “Heart Full Of Soul,” and his propulsive choruses in “Train Kept A-Rollin’.”

The real head-spinner, though, was “I’m A Man.” With drummer Jim McCarty’s marching beat; the Bo Diddley number was a jumping-off point for a manic jam. Beck’s solo begins in call-and-response mode with Keith Relf’s harmonica before some high-register bends. He then mutes the strings, not pressing to the frets, and climbs beyond the top of the fretboard. It’s been described as a chicken being run over by a steamroller.

Beck was pushing the sonic envelope, reimagining what a guitar could sound like – and, mind you, this was a year before an unknown Jimi Hendrix arrived in England. He could be both melodic and savage, and the term “perfectly constructed spontaneity” isn’t a contradiction in his case. No wonder Yardbirds bassist Paul Samwell-Smith said in ’84 that the Beck period was the band’s most creative.

When blues purist Clapton left the Yardbirds, Jimmy Page turned down an offer and recommended Beck, who’d been impressing folks with the Tridents. Though he didn’t own a guitar (“They loaned me the red Telecaster that Eric had played”), he wasted no time staking his claim as the new guitar slinger in town. To clear up any confusion, the first Yardbirds album released in America, 1965’s For Your Love, pictured and credited Beck, who played on only “I’m Not Talking,” “My Girl Sloopy,” and “I Ain’t Done Wrong,” the latter featuring his slide playing. Un-named Clapton played on the other eight tracks. Its follow-up, Having A Rave Up With The Yardbirds, had a live side culled from the band’s English LP Five Live Yardbirds, again not crediting Clapton, while the studio side was all Beck.

Beck’s exposure to blues didn’t come until he started playing in bands, and surprisingly, he wasn’t enamored of the Yardbirds’ reworking of “Train Kept A-Rollin’” by Johnny Burnette’s Rock ’n Roll Trio. “Blues was a big thing, and in the beginning they really wanted me to play blues,” he said. “They hadn’t heard of Johnny Burnette until I came along. All the Yardbirds were upper-crust blues fanatics. They knew all the blues songs, and I had never heard them. I said, ‘Do you know the Johnny Brunette stuff? It’s real ass-kicking stuff.’ They just heard me play the riff, and they loved it and made up their version of it. We didn’t bother to make any references to the original record.”

When the band entered the studio to finally record its first full-fledged album (as opposed to leftover live material and collections of singles), Beck and the boys were at their eclectic best. The 1966 album was called The Yardbirds, but was nicknamed “Roger The Engineer” after rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja’s cover drawing (a truncated version titled Over Under Sideways Down was released in the States). Beck handled the varied repertoire in grand fashion – from “Over Under Sideways Down” (an Indian-tinged follow-up to “Heart Full Of Soul”) to the country drone of “I Can’t Make Your Way,” and the uncategorizable “Hot House Of Omagarashid.” His instrumental “Jeff’s Boogie” (with nods to Chuck Berry and Les Paul) became a trial by fire for guitarists in high-school garage bands everywhere, and was the first song Doyle Bramhall, Sr. heard an adolescent Stevie Ray Vaughan play. In Beck’s vocal contribution, a shuffle in Elmore James mode called “The Nazz Are Blue,” you can almost feel the volume in the studio as he controls feedback for 15 seconds.

He didn’t particularly like the rosewood fretboard on the “Clapton Tele,” and replaced it for Rave Up and Roger. “I really wanted a maple-neck. In ’65, we were on tour with the Walker Brothers, and John Walker had one, and I asked if I could buy it. He wanted 75 pounds for it.”

It also can be heard on the single “Shapes Of Things,” featuring another classic Beck solo.

Leaving session work, Page replaced Samwell-Smith on bass, eventually switching roles with Dreja. The monumental prospect of dual Beck-Page leads only surfaced on the psychedelic “Happenings Ten Years Time Age,” “Psycho Daisies,” and revamped version of “Train Kept A-Rollin’” titled “Stroll On,” for the 1966 film Blow Up.

Accounting for his bad temperament and sometimes being a no-show, Beck was fired during a U.S. tour in November ’66.

Though it seems obvious that Beck was blessed with natural talent, he also must have spent untold hours woodshedding. At six, he first heard Les Paul, who would become a continuing influence; his bright sound and echo also caught Beck’s ears via Carl Perkins and Scotty Moore.

Of being a 13-year-old with no formal training, Beck said, “I used to go to the music shops in Charing Cross Road and look through the window, and sometimes go in and play when they’d let me. And the salesmen at the guitar shops, like Jennings, had to be pretty good to demonstrate different styles while selling guitars. So I’d watch them.”

Around that time, he saw the rock-and-roll movie The Girl Can’t Help It, starring Jayne Mansfield and including lip-synched appearances by Little Richard, Eddie Cochran, Fats Domino, and others, along with Julie London’s sultry “Cry Me A River.” He recounted, “It was like a door opening. That film was a masterpiece – in Technicolor, just everything about it.”

Particularly pivotal were albums and the movie appearance by Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, featuring the dazzling guitar of Beck’s idol, Cliff Gallup. “When I was a kid learning those songs, all I did was play along with those licks,” Beck said in ’93. “Cliff did all the work, and I just hit the odd note here and there. I would just play the easy bits, and later I linked them together with my own things. I guess you could say that’s where the original Beck style came from – the ‘making up of the bits in between.’ Then I gradually shed off the Gallup stuff, my motor was running, and I played my own stuff.”

Going Retro
In 1985, speaking of the ’83 Action Research into Muscle Dystrophy (A.R.M.S.) tour that united Yardbirds alumni Beck, Page, and Clapton for the first time, E.C. said, “At that time and for many months after that, I began to think of Jeff as probably being the finest guitar player I’d ever seen. And I’ve been around. I still think that way if I really sit down and mull it over.”

Of Beck’s gunslinger attitude, he added, “There’s something cool and mean about Becky that beats everyone else.”

Having already played heavy rock with Beck, Bogert & Appice and jazz-fusion on Blow By Blow and Wired, Beck again did the unexpected, breaking out his ’50s Gretsch Duo Jet and a small amp to cut 1993’s Crazy Legs, a tribute to Vincent and Gallup, backed by England’s Big Town Playboys.

When asked where the inevitable “Jeff Beck twist” was, he said, “There is none. I see myself like an evangelist; ‘Listen to the gospel of Cliff Gallup.’ I’d have made the album just to have it for my car, you knows. So I could say, ‘Hey, want to hear me play like Cliff?’”

For his part, Gallup seemed oblivious to the fact that English guitar gods like Beck, Page, and Albert Lee were devotees, saying only, “I heard there were some guys over there.” Which suited Beck just fine. “I can imagine he was playing clubs like Bob’s Country Bunker,” he laughed, referring to a scene in The Blues Brothers.

Beck used Gallup’s lines as a road map, rather than copying them verbatim, but you’d have to A/B them to make sure. “On a thing like ‘B-I-Bickey-Bi-Bo-Bo-Go,’ I’m half playing my stuff in a Cliff Gallup style. I maybe would’ve liked to have another version with all my own solos,” he said. “But the whole point of it was, ‘Hey, this guy Cliff Gallup was it.’”

He didn’t want to take any credit or accolades for the project; to him, it was all about Cliff. The iconoclast-turned-purist even adopted Gallup’s unorthodox technique of using a pick in combination with fingerpicks on his middle and ring fingers.

He spoke of his tinnitus (“a hiss, like steam, more like a rattlesnake”), saying he couldn’t hear a phone ringing in the next room, the rustling of paper, or shoes shuffling across a floor – perhaps an additional reason for, and benefit of, the low-volume Gallup tribute. “I don’t suppose my amp went over 1 in the whole session.”

Beck first got to play with Les Paul in ’83, and recorded Rock ’n Roll Party (Honoring Les Paul) in 2010, a year after Paul’s death. The setting was the Iridium, in New York City, which had been the guitarist/inventor’s home base, and the show included favorites by Les Paul and Mary Ford like “How High The Moon” and “Vaya Con Dios,” featuring vocalist Imelda May. This time, “Train Kept A-Rollin’” was delivered in spirited rockabilly style, a la the Rock ’n Roll Trio’s version. “Peter Gunn” was a nod to Duane Eddy, while a note-perfect “Apache” was a bow to another early influence, the Shadows’ Hank Marvin. Beck uncannily imitated a steel guitar for “Sleep Walk” thanks to deft manipulation of his Strat’s Volume knob and whammy bar.

For the event, he was even decked out in a tailored outfit identical to the powder-blue pleated pants and three-tone blue shirt-vest (and cap, of course) that Vincent wore in – you guessed it – The Girl Can’t Help It.

As reverential as he was, Beck looked onward far more than he looked back, as he continually morphed stylistically and altered the actual mechanics of his technique.

In his Hall Of Fame speech, Page said, “Jeff’s whole guitar style is totally unorthodox to the way that anybody was taught. He’s really developed a whole style of expanding the electric guitar and making it into something that is just sounds and techniques totally unheard of before.”

In a career spanning almost 60 years, Beck experienced many instances when his playing took flight and he entered the “zone.” Asked in 2011 how that felt, his response is now especially poignant.

“Yep, that happens,” he nodded. “I don’t know how it happens. It’s heaven. You want to stay there forever.”

(Ed. Note: All quotes in this section are from interviews conducted by Dan Forte.)

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Wired: The Journey to Fusion, Funk & Beyond

By Pete Prown

If Beck’s career had ended in the November ’69 car crash that fractured his skull, he would still be thought of as a guitar pioneer. Turns out, he was just getting started.

After the demise of the original Jeff Beck Group (with Rod Stewart) three weeks before Woodstock, the 25-year-old planned to form a new act with bassist Tim Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice of Vanilla Fudge. But, with Beck still recovering, the pair formed Cactus. A year later, Beck assembled the second Jeff Beck Group and released two studio albums that, in hindsight, were largely transitional. Unlike Jimmy Page’s arena-sized explorations with Led Zeppelin, Beck turned down the volume to explore funk, R&B, and soul. On Rough and Ready and The Jeff Beck Group, he grabbed a stripped-down Strat with a broken pickguard, trying to shed his sweaty hard-rock past. Highlights were the bruising blues-rock of “Goin’ Down” (previously covered by Freddie King) and harmonized bottleneck in “Definitely Maybe,” both produced by Steve Cropper. Still, the group broke up after 16 months.

The guitarist then assembled Beck, Bogert & Appice and recorded one studio album that merged rock with cacophonous funk and soul. The trio covered “Superstition,” a song Stevie Wonder had written for Beck then recorded himself (scoring a #1 U.S. hit). Beck also started using a Heil talk box in concert, as well as acquiring a ’54 Les Paul purchased from Strings & Things, in Memphis, for $500. He refinished it in a near-black color that thereafter was called “oxblood” and installed humbuckers; later, it would become a critical part of the Beck guitarsenal.

Fusion Superstar
By the time BBA folded in ’74, the 30-year-old Beck was heavily into the Mahavishnu Orchestra, a breakthrough act of jazz-rock fusion, as well as Billy Cobham’s Spectrum album with guitarist Tommy Bolin. The Cobham LP effectively became a blueprint for Beck’s fusion, revealing a method for rock guitarists to play jazz-tinged instrumentals – without possessing actual jazz training.

Throughout this era, players began integrating the Dorian mode and chord tones into solos, bypassing the need to learn hard bop or that dreaded “playing over changes.” Of his jazzy ambitions, Beck bluntly said in the biography Crazy Fingers, “I want stuff that enables me to roast on the guitar, but… not have to come out with all the old s**t that people expect from me. You can keep up with the times, as well as kick ass.”

The proverbial atomic bomb dropped on March 29, 1975, when Beck released Blow By Blow, produced by The Beatles’ studio wizard, George Martin. The album exploded to #4 on the charts and established a new paradigm for instrumental rock, offering more-sophisticated harmony, yet retaining a high-velocity thump. “Scatterbrain” was a tour-de-force, displaying the axeman’s high-speed picking with Martin’s string arrangements behind him. He gleaned airplay with “Highway Jam,” as well as a bittersweet ballad, “’Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers,” written by Stevie Wonder as a gift/apology for stealing back “Superstition.” The track was dedicated to Roy Buchanan – another pivotal influence.

Instead of a Strat or Les Paul, Beck recorded “’Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers” using a solidbody assembled by Seymour Duncan, who documents the guitar on his company website. “The Tele-Gib was a hybrid that started out as a butchered ’59 Telecaster with a slab rosewood fingerboard,” he says. “The body was chiseled out badly. It had no pickguard, bridge, or other parts that could be used. I worked on repairing the fingerboard and pickguard quickly so it could be done before Jeff was done at CBS Studios. I rewound a broken pair of old Gibson ’59 PAF humbuckers that were damaged when the covers were removed. They were from a smashed ’59 Flying V that was painted black and once belonged to Lonnie Mack.”

Blow By Blow had an immediate impact on the guitar universe, even winning Beck readers’ polls as “best jazz guitarist” (much to the ire of traditional jazz pickers). A doubleheader U.S. tour with John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra – on which he often used the oxblood Les Paul – made it that much more exciting. Another achievement was the concept of an instrumental guitarist carrying an entire live show, much less in front of noisy, inebriated rock crowds.

In 1976, the British ace doubled down with another masterpiece, Wired, prominently featuring ex-Mahavishnu keyboard maestro Jan Hammer. As Hammer told Beck biographer Annette Carson, “He’s the only person of his type – which is a genuine ’60s rock-and-roll guitar hero – that actually advanced anywhere beyond the ’60s. You take every one of those other guys, from Clapton down to Page and Wood or whatever – they’re still where they started, haven’t moved one inch. But Jeff has progressed incredibly, because he’s open to all kinds of melodic invention.”

Amongst Wired tracks, the electronic boogie “Blue Wind” became an immediate FM staple, as Jeff’s Strat joyously battled Jan’s Minimoog synth and Oberheim SEM module rig. “Sophie” found him wailing with a newfangled pedal called a ring modulator, while a cover of hard-bop bassist Charles Mingus’ “Goodbye Porkpie Hat” bolstered his jazz cred. A joint tour with the Jan Hammer Group followed, summed up on the Live album where Beck also revisited an old Yardbirds favorite, “Train Kept-A Rollin’.”

Seemingly overnight, Beck was the hottest guitarist alive.

Disappearing Act
After this peak, Beck launched a pattern that would continue for much of his career – he simply disappeared, retreating to his English home to build hot rods, his beloved hobby. Aside from a deafening tour of Japan with Return to Forever bassist Stanley Clarke (which likely contributed to Beck’s profound tinnitus), he didn’t reappear until 1980’s There and Back, a strong album marking the end of his jazz-rock era. It was also one of the final projects where he used a plastic pick before converting to fingerstyle.

Once again, he vanished, though reap pearing for the 1981 benefit gig, The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball. For the first time, Beck got onstage with Eric Clapton for “’Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers,” “Crossroads,” and “Further On Up the Road.” Well-documented on video, Beck effectively mopped the stage with his old friend and rival. He also appeared on the 1983 ARMS charity tour with Clapton and Jimmy Page, and made a studio reappearance the next year on “Private Dancer,” the comeback mega-hit from Tina Turner. The single was written by Mark Knopfler, who was not a fan of Beck’s angular solo – as he told a New Zealand website, the Dire Straits picker decried the hiring of “Jeff Beck to play the world’s second ugliest guitar solo.” This was followed by a hired-gun role on She’s The Boss, Mick Jagger’s disappointing debut.

In ’85, Beck delivered Flash, an all-star affair that found him moving into mainstream rock with the aid of super-producer/guitarist Nile Rodgers. A reboot of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” with old pal Rod Stewart earned a hit, while Beck shredded on other tracks using a pink Jackson superstrat (upon which Tina Turner had carved her name). In Rolling Stone, critic David Fricke astutely analyzed “Ambitious,” noting that, “Jeff Beck’s guitar suddenly shoots up into the mix like a runaway jet, cutting a reckless path through Nile Rodgers’ spit-and-polish production with sawtooth distortion and heat-ray feedback.”

Following another hiatus, Beck returned in ’89 for the Grammy-winning solo album Guitar Shop and a U.S. tour with Stevie Ray Vaughan. In ’90, he played the slide-guitar parts and lead solo for the Jon Bon Jovi soundtrack hit “Blaze of Glory.” Yet with all this activity, was Beck back at last? Nope. Once again, the Houdini of electric guitar disappeared for much of the ’90s, occasionally popping up for an album of rockabilly (Crazy Legs), a ’95 tour with Santana, recording with Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters (Amused to Death); and a soundtrack (Frankie’s House). Otherwise, he was home.

The Comeback
In the ’90s, the Fender Custom Shop offered the Jeff Beck Signature Stratocaster. As his guitar tech, Steve Prior, told VG’s Dan Forte, “Jeff’s signature Strats are slightly modified from the ones you’d find in a guitar shop. The main white one is a ’95 basswood-body made by J.W. Black, with a neck from ’93 and John Suhr pickups, which there are really only two sets in existence – that main guitar and the Surf Green spare. Obviously, Fender would like to get those back so they could try to replicate those pickups, but that’ll never happen because you’d never get the guitar out of Jeff’s hands long enough.”

In ’99, Beck reinvented himself as a techno player on Who Else?, his band highlighting guitar-synthesist Jennifer Batten. The live cut “Brush With the Blues” revealed something even bigger – Beck had taken his Strat playing to another level with revolutionary fingerpicking, volume swells, and a whammy-bar technique that could mimic slide guitar. By age 55, Beck had, miraculously, gotten better on guitar. His 2001 sequel You Had It Coming proved a late-career masterpiece, displaying virtuosity on the Indian-tinged pop of “Nadia” and “Blackbird” – where he actually jammed with bird songs. At long last, Beck was back.

In the 2000s, the British master not only began touring regularly, but became an online-video sensation for a generation dumbfounded by his command of the six-string. His Stratified versions of “Nessun Dorma” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” remain evidence of that uncanny genius. Gigs at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London proved another sensation, with Beck bringing Clapton onstage for blues jams and making a star out of young bassist Tal Wilkenfeld. More solo albums arrived, including last year’s eyebrow-raising duo project with movie star Johnny Depp.

For the last 24 years of his life, Beck was a man on a mission, thrilling fans in concert and making up for the lapses that marked his career.

Guitar Hero
With his passing, accolades poured in from fellow rock heroes. Gene Simmons of Kiss nailed it by saying, “No one played guitar like Jeff. Please get a hold of the first two Jeff Beck Group albums and behold greatness.” Joe Satriani added, “Jeff Beck was a genius, a stunning original. He was an astounding guitar player with more ways to make you go, ‘WTF was that?’ than anybody else.” Dixie Dregs/Deep Purple virtuoso Steve Morse once told the Long Island Weekly, “I always admired his phrasing and ability to explore the quirky and melodic side of the guitar … even without effects, he could be so amazing.”

British guitar flash Bill Nelson, solo artist and founder of Be Bop Deluxe, recalled, “I became aware of Jeff when he was a member of The Yardbirds and I remember watching him play ‘Shapes Of Things’ on television’s ‘Ready, Steady, Go’ program. He wore a fringed buckskin jacket and when his solo came up he dropped to his knees, placed his Telecaster upright on the floor of the stage and played the song’s wonderful, Indian-inspired solo with the aid of a Tone Bender fuzzbox. It was a magical, transformative moment.”

The immortal Ritchie Blackmore once told journalist H.P. Newquist, “Jeff Beck is my idol. The guy gets notes from nowhere, you know? Sometimes he finds notes that I just do not have on my guitar. When ‘Shapes Of Things’ came out, everybody went, ‘Oh my God, who is that – and why is he playing this Indian stuff? It shouldn’t be allowed.’ It was just too good.”

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Beck Reflections

Vintage Guitar staff and friends recall the mystique and impact of a legend.

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Beck’s performances at the Shrine auditorium in November ’68, are as fresh in my mind today as the evening I witnessed them. He inspired many as a member of the Yardbirds, but for most, Truth, Beck-Ola, and the U.S. tour were our first taste. Beck’s command of the instrument, imagination, sound, soul, and humor were life-changing. Through the twists and turns of his career, he was an innovator, but in ’68 he not only redefined blues-rock for a generation and anticipated heavy metal, but left enumerable musical bread crumbs the rest of us follow to this day. He will always be remembered as the ultimate guitar hero. – Wolf Marshall

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Duane Eddy and Jeff Beck were my first guitar heroes, and For Your Love was the first album I bought with my my own money. My first Beck interview was in ’93, behind his Crazy Legs tribute to Gene Vincent and Cliff Gallup. When he began quoting Guitar Player’s Gallup feature from 1983, I said, “That was my interview.” He was blown away; “You have Cliff’s voice on tape?” After that, whenever I’d cross paths with Jeff, I’d remind him that “I’m the guy who interviewed Cliff Gallup,” and he’d immediately brighten up. That was my “in.” – Dan Forte

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While John McLaughlin and Jan Hammer popularized what we might call the “Mahavishnu Scale,” it was Jeff Beck who made the sound world-famous. Before jazz-rock began, guitarists typically soloed in straight major- or minor-blues scales, but Mahavishnu’s minor pattern replaced the minor 3rd with a major 3rd, combined with heavy pitch and string bending; in A minor, this would be A-C#-D-E-G, with the optional Eb “blue” note. Beck later embedded this motif into his fusion-era solos. Try this Beck-ism for yourself: pop a major 3rd into your minor blues and start bending. Like El Becko, you’ll be instantly wired.
– Pete Prown

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Jeff Beck was one of those guitarists who held your feet to the fire. Whenever you think your playing is inspired – you’re hitting all the right notes with the right tone, the right dynamics, the right balance of fire and air – it only takes a few bars of Beck to let you know you can do it better. – Walter Carter

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When I think of Jeff Beck, I picture the cover of Having a Rave Up with The Yardbirds; Beck stands to one side, smirking knowingly, both part of and apart from the rest. Whatever he played – blues, hard rock, fusion, retro rockabilly, pop, and beyond, that attitude remained, along with drive to embrace surprise. Whatever he played sounded like a spontaneous creation, regardless of context. He was truly inimitable – practically a genre unto himself – and it’s reassuring that he did not succumb to the traps of the ’60s, but remained a vital artist for six decades, doing what he wanted, bending notes with that offset smirk. – Peter Stuart Kohman

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Beck was the greatest living guitarist of his generation – a role model for the creative, forward-thinking player. Never tied to the past, he was always reaching, exploring, and curious about new music. Exhibit A for the adage, “Tone is in the hands.” He was never precious about gear, and everything he playeds was a distinctive fingerprint of humanity. All this from a guy who took rockabilly-guitar tropes and morphed them to his will through decades of music trends. His passing is a massive loss to the world. – Oscar Jordan

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When I first heard the Yardbirds single “Over Under Sideways Down,” I knew it was fuzztone, but only learned later who created that nimble, fluent riff. I was a Jeff Beck fan from that moment on. I marveled at over a half-century of virtuosity and depth, at the daring fearlessness that set standards for the future. He traveled light years, musically, yet never forgot his roots. Whether blazing new trails on Blow by Blow and Wired, jamming on old blues with Tom Jones or celebrating Cliff Gallup and Les Paul, he summarized – unforgettably – the entire history of electric guitar. – Rich Kienzle

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Almost every aspiring teen guitarist in the ’60s was familiar with Beck’s innovative, often-distorted riffing in the Yardbirds, and many were surprised when the first song on the Jeff Beck Group’s first album, Truth, was a reworked Yardbirds hit, “Shapes of Things.” Beck abruptly and adroitly yanked the song into his own guitar-centric fiefdom, purveying his sonic sleight-of-hand in a manner that mandated listening to the entire album. His shape-shifter approach on subsequent albums was legendary, but that audacious and auspicious cover of “Shapes…” was the first footfall of a brilliant and innovative career.
– Willie G. Moseley

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It’s hard to express how much Jeff meant to me. When he was young, the electric guitar was taking its first breaths. He took hold of the instrument and never let go, creating his own genre, crafting sounds and technique that nobody had heard before. Then somehow, impossibly, he did it again and again and again. Every new record broke the mold. How did he do it? Personally, I think he just got bored and had to create something fresh – for himself. And thank God he did. A few notes bring me to tears; rough and ready, he will always be my hero. – Rick Gould

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The loss of Jeff Beck is monumental, tragic, and unbelievable. His revolutionary and exploratory work with The Yardbirds was mind-shattering when I discovered them in the ’60s. The Jeff Beck Group laid the groundwork for ’70s hard rock. His forays won Grammys, acclaim, and a two appointments to the Rock Hall of Fame. His later work, embracing rockabilly, Les Paul-style jazz/pop wizardry, and gorgeous neo-classic melodicism, secured his place as a shaman of electric guitar – Master of the Stratocaster, a musician’s musician, and a talent the likes of which we may never see again. Beck is simply irreplaceable.
– Bob Cianci

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Jeff Beck was a genre unto himself, knowledgeable about every form of music and fearless enough to tackle whatever he wanted to delve into – rockabilly, psychedelic rock, jazz, electronica, blues, he was adept at it all. And, he was ever evolving. When I saw him in 1989, he was playing just new stuff. A fan yelled “Yardbirds,” and he played eight bars of “Over, Under, Sideways, Down”, stopped, laughed, and broke into a new song. Always moving forward. – John Heidt

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There’s so much to be learned by working out Beck’s lines and melodies, but his real lesson for musicians is about independence. Listen for your own voice and then pursue it, without compromise. Follow it if it changes, and toss the things that don’t work. When I watch Live at Ronnie Scott’s from 2007, when he was 63, it sounds like a player who’d been refining his thing for a lifetime. And he sounded as if he was still searching, still chasing the possibilities. – Rich Maloof

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In 1980, I was 14 and just starting to play guitar. I bought Wired and Blow by Blow on cassette and never looked back. The sounds, the playing, the interaction between Beck and Jan Hammer, the instrumental format – it was all sonically mesmerizing. Over the decades, I devoured all of Beck’s new albums, and he just got better and better year after year, culminating in what I consider the best live performance album of all time, Live at Ronnie Scott’s – a true masterpiece by a true master of the guitar. – Phil Feser

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In the ’70s golden age of the guitar hero, there was none bigger than Jeff Beck. From The Yardbirds to his last tour in 2022, the only thing predictable about his playing was that it was constantly changing, growing, and improving. He paid no attention to trends, but created new ones, then moved on. With their voice-like phrasing and tone, his solos were unique and recognizable, his touch incredibly sensitive, and his impact massive. Our age of tribute acts proves that many guitarists can be copied and mimicked, but nobody will ever sound like Jeff Beck. His art is eternal. – Tom Guerra

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Growing up in the ’60s as a fan and young guitarist, I knew Jeff Beck to be a player’s player. His stellar playing on Live at Ronnie Scott’s is exemplary of his unfolding melodic solos and unbelievable technique that pierces your soul and takes you places. Jeff Beck was one of a kind – a great master indeed! From the jump, he had a profound effect on my appreciation for genius talent. – Mac Wilson

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I remember playing “Jeff’s Boogie” in the summer of ’66. Hearing it for the first time was mind-blowing to a 13-year-old kid, and from The Yardbirds through The Jeff Beck Group and Beck, Bogert & Appice, I followed Jeff’s many sonic adventures; his music has always been a beacon of light, a part of our DNA. He showed us the sonic possibilities of the guitar and inspired us to push our own boundaries and find our God-given voices. I’m thankful to have met him. His passing hurts, like part of my youth has been yanked away. God bless you, Jeff, you’re forever in our hearts. – Greg Martin, The Kentucky HeadHunters

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Jeff brought a huge element of what people know as the “Yardbirds sound” – an adventurous, devil-may-care approach breaking through the old barriers. Some called it psychedelic. Great loss, and shock. – Jim McCarty, The Yardbirds

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I had the pleasure of working with Jeff while in Fender R&D and the Custom Shop. He was an amazingly cool guy. During the Bon Jovi “Blaze of Glory” sessions at A&M, J.W. Black and I were delivering guitars built for him, and Jeff had us hang out while he was recording the solo. It was amazing, watching him create this wild, seemingly out-of-place solo, yet in the end it blended perfectly. His playing was so instinctual and effortless. The musical world has lost a great one. – John Page

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I was 17 in 1985, when Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart released their astonishing cover of the Impressions’ “People Get Ready.” Its soulfulness leaped out in the shiny ’80s, his tone and vibrato were earthshaking. I knew his history, but that song and his fun solo on Stewart’s 1984 hit “Infatuation” led me to discover Blow by Blow, etc. Beck’s ’80s work deserves respect as a primer for many in my generation. – Bret Adams

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Jeff Beck was the man. I adore Truth. Live, he was otherworldly, channeling something no one else had access to – so in the present, as if everything was 100 percent improvisational, but delivered with an urgency and mastery of technique that always astounded. A mastery beyond description, without peer. – Webb Wilder

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This article originally appeared in VG’s March 2023 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

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