Guitar Player

Guitar Player magazine helps you play better and sound better

Guitar Player8 min read
BRUSH WITH the Blues
When asked in 2018 why he thought the 1960s created so many great blues guitarists — including himself, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page — Jeff Beck had a ready response that reached high, deep and wide. “WE WERE DOWN on our luck until the blues arrived,”
Guitar Player2 min read
Delta Force
THE SURREY DELTA scene was home to many blues artists in the post-war period, but three stand apart, if not for their guitar prowess then for the coincidences that tie them together forever. Born within 15 months of each other in 1944 and 1945, Jeff
Guitar Player8 min read
SHAPES of THINGS
Paul McCartney likes to explain the sleuth-like method by which he, John Lennon and George Harrison learned new chords in their Liverpool days. In the absence of an internet — not to mention guitar magazines and lesson books — they would get wind of
Guitar Player2 min read
Beck’s Best
Ground zero for psychedelic guitar, “Heart Full of Soul” shows how ready, willing and able Beck was to cut a new facet in the British Invasion’s rock gem by emulating a sitar with his Fender Esquire through a Sola Sound Tone Bender, with the D string
Guitar Player2 min read
‘Beck Is Back’
How did you happen to join up with the Yardbirds? Well, Giorgio Gomelsky appeared on the scene when I was playing at a club, and after the set we talked about a job he had for me with a new group. I said, “No, go away, you nasty little man!” and afte
Guitar Player6 min read
BECK, PAGE, MOON & THE BIRTH OF Led Zeppelin
IN MAY 1966, Melody Maker announced that Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker had joined forces to form what would arguably become the world’s first “supergroup,” the as-yet-unnamed Cream. Just a few days later, on May 16, five moonlighting musi
Guitar Player5 min read
GROUP Therapy
If Jeff Beck was aimless after the Yardbirds, there was one man who was willing to point him in a particular direction. MICKIE MOST WAS a producer and manager who, by the dawn of 1967, had scored hits with the Animals (“House of the Rising Sun”), Her
Guitar Player2 min read
‘Lovers’ Leap
WHILE BE CK, BOGERT & Appice had no shortage of talent, the band suffered for songs. Of the nine tracks on their self-titled studio album, just four are credited to the group. “We needed the catalyst, somebody to write these incredibly interesting so
Guitar Player6 min read
The Whole TRUTH
IN JULY 29, 1968, Jeff Beck, along with a kick-around vocalist, a future Rolling Stone and a drummer with a lot of bash released Truth. The album was a miracle of fury and berserk beauty, a testament to the jaw-dropping chops of a 24-year-old guitari
Guitar Player7 min read
HI HO, Silver Lining
In 1974, Jeff Beck found himself in a repeating cycle that rivaled the predicament of Bill Murray’s character, Phil, in the movie Groundhog Day. AFTER BEING BOOTED from the Yardbirds in late November 1966, Beck formed three different bands — two iter
Guitar Player8 min read
EMOTIONAL Rescue
“I’m an awkward son of a bitch when it comes to doing the expected,” Jeff Beck said in an interview published in the April 1992 issue of Guitar Player. BECK MADE THE comment while explaining his decision to not record Gene Vincent’s biggest hit, “Be-
Guitar Player2 min read
‘Jeff Beck’
DECEMBER 1973 You made your own guitar? Yeah. I made a guitar. The first one I made was out of a piece of cigar box, and then I progressed on that. Cut the front and back out of plywood and made steamed-round sides, glued it all together — my old man
Guitar Player2 min read
‘Jeff Beck’
OCTOBER 1980 Are your emotions tied in with the way you play? It’s purely emotional. I can sort of switch on automatic and play, but it sounds terrible. I’ve got to be wound up, in the right mood. Have there been times when you’ve played better in a
Guitar Player1 min read
‘Beck On Beck’
NOVEMBER 1985 Do you often play at the outside edge of your ability? Oh yeah — bordering on total calamity. Do you ever get angry in the studio? Terribly, yeah. Especially if I see time sliding away and nothing’s being done. I’ve got this curse about
Guitar Player1 min read
‘Of Meat And Fingers’
FEBRUARY 1990 Jeff, what was it like to jam with Hendrix? STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN Yeah, good question. JEFF BECK What was it like? Well… it was awful! [laughs] The first time, I felt like a peanut, like a fucking hole would have opened up and swallowed me
Guitar Player1 min read
‘Pure Genius’
DECEMBER 2000 How much of your style depends on the whammy bar at this point? Quite a lot of it. I can simulate voice sounds, Eastern things, Bulgarian tremelos — all in midflight which I couldn’t do any other way…. Your intonation seems so perfect,
Guitar Player2 min read
‘Beck To Beck’
APRIL 1993 CHRIS GILL WAS assistant editor at Guitar Player when he interviewed Beck for the April 1993 issue to discuss his new album Crazy Legs, a tribute to Gene Vincent and the Blues Caps guitarist Cliff Gallup, who was Beck’s main guitar inspira
Guitar Player2 min read
‘Orchestral Maneuvers’
JUNE 2010 Since you play with your fingers, do you use heavier-gauge strings? My guitar is strung pretty lightly now because I haven’t played live for a while. But by mid tour I’ll go to a .012 on the first and a .052 on the bass. It’s self-torture,
Guitar Player2 min read
‘Heart Full Of Soul’
SEPTEMBER 2003 Jimi acknowledged being inspired by your playing and your performance style during your Yardbirds days. That’s amazing. And what he did with the Experience was, in some ways, an intensification and extension of Beck’s Yardbirds. How di
Guitar Player9 min read
JEFF BECK & Jimmy Page
One day, maybe soon, geologists and hydrographers will perform studies in and around Surrey, England, to divine the magical compounds that have contributed to a strange and almost unbelievable phenomenon: Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton — thre
Guitar Player9 min read
Loud Haller
Afternoon tea with Jeff Beck always seems like a good idea — and it certainly was on this occasion. BECK WAS IN Cleveland on April 4, 2009, to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, on his own this time after going into the shrine as part o
Guitar Player2 min read
Cover Stories
JEFF BECK WAS an avid interpreter throughout his 60-year recording career, from T-Bone Walker’s “Stormy Monday” with the Nightshift in 1963 through the great blues songs the Yardbirds covered. On his own recordings, he was apt to draw from the catalo
Guitar Player4 min read
THE BEST OF Jeff Beck… IN HIS OWN WORDS
THE MOST MERCURIAL guitarist of his generation, Jeff Beck never conformed to the conventional image of a guitar hero, except maybe when it came to looks (and to that end, he almost certainly inspired the sartorial style of Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel).
Guitar Player5 min read
‘I FEEL THAT I’M KIND OF underrated…’
HARVEY GOLDSMITH RECEIVED a surprising phone call during late 2008. “I had just literally arrived in New York,” Goldsmith, the U.K.’s best-known concert promoter, recalls via Zoom from a holiday in Portugal, the day after Beck’s death was announced.
Guitar Player4 min read
ALL-STAR Salute
“THIS IS SUCH an extraordinary loss and he was such an extraordinary person. Jeff was completely and utterly unique and the kind of musician who was impossible to define. And I was absolutely in awe of him. He was only a couple of years older than me
Guitar Player8 min read
Beckology
THERE ARE MANY guitar heroes but few who can express a simple melody in so many different ways. Jeff Beck was a master of his craft who had the power to move musicians and non-musicians alike. In this lesson, we’ll look at elements of Beck’s signatur
Guitar Player3 min read
Spanish Magic
JEFF BE CK IS the ultimate electric lead guitar hero, and Jimmy Page is rock’s ultimate acoustic-electric songsmith. “Beck’s Bolero,” from the Jeff Beck Group’s 1968 release Truth, pits them side by side on one hell of a beautiful romp. As Page has v
Guitar Player5 min read
Prs
SINCE ITS INTRODUCTION in 2007, the PRS DGT (for David Grissom Trem) has been one of the most successful, and most highly acclaimed, variations on the flagship PRS models and a firm favorite of numerous guitarists. Created in close collaboration with
Guitar Player6 min read
Gibson
CREATING A VINTAGE-QUALITY instrument with modern dependability at an affordable price is a lofty goal, and Gibson is shooting for the moon with the J-45 ’50s Faded, which features ’50s specs and a muted burst top with light finish. To make the missi
Guitar Player4 min read
Donner
AS IMPRESSIVELY COMPACT all-in-one rig solutions continue to become more feature-packed and more affordable, Donner Music has fired a noteworthy volley into the fray. The Chinese gear maker’s Arena2000 is a floor pedal delivering effects, amp and cab
Guitar Player6 min read
Universal Audio
THE GROWING FAMILY of UAFX pedals from Universal Audio now includes three amp-emulator models that join the Astra Modulation Machine, Golden Reverberator and Starlight Echo Station we reviewed in our May 2022 issue. As with those pedals, the new Drea
Guitar Player4 min read
Kernom
TOUTED AS THE “million moods overdrive,” the Ridge is carving out a niche as the world’s first augmented-analog pedal, with the underscore that it contains technology that allows the player to control in real time the behavior of key internal compone
Guitar Player4 min read
‘One Of The Greatest Times Of My Life’
STEVE LUKATHER WILL never forget the first time he played with Jeff Beck. It was at a huge outdoor concert in Japan in 1986 featuring sets from Beck and Carlos Santana, with a young Lukather guesting in both bands. “I was ecstatic,” the guitarist say
Guitar Player2 min read
A Light That Never Goes Out
ON JANUARY 10, the guitar world lost one of its greatest when Jeff Beck passed away. We had sent our previous issue off to the printer that very morning when the word came, and we knew we had to make this month’s issue of Guitar Player a special even

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