Legendary guitarist Jeff Beck dies at 78 | Jeff Beck

Jeff Beck, the famous guitarist who played with and led the Yardbirds Jeff Beck Grubb, who died at the age of 78, confirmed his representative.

The actor confirmed that Beck died on Tuesday after “suddenly developing bacterial meningitis.” They added, “His family requests privacy while processing this terrible loss.”

Often described as one of the greatest guitarists of all time, Beck was known to insure his fingers and thumbs for £7 million, and was known as an avid innovator. He pioneered jazz and rock, experimenting with fuzz and distortion effects and paving the way for heavier subgenres like psych rock and heavy metal over the course of his career. He has won eight Grammy Awards, received the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music and has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist and as a member of the Yardbirds.

Musicians and old friends began paying tribute minutes after word broke. on twitter, Jimmy Page Books“The six-stringed warrior is no longer here for us to admire the incantations he can weave around our mortal feelings. Jeff can channel music from the ethereal. His style is unique. His imagination seems to have no limits. Jeff I will miss you along with your millions of fans.”

“With the death of Jeff Beck we have lost a wonderful man and one of the greatest guitarists in the world,” Books by Mick Jagger. “We will all miss him very much.”

With the death of Jeff Beck we have lost a wonderful man and one of the greatest guitar players in the world. We will all miss him so much. pic.twitter.com/u8DYQrLNB7

— Mick Jagger (@MickJagger) January 11, 2023

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With the passing of Jeff Beck we have lost a wonderful man and one of the greatest guitarists in the world. We will all miss him very much pic.twitter.com/u8DYQrLNB7

– MickJagger January 11, 2023

Rod Stewart, who toured with Jeff Beck’s group in the late 1960s, described him as “one of the few guitarists who when they’re playing live actually listen to me sing and reply… You were the greatest, my man. Thank you for everything.”

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Jeff Beck was on another planet . He took me and Ronnie Wood to the USA in the late 60s in his band the Jeff Beck Group
and we haven’t looked back since . pic.twitter.com/uS7bbWsHgW

— Sir Rod Stewart (@rodstewart) January 11, 2023

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Jeff Beck was on another planet. He took Ronnie Wood and me to the US in the late 1960s in his band The Jeff Beck Group
And we haven’t looked back since. pic.twitter.com/uS7bbWsHgW

– Sir Rod Stewart (@rodstewart) January 11, 2023

Gene Simmons invited him “Heartbreaking news… no one ever played guitar like Jeff. Please pick up the first two Jeff Beck Collection albums and see the greatness. RIP.”

“Now Jeff is gone, I feel like one of my brothers has left this world, and I will miss him so much.” Ronnie Wood tweeted.

Ozzy Osbourne chirpwrote, “I cannot express how sad I am to hear of Jeff Beck’s passing. What a terrible loss for his family, friends and many fans. It is such an honor to know Jeff and an incredible honor to share with him on my latest album.”

I can’t express how saddened I am to hear of @JeffBeckMusic’s passing. What a terrible loss for his family, friends & his many fans. It was such an honor to have known Jeff & an incredible honor to have had him play on my most recent album, #PatientNumber9.
Long live #JeffBeck pic.twitter.com/hG6O9tzfij

— Ozzy Osbourne (@OzzyOsbourne) January 11, 2023

\n”,”url”:”https://twitter.com/OzzyOsbourne/status/1613305483250790400″,”id”:”1613305483250790400″,”hasMedia”:false,”role”:”inline”,”isThirdPartyTracking”:false,”source”:”Twitter”,”elementId”:”79b20955-f19d-4e5f-a940-954e5bb65476″}}”/>

Pink Floyd David Gilmour wrote“I was saddened to hear the news of the passing of my friend and hero Jeff Beck, whose music inspired and inspired me and countless others for so many years…he will be in our hearts forever.”

Johnny Marr I called him “a pioneer and one of the all-time greats”, while Whitesnake Books by David Coverdale“Oh my heart…RIP, Jeff…I miss you already”.

Contract’ Dave Davies tweeted“I’m heartbroken, he looked so good to me. He played so great he was so good. I’m shocked and amazed… It doesn’t make sense that I don’t get it. He was a good friend and a great guitarist.”

Beck was born Geoffrey Beck in 1944 in Wallington, South London. As a child, he sang in a church choir, started playing guitar as a teenager, and got his first instrument after trying to con a music store in a hire purchase scheme. “There was this guy, he wasn’t old enough to be my father, but he offered to be my guarantor. I’m going to tell them I’m your stepfather,” he told the New Statesman in 2016. “Within a month, they found out I had absolutely nothing to do with it.” And they grabbed the guitar again. My dad went and explained we couldn’t afford it – so they waived the rest of the payment and I got the guitar.”

After briefly attending art school in London, Beck began playing with Screaming Lord Sutch even after Eric Clapton left the Yardbirds, Jimmy Page recommended Beck as his replacement. Although already successful at the time, the Yardbirds had several of their biggest hits during Beck’s brief time in the band, including the 1966 album The Yardbirds and No 3 Single Shapes of Things. Beck was in the Yardbirds for only 20 months, and left the group in 1966 due to tensions between the bands that arose during a US tour. (Later, he would say “Every day was a tornado in the Yardbirds”.)

In 1968, Beck released Truth, his first solo album, which drew on blues and hard rock to form a typical version of heavy metal. One year later, he released an album with Jeff Beck’s group, Beck-Ola, but his solo career was derailed after he suffered a head injury in a car accident.

In 1970, after recovering from his skull fracture, Beck formed a new incarnation of The Jeff Beck Group, releasing two records – 1971’s Rough and Ready and 1972’s The Jeff Beck Collection – which showcased his early forays into the jazz fusion sound he would become known for.

In the mid-1970s, Beck supported John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra on tour, an experience that radically changed how he saw music. “Watch [McLaughlin] And the sax player was trading solos, I thought, ‘This is me,'” he said in 2016.

Inspired, Beck fully embraced jazz fusion in George Martin’s Blow By Blow. A platinum-selling hit in the US that peaked at No. 4, it was Beck’s most commercially successful album of all time, but he later regretted it. “I shouldn’t have done Blow By Blow,” he told Guitar Player in 1990. “I wish I’d stayed with earthy rock. When you’re surrounded by musical people like Max Middleton and Clive Shaman, you’re in prison, and you have to play along with that.” .

Despite his later feelings about Blow By Blow, Beck continued to experiment throughout the 1970s, releasing two more platinum-selling jazz albums, Wired, in 1976, and There and Back, in 1980.

Beck’s output slowed dramatically in the 1980s, in part because he struggled with tinnitus. His projects over the decade were sporadic but notable: in 1981, he performed with Clapton, Sting, and Phil Collins at Amnesty International’s Secret Policeman’s Other Ball concerts, and returned with his first solo album in five years, Flash, in 1985. From Producing Chic, Nile Rodgers introduced a dramatic shift for Beck in that he featured primarily vocal-led pop tracks, a change from his largely musical output of the 1970s. People Get Ready, a collaboration with Rod Stewart, became one of Beck’s rare number one hit singles under his own name, appearing in the United States, New Zealand, Sweden, Belgium and Switzerland.

Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop album was his last solo album for a decade, but he remained active through the 1990s, collaborating with Jon Bon Jovi, Kate Bush, and Roger Waters, among others; In 1999, he released Who Else, which combined techno and electronic elements.

In the 2000s and 2010s, Beck released only a handful of albums, but he began to settle into a role as a major statesman and acclaimed influence, performing with artists such as Kelly Clarkson and Joss Stone. He has lived on an estate in East Sussex since 1976, and married his second wife, Sandra Cash, in 2005.

Beck’s most recent project was 18 last year, a collaborative album with Johnny Depp that featured original songs penned by Depp and covers of Marvin Gaye, the Velvet Underground, and other classic artists. The album was widely criticized; In a two-star review, the The Guardian’s Michael Han described it as a “weird, wildly uneven record”, while noting that “it is to Beck’s credit that alone among the guitar heroes of the UK R&B boom of the 1960s, he didn’t regress into coffee-table blues”.

• This article was last modified January 12, 2023. Beck-Ola was released in 1969, not 1971 as an earlier version suggested, and Sandra Cash was Beck’s second wife, not sixth.