Jeff Beck was undeniably a world-class guitarist (named the fifth best of all time by Rolling Stone), but that didn’t stop him from spending half his life with his mitts shoved firmly in the finger-crunching inner workings of an engine. “If I worried about my fingers, I’d never pick up a pair of pliers,” he said.
His motoring passions stretched back 60 years – before joining the Yardbirds, he worked in a car body shop as a mechanic to make ends meet. He was that rare breed of celebrity who didn’t just know his way around an expensive car showroom, but underneath the bonnet as well. The chances are, if you visited him at his Surrey mansion, you’d find him tinkering away in his purpose-built garage, where a whole fleet of his beloved hot rods is housed. When his old friend Eric Clapton showed him his collection of Ferraris, an unimpressed Beck commented: “Anyone can buy those.” Then he indicated the hot rod he’d driven over in. “These, you make.”
He'll be remembered as one of rock's greatest pioneers, a titanic influence on modern guitar music who was universally respected for an iconoclastic, innovative approach to his work that took in genres as varied as jazz, opera and punk.
The two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Famer told the crowd at his second induction that “I play the way I do because it allows me to come up with the sickest sounds possible. That’s the point now, isn’t it? I don’t care about the rules.
“In fact, if I don’t break the rules at least ten times in every song, then I’m not doing my job properly.”
Source: Benjie Goodhart / GQ
(Photo by Robert Knight Archive)
Jeff Beck - A Day in the Life (Beatles)
The 25th anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert
The ‘mechanic’ at work!
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