MAESTRO: Jeff Beck - Capitol Theater, Port Chester, NY, 8-15-2018

 Jeff Beck - Capitol Theater, Port Chester, NY, 8-15-2018

Paul notes: I am still in the middle of a month long vacation. During that vacation, I've been posting one album a day pretty consistently. But since today is the Fourth of July, 2026, here is a second post today to help celebrate the holiday. Last month, June 2026, I posted a Jeff Beck concert that took place in the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, New York, in 2016. This is a concert from that exact same venue, except it was on his next tour, in 2018.

Both this concert and the 2016 one are publicly available thanks to the big leak of soundboard concerts from this venue in April 2026. There are surprisingly few Jeff Beck concerts with soundboard quality from his long music career, so these two previously unknown recordings are very welcome. This was originally a single audio file in mono. I chopped it up into mp3's. 

Beck was known for being a great lead guitarist, not a lead vocalist. So for this concert tour, he brought back one of the two lead vocalist from his 2016 tour, Jimmy Hall. About half of the songs, here are sung by Hall, while the rest are instrumentals. In 2016, he was promoting a new studio album. But in 2018, he wasn't. So the songs are selections from all points in his long music career.

This album is an hour and 27 minutes long.

01 Pull It [Instrumental]
02 Stratus [Instrumental] 
03 Nadia [Instrumental] 
04 You Know You Know [Instrumental]
05 Morning Dew (Jeff Beck with Jimmy Hall)
06 I Have to Laugh (Jeff Beck with Jimmy Hall)
07 Star Cycle [Instrumental]
08 Lonnie on the Move [Instrumental] 
09 Mna na Heireann [Instrumental]
10 Just for Fun (Jeff Beck with Jimmy Hall)
11 Little Wing (Jeff Beck with Jimmy Hall)
12 A Change Is Gonna Come (Jeff Beck with Jimmy Hall)
13 Big Block [Instrumental] 
14 Cause We've Ended as Lovers [Instrumental] 
15 You Never Know [Instrumental]
16 Brush with the Blues [Instrumental]
17 Blue Wind [Instrumental] 
18 Superstition (Jeff Beck with Jimmy Hall)
19 A Day in the Life [Instrumental] 
20 talk
21 Corpus Cristi Carol [Instrumental] 
22 You Shook Me - Going Down
23 talk 

(all tracks Jeff Beck except where noted)

Jeff Beck - Corpus Christi Carol

At Trädgår´n, Gothenburg, Sweden

Jeff Beck - Capitol Theater, Port Chester, NY, 19-7-2016 | Albums That Should Exist

 MAESTRO!

Jeff Beck - Capitol Theater, Port Chester, NY, 7-19-2016

Paul says: Whilst he prepares to go on holidays! : "For some reason, I’ve noticed that there aren’t many Jeff Beck concert recordings with really excellent sound quality. So I was especially pleased to see that when there was a big leak of soundboard recordings from the Capitol Theater in Port Chester back in April 2026, two of those are Jeff Beck concerts. Here is the first one I’m posting.

This concert was part of a tour to support his 2016 studio album “Loud Hailer.” It got good reviews, but the sales were disappointing. A lot of the songs on the album had vocals. I was pleasantly surprised to discover a song called The Ballad of the Jersey Wives,” which was performed in this concert, concerns the widows of the 9/11 victims and their search to find out what really happened in the events related to that terror attack. I didn’t know Beck wrote or cowrote those kinds of songs.

Some of the songs performed in the concert or instrumentals. Other others are sung by vocalist Rosie Bones, And still, others are sung by vocalist Jimmy Hall. You can see which is which in the song list.

A friend of musical associate Lil Panda was the one who split a single audio file into separate songs. I made a little change of boosting the volume of the applause between songs. That was too low, as is often the case with soundboard recordings. 

You sound quality is excellent. But note that the recording is mono, not stereo, just like virtually all the others from the Port Chester leak. "

This album is an hour and 23 minutes long.

01 The Revolution Will Be Televised 
02 Freeway Jam [Instrumental] 
03 Stratus [Instrumental] 
04 Live in the Dark (Jeff Beck with Rosie Bones)
05 The Ballad of the Jersey Wives (Jeff Beck with Rosie Bones)
06 The Pump [Instrumental]
07 Morning Dew (Jeff Beck with Jimmy Hall)
08 A Change Is Gonna Come (Jeff Beck with Jimmy Hall)
09 Even Odds [Instrumental] 
10 Cause We've Ended as Lovers [Instrumental] ]
11 O.I.L. [Can't Get Enough of That Sticky] (Jeff Beck with Rosie Bones)
12 Scared for the Children (Jeff Beck with Rosie Bones)
13 You Never Know [Instrumental]
14 Rollin' and Tumblin' (Jeff Beck with Jimmy Hall)
15 Superstition (Jeff Beck with Jimmy Hall)
16 Right Now (Jeff Beck with Rosie Bones)
17 A Day in the Life [Instrumental] 
18 talk (Jeff Beck with Jimmy Hall)

(All tracks Jeff Beck except where noted) 

Jeff Beck - Freeway Jam - Port Chester, New York - October 8, 2022.  Anika Nilles on drums. Rhonda Smith on bass, and keyboardist Robert Adam Stevenson 

Jeff Beck visits Jimi's ‘Little Wing’ . . . .

 Jeff plays a clipped Little Wing!

Top Hat Crew's "Live Music Archives"

Jeff Beck the Petrol Head | Don’s Tunes

 

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)

Don's Tunes



Jeff Beck - A Day in the Life (Beatles)

The 25th anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert

The ‘mechanic’ at work!

Jeff Beck reflects pre Yardbirds and approach to music! . . . . | Don’s Tunes

Billy n Jeff

 Jeff Beck:  When you are taken with any music with inner gusto, you don’t think too much about it—you just have to have it!

For example, I was playing in a blues band before I joined the Yardbirds, and I was really into Bo Diddley, who made the best use imaginable out of playing one chord. His outrageous jungle rhythms were so powerful and hypnotic, he didn’t have to change keys. We basically took his idea of the one-chord vamp, and while the band played, I would just slack all my strings and then really pull on them to make the most ridiculous and surreal sounds with slap echo so that people would just look up. It wasn’t premeditated.

I just wanted the audience to look at me and listen! I did all kinds of outrageous things like that at the time, like taking two guitars and have them feedback against each other, and it was that kind of attitude that eventually got me the job with the Yardbirds. They didn’t want someone to play a beautiful slide guitar solo, or someone that sounded like Earl Hooker.

They wanted someone that would hold an audience. I had something no one else had, and however crude or outrageous it was at the time, it worked. It wasn’t all that calculated. It was just my way of saying, Here I am. Ultimately, I had to tone some of it down when I joined the Yardbirds, because we were going on television playing pop singles.

Photo: Ros Halfin

Don's Tunes

Jeff Beck on Guitars + | Don’s Tunes

JEFF BECK - On Guitars : Strats vs. Les Paul's

 Jeff Beck: “I think it was when we did the [1969] Beck-Ola album that I got fed up with the sound of the Les Paul. In the studio, the Les Paul didn’t sound a lot different from the John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Lovely sound, but every track ends up sounding very similar. The Strat seemed to respond more to my aggressive playing than the Les Paul, which just sounds dreadful if you start hitting it.”

The Les Paul is heavier, but because of that bulk you can do bends on it more easily. Also, the Les Paul’s lack of a vibrato arm means you’re not wrestling against the spring-loaded bridge all the time.

The Strat is the ultimate because it’s like having a miniature pedal steel within it. Once you get familiar with where the bends are and where they meld down into a fourth or whatever, you can do all kinds of pedal-steel-like things, which I think are cool. Some of the things that sound the most difficult are the easiest for me.“

Photo: Robert Knight Archive/Redferns

Don's Tunes

UPP feat. JEFF BECK - Down In The Dirt (1974 UK TV Performance)

 Jeff Beck - Down In The Dirt (1974)

Is THIS the best guitarist in the world?

Think so . . . . 

Speakin’ of ROCKERS! | JEFF BECK with BILLY GIBBONS - Foxy Lady

 Jeff Beck and band introduce Billy Gibbons ‘Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix cover) look at the body language from Jeff and you know he is not too big for his boots to introduce lesser mortals (sic!) but appreciates the genuine article when he hears it . . so deferential it is heartwarming . . . . such fun!  “My boy!"

Jeff Beck Band with Billy Gibbons

Song: Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix)

The 25th anniversary rock and roll hall of fame concert

Jeff Beck - Scatterbrain (North Sea Jazz) 2006

 Meanwhile . . 

Jeff Beck - 'Scatterbrain' [HD] | North Sea Jazz (2006)

there’s a nice version with Tal on bass the year later at Ronnie Scott’s but heck this version is breathtaking . . . .what is his opening word?@@?@?!!? F**K!

Oh you thought Clapton and Page were up to this? . . . . . . . nope! Vai? Zappa? PAH! Belew? anyone? nah, the MAESTRO!

Jeff Beck (guitar); Jason Rebello (keyboards); Randy Hope-Taylor (bass); Vinnie Colaiuta (drums).

Jeff Beck on other guitarists - Interview Paul Guy 1999

Jeff Beck:  I had a criticism once, I read a review of one of Ronnie Wood’s gigs, and I know what they meant by this comment - and it said, ”Ronnie Wood, unlike some people we could mention, knows when to shut up” - and I just suddenly went red, and I thought, ”They’re talking about me! Shit.” 

And it stuck with me, and I used that criticism to some effect. Cause you know, you talk about the 70’s, and Eric Clapton playing 20-minute guitar solos - without even one rest - absolutely note linked to note, there’s not one break in it. And that last concert was the epitome of everything I didn’t want to be - standing there wailing away for hours on the same riff. 

And also, I’ve been heavily influenced by Scotty Moore and people like that, and Albert Lee, cause he just plays beautifully, and Steve Cropper - he just does a jab in ”Green Onions”, and it’s so cool. They’re the kings, just wonderful players.

Paul Guy Interview 1999

Photo Credit: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

Don's Tunes

Jeff Beck - Brush With The Blues (Charlie Mingus) - Ronnie Scott’s 2007

Band Members - Line Up : Jeff Beck - Guitar  🎸 /Tal Wilkenfeld - Bass 🎸 /Vinnie Colaiuta - Drums 🥁 /Jason Rebello - Keyboards 🎹

John French on Volume - (feat Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jeff Beck)

From John Drumbo French

Facebook page . . . . . 

The Drumbo Club

"My theory with guitar amps was to concentrate on hearing yourself onstage and nothing more. Basically, everyone ignored me for the most part. The Magic Band did one tour where we used tiny amps miked through the P.A. It saved a lot of backs. The guitars came through the monitors with as much volume as each person desired, and was blasted out to the crowd through the P.A. The drummer didn't have to pound to be heard, and the sound man, but increasing or decreasing the drummer's side wash could control a bit how loud the drummer had to play. It beats going deaf like Pete Townsend" John French

During his final years, Jeff Beck was on a mission to teach proper volume techniques. The legendary guitarist had his fill with massive ear-shattering volumes, which he used willingly and joyfully during his time with The Yardbirds and in his initial solo career. But as he aged, Beck became more interested in refining his technique and finding the perfect sound. It was then that he came to a revelation: you can still fill up a room without actually having to crank up amplifiers.

“By using the P.A. to act in the way it was designed – which is play at low level and use all the distortion and whatever else you need, but make sure you don’t come out louder than the side-fill monitors or the front wedges – you can blow the house down, and I’ve done it,” Beck told Guitar Player in 2010.

“I’ve done a whole tour with a Fender Twin when Stevie Ray Vaughan was going through about four billion watts with a rig that looked like an amp shop,” he added. “He asked me, ‘What the hell are you using? Are your amps under the stage?’ I said, ‘Nope, that’s it right there.’ [Laughs.] But we spent quite a lot of time dialing in the sound and getting rid of the squeaks and squeals. We’d raise the level and then tweak it a little bit, and then we’d raise it a little more. You can’t believe what you can get out of a little tenor 20-watt amp.”

“I played with this powerful band that had 18 pieces, and I thought I’d need a Marshall for it, but I didn’t; I needed a Pignose,” Beck observed. “Even though the trumpets and the horns were blasting away, the difference in character of the guitar with that concentrated trebly sound just cut right through.“  

Mas Metal Más Rock

Blow Up - Michelangelo Antonioni (starring David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave etc) feat. THE YARDBIRDS Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page

 The Yardbirds in the film 'Blow Up'

The Train Kept a Rollin’

From the 1966 movie "Blowup" starring David Hemmings, featuring Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Birkin, Sarah Miles and model Veruschka. With Jeff Beck having a fit (unhappy to wreck the guitar it is said). The song "Stroll On" was a movie lyrics re-write of their hit song "Train Kept 'A Rollin'. Notice at the very end of the clip that no one was at all interested in Jeff Beck's discarded guitar. Well Hemmings character does run out carrying the neck and discards it on the street Also note all the Vox amps, which were all used during that period.

         featuring it is said (not least by her) Janet Street-Porter

well despite Janet even being on record as saying it IS her and her rate of pay the rest of the daily picked up student extras got £5 a day and she was chosen then to dance so got the princely sum of £35 it is said, she noted exactly what she was wearing too. Even though this looks nothing like her to me but then we were all so much younger then . . . . . . . we’re older than that now!

Gary Lucas on Led Zeppelin [1969]

 Gary Lucas is BRAVE and shared this article about ‘Lead Zeppelin’ (sic) with the comment 

"WAS I NAIVE OR WHAT?? from my high school underground newspaper COGITO Spring ’69” 

Bless him it WAS 1969 so those were different times . . . . . worth a read and so self aware and self effacing too! Gary goes on to say "

at this point, the depths of Page's rampant plagiarism were still unplumbed. But there were inklings. Case in point: the last Yardbirds single "Think About It" (B-side of "Good Night Sweet Josephine") --where in Page plays an appropriately stuttering manic guitar solo he was to repeat note for note verbatim a year later on Led Zeppellin's "Dazed and Confused"--he was plagiarizing himself!!"

I am minded of what Jeff Beck said about all three guitarist when they first heard Jimi Hendrix on his arrival here

"When I saw Jimi we knew he was going to be trouble. And by ‘we’ I mean me and Eric [Clapton], because Jimmy [Page] wasn’t in the frame at that point. I saw him at one of his earliest performances in Britain, and it was quite devastating. He did all the dirty tricks – setting fire to his guitar, doing swoops up and down his neck, all the great showmanship to put the final nail in our coffin."

Classic Rock Louder Sound - Jeff Beck on Hendrix, Page and Clapton

Jeff Beck - Tallyman 1967 (other early singles)

 Jeff Beck Tallyman 1967

We played Hi Ho Silver Lining with the A.R.M.S. concert and friends the other day and he hated playing it and having written such a hokey single as he thought it . . . . but we early fans loved it Bippitty Boppitty hat an all!

But he wrote and sang other singles to break the scene . . . . . here’s a doozie ( fans loved this too)

Jeff Beck for a Sunday! GUITAR LEGENDS | TWILIGHTZONE

Jeff covers my brothers first foremost guitar hero - Hank Marvin of The Shads! (and Santo and Johnny’s Sleepwalk too!)

The Guitar Gods - Jeff Beck: "Apache" / “Sleepwalk” 

well we all gotta start somewhere  . . . . . . . 

Jeff Beck Group - Hi Ho Silver Lining (The A.R.M.S. Concert 1983)

look out for Stevie Winwood and Andy Fairweather-Low

Jeff Beck on Volume!

 

 During his final years, Jeff Beck was on a mission to teach proper volume techniques. The legendary guitarist had his fill with massive ear-shattering volumes, which he used willingly and joyfully during his time with The Yardbirds and in his initial solo career. But as he aged, Beck became more interested in refining his technique and finding the perfect sound. It was then that he came to a revelation: you can still fill up a room without actually having to crank up amplifiers.

“By using the P.A. to act in the way it was designed – which is play at low level and use all the distortion and whatever else you need, but make sure you don’t come out louder than the side-fill monitors or the front wedges – you can blow the house down, and I’ve done it,” Beck told Guitar Player in 2010.

“I’ve done a whole tour with a Fender Twin when Stevie Ray Vaughan was going through about four billion watts with a rig that looked like an amp shop,” he added. “He asked me, ‘What the hell are you using? Are your amps under the stage?’ I said, ‘Nope, that’s it right there.’ [Laughs.] But we spent quite a lot of time dialing in the sound and getting rid of the squeaks and squeals. We’d raise the level and then tweak it a little bit, and then we’d raise it a little more. You can’t believe what you can get out of a little tenor 20-watt amp.”

“I played with this powerful band that had 18 pieces, and I thought I’d need a Marshall for it, but I didn’t; I needed a Pignose,” Beck observed. “Even though the trumpets and the horns were blasting away, the difference in character of the guitar with that concentrated trebly sound just cut right through.“

Don's Tunes

Tyler Golsen / Far Out 

Photographer Robert Knight

Jeff Beck first sees Jimi Hendrix! | Don’s Tunes

 

here . . . . .  

Jeff Beck: “I’d like to get back to that Jimi Hendrix Experience type of approach,” he says. “The way that Jimi played, you didn’t miss the keyboards. It was all heavy and powerful. It just suggested power through the drummer, which I like. I love the sound of a big three-piece.” 

"When I saw Jimi, we knew he was going to be trouble, and by ‘we’, I mean me and Eric (Clapton) because Jimmy (Page) wasn’t in the frame at that point.” I saw him at one of his earliest performances in Britain, and it was quite devastating,” he continued, humbly revealing his envy. “He did all the dirty tricks – setting fire to his guitar, doing swoops up and down his neck, all the great showmanship to put the final nail in our coffin. I had the same temperament as Hendrix in terms of ‘I’ll kill you’, but he did in such a good package with beautiful songs. 

I don’t want to say that I knew him well, I don’t think anybody did, but there was a period in London when I went to visit him quite a few times,” Beck added later. “He invited me down to Olympic studios, and I gave him a bottleneck. That’s what he plays on Axis: Bold As Love. We hooked up in New York and played at Steve Paul’s club, The Scene.”

Don's Tunes