GUITAR MASTER JEFF BECK DEAD AT 78
NEW YORK: Jeff
Beck, the influential guitarist who rose to rock and roll stardom with 1960s supergroup the Yardbirds and later enjoyed a prolific solo career, has died aged 78.
A guitar virtuoso and innovator who was also one of the world’s great rhythm and blues interpreters, Beck died “peacefully” after a sudden bout of bacterial meningitis.
Beck’s death quickly reverberated around the music world, with tributes pouring in from rock icons like Ozzy Osbourne and Kiss lead singer Gene Simmons, who called Beck’s passing “heartbreaking.”
“No one played guitar like Jeff,” Simmons posted on Twitter. “Please get ahold of the first two Jeff Beck Group albums and behold greatness. RIP.”
Mick Jagger hailed Beck – an eight-time Grammy winner who was twice inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – as “one of the greatest guitar players in the world.”
Beck played in a number of groups while in art school in London, and had already recorded pioneering rock sounds by the time the Yardbirds hired him in 1965.
He auditioned after the departure of one of the band’s star guitarists, Eric Clapton, and helped propel the British avant-garde rock sound with multiple groundbreaking recordings. By 1966 he was paired in the Yardbirds with fellow guitar wizard Jimmy Page, who went on to found the British sensation Led Zeppelin.
“The six stringed Warrior is no longer here for us to admire the spell he could weave around our mortal emotions,” Page posted upon Beck’s death.
A year later Beck formed his own band – the Jeff Beck Group, which included Rod Stewart on vocals and Ronnie Wood on bass – and swiftly drew widespread praise.
“The guitarists’ guitarist,” tweeted musician Paul Young of Beck, who said the virtuoso was “loved by everyone in the know.”