Coda

Another guitar god gone

IMAGINE that Jimmy Page is watching you play guitar on stage in 1966. And is so impressed that he agrees to join the band. As the bass player.

(!)

Jeff Beck became a name in the mid1960s after a 20-month stint with pioneering rock band The Yardbirds. He had some big shoes to fill, replacing Eric Clapton in the group, but fill them he did.

Beck, who died this week at age 78, was the rock guitarist’s guitarist, considered one of the most influential players in the history of rock and roll.

He’ll be celebrated mostly for his innovative guitar solos and his eagerness to expand his music and even infuse it with elements of blues, jazz and even electronica.

For many, he’ll be remembered as the unverified source for Christopher Guest’s Nigel Tufnel. Nigel was lead guitarist for the quasi-fictional British heavy metal band Spinal Tap, subject of Rob Reiner’s brilliant 1984 spoof “This Is Spinal Tap.”

Mr. Guest says Nigel was based on many British guitarists of the time, but much of the character brings to mind Jeff Beck, not the least of which is the striking resemblance. (It wouldn’t surprise us, though, if Beck’s amplifiers went to 11.)

Post-Yardbirds, Jeff Beck launched a career of solo and collaborative projects and remained highly regarded and active, if not as commercially successful as Clapton. But that enduring image of rock and roll axman, alone on stage, head back and eyes closed, enveloped in trance and mist . . . that’s Jeff Beck.

Mr. Beck collaborated with many prominent artists throughout his almost 60-year career, Rod Stewart among them. In 1985, Beck and Stewart recorded a cover of the 1965 Impressions soul hit, “People Get Ready.” The song’s been covered over the years in various genres by numerous artists including Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Al Green and Ziggy Marley.

Written by the late great Curtis Mayfield, the song perhaps comes closest of any secular piece to transporting listeners into that great country beyond:

So, people get ready, there’s a train a-comin’

You don’t need no baggage, you just get on board

All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin’

Don’t need no ticket, you just thank the Lord.

And it was two lads from London who gave it rock and roll’s best interpretation. Mr. Beck carried the song’s underlying message of redemption on the back of his beloved Fender Stratocaster, from the opening chords to the final riff.

For many reasons, Jeff Beck wasn’t like most modern rockers. He didn’t seek celebrity, though it was his for the taking. He was satisfied in his role as influencer and innovator. His death was attributed to a sudden case of bacterial meningitis, according to his representatives. We trust he was ready to hop the train when it came.