I don’t think I knew there were different kinds of meningitis, nor that one of those kinds can be fatal within hours of getting it (and that it will fuck you up if it doesn’t kill you), but, thanks to today’s news about Jeff Beck, I certainly know that now… sigh. The only non-Yardbirds Beck I have are his first two solo records, which I’m giving another listen to tonight, cos it’s been a while anyway.
Regarding which: Double J dusted off an old interview with Beck from when he was in Australia back in 1977, wherein he says this:
Two of the three albums Beck released in his 20 months with the band comprised entirely of covers, which he saw as a limitation.
“I said to them, ‘We can’t keep going and doing Howlin’ Wolf numbers for the rest of our lives. Or Sonny Boy Williamson. You got to start writing your own material’. I found that I had a lot of influence on that.
“The first record we did, other than blues, was ‘Shapes Of Things’, which is a homemade job. And it worked a treat.”
That 1966 single – and Beck’s blistering solo in particular – became part of the blueprint for the psychedelic rock that would take over popular music in the following decade.
The Yardbirds shift from blues into more psychedelic territory was hugely influential on the development of rock’n’roll. Like so many important moments in rock history, many fans hated it at first.
“There was this great sort of complaint from all and sundry about the fact that they weren’t sticking to their guns,” Beck recalled.
“But, like I said, you can’t just sit around playing Howlin’ Wolf numbers. Sooner or later, you’ll die of boredom and people will die of boredom listening to.
“And you won’t even die gracefully, you’ll die having failed playing someone else’s material. So, it’s completely negative. We had to move on.”
Weird, then, that Truth, his first album from 1968, was full of covers, including not only a Howlin’ Wolf number but the aforementioned “Shapes of Things”, and even the three numbers actually credited to Beck & Rod Stewart are all rewrites of existing blues songs by Buddy Guy and B.B. King. Jeff apparently was less ready to “move on” to original material than he wanted his bandmates to be… and I think the next album, Beck-Ola, maybe demonstrates that too; the original material is kind of thin next to the two Elvis covers. Points to “Rice Pudding”, though, for the abruptness of its ending…