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The Best Of Jeff Beck

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Simply put, this is a wonderfully produced effort and a significant entry into the artist's extensive recorded legacy.

Keyboardist Max Middleton provides the musical foil for Beck’s guitar to sing with rapturous abandonment in response to. The best album credited to Jeff Beck is Truth which is ranked number 1,449 in the overall greatest album chart with a total rank score of 1,195. Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood departed soon after to form The Faces, taking some of this loose-limbed boogie with them, but Spanish Boots’ power is inimitable. Necessity proved to be the mother of invention, however, as the short-lived Beck/Page two-guitar Yardbird line-up exploded with more feral power and menace than Lou Reed and co could have ever mustered. Aligned to the Stones and Pretty Things, thanks to an authentic approach to playing the blues, their demos featured here, including Trouble In Mind, Nursery Rhyme and Wandering Man Blues capture a fledgling Beck already master of his instrument and pushing boundaries with the use of feedback.While 'Rough and Ready' showed a rejuvenated Jeff Beck attempting to merge a soulful Memphis sound with AOR-friendly hard rock, 1972's eponymous follow-up captures the restless guitarist already moving on; creating a tougher-edged sound that fused his searing rock sound with the structureless free-formed jazz leanings. So as we say goodbye to a Mount Rushmore figure in not just guitar-playing but all of music, we rank these 15 as Jeff Beck's Best Albums. To say that Jeff Beck is running out of ideas on 'Jeff', the third album in his electronica trilogy, would be unfair; it is quite clear that the man could churn out albums in the vein for the remainder of the decade if he'd like to. The interesting thing is that such a solid record was made with such rapidity, but we cannot help but feel this is a style that Beck won't stick with for much longer.

Each one is a short tour-de-force in its own right, showing precisely why the world’s best guitarists considered Beck to be the undisputed master.Songs like “The Revolution Will Be Televised” and “Oil” rock with the power of any metal band and Jeff Beck seems to be especially charged up on this set of ultra contemporary songs that would delight NIN fans as well as Beck fans who continue to marvel at his incredible range of style. In his final dozen years he would release two more albums: Loud Hailer, aided and abetted by Carmen Vandenberg and Rosie Bones from Camden Town hopefuls Bones UK, before his final album 18 arrived in 2022, recorded with actor/musician Johnny Depp. It shows Jeff Beck adopting a more pop style but fusing his always razor sharp lead work in a new framework, giving room for his fireworks. Jeff Beck would never revisit this hard rock abandon again, which makes this the perfect swan-song for the straight-ahead blues that helped make Jeff a household name in rock. His 1967 debut solo single, Hi Ho Silver Lining, made the UK Top 20, proof he could achieve success as a mainstream artist should he wish.

This is a man whom was every bit as influential and brilliant in introducing hard blues rock to the world as The Rolling Stones and by being in The Yardbirds even for a short time places him in the same level of greatness as that other guitarist whom, for a short time shared lead work with him. In the documentary film Still on the Run: The Jeff Beck Story, fellow guitar god Jimmy Page summed Beck's unique talents up thusly: "He’s an extraordinary musician and he’s developed a technique which is so complex, it’s just a beauty to behold and hear and to feel his playing. He not only mimicked a sitar during the familiar riff that rings throughout the song, he also busted out one of the first distortion-heavy solos ever recorded. Where other fusion players would make their own distinctive impact, Jeff Beck somehow remembered to keep things rocking and on great songs like Stevie Wonder’s “‘Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers” showing his incredible sense of melody before blowing the doors off on “Freeway Jam” and closing with the majestic and beautiful “Diamond Dust” would be regarded even more as one of the most innovative and original guitar geniuses of all time. The big moment here however as far as the “emotion” portion of the album is concerned is the magnificent cover of “Over The Rainbow”.

It's a perfect album to compare the band in two totally different periods, although in both the guitar is the absolute protagonist, (in the case of Beck his ‘54 Esquire with several pieces changed, making it the first great Frankenstein guitar of rock), but I think you can say that Beck, this time, comes out ahead. Beck wasn’t only pushing the boundaries of what he could do as a player in The Yardbirds, but was revolutionising what the band did in the studio, manipulating his instrument beyond almost all recognition. The Nazz Are Blue, sung by Beck himself, can be seen as an antecedent to the sound of the Jeff Beck Group and Led Zeppelin. Rating metrics: Outliers can be removed when calculating a mean average to dampen the effects of ratings outside the normal distribution. Little is known of what Jeff Beck occupied himself with during that time, which is probably why this album serves as more of a reminder that he is still around, less of a grand stylistic statement.

In addition to being a personal milestone, Blow by Blow ranks as one of the premiere recordings in the canon of instrumental rock music.Like the A side, the B side was a selection of titles from the band's debut album, Five Live Yardbirds, released in 1964 when the lead guitarist was still Clapton. Rough and Ready' sports some of Beck's best tunes; "Got The Feeling", "I've Been Used" and "New Ways/Train Train" but it remains the unabashed rock record of its time; falling prey to those excesses and has eventfully been obscured by time. THX 138” is a frantic guitar run reminiscent of early 1960s guitarists like Duane Eddy and Dick Dale while “Declan” sounds Celtic. On this song, which HAS to be heard to be believed, we see visions of flights of birds riding the thermals, cruising perhaps along a beach at sunrise or sunset, and a culminating climax that, like the rest of the song, is a beautiful sound in and of itself.

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