For many of music’s biggest names – Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood and Eric Clapton – Jeff Beck was the ultimate maverick.
He had a knack for leaving bands just before they made it big, or missing opportunities that would have led to fame, fortune and musical accompaniment. As Clapton said, “He likes to be left alone.”
The reclusive Beck was invited to join the Rolling Stones but declined. Nick Mason was asked to quiz him about joining Pink Floyd but couldn’t muster the courage to ask, such was Beck’s reputation.
How ironic, then, that Jeff Beck, along with his status as a guitar star, will be remembered for his very public and very unlikely friendship with actor Johnny Depp.
For many of music’s biggest names – Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood and Eric Clapton – Jeff Beck (pictured with Johnny Depp) was the ultimate loner
Beck, who died suddenly after contracting bacterial meningitis at the age of 78, was the only man to stand shoulder to shoulder with Depp during his long years of public shame over domestic violence allegations. Their unlikely bond ran so deep that they both referred to it as familial.
Depp, 59, called Beck his “brother” and adored him as a hero. “Like Jimmy Page said, there are a lot of great guitar players, and then there’s Jeff Beck,” Depp said just two months ago. He continued: “Once you’ve connected on any level, it becomes so close that you don’t have to say anything in particular. Just one look with the ball of your eye and you’re both on the floor laughing.’
For his part, Beck remarked, “I haven’t had a creative partner like him in ages.”
This from a man who played with all the greats of pop music’s golden age – including David Bowie and Stevie Wonder, who wrote Superstition for Beck only to be told by his record label that it was too good and he should keep it to himself .
Beck and Depp met in 2014 when the actor was filming in Tokyo at the same time the guitarist was on tour. One evening, Depp knocked on Beck’s dressing room door. A friendship developed based on a shared, surreal and very British sense of humor as well as a shared love of guitars and cars. Depp joined Beck on his UK tour last year.
Introducing his friend during a performance, Beck said: “He knocked on my dressing room door about five years ago and we haven’t stopped laughing ever since.
Their friendship blossomed into an artistic collaboration even as Depp was ostracized over domestic violence allegations and two blockbuster court cases with his ex-wife Amber Heard.
Depp left the second case – which he won – before the verdict came so he could prepare for his tour with Beck. Last year they released an album called 18. “When Johnny and I started playing together it really sparked our youthful spirit and creativity. We would joke about how we felt at 18 again,” Beck explained.
Friends of the actor confirmed yesterday that Depp was so much a part of Beck’s inner circle that he had traveled to East Sussex to be at his bedside in his final days.
One said: “They were very close and Johnny had to see him when he found out his health was failing.
He had a knack for leaving bands just before they made it big, or missing opportunities that would have led to fame, fortune and musical accompaniment. As Clapton said, “He likes to be left alone.” Pictured: Beck with Mick Jagger
“He spent time with him just before he died. Johnny is just torn apart with grief – devastated.’ In 2016, when his marriage fell apart, the friendship became particularly valuable for Depp, who rose to fame as an actor but was a longtime guitarist with musical aspirations.
They first performed together in 2019 at a charity event hosted by Eric Clapton.
Depp has spent much of the lockdown with Beck and his second wife Sandra, an artist, at their 16th-century farmhouse near Wadhurst in East Sussex. Friends confirm he was there for months and has been seen several times at the Middle House pub in nearby Mayfield. Depp also toured Folly Wildlife Rescue, of which Beck was a patron, and was photographed cradling an orphaned badger named Freddie Mercury.
“There was one couple who went a long way in keeping me alive, sane and happy through the craziness at that time — and they were Jeff and Sandra,” Depp said.
Of course they were very different. A vegetarian, Beck had a penchant for nothing fancier than Prosecco and was very interested in gardening and history. Depp, meanwhile, is famous for his narcotic and financial excesses and admitted in court he blew up £50m for his hard life. His former managers said he spent £4million shooting writer Hunter S Thompson’s ashes into space and £25,000 a month on wine.
And while Depp was an A-lister, largely thanks to his role as Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, Beck deliberately chose the road less traveled.
“Mercifully I’ve never made it,” Beck told Rolling Stone. “If you look around and see who made it big, it’s a really crappy place.”
Growing up in suburban Wallington, Surrey, Geoffrey Arnold Beck was a famous innovator and guitar master, but notoriously awkward.
He absolutely despised his biggest chart hit — 1967’s upbeat pop anthem Hi Ho Silver Lining — likening it to a pink toilet seat around his neck.
He was such a perfectionist that he once called the Beatles’ producer George Martin to ask if he could do a solo again, only to be told that months after the session the record was in stores.
The reclusive Beck was invited to join the Rolling Stones but declined
But then again, as Aerosmith’s Joe Perry observed, he was “head, hands and feet above the rest of us”.
Beck, the son of an accountant, first heard an electric guitar on the radio when he was six and decided, ‘This is for me.’
He tried building guitars at home out of cigar boxes and snuff cans, and ended up buying one on hire purchase with the help of a friend who posed as his stepfather and acted as guarantor.
He attended art school in Wimbledon and at 19 married Patricia Brown, an animal-loving blonde from Crawley. The first thing they bought was an Afghan Hound, and he found he was struggling to even support him as a session musician with fees.
Another session man, Jimmy Page, introduced him to the Yardbirds, which he joined, replacing Clapton. A tour of America in 1966 convinced him he didn’t want to be there either, missing his wife. Other reports suggest he was fired for not showing up and because of his temper.
After recording Hi Ho Silver Lining, he formed the Jeff Beck Group, which included Rod Stewart on vocals and Ronnie Wood on bass. Two albums were well received, but arguments and line-up changes broke out again.
After the death of Brian Jones in 1969, he was asked to join the Stones and met the band in Rotterdam. Beck said he waited for days without seeing her and eventually decided to go home rather than hang around longer.
By now his marriage had ended and he was living with model and animal activist Celia Hammond.
In the 1980s he struggled with tinnitus and recorded less. He also lost the tip of one of his fingers while slicing carrots, although it was reattached. His fingers and thumbs were then insured for a reported $1 million each.
In 2005 he married Sandra Cash for a second time in the gardens of his Sussex home.
They lived in a menagerie that contained a pet crow and once a ewe.
Neighbors affectionately said that the couple was involved in local life, particularly in charities.
Beck will be missed by many. And few, one feels, are hotter than his soulmate, Johnny Depp.