Jeff Beck, the British guitar virtuoso who rose to prominence as a member of the Yardbirds in the 1960s and then embarked on an adventurous career as a cross-genre solo artist, died on January 10. He was 78 years old.
A statement on its website said Mr Beck died “after suddenly contracting bacterial meningitis”. Further details were not immediately available.
Widely regarded as one of the greatest guitarists in history, Mr. Beck was a master instrumentalist who seamlessly transitioned between genres while recording albums that spanned hard rock, heavy metal, jazz fusion, blues, funk and electronic music. Playing a Fender Stratocaster with the amps cranked up, he helped unleash new tonal possibilities with the guitar alongside contemporaries such as Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and his friend Jimmy Page.
“I don’t care about rules,” he once said. “In fact, if I don’t break the rules at least 10 times in every song, then I’m not doing my job right.”
During his brief stint with the Yardbirds, Mr. Beck pioneered the use of feedback and distortion, developing a hard-edged new sound that informed hits like “Heart Full of Soul,” “Shapes of Things,” and “Over Under Sideways Down.” He later formed The Jeff Beck Group, a rotating group of musicians that initially included vocalist Rod Stewart and bassist and guitarist Ronnie Wood. This line-up featured on his 1968 solo debut Truth, which peaked at No. 15 in the United States and showcased his blues-influenced playing style, most notably on a psychedelic cover of Willie Dixon’s I Ain’t Superstitious.
“At every pause, Beck’s watery wah-wah tone makes his instrument sound like it’s talking—Chicago blues upgraded for the age of bad trips,” Rolling Stone later wrote, including the song in its list of the 100 greatest guitar tracks on.
Mr Beck seemed to agree with that assessment, once telling the magazine: “That’s my whole thing, I’m really trying to explore the blues to the max. It’s in the blood.”
Mr. Beck is the recipient of eight Grammy Awards and has been twice inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, first as a member of the Yardbirds in 1992 and then as a solo artist in 2009. However, his reputation as a brilliant and inventive musician has been somewhat eclipsed by his reputation as a moody egoist, a bandleader who continually struggled to keep his bands together. “My problem is that I’m not very professional,” he said. “I get bored very easily, then I get irritated.”
After working with Stewart, Mr. Beck has worked with singers as diverse as Macy Gray, Buddy Guy, Wynonna Judd, Cyndi Lauper and Luciano Pavarotti. He also recorded predominantly instrumental albums such as “Blow by Blow” (1975), which reached #4 on Billboard, and joined supergroups such as Beck, Bogert & Appice, a power trio featuring bassist Tim Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice . In the 1980s he played with the Honeydrippers, a rock group that included Page and his former Led Zeppelin bandmate Robert Plant.
Mr. Beck has continued to make music and last year collaborated with actor and musician Johnny Depp to record the studio album ’18’. But he also stayed out of the spotlight while avoiding interviews and turning down corporate sponsors, valuing his privacy and trying to avoid distractions. When the makers of the Guitar Hero video game asked him to be an avatar in their musical world, he was uninterested, telling the New York Times in 2010, “Who wants to be in a kid’s game like a toy store?”
Yet even as he faded from view, his fans and peers never doubted his greatness. “Jeff Beck is the best guitarist in the world,” Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry told the Times. “He’s head, hands and feet above any of the rest of us, with the kind of talent that only comes along once every generation or two.”
Geoffrey Arnold Beck was born on June 24, 1944 in Wallington, a south London suburb. When he was 6 years old, he heard electric guitarist Les Paul play “How High the Moon” on the radio and asked his mother to tell him the name of the instrument. “This is for me,” he replied.
Mr Beck learned on a borrowed guitar and as a teenager made crude attempts at creating his own, once attempting to screw cigar boxes together for a body. At Wimbledon School of Art, now part of the University of the Arts London, he played in R&B and rock bands, honing his technique and experimenting with genres.
His breakthrough came via another young musician on the London scene, Page, who turned down an offer to join the Yardbirds as Clapton’s replacement, recommending Mr Beck instead. Mr. Beck continued to perform on their only British studio album, which became known as Roger the Engineer (1966). He only stayed with the band for 20 months before working as a solo artist and striving to translate his ideas into music.
“Everyone thinks the 1960s was something they really weren’t,” he said. “That was the most frustrating phase of my life. The electronics just weren’t suited to the sounds I had in mind.”
Such was his talent and personality that members of Pink Floyd considered asking Mr. Beck to join the band, according to drummer Nick Mason’s 2004 memoir, Inside Out, but “neither of us had that.” courage to ask”.
Among the survivors is his wife, Sandra Cash, whom he married in 2005.
Emily Langer contributed to this report.