Rough and Always Ready

His first major gig was replacing GOD in a volatile British blues-rock band, a job for which he was recommended by a man who more than a few people thought was LUCIFER, who eventually came back around and replaced *him*. Which made him the middle child in the most storied lineup of guitarists in the history of rock, sandwiched between heaven and hell, forever condemned to live in the shadow of mythical figures who’d go on to collect more private planes and platinum records and ROLLING STONE cover stories than he ever would, even if he was the one who turned that particular blues-rock band into the Rock Hall of Fame-worthy innovators they became by modernizing and psychedelicizing their sound, even if he was the one with the most lightning bolts in his fingers. Condemned to be not a guitar god, per se, but a mortal guitar hero. A guitar hero’s guitar hero. The one the other heroes wanted to be. The one who influenced everybody who came within 100 miles of rock in the past 60 years. Everybody! The one with the purest tone and the most sensitive touch. And always one more melodic idea. The one who said yes to blues and psychedelia and metal and jazz and soul and even techno, and no to the ROLLING STONES. “I’ve never made the big time, mercifully probably,” JEFF BECK once said. “When you look around and see who has made it huge, it’s a really rotten place to be when you think about it. Maybe I’m blessed with not having had that.”

Beck, who died Tuesday at age 78, remained active to the very end, and though he had a heart full of chops and technique that ran over, under, sideways and down, what he really had, what made him an unequal among unequals, were his sympathetic ears and borderless musical curiosity. I was struck by two particular tweets in the outpouring of love for Beck on Tuesday. ROD STEWART, who first came to the world’s attention as lead singer of the JEFF BECK GROUP and who’s known a few other guitarists in his time, wrote, “He was one of the few guitarists that when playing live would actually listen to me sing and respond.” What an incredible compliment. What a massive diss of everybody else. And then, by way of example, this tweet from acolyte VERNON REID of LIVING COLOUR, describing how Beck listened his way through his solo on STEVIE WONDER’s “LOOKIN’ FOR ANOTHER PURE LOVE”: “The sound of Pure LOVE. Between 2 friends. Stevie’s ‘go ahead Jeff’, & what Jeff played? It doesn’t happen often enough.” It happened every time Beck played. With the Yardbirds. With Rod. With JAN HAMMER and NARADA MICHAEL WALDEN and STANLEY CLARKE. With BUDDY GUY and STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN. With DIANA ROSS and TINA TURNER and KATE BUSH. (And here’s what else happened when Beck and Wonder were hanging around in the early 1970s.)

Beck also had a ceaseless drive for musical adventure, which led him from the Yardbirds’ psychedelic pop to the Jeff Beck Group’s proto heavy metal (that audacious first album came out half a year before the remarkably similar debut from LED ZEPPELIN, who began life, not coincidentally, as the New Yardbirds) to the instrumental jazz albums (or jazz rock or jazz fusion or whatever you choose to call them) that brought him his greatest acclaim and biggest fame to soul and funk and pop and a thousand side trips. His was a life of listening and responding, following the music wherever it might lead. An improviser’s life.

There were bumps and bruises along the way, as will happen. Beck wasn’t always as good an actual bandmate as he was a musical collaborator, and there’s a reason, besides his wandering musical heart, why a lot of his projects were short-lived. And then, in hindsight, he’d tell interviewers he regretted a lot of his musical choices until, after additional hindsight, he’d tell other interviewers he was happy with them. Wandering ears, you might say. Except when he was in a studio or onstage, when his ears were always at attention, his fingers ready to follow. This is from four months ago. RIP.

Etc Etc Etc

DR. DRE is selling a huge bundle of artist, songwriting and producing royalties for his N.W.A and solo work, as well as the master rights to THE CHRONIC, in two catalog deals that will net him north of $200 million, Billboard reports, citing unnamed sources. Two separate buyers, SHAMROCK HOLDINGS and UNIVERSAL MUSIC, will scoop up assets that Billboard says are currently earning $10 million a year. Universal is also reportedly getting Dre’s share in KENDRICK LAMAR’s catalog, which comes through a joint venture between Lamar’s label, TOP DAWG, and Dre’s AFTERMATH... UMG chief LUCIAN GRAINGE says “the economic model for streaming needs to evolve.” And though he’s a little vague, in his annual memo to UMG staff, about what it should evolve into, he has some clear ideas about what it should evolve away from. He calls out platforms that are adding 100,000 tracks a day and using algorithms to push users toward “generic music that lacks a meaningful artistic context, is less expensive for the platform to license or, in some cases, has been commissioned directly by the platform"... Nominations for the BRIT AWARDS will be livestreamed starting at 11 am ET today.

Rest in Peace

Metal album artist JUSTIN “VBERKVLT” BARTLETT.