From Touring Australia To His Techno Phase, Jeff Beck Moved To His Own Tune

In his book Shots , Don Walker tells the wonderful story of Jeff Beck playing pinball at the Bondi Lifesaver in the summer of 1977.

Just after midnight, after setting fire to some stage in the city, the British guitar god slipped into a public bar and began banging on a corner rig under the restraints of his 60s-style haircut.

“He hunts alone, he has no equipment, he knows no one, and he walks alone through time,” notes the author of the song “Cold Blade” from a respectful distance. Those words and image sound like a poetic epitaph as the solo electric guitar maestro takes his shocking walk this week at age 78 after suffering from a sudden bout of bacterial meningitis.

"I just got the famous kiss on the cheek and that's it," Beck said on his next visit to Australia three decades later. “I really wouldn’t have had any other choice. Anonymity is not a bad thing."

Beck was no stranger to those who made any contribution to the history of rock. He meant avoiding the pop music spotlight that seared Yardbird alumni Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page; And kids like Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood, who he promoted on those brilliant early Jeff Beck Band albums (which some say Led Zeppelin invented).

The result was a rare, mesmerizing and completely independent quality that I thought I saw in photographs of the time. In this classic 1968 film about Baron Wollman, tucked away in his switched off Gibson in a Los Angeles hotel room and a roaring TV, Beck appears in pure inspirational splendor, oblivious to the camera or anyone else. More space probes than stars.

Part of his myth about '70s kids like me was that he agreed to join aspiring fan David Bowie at the final Ziggy Stardust show in 1973 and then insisted on being cut from the movie. "Quand j'ai vu les images, j'étais tellement gênée parce que j'avais ces chaussures blanches saltes avec des plateformes et il n'y avait no moyen que je laisse qui que ce soit voir ça", m'a-t . -he said.

This was the first time Mick Jagger was on a solo world tour in 1989: "Ce ne sera pas un flash jumping jack de ma part, je peux vous le dire", in Jagger's il previn from the start. “We rehearsed for a good three weeks, and then the set list appeared on the floor and Jumping Jack Flash appeared. A puff of smoke appeared and I disappeared.