Jeff Beck

Tribute

Atco

     Released just in time for this week’s star-studded Royal Albert Hall concerts in honor of Jeff Beck, this Tribute EP serves as a tiny, tasty appetizer of what the late, groundbreaking guitarist was capable of. Everyone knows the name Jeff Beck for a reason. Organized by Eric Clapton, the shows have the potential of spanning the incredibly vast breadth of Beck’s range. This EP displays two sides. When Jeff Beck tragically passed away in January at age 78, he was still at the height of his powers, playing vital music that not one of his peers could even touch in terms of vision or execution. That is clear here in songs presumably taken from three different concerts, likely from 2018 forward. The orchestral aspects of Beck are on cinematic display in the first two songs. The guitar master was in a place at the end that now, in retrospect, seems like the final leg a journey.

“Midnight Walker Lament” is “Midnight Walker” from Beck’s last studio album, 18 (made in collaboration with Johnny Depp), with a poem composed and read over it by the Irish singer Imelda May. Beck collaborated with May on the wonderful, rockabilly-infused album, Rock ‘n Roll Party in 2010. Here, you would never know it was the same lady because her voice over the music is so in tune with opera. Which is what the next number is based upon, featuring opera singer Olivia Safe reprising her role on the dreamy “Elegy for Dunkirk,” a piece written for a 2007 movie. The song was reinterpreted by Beck (with Safe) on his 2010 album Emotion & Commotion. What an eclectic, electric guitar player, raised on rock, could do within that type of music, was genius.

Then the atmospherics explode for the finale. Beck and his band, featuring the dynamic singer Jimmy Hall, throw it down and go to town on Don Nix’s classic, “Goin’ Down,” which Beck began playing with his Jeff Beck Group in 1972. He subsequently played the song throughout his career, so fittingly, the initial London tribute concert closed with a furious eight-minute jam on the song. A veritable guitar army was on hand, featuring Clapton, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, John McLaughlin, Ron Wood, Billy Gibbons, and Kirk Hammet, among others. The vocals were traded off between Rod Stewart, Imelda May, Olivia Safe, and Joss Stone.

I cannot help but wish the recently released vinyl 45 RPM single of “Moon River,” featuring a guitar duet between Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton on the Henry Mancini classic, was included on this otherwise fine EP. It sure would have fit the mood.

 

Tom Clarke for MAS

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