In the world of English rock guitar gods, all roads lead back to the Yardbirds.
In 1963, the young combo began playing clubs around London, and immediately earned a reputation, both for its devotion to the blues and for a stunning young guitarist named Eric "Slowhand" Clapton (the nickname being an ironic acknowledgment of his speed on the fretboard).
Two years later, Clapton left the group, disgusted at how pop-friendly the Yardbirds had become. Desperate for a replacement, the group turned to Jimmy Page, then the hottest session guitarist in England. Page wasn't interested, but suggested a friend of his named Jeff Beck. It was a canny choice, for Beck's technique was even more dazzling than Clapton's. With Beck's guitar blazing, the Yardbirds became more popular than ever.
A year later, Page joined up, and the band briefly boasted a twin-guitar lineup. But Beck left by the year's end, and in 1968, the Yardbirds disbanded, bringing an era to its end.
Fast-forward 30 years. Far from being a blues purist, Eric Clapton has himself embraced pop, and become one of the biggest names in rock. Jimmy Page, whose group Led Zeppelin played its first shows as "The New Yardbirds," has reunited with Led Zep singer Robert Plant, and is again one of the most popular acts on the arena-rock circuit.
And Jeff Beck? "I'm just sticking in there, in case it works," says the 54-year old guitarist with a laugh.
Where the other Yardbird guitar alums have taken commercial paths, Beck has opted for the riskier approach of only making music that personally interests him. Over the last decade, he's done virtuosic instrumentals ("Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop"), vintage rockabilly ("Crazy Legs"), and eerie, atmospheric soundtrack work ("Frankie's House").
Funny thing is, Beck initially seemed the most commercial of the three. His first post-Yardbirds ensemble, the Jeff Beck Group, was an immediate sensation. Featuring Rod Stewart on vocals and Ron Wood on bass, its bluesy bravura set the stage for the hard-rocking arena acts of the '70s. Page, in fact, worried that Beck's group would steal Led Zeppelin's thunder.
Personality conflicts ultimately kept the Beck Group from becoming a threat to Led Zeppelin. Stewart and Wood went off to join the Faces, and Beck eventually formed another supergroup, this time with former Vanilla Fudge members Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice. But Beck eventually tired of playing such predictable music and in 1975 turned his attention to jazz fusion. The result was "Blow By Blow," a lush, all-instrumental album that focused on Beck's fretboard virtuosity -- and became his biggest seller.
Beck's newest album, "Who Else!" (which arrives in stores Tuesday) finds the guitarist taking off on yet another tangent. This time, he's obsessed with techno, the relentlessly mechanistic dance music played at nightclubs and raves.
"Somebody gave me a couple of CDs their 16-year old daughter had," he says over the phone from London. The CDs were compilation albums by acts he'd never heard of -- in fact, he still has trouble remembering the names. There weren't any hit singles on these discs, or even much in the way of melody. "Just in-the-face drum grooves, and not much else," he says.
"But -- oh, god."
Beck was instantly smitten with the percussive intensity of those synthesized beats. "I get inspiration from rhythm," he explains. "That's the basis [for my music], not harmony or guitar sounds. I just have to have that punchy, sexy groove going. ... And if it's barbaric and twisted, great."
Before long, Beck began practicing to "loops" -- repetitious rhythm vamps culled from techno records -- and he was astonished at the difference they made in his playing. "It'll wear you out," he says of the music. "You go back to it, and it'll wear you out again. But you've been pushed to another place that you wouldn't have got to with a real drummer."
One day, Beck happened to share his enthusiasm with Tony Hymas, his keyboardist from "Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop." Hymas was intrigued, and wrote some tunes for Beck -- enough to fill an album or two. Beck put a band together, did some shows last year in Germany, and eventually assembled "Who Else!"
It's quite a surprise. From the sample-studded groove of "What Mama Said" to the ambient dub pulse that lumbers beneath "Space for the Papa," the music Beck makes seems worlds away from the psychedelic blues of his Yardbirds days. If it weren't for the virtuosic flair of the guitar solos themselves, most fans would have a hard time believing the album was the work of Jeff Beck.
Still, the guitarist hasn't completely given himself to this rave new world. His current group (which plays the 9:30 Club in Washington tomorrow) has a standard rock setup, with nary a DJ in sight. But Beck does hope that his embrace of electro-rhythms will attract some new listeners.
"I think kids are in a techno world now, where every day is an exciting adventure," he says. "They're just looking for something that they can latch onto, you know? If we even do a slight bit towards that, the job's done."
Beck isn't the first rocker of his generation to flirt with techno. Clapton sat in -- anonymously -- with Simon Climie's group T.D.F. for the 1997 release "Retail Therapy," and Paul McCartney has cut two albums of electronic instrumentals under the moniker "The Fireman."
But where the others attempted to play the kid's game and make genuine electronic dance music, Beck has taken techno on his own terms, working with the rhythms but placing them in a context that is mostly rock and roll.
Start with the band. Instead of a keyboard player, Beck is working with Jennifer Batten, whose guitar is outfitted with a digital interface to trigger synthesizers. Then there's Steve Alexander, whose drum kit is augmented by a rack of samplers, sequencers and drum machines. Bassist Randy Hope-Taylor is the only one in the rhythm section without some sort of synth backup.
Some of Beck's older fans may object to the level of mechanization this new music entails, but frankly, the guitarist couldn't care less. "I was aiming at kids that don't really care about mega-drum kits," he says. "That's a little bit yesteryear, the god drummer with 50 million drums."
For all his faith in samplers and synths, Beck's approach to his own instrument is surprisingly purist. His guitar arsenal is fairly simple -- several Fender Telecasters and a Jeff Back Edition Stratocaster he's had for eight years. The guitars are "not tricked up," nor does Beck mess much with effects pedals.
It's hard to say at this point whether "Who Else!" will earn the guitar veteran a younger and larger audience. Beck says he's encouraged by the response his band earned during a South American tour late last year, "especially with all the new material being well- received before [the audiences] even heard it on record. That was a nice bit of pumping up for me."
Still, he doesn't sound like a man aiming for the stars with his new album. "Maybe the long wait will pay off," he says cautiously. "Or maybe we'll just have to completely break it up and have another go."
Mechanized Beck
When: Monday, 8 p.m.
Where: 9:30 Club, 815 V St. N.W., Washington
Tickets: $35
Call: 410-481-7328 for tickets, 202-393-0930 for information.
Pub Date: 03/14/99