Included in 'The Original Punk – Jeff Beck Stories: From Yardbird to the Guitar Shop' are archival conversations with key figures in Beck's life including Jimmy Page, Stevie Wonder, Ritchie Blackmore, Donovan, Pete Townshend, Frank Zappa and many more. More than a few of the artists interviewed here have sadly passed away, which makes this collection of conversations all the more rare and valuable. For more details and purchasing information, visit Rosen's site.
The title, 'From Yardbird to the Guitar Shop,' indicates what's inside. Rosen initially interviewed Beck in 1973 and would speak with him three more times through their last conversation in the late '80s. So, the new book focuses on Beck's very early pre-Yardbirds days and ends around the release of 1989's 'Guitar Shop.' Here's a sneak peek at Chapter 2 from 'The Original Punk – Jeff Beck Stories: From Yardbird to the Guitar Shop':
Though [Jeff Beck's father] Arnold [Beck] had instilled a love of music in his son, he did not measure Jeff’s interminable plucking and plonking on his homemade guitar as anything more than squawks and squeals solely meant to irritate him. Seemingly, he supported his son’s endeavors, encouraging him to indulge in music and arts while at school, but that may have simply been his way of tolerating the noise.
Even his mother, who had tried to push him into church choirs and taking up piano, cello and violin, could recognize the burgeoning talent streaming from her son’s fingertips. But she too had grown weary and weathered by having to endure barely tolerable sounds emanating from the instrument.
In a landslide of pent-up rage, Papa Beck destroyed Jeff’s most important thing in the world. Demoralized and demeaned, the young bright-eyed boy was not defeated but only grew more determined than ever. “My old man threw it out in the garden because I had a row with him. He busted it and that was the thing I wanted to do so much.”
“I used to deliberately carry my guitar around without a case so everyone could see what it looked like. I used to ride a bike with it, stick it on my back and ride a bicycle. I could see then it just wasn’t a fly-by-night thing because the expressions on people’s face when they saw this weird guitar … that was something boring like a violin or a sax in a very stock-looking case. It was bright yellow with these wires and knobs on it. People just freaked out.”
Read the full article on Ultimate Classic Rock Here
