Quotes About Jeff Beck

#1. When we toured ... I was hungry to take out people like Jeff Beck in front of us; Fleetwood Mac, just before they hit; Heart, just before they hit.

Paul Kantner

#2. Jeff Beck is probably my favorite and biggest influence on the guitar. Touring with him in 2010 was such a milestone. I used to show up early every day just to hear his sound check, which sometimes lasted an hour.

Gary Hoey

#3. I would say seeing the original Yardbirds with Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page at the old Fillmore was a pretty powerful influence on me.

Ronnie Montrose

#4. Jeff Beck is one of my heroes and has been since I first picked up a guitar.

Kirk Hammett

#5. My personal favourite is Jeff Beck. All the others are wonderful as well.

Noel Redding

#6. I got married to an amazing woman, had 2 awesome kids and toured with Jeff Beck, I can die a happy man now.

Gary Hoey

#7. I decided early on that I wanted to be Michael Bloomfield, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton - not George Harrison.

Todd Rundgren

#8. I probably owe as much to Jeff Beck as I do to Son House with connections to the blues.

Billy Gibbons

#9. There's just not a lot of guys around playing like that these days; a lot of steel players are plugging into stomp boxes, trying to sound like Jeff Beck on a steel guitar.

John Fogerty

#10. I don't put myself on Jeff Beck's level, but I can relate to him when he says he'd rather be working on his car collection than playing the guitar.

Ritchie Blackmore

#11. My guitar heroes are Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck and people like that - so I've tried to make an album of Robert Johnson covers that, well, while not totally faithful for blues purists, is faithful for people like me that grew up with the '60s and the electric blues-rock versions of Johnson's songs.

Todd Rundgren

#12. Jeff Beck is compelled by his inner artistic drive to keep evolving the instrument. He'll use the whammy bar with the volume knob and the tone control all at the same time - creating harmonics that no human being should be able to hit.

Steve Vai

#13. I can turn on some jazz guitarist, and he won't do a thing for me, if he's not playing electrically. But Jeff Beck's great to listen to.

Ritchie Blackmore

#14. When God plays guitar he uses Jeff Beck's hands.

Steve Lukather

#15. Every time I listen to Jeff Beck my whole view of guitar changes radically. He's way, way out, doing things you never expect.

Brian May

#16. The great British blues guitarists of the Sixties - people like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Peter Green - could play like virtuosos, but they also understood the importance of energy and intensity

Joe Perry

#17. Ever since I was a child I've always been very attracted to melodies. Whether I hear Jeff Beck, a choir, an ocean or the wind, there's always a melody in there.

Carlos Santana

#18. Jeff Beck is my idol .. sometimes he finds notes that I just do not have on my guitar. Frank Zappa's another one .. I loved Frank Zappa ... I do think Van Halen reinvented the guitar ... he's an excellent musician, a shrewd guitarist and as a person he's wonderful ...

Ritchie Blackmore

#19. 'Sing It Again Rod' touches all the solo bases since Stewart's departure from the Jeff Beck Band, wherein he cut his teeth on American audiences for $75 a week plus expenses, and wisely ignores his generally inferior work with the Faces.

Jon Landau

#20. I'm a very emotional person. If I've got something on my mind, that would stop me from giving my best.

Jeff Beck

#21. Sometimes when I do an overdub solo, they'll keep four or five of my attempts and then mix the bits that they like to make a solo up out of them. It's not against the rules, really - I can learn my own solos, then. But that's the whole beauty of multi-track recording, isn't it?

Jeff Beck

#22. Things turn out better by accident sometimes. But you can't organize accidents.

Jeff Beck

#23. A lot of solos I hear sound so incredible, but they sound like somebody practicing. They sound a bit soulless - fiery, but at the same time, lacking in spirit and soul.

Jeff Beck

#24. I've never stuck around long enough to know if anyone would miss me. That's rock 'n' roll, though. Here today, gone tomorrow.

Jeff Beck

#25. That old funny-shaped bit of wood is still staring me in the face every day saying 'come on, you haven't started yet!' It's infinite.

Jeff Beck

#26. London is a dead duck, as far as innovative new music is concerned, unless you want to have your head blown off with some outrageous, rubbish, pounding dance music.

Jeff Beck

#27. If you don't have an album or you don't have any tune, you can't start.

Jeff Beck

#28. I cherish my privacy, and woe betide anyone who tries to interfere with that.

Jeff Beck

#29. As long as there's something original going on, that's all that matters.

Jeff Beck

#30. My first wife said, 'It's either that
guitar or me,' you know
and I give
you three guesses which one went.

Jeff Beck

#31. I don't care about the rules, if I don't break the rules at least 10x every song then I'm not doing my job.

Jeff Beck

#32. If I'm on form and I'm not being bothered too much by mental problems or whatever, I can whip out something good. That's why I've done quite a few overdubs for Tina Turner and things like that, because even before she made this comeback I said yes to her, just because I love Tina Turner.

Jeff Beck

#33. I don't care about the rules. In fact, if I don't break the rules at least 10 times in every song then I'm not doing my job properly.

Jeff Beck

#34. The Strat covers the complete spectrum of human emotion .. the tremolo enables you to do anything - you can hit any note known to mankind

Jeff Beck

#35. I was interested in the electric guitar even before I knew the difference between electric and acoustic. The electric guitar seemed to be a totally fascinating plank of wood with knobs and switches on it. I just had to have one.

Jeff Beck

#36. I don't understand why some people will only accept a guitar if it has an instantly recognizable guitar sound. Finding ways to use the same guitar people have been using for 50 years to make sounds that no one has heard before is truly what gets me off.

Jeff Beck

#37. At the end of the day, there are a hell of a lot of notes being played out there and I defy the average middle-American or the average punter to differentiate between them.

Jeff Beck

#38. After I saw Jimmy [Hendrix] play, I just went home and wondered what the f*** I was going to do with my life.

Jeff Beck

#39. I wanted to be in Rolling Stone number two with a tomorrow feel to it, like an experimental Rolling Stones with Jagger singing.

Jeff Beck

#40. I try to become a singer. The guitar has always been abused with distortion units and funny sorts of effects, but when you don't do that and just let the genuine sound come through, there's a whole magic there.

Jeff Beck

#41. I was really small when jazz broke through in England and I can still remember sneaking off to the living room to listen to it on the radio - much to my parent's disapproval.

Jeff Beck

#42. If you were to plot my success or failure, it goes, it very seldom stays on a high plateau.

Jeff Beck

#43. By far the most astonishing guitar player ever has got to be Django Reinhardt ... Django was quite superhuman, There's nothing normal about him as a person or a player.

Jeff Beck

#44. I never really felt at home with that - the headbands, the roses, the feet, the peace sign, all that bollocks. That wasn't me at all; I felt like a fish totally out of water during the mid-'60s thing.

Jeff Beck

#45. There was mass hysteria in the Chess Recording Studio when I did the "Shapes of Things" solo ... they weren't expecting it, and it was just some weird mist coming from the East out of an amp.

Jeff Beck

#46. I play purely from the heart, y'know, and so if it doesn't work the first couple of hours, forget it.

Jeff Beck

#47. I play the way I do because it allows me to come up with the sickest sounds possible. That's the point now isn't it?

Jeff Beck

#48. Nowadays music is as disposable as a McDonald's wrapper.

Jeff Beck

#49. Some are skeptical. My mom thought the guitar was going to fizzle out in two weeks, that it was just a fad-and that was in 1958.

Jeff Beck

#50. It's a diabolical business. I can't imagine how hellish it must be to be hounded like Amy Winehouse and people like that. I have a little peripheral place on the outskirts of celebrity, when I go to premieres and that sort of stuff, which is as close as I want to get.

Jeff Beck

#51. I like an element of chaos in music. That feeling is the best thing ever, as long as you don't have too much of it.

Jeff Beck