As you may know, guitar hero Jeff Beck—who was dubbed “The Guv’nor” by Queen’s Brian May—died earlier this year. In order to pay textually deviant tribute to the man and his music, Tomek and I had a listen this week to the former Yardbird’s cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers”—which happens to be my favorite track off my favorite Jeff Beck album (the George Martin-produced Blow By Blow). In addition to sharing our impressions of the song, we discuss my Jeff Beck origin story (or, rather, stories), hot rods, the boomer generation, Antonioni’s Blow-Up, the theme song from “Ghostbusters,” and of course JB’s fellow guitarists Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend, David Gilmour, John McLaughlin, et al. We also consider whether Beck is, in the words of Slash, the Pablo Picasso of the electric guitar or, as he saw himself, the Jackson Pollack thereof. Press play to hear our conversation in its entirety.
This episode is dedicated to my first guitar teacher, Clayton Trent, guitarist of the band Texas Heat. Thanks, Clayton, for teaching me the fundamentals of the guitar, deepening my appreciation for Texas-born players like Billy Gibbons, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Eric Johnson, encouraging me to form a band of my own, and being a mentor to my teenage self in music and in life!
Thanks also to Stephen Harris of Big Beaver Diaries for sharing his experience of seeing “The Guv’nor” live!
And here’s a Beck-related trivia question:
Which Killing Joke song do Jeff Beck and Johnny Depp cover on their album 18?
Next week on Texting we remain in music mode as our textual focus will be Disc 2 of Michael Jackson’s HIStory. Stay tuned!
MW
"The Guv'nor"