From Touring Australia To His Techno Phase, Jeff Beck Moved To His Own Tune
In his book Shots , Don Walker tells the wonderful story of Jeff Beck playing pinball at the Bondi Lifesaver in the summer of 1977.
Sometime after midnight, having torched several venues around town, the English guitar god snuck into a public bar and began playing a slot machine on the corner with a forbidden haircut from the 60 years.
“He hunted alone, without groups, without recognizing anyone, and finally he was left alone,” composer Cold Chisel comments from a distance. Those words and images seemed like a poetic epitaph as electric guitar maestro Wolff took his final downfall this week, aged 78, after suddenly developing bacterial meningitis.
"I just got a kiss on the cheek from fame, that's all," Beck told me on his next tour of Australia three decades later. “I really wouldn't have had a choice. Anonymity is good."
Beck is unknown to anyone who has invested in rock music history in any way. That is, he avoided the searing pop attention of Yardbirds alumni Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page; and guys like Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood, whom he trusted to work on the early albums of Jeff Beck's glamorous band (who are said to have created Led Zeppelin).
The result is a rare, fascinating and completely self-sufficient quality that I envisioned in photographs from that time. As the television shows this classic shot of Baron Woolman from 1968, Beck appears to be ablaze with pure inspiration, oblivious to the eyes of the camera or the eyes of others. More space receivers than stars.
For a '70s guy like me, part of his mythology was agreeing to join young fan David Bowie in Ziggy Stardust's last performance in 1973 and then insisting he be kicked out of the movie. “When I saw the pictures, I was really embarrassed because I was wearing these ugly white platform shoes and I never intended to show them to people,” she told me.
Then there was the time when Mick Jagger recruited him for his solo world tour in 1989. "I'm not going to make Jumping Jack Flash my own, I assure you," Jagger warned. “We rehearsed for three whole weeks, and then the set list came up with Jumping Jack Flash on the floor. There's a cloud of smoke and it's me, get out."
