When I heard that Jeff Beck had passed away, I was reminiscing about when I first encountered the music of the great guitarist.

It was 1980, and every Friday night I loyally tuned into Radio 1 at 10pm, to listen to the ‘Friday Rock Show’. One Friday the guest presenter was Ian Gillan, whose band of the time, ‘Gillan’ were one of my favourite bands , who riding high in the album charts with their ‘Glory Road’ album, so it would be interesting to hear what he would play, given his passion for the rock ‘n roll sounds of Elvis Presley,and Little Richard. The one song that stuck in my mind from that show, was ‘Space Boogie’, which was from Jeff Beck’s new album ‘There and Back’. Now, this to my heavy metal attuned ears sounded a bit like Santana, who I liked, not heavy rock as such , but more ‘mellow’ as we said back then.

I would later discover that this music was called ‘jazz-rock’, and some of it was pretty damn good, like the Mahavishnu Orchestra with John McLaughlin, some of Frank Zappa’s work, and the sounds of Weather Report, but that’s perhaps for another day and blog.

Anyway, about the same time, I was getting into discovering blues, which I was getting acquainted with courtesy of listening to Jimi Hendrix , Cream, Led Zeppelin and the early incarnation of ZZ Top, so my first blues album bought at that time was a compilation on the Immediate label, called not surprisingly, ‘Immediate Blues’, this cracker of an album, which I still play a lot 40 odd years later, featured a galaxy of stars from the Brit Blues Boom of the ’60s; Jimmy Page, John Mayall, Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck, who with his All Stars, ( Nicky Hopkins, Carlo Little, and Cliff Barton -on piano, bass and drums respectively), played on two instrumentals ‘Steelin’, and ‘Chuckles’, ‘Steelin’ was the slow classic blues with piano, and slide guitar, which I grew to love, and ‘Chuckles’ is a riff on the ‘Johnny Be Goode’ riff by Chuck Berry.

So I had discovered Jeff Beck’s music in 1980, then a few years later in 1983, I bought ‘Truth’ , which I really enjoyed, a blues -rock classic, which featured Rod Stewart on stunningly soulful vocals, and Jimmy Page on guitars.

I recently revisited this LP, as I recalled the version of ‘Ain’t Superstitious’, and ‘You Shook Me’, which really remind me of Led Zeppelin’s early work, and the sleevenotes of ‘Truth ‘ tell us, that ‘Truth’ predated ‘Led Zeppelin’ by six months.

Great stuff, as I often say!

Moving into the ’90s and Noughties I explored Beck’s eclectic music , especially his ‘You Had It Coming’ (2001) and ‘Who Else’ (1999) both of which explore other genres of music like Irish folk (‘Declan’ with the great Donal Lunny), and guitar based electronica similar to what David Bowie was exploring on his ‘Earthling’ album of 1997 with Reeves Gabrels on guitar duties.

I love the version of Muddy Waters’ ‘Rolling and Tumbling’ on ‘You Had it Coming’ , with vocals by Imogen Heap.

More recently, in 2008, Beck’s ‘Performing this week….Live at Ronnie Scott’s’ is excellent, and really showcases his playing in all its eclectism, covering the work of Stevie Wonder, Charles Mingus, John Lennon, and yes the great ‘Space Boogie’ is there, and it still reminds me of Carlos Santana, after all these years.

Beck was a great musician, and one who was not afraid to experiment, like Bill Frisell, David Bowie, and Gary Lucas, while still retaining the roots of the blues, and leaving a great legacy of music.