From the Keith Moon archives: Jeff Beck.
“Keith was like a keyhole on lunacy that I could always get access to.”
Tony Fletcher, Wordsmith is a reader-supported publication, with a Midweek Update full of news and recommendations, and a longer weekend post. Midweek posts are free. Weekend posts are longer, and this one extends beyond the e-mail limit so please sit back and enjoy on a laptop or desktop computer. it is an interview with Jeff Beck, the third in a series ‘From the Keith Moon Archives,’ digging into the transcripts and back stories from the many incredible conversations I had researching my 1998 biography Dear Boy: The Life of Keith Moon (a.k.a. Moon: The Life & Death of a Rock Legend in the USA). This particular post is for paid subscribers; subscriptions start at $5 a month and help finance future similar posts. I believe that free subscribers get a 7-day one-time free trial. Your support is greatly appreciated.
WORD for word, anecdote for anecdote, insight for insight, Jeff Beck was probably the best interview I conducted for my Keith Moon biography.
As with so many others for the book, it required little effort on my end. The interview was easily arranged following just an introductory phone call on my end, and when we got together (at his management office in London during the summer of '96), he did just about all the talking. It quickly became clear that Beck had a story to tell — of his bizarre journey into “Moony land” in what was almost certainly late 1973 — and he wanted to get it out there for posterity. Along the way, he also talked in detail about the “supergroup” he tried to form in 1966 featuring Jeff Beck himself and Jimmy Page on guitars, John Paul Jones on bass, Nicky Hopkins on piano, and Keith Moon on drums. The five of them were able to get the classic instrumental 'Beck's Bolero' on tape during their single recording session, which showed up as the B-side to Beck's wedding chestnut 'Hi-Ho Silver Lining' and also made it onto the Jeff Beck Group's first album, Truth. The talent was too strong to corral on a permanent basis: Keith went back to The Who. Page and Jones formed Led Zeppelin. Hopkins laid down some of the greatest piano parts on some of the greatest rock songs in history. Beck didn't do too badly himself.
Sadly, Jeff Beck is no longer with us. I had the good fortune of seeing him play solo at UPAC in Kingston not too many years after my family moved up to the area, maybe somewhere around 2006-2007, and he was incredible. I recall feeling like I was in the presence of a top violinist playing a Stradivarius. He eschewed foot pedals and special effects and yet the sounds he got out of his Fender were like no one else I’ve ever seen or heard, playing the strings with his thumb and reserving his fingers for constant fluctuations of tone, volume and treble. I already had a special admiration for Beck based not only on his friendly, open demeanor that day I met him – a character attribute commented upon in so many personal tributes after his passing – but for his then-recent forays into electronica, conducted with credibility, sincerity and his usual creativity.
But then Beck always furrowed his own path, his career careening all over the musical map. He was guitarist for surely the best of The Yardbirds’ recordings, and with his Jeff Beck Group, he brought Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood further to the fore. After they left for The Faces, Beck embraced jazz-rock fusion with George Martin at the helm, funk with Nile Rodgers at the helm, the aforementioned excursions into drum and bass and other dancefloor sounds of the new Millennium, later conducting interpretations of classical composers Britten and Puccini, and ending up making a collaboration with Johnny Depp shortly before his unexpected death from bacterial meningitis in January 2023. Along the way he did his share of top-drawer session work, for the likes of Roger Waters, Kate Bush and Mick Jagger, and shared the stage with many of his guitar-playing peers, but Beck was ever curious, ever willing to experiment with styles, and ever brilliant. It is perhaps a fool’s errand to try and choose the greatest electric guitarist of all time, but for his virtuosity, creativity, and heart full of soul, there are many who believe Jeff Beck should be awarded that title.
Beck returned to UPAC again last October. For reasons I can’t explain, I didn’t prioritize getting a ticket, the show sold out, and they only got more pricey as the concert got closer. I figured there would surely be another occasion to see him, as you often do. But there was not, and I regret just splurging and being treated to that classic(al) performance again. A look at the set list from that night confirms Beck’s peripatetic nature: alongside his own songs were compositions by the aforementioned Benjamin Britten, plus John Lennon, the Velvet Underground, Brian Wilson, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Jimi Hendrix, Link Wray, the Beatles and Syreeta (!), all of it concluding with Killing Joke’s “The Death and Resurrection Show.” This concert footage I just found online confirms Beck’s unique style. Jeff Beck was 78 at the time of this show. He looks and sounds at least a couple of decades younger; nobody would have expected him to go so soon and so suddenly, but such is life. And death.
Regarding our “interview” itself, there are similarities between Beck’s commentary on Keith Moon and that of Oliver Reed (my interview with whom you can find here, and here). Beck observes, “Keith was like a keyhole on lunacy that I could always get access to,” where Reed noted that “Keith showed me the way to insanity..” Both these references are clearly ones of endearment. Unlike Reed however, Jeff Beck was able to stay on the straight and narrow when I interviewed him, and as you can see from the transcript below, I barely had to contribute a word. He started off by explaining the back-story to his lost weekend at Tara - an invitation from Moon to come buy a hot-rod car from him…
Jeff Beck: Keith and I met at the Speakeasy or other clubs that were watering holes. When Carnaby Street first opened you could easily meet him down there. Every other day he got fed up with a shirt and got another one — he could afford it. But mostly in nightclubs. The Cromwellian, places like that. I got on with him the easiest. Townshend was a little bit, we were kind of… competition. I got on with Keith on a very loony level. It was a great therapy just being with him.
He also had a very soft side. Why he called me, why this event came around… It was more than a request for me to come round and have a look at this car that was for sale, because it [the car] was a pile of shit. It was unbelievable. It had taken root and there were weeds coming out of the seats. He knew that I was into hot rods. It got around the business. He got Beach Boy mania. We used to drive around in his pink Rolls, lilac 60s lipstick colour, a '62 Roller and being in the back with him playing Beach Boys was as close as you could get to a great night out. We used to drive through the underpass at Knightsbridge at 100 mph, and you had the Beach Boys playing. 'Don't Worry Baby' was his favorite song. And he had a microphone hooked to an amplifier that was a 12-volt amp, which in those days was a hi-tech deal. And the speaker used to come out of the radiator shell. We pulled up alongside this cyclist, or moped, and Keith said, "Dismount immediately" and the guy wobbled and came to an abrupt halt. Then he did the same thing 100 yards up the road to a policeman on a motorbike. I was ducking. It was a fantastic night! By 7 o'clock we were blotto. We would drive up on the pavement — "excuse me I need to get into this shop now, I need to buy a new suit" — and he would jump out and come back again with a new suit and I hadn't even got out of the car. Quite worrying really! Because after you've laughed solid for half an hour you don't have any other form of expression. My jaws were aching, and I started wondering whether I was doing the right thing being with him. This is one mad night or day. We'd be up Wardour Street and he'd shout and scream at the Marquee outside.