Hot Wired Guitar: The Life of Jeff Beck

I'm a lifelong Jeff Beck fan, so buying and reading this book was a no-brainer, and I enjoyed every page. It's important, though, to know what this is and what it isn't.

What it is is a book about Beck's life in music, an almost encyclopedic account of just about every tour, influence, instrument, recording session, and collaboration in Beck's career, framed by his aspirations, tastes, and, at the beginning of the book, his childhood discovery of the guitar and almost desperate drive to acquire one and learn to play it. We learn about his friends in music, some of them, like Jimmy Page, lifetime collaborators, influences, and thorns in his side.

What it isn't is any kind of probing character study or psychological reflection on Beck as a person. Other than those childhood scenes at the beginning of the book and his relationships with other musicians, we don't find out all that much about Beck's personality, at least beyond what we already knew about his younger, prickly days and his later reputation as a humble, self-effacing, gentle soul. There's some space given to his fanatic attraction to hot rods, relatively little to his marriages and other significant relationships.

All that's fine with me -- I don't really care to have Beck's psyche dissected for me. I'd rather hear and learn about how he developed his one-of-a-kind style, how he navigated (sometimes truly by random steering, it seems like) through all the musical fads and styles from the late 50s through to today. That propelled me through the book. I discovered more than I ever knew about the artists and music that inspired and influenced Beck, and spent more money than I probably should have chasing down a lot of that music on iTunes, eBay, and Amazon.

This book satisfied an itch for me, to understand more about Beck's music, how he got to where he got (all the different places he's gone), and maybe a little bit of why, of all the great guitarists we've seen, he is so unique that you find yourself saying that this guitarist or that guitarist, well they're great, but they're not Jeff Beck.

I'd like to have something more critical to say, and I'm sure someone's going to find factual errors here and there (actually, I will mention that there are numerous typos in the book -- missing words, wrong words -- all the things that escape spellcheck), but this was a great learning experience for me.

"Hot Wired Guitar" is an exhausting and comprehensive biography of British guitar icon, Jeff Beck. There are a plethora of highlights including Jeff's Yardbird years being the best of the band's career. When Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood were in the Jeff Beck Group they released the magnificent "Truth" CD which was a template for Led Zeppelin to emulate. Jeff Beck's groundbreaking jazz fusion masterpieces "Blow By Blow", "Wired" and "There And Back" made Jeff Beck even more popular and respected as a fretboard virtuoso. His tours with Stanley Clarke in the late 1970's made for both interesting reading and really good music. The 1980's were kind of a downer. Jeff spent much time building his beloved hot rods. He was a great session guitarist on many stars' albums but by far the paramount part of the the 80's was his "Guitar Shop" CD. That was the album that really made many elite fellow guitarists consider him to be one of the very best. The emotive "Two Rivers" and the poignant pathos of the incomparable "Where Were You" were unmatched. Jeff Beck also toured with the legendary Stevie Ray Vaughn a year prior to SRV's tragic death. 1990 through 1993 were a brief but busy period when Jeff released critically acclaimed but not commercially successful CDs. The riveting "Frankie's House" was an instrumental gem and "Crazy Legs" was an extraordinary rockabilly tribute to Cliff Gallup and Gene Vincent. In the years 1999 to 2003 Jeff Beck released three sterling hard rock/ techno marvels, namely, "Who Else", "You Had It Coming" and "Jeff". Some of Jeff's ulimate songs were on those CD's including "Angel"(Footsteps), "Declan", "Brush With The Blues", "Blast From The East", "Psycho Sam", "Nadia", "Dirty Mind", "Plan B" "JBs Blues" and "Bulgaria". By this time he was considered the greatest living guitarist by many of his elite fellow guitarists and several critics in the know. However, it was in 2007 when Jeff Beck finally regained his fan popularity. He had an astounding performance at Eric Clapton's Crossroads event in suburban Chicago. But it was the DVD and CD release of "Live At Ronnie Scotts" that ascended Jeff Beck into the highest guitar pantheon. The band, venue and music were impeccable and DVD sales were fantastic. A few years later Jeff Beck surprised all of us with the CD "Emotion And Commotion". Amazing songs like "Corpus Christi Carol" "Hammerhead" the rousing "Nessum Dorma" and the melancholic but brilliant "Elegy For Dunkirk" were out of this world awesome. Jeff Beck then had two ensuing wonderful World Tours that elated his enthralled audiences. I like the fact the author loves Jeff Beck's most emotive and poignant instrumental songs. There are gloriously performed live too !

Jeff Beck is peerless because he masters hard rock, blues, jazz fusion, funk, techno, rockabilly, and psychedelic musical genres. He can create a galaxy of heavenly and sad sounds with just his bare fingers and guitar without relying on effects. His life has been graced by Les Paul, John Mcluaghlin, Jimmy Page, Tony Hymas, Jan Hammer, Roger Waters, Tina Turner, Rod Stewart, Sir George Martin, Stevie Wonder, his recent manager. Harvey Goldsmith and an array of good friends including Macca, David Gilmour and Ronnie Wood. A personal note that the book omitted is the reality that for over 40 years Jeff Beck has been an animal lover who has taken care of hundreds of dogs and cats and many wildlife species. He's also a Patron of the Folly Wildlife Rescue Trust in England. It proves that a mod, blistering and cool guitar paragon can also have a heart of gold.

Note: In addition to this book on Jeff Beck it's imperative to have the book "Crazy Fingers" by Annette Carson. It's a shorter but equally exemplary Jeff Beck biography.

I am a guitar player (45 years) and I still go back to "Truth" and "Beck-Ola". Now he has emerged as the best player alive, On the same stage as Hendrix, neither better or worse, just his own man as Hendrix was.
This book is the most all encompassing and easy to read-miles above any thing else I have read. Buy it. If you are a player, try playing "Where Were You" with a regular strat with locking tuners, and a roller nut, like Beck, and keep it in tune. This really separates the men from the shredders. No offense to shredders, but most (not all) seem to think the faster they are, the better they are. When Beck steps on the gas pedal, he is as fast, but his phrasing has a point, and something to say. Or he can put together 4 notes in a way no one has ever done before.
This book is helpful to understand the man and the player and how they both came together to give the world a a guitar hero that lasts a lifetime.
Steve Buffington

For those uninformed - Annette Carson's Crazy fingers book was the first Jeff Beck book. She talked to people associated, met him in 1966 ,did her research well and is a good writer, Iassisted with information (which am credited) Myself, i had "jeff Beck fanzine in 1991 and 92 (4 issues). There was a yardbird's book in England by 2 members of the band and John Platt (but Beck was only a member for 18 months), Another book "Jeff's Book" C. Hjort and Doug Hinman follwed but that one only covered daily events till 1980 - we can assume a second book would come out. It didnt. Now Martin Power has outdone it and produced "hot Wired Guitar....." I was glad to obtain a copy, its huge! His research is good ,there is a "selected discography - which i am not too crazy about - but still i've learned lot. Its hard to put this book down - i didnt catch any mistakes except when he says(in 1968) Peter Grant Faxed JBG's NY Times concert review from the Fillmore (he actually telegraphed it) Thank You Mr Power for crediting me in your book and mentioning my Fanzines. Your book is thorough,mistake free and you are obviosly a big fan!! 5 star review - David Terralavoro

A brilliant moment in mock-rock history is when Spinal Tap guitarist Nigel Tufnel describes for an interviewer how the volume knob on his amplifier is customized to go all the way to 11 for those times 10 just isn't enough. When the *Spinal Tap* film debuted in 1984, guitarists the world over saw the immediate homage to Jeff Beck. Even Beck himself picked up on the Beck-ish references to ego-driven guitarists with their dismissive humor and hot-rod past-times. When making the movie, actor/writer Christopher Guest had any number of archetype guitarist to imitate but he knew that to really do it in a way that guitarists would "get," only the droll personality and long-but-not-too-long straight hair of Beck would suffice. He doesn't have the household cache of his contemporaries Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton, but guitarists all know the truth--and have for decades--Beck is the man!

While other guitarists of the era aligned themselves with various bands or singers to stake their claim on pop history, Beck soldiered through the 1970s making primarily instrumental albums that were assigned the dreaded label of "fusion." While others became better rock stars, Beck simply became a better guitarist and outgrew the competition. But his no-vocalist approach kept him off the top of the charts which contibuted to the fact that there have been very few book-length attempts to tell Beck's story.

Correcting this grievous omission is author Martin Powers who has delivered previous rock-related books on Queen and Metallica. So let me get right to the problem with Power's effort: he is seemingly the owner of the largest collection of Beck quotes, magazine articles, CDs, 45s, LPs, EPs, DVDs, bootlegs, and Youtube links on the planet, and he was absolutely committed to referring to each and every one of them in this 487-page tome. It's both exhaustive and exhausting.

Powers does not write badly. All the sentences make sense and the paragraphs flow into the next. But he seems more comfortable being a play-by-play delivery boy rather than a craftsman of context and subtlety. Each chapter is essentially a narrative of every appearance and session Beck made during the time in question--with several descriptions of which guitars were played through what amplifiers. I'm sure somebody out there prefers this kind of writing over all others--I am not that person. I would prefer my author to inject some artful expertise into the life details of a man who surely must be a more interesting figure than is revealed here. Powers eventually proved he is capable of this task, but he waited 485 pages before taking his shot and by then I just didn't give a damn.

Now Powers may think, "I'm simply delivering the details and it's up to the reader to assign their own feelings without my manipulation," but I'm not going to excuse him for offering up nearly 500 pages of data-driven bullet points. Creating the kind of biography I'm expecting for my favorite guitarist of all time is hard--damn hard--and Powers came up short by writing a book far too long. Sometimes 11 is just too much.

This book is very bland! I am dissappointed. It provided me with some informational connective tissue, (in terms of what happened as he was ramping- up for the making of some of the individual albums) but there was hardly any new insight into Beck as a person or a player. It felt like a fan was trying to connect the dots by reading quotes we all have read or heard before. It was really lacking in the details we would want. There are good books on Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton but this is similar to reading books on Blackmore, in that it's just not fully there. There is a weird error in my copy of the book too, with pages 154 through 186 upside down! There are some color pictures that are decent but on the whole it just screams mediocrity. When you think of what a book on Jeff Beck "could" be this one just falls WAY short. Who are these people giving it five stars? I would reccommend it for those who are new to Jeff Beck, but for others like me who are already well read, I would wave you off on this one. Like this book there just isn't alot to say after reading it which is a shame.

Very, very thorough. I actually jumped around to different sections of this book rather than doing a cover to cover read. It was good to read all the behind the scenes details about my favorite Jeff Beck albums and the participating musicians. I find Jeff Becks music, for my tastes, is hit or miss. Jeff Beck has done well to stay clear of pop music producers in recent years. When he doesn't, you get unlistenable albums like "Flash" which was produced mostly by Nile Rogers. "People Get Ready", according to Martin Power, was already in the can from a previous recording session before his work with Nile Rogers. They tacked it on to "Flash" and it became a hit. For my tastes, Beck's best work is the funk/fusion material and his electronica dabbling with David Torn and others.

Martin Powers tedious tome to Jeff Beck reads like a Beck set list from the 1980's. Dry and without any charm, I'd had to force myself to complete this book over the course of a year and let me tell you, it's been an effort.
Documenting every gig and recording session that Beck ever did, while having historical merit, doesn't make for riveting reading. If you're looking for any information about Beck's personal life or enjoy learning about interesting vignettes from Beck's time on the road, look for a different title because you won't find it here. Mr. Power never misses an opportunity to make a snarky comment about a Beck rival, which doesn't make him a neutral narrator.
In summary, if you are a Jeff Beck historian, this book is for you. If you are looking to be entertained, abandon all hope.

Anything by or about beck is good,one of my favorite misicians

Great biography of my all time favorite guitarist. It is not only knowledgeable but insightful in the story of Jeff Beck.