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"Jeff Beck Commemorates Les Paul's 95th Birthday"
The Scotsman Review from Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.
IN THE hours following Michael Jackson's death last week, the veteran broadcaster Paul Gambaccini put forward an interesting theory on a Radio 2 tribute programme as to the singer's impact on popular music. Before Jackson, he said, pop stars were static, proficient, credible through their ability with an instrument. After Jackson, they were "dancers" – mobile, visual and more revered for their ability to physically express music than to create it. Jeff Beck, alongside his fellow former Yardbirds Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, best exemplifies the bygone era of the player.
Not that good playing, particularly of the guitar, isn't still a virtue of any band. It's just that only a performer of Beck's vintage gets away with doing nothing but. His skill is clearly a joy for technical aficionados and fellow players, but other listeners may find their minds wandering from time to time.
The 65-year-old Beck, sporting co-ordinated white boots, jeans, sleeveless shirt and guitar, didn't have a microphone here (aside from one hidden at the stage's edge for making his thanks at the end). Instead, he expressed himself with a whip-like flick of the guitar cable or a roll back on his heels for another wailing solo.
For a slim but hardcore contingent of classic rock fans, this show must have been a revelation. Beck's band (Vinnie Colaiuta on drums and Jason Rebello on keyboards complete the quartet) are all exceptional, and at times they led the music off into credible jazz interludes or pounding, almost drum'n'bass rhythms.
Highlights included the guitarist's own Beck's Bolero, a virtuoso instrumental cover of the Beatles' A Day in the Life and a raw, noisy version of Henry Mancini's Peter Gunn Theme, all of which rejuvenated a vintage style for those who love it most.
Jeff has a scholarship in his name at the Berklee College of Music.
BERKLEE’S ONLINE MUSIC SCHOOL OPENS ITS DOORS IN THE UK WITH OVER £45,000 IN SCHOLARSHIPS
An illustrious list of patrons including Sir George Martin, Jeff Beck, Paul Oakenfold, Simon Napier-Bell and Steve Vai join Berklee in bringing online education opportunities to the UK.
London June 11th, 2009 – Berkleemusic, the online Continuing Education Division of Berklee College of Music, today announce the official launch of Berkleemusic UK. To coincide with this announcement, Berkleemusic UK is introducing a unique music scholarship programme that will award 50 UK-based students the opportunity to study online with some of the most notable music instructors in the world.
For over 65 years, Berklee College of Music has been the world’s leading college for the study of contemporary music. Berklee’s alumni have sold tens of millions of records, won over 175 Grammy awards, and count John Mayer, Quincy Jones, Steve Vai, Al DiMeola and Branford Marsalis among their thousands of successful graduates.
Each patron scholarship will be awarded to two outstanding students every year for five years. This will give 50 UK-based students an opportunity to pick a course from Berkleemusic’s online catalogue absolutely free.
"Music is a wonderful thing and something that I have been able to enjoy all my life,” said Berkleemusic UK Scholarship honouree Sir George Martin. “Getting access to a great musical education can only be a good thing and now with this initiative, UK-based students are going to be able to access Berklee's remarkable resources directly. I am proud to be a patron of this innovative programme and look forward to seeing it and the students flourish in the years to come."
Jeff Beck, another Berkleemusic UK Scholarship honouree said: "I am very happy to be involved with the Berkleemusic UK Scholarship that will encourage inspiring musicians to develop their talent."
“I loved my time at Berklee, and really got a whole lot out of it,” said Steve Vai, Berklee Alumnus and Berkleemusic Scholarship honouree. “What makes Berkleemusic such a great opportunity is the fact that you can experience the best of what Berklee has to offer from anywhere in the world.”
Berkleemusic UK will deliver online access to Berklee’s acclaimed music curriculum from anywhere in the world. Their award-winning online courses and certificate programmes are fully accredited and taught by the college’s world-renowned faculty, who provide one-on-one direct feedback to students throughout the duration of their course.
Berkleemusic’s online course catalogue currently features more than 80 individual courses in music production, music business, guitar, bass, voice, theory, technique and songwriting courses. Each course is 12-weeks in length and combines a number of interactive digital demonstrations and video instructions to support the lesson content. Over 20,000 students from 120 countries worldwide have studied with Berkleemusic since the online school’s inception in 2002.
Debbie Cavalier, Dean of Continuing Education at Berklee said: “Berkleemusic UK is an ideal pairing for a learning establishment that has a unique global approach to online music education, and a country that is home to some of the world’s most remarkable musicians. Our UK launch will expand on our commitment to nurture and develop the world’s greatest talent, and our scholarship programme is the first step towards providing our extensive music resources directly to UK musicians.”
The Berkleemusic UK Scholarship patrons are Sir George Martin, Jeff Beck, Paul Oakenfold, Simon Napier-Bell and Steve Vai.
Applications for the scholarships are being taken now with a deadline of 27 July 2009. Berkleemusic UK’s autumn term will begin on 29 September 2009.
Visit www.berkleemusic.co.uk to apply for a scholarship and learn more about Berkleemusic UK
For more information on Berkleemusic online courses and scholarships, please contact gareth@namemusic.co.uk or sam@namemusic.co.uk on 020 8357 7305 or nik@musically.com
The UK and European Business development for Berkleemusic is being handled by Music Ally.
Jeff Beck presents award at Mojos to Billy Gibbons.
Jeff was invited to the Mojo's to present Billy Gibbons with the Mojo Les Paul Award on Thursday 11 June.
Gibson Guitar, the world’s premiere musical instrument maker and leader in music technology, once again proudly sponsored the Mojo Les Paul Award at one of the UK’s most prestigious Music Awards ceremonies; The MOJO Honours List. The cream of British and International artists walk the events red carpet such as Mott The Hoople, Blur, Paul Weller, Manic St Preachers, Elbow, Jeff Beck, Yusuf Islam, New Order and Johnny Marr to name a few. International stars who were there to collect their Mojo Award included Yoko Ono, Fleet Foxes and Billy Gibbons.
This year’s recipient of the Mojo Les Paul Award was ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons. Past winners of the Mojo Les Paul Award include Peter Green, Jeff Beck, Brian May and the late John Martyn.
A Gibson Les Paul Standard Goldtop guitar was signed backstage by many of the MOJO Award winners including Billy Gibbons and Jeff. It will be auctioned off for the War Child charity at a later date.
Photo credit: Ross Halfin
Jeff Beck track track to feature on new Guitar Hero 5 game.
GUITAR HERO® 5 ONLINE SCAVENGER HUNT OFFERS WINNER EXCLUSIVE ACCESS TO 5 CONCERTS BY THEIR FAVORITE BANDS
Fans Participate in Unveiling Guitar Hero 5 Artists in Unique Contest Spanning Websites, TV, Blogs and Online Media
Santa Monica, CA – May 26, 2009 – Guitar Hero launches a unique online scavenger hunt today that invites fans to scour websites, TV shows, blogs and online media sites to uncover the full list of artists that will appear on Guitar Hero 5, the next version of the most popular music game in the world. Fans are invited to start their search at GH5.GuitarHero.com and register to participate in The Guitar Hero® 5 Tickets, 5 Concerts Sweepstakes and enter to win a set of 5 tickets to 5 different concerts in their hometown.
Once registered at GH5.GuitarHero.com participants will be given clues leading them to a series of blogs, TV shows and online media where every day, for the next five days, a selection of bands from the Guitar Hero 5 set list will be revealed. Once entrants have uncovered the bands from the designated locations, they must go to GH5.GuitarHero.com to verify the information found and will then be eligible to enter to win The Guitar Hero 5 Tickets, 5 Concerts Sweepstakes. Entries for the sweepstakes will be received through June 25, 2009. Registration is now open.
Panasonic competition winners meet Jeff Beck.
Panasonic competition winners submitted their photos from Jeff Beck’s tour that they took with Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 camera. See below to view the winners and their photos
Jeff Beck plays at the El Rey with Joss Stone and John Mayer.
Los Angeles, CA – April 23, 2009) Recent Rock&Roll Hall of Fame two-time Inductee, Jeff Beck, was joined onstage last night by Joss Stone and John Mayer. For Joss, it was “night two” at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles – at both Tuesday and Wednesday nights’ sold-out shows, she performed a rousing rendition of Sly and the Family Stone's “I Want To Take You Higher.” John Mayer joined Beck on Wednesday night during the encore for a soulful rendition of “Manic Depression.”
Over the course of Beck's two-night stint, celebrity fans spotted in the audience included: Mick Jagger, Steve Perry, Neal Schon and Rusty Anderson (guitarist, Paul McCartney). Former band mate and rock legend, Rod Stewart, also joined Jeff at Tuesday nights show, reuniting for the first time in 25+ years. The duo performed their 80's hit remake "People Get Ready" and "I Ain't Superstitious" originally recorded in 1968 during Stewart's tenure as the vocalist in The Jeff Beck Band.
copyright ross halfin
credit ross halfin
El Rey review by Randy Lewis for Los Angeles Times.
‘The guitar legend has jaws dropping AND eyes popping Tuesday AT the El Rey’
IN the age of "Guitar Hero," IN which anyone WITH a few hundred bucks TO spend ON a video-game system can feel LIKE a world-class shredder IN a matter of minutes, what's the real deal still have to offer?
FOR ONE, the living, breathing VERSION doesn't necessarily burn out after it's been on for an extended period. British guitar god Jeff Beck, who's been making jaws drop for nearly half a century now, pointed up that happy fact at his stirring show Tuesday at the El Rey, the first of two sold-out nights, one that was as much a master class as entertainment experience.
IN fact, a number of other high-profile guitar slingers, including the Paul McCartney Band's Rusty Anderson, looked on with regular-Joe (and Jane) fans in fascination, admiration, frustration and exhilaration at the full spectrum of possibilities Beck unleashed from his instrument of choice, a vintage white Fender Stratocaster.
Beck pulled a rainbow of SOUNDS AND effects FROM the guitar -- most without going near the foot pedals of the guitar switches on the floor, during the hour-and-45-minute set, which consisted far and away of instrumentals. Some were elegant ballads built on the utter purity of tone Beck can produce, others rock, blues, funk, progressive rock and jazz-inflected numbers.
THEN he sent an already agog crowd INTO apoplexy WHEN near the END he peeled off the instantly recognizable FIRST few notes of Curtis Mayfield's 1960s spiritual "People Get Ready."
A bolt of electric anticipation shot through the SRO crowd. Sure enough, OUT FROM the wings stepped Rod Stewart, his onetime band mate, who strolled TO the mike FOR an intensely beautiful reading of the song that was a pop hit FOR him AND Beck IN 1983.
That YEAR was the LAST TIME these onetime band mates appeared together onstage. AFTER their elegant collaboration brought them back together again a decade AND a half AFTER Stewart's brief stint as lead singer in the Jeff Beck Group, the brotherly love at the core of that song flew out the window during a heated onstage argument. They hadn't shared a stage since.
This TIME, it was heartfelt smiles AND bear hugs AS Stewart greeted his NEW newly inducted fellow member of the Rock AND Roll Hall of Fame.
Perhaps the only thing larger THAN rock-star ego IS jaw-dropping talent. "It IS a privilege TO be ON stage WITH this guy," Stewart said. HAVING reconnected WITH a foil AND partner EVERY BIT his equal, Stewart plumbed the R&B/soul depths that were once his stock-IN-trade BEFORE the jet-setting party-boy persona usurped his musical ambition. Taking the lead FROM their MASTER-of-restraint boss, keyboardist Jason Rebello, bassist Tal Wilkenfeld AND drummer Vinnie Colaiuta kept the accompaniment ON low boil rather THAN shifting INTO overdrive, making Stewart raspy voice sound ALL the more earnest.
It's the kind of material ideally suited to him, far more so than the Great American Songbook stuff he's nonetheless made a mint off of in the last decade.
Stewart stuck around FOR a SECOND number, "I Ain't Superstitious," from the days of the Jeff Beck Group. Seeing how they fed off one another's energy, you couldn't help but wish Stewart would spend more time -- maybe even tour -- with the guitar great.
People get ready, indeed.
photo credit: Lawrence K. Ho
Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart play at the El Rey in LA.
(Los Angeles, CA - April 22, 2009) For the first time in over 25 years, last night recent Rock&Roll Hall of Fame Inductee, Jeff Beck was joined by former band mate and Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Rod Stewart, on-stage at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles for the first of two sold-out shows. The duo performed their 80's hit remake "People Get Ready" and "I Ain't Superstitious" originally recorded in 1968 during Stewart's tenure as the vocalist in The Jeff Beck Band.
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credit ross halfin
Jeff Beck and Panasonic Hit the Road Together - Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 Owners Get Rare Opportunity..
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee Jeff Beck, who has recently released his CD and DVD Performing This
Week...Live at Ronnie Scott's (Eagle Rock Entertainment - November 2008 and
March 2009 respectively) has entered into an agreement with Panasonic. The
guitar virtuoso will give fans an opportunity to capture his live
performances while he's on the road via this collaboration.
Concert attendees with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 - the world's smallest
and lightest digital interchangeable lens camera - will have a chance to
take photos of Jeff Beck performing and submit them to the "Best of the
Tour" series. The best photos will be available for viewing on VeiraCast of
Facebook on a special Panasonic G1/Concert Series, as well as JeffBeck.com.
Furthermore, the first 10 people who show up at the venue with a
Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 camera will be identified with a special Panasonic
VIP logo photo pass. When they present their camera to a Panasonic rep,
they will be given this pass which allows them backstage access for an
exclusive photo opportunity with the man himself.
Finally, Panasonic will raffle off two TZ5 class Digital Still cameras
at each of the North American concerts, and winners will celebrate by
having their photos taken with Beck backstage.
The Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 is the first interchangeable lens camera to
come in a color variety, which allows serious photographers to have the
customizable style of the point-and-shoot user. This combined with the
lightweight (1.28 lbs) makes this camera perfect for the concertgoer who
takes serious photos.
Jeff Beck wows with his guitar sleight of hand.
The Connecticut Day [theday.com
By Rick Koster Published on 4/13/2009
Long after Jeff Beck and his miraculous band had finished their 85-minute set in the MGM Grand Theater at Foxwoods Saturday, five men still sat, dumbfounded, in their front row seats in the otherwise deserted hall.
Ricky Jay, David Copperfield, Criss Angel and Penn and Teller simply could not digest Beck's guitar sorcery. Finally, it was Teller who asked, “How the hell does he do that?”
A sold-out crowd of us lesser mortals will be pondering the same question for days after Beck put on a carnival display of the possibilities of the electric guitar - in which any context of “showing off” was communicated with a spirit of great fun, and the sounds and technique were at all times delivered in service to the music itself.
Now 64, with the frame and energy of someone just out of college, Beck emerged from the wings in an angel-colored outfit: white jeans tucked into white boots and a tripartite white top. And his signature crop of blooming onion hair stays the same as it ever was.
Beck's support group was effortlessly equal to the task: all-world drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, wunderkind Australian bassist Tal Wilkenfeld, and keyboardist Jason Rebello. But “support” isn't really fair. Though Beck, inducted last week into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame for the second time, is clearly a one-of-a-kind genius, his creative muse demands cooperative interplay rather than chordal backdrop over which he sets off nuclear explosions.
Charging into the set with “Beck's Bolero,” he darted, capered, soared and dive-bombed through 19 tunes. Whether using speed-clusters of notes, slide guitar harmonics, tremolo bar-orchestrations or combinations and inventions of sounds that seemed simply not possible, Beck grinned and essentially seduced his instrument in fashions simply unimagined by other players.
It's been years, of course, since Beck worked with vocalists, and his preferred style is closest in textbook definition to jazz-rock fusion. But the presentation skipped from a brain-melting rendition of the Beatles' “A Day in the Life” to a tenderly affectionate “Goodbye Porkpie Hat” by Charles Mingus.
They did “Nadia” from “You Had It Coming,” “Angel” and “Brush With the Blues” from “Jeff” and, from “Guitar Shop,” “Behind the Veil” and the whammy bar/harmonics miracle of “Where Were You.” And, yes: his now-signature interpretation of Stevie Wonder's “'Cause We've Ended as Lovers” and “Blue Wind” from the “Wired” and “Blow by Blow” days.
An out-of-left-field surprise was another highlight: a cyclonic take on Billy Cobham's “Stratus,” with Colaiuta going insane as Beck devilishly recreated guitarist Tommy Bolin's original lines.
Not once did Beck have to tune or even change his guitar out. How is that possible? Well, frankly, nothing Jeff Beck does surprises me.
And everything he does surprises me.
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