Jeff Beck
Guitarist’s senior music editor, Jason Sidwell, shares an unpublished interview with Steve Lukather that was recorded in the early Noughties – where Lukather praises Jeff Beck’s untouchable, “alien” approach to the guitar
We heard a story that John McLaughlin, you and Jeff Beck were all recording on David Gilmour’s boat in London. You were producing Jeff at this point [for an unreleased album]. What happened to the tapes?
“What happened back then was John had written a piece for the three of us to play, but it ultimately didn’t work out. Jeff ’s just trying to find his way and I was trying to help him as we’re friends – he’s my favourite guitar player in the whole world. I volunteered to help him and we checked out a whole bunch of stuff. Some of the stuff we did on Gilmour’s boat was pretty amazing; I was surprised he never wanted the stuff to come out. But he got into this techno thing so I respect him for that. I’m sorry it didn’t work out as I thought we did some pretty cool stuff.”
Didn’t he record a version of Chariots Of Fire with Nile Rodgers?
“Jeff has more material in the can than he does have out, that’s for sure.”
That would make a good boxset sometime in the future!
“I wouldn’t count on it. He’s really funny about that – once he’s changed his mind to not release something he doesn’t want anyone to hear it. I’ve fond memories of what we did, even though it’s not come out.”
Do you find that you pick more with fingers these days after working with Jeff?
“Yes, most definitely. He’s been a tremendous influence on me as a player, and being able to hang with him, sitting around in a room and jamming with him like I did, I clocked a lot of stuff that he does. Then again, he never does the same thing twice. He’s not one of these guys that does licks, but he’s alien – like, whatever the weirdest approach you can take to play the guitar, he does it. There was a Tony Hymas tune and the whole thing was false harmonics, except they don’t always lie well, right? So he was bending up the wang bar perfectly in tune, hitting the harmonic and letting it down. He was doing it seamlessly, you couldn’t even tell if you weren’t looking. He just doesn’t play the guitar like anybody else [laughs].”
There’s the world of Allan Holdsworth and then there’s the world of Jeff Beck.
“Yeah, he’s an alien. It’s wonderful, he should just keep following his thing w
