OFF: Jeff Beck

[Ted Blair]

I'm not a fan of Jeff Beck as such but was curious enough to give it a
whirl (£40 a ticket mind!) and went to the Thurs night gig since I fancied
seeing Roger Waters too - again not a fan but curious.

I can't say that I was blown away by the gig - I found some of what JB did
to be a bit disjointed (no doubt fans would call it free-form!) but it was
interesting to see one of the acknowledged guitar greats at work.

I'm more of a Bill Nelson fan when it comes to axe men - sadly making too
few few appearances with a geetar these days though I did see him a few
weeks ago doing some old Be Bop/Red Noise numbers.

The highlight for me was a great take on the Beatle's "A Day in the Life"
and then when Roger Waters came on to do "What God Wants" - which saw a bit
more disciplined playing from JB.

Still, everyone else certainly enjoyed it.

Setlist as follows...

Beck's Bolero
Rice Pudding
Angel/Footsteps
Goodbye Porkpie Hat
Blue Wind
Still I'm Sad
I'm A Man
Ain't Superstitious
Heart Full of Stone
Morning Dew
Savoy
Slingshot
Big Block
Freeway Jam

interval

Pump/Brush With the Blues
Star Cycle
Behind The Veil
Rollin' and Tumblin'
What God Wants (Roger Waters)
Nadia
What Mama Says
Going Down
People Get Ready
A Day In The Life

Where Were You
Hi-ho Silver Lining

(Nicked from
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jeffbeckappreciationsociety/message/1270)

Also a far-from-complimentary review from the Times for that night as well:

WITH the pre-concert publicity promising a musical journey “from the
Yardbirds to the future” with “very special guests”, expectations were
running high for Jeff Beck’s first London show in three years.

The guitarist has previously avoided playing the nostalgia card. But now,
at 58, his attitude has softened, and the tone for this lengthy
presentation was set by an opening salvo of Beck’s Bolero and Rice Pudding,
tracks from his first two solo albums released in 1968 and 1969 which,
frankly, sounded their age.

Beck’s lustrous guitar tone and brittle, swooping technique remained intact
but, perhaps in keeping with the era they sought to evoke, the backing
musicians sounded sluggish and under-rehearsed. Meanwhile, back projections
of spinning wheels and other examples of Sixties art were intercut with
moody photographs of Beck in his youth, a naff visual distraction which
further underlined the sense of stepping into a timewarp.

The first of the “very special” guests, whom Beck introduced as “my
favourite all-time singer”, was Jimmy Hall. Jimmy who? Formerly a member of
the long-forgotten American bar band Wet Willie, Hall brought some pub-rock
mediocrity to bear on performances of Muddy Waters’s I’m a Man, Tim Rose’s
Morning Dew, the old Yardbirds hit Heart Full of Soul and others.

The rapid haemorrhaging of Beck’s credibility was stem- med for a while by
the arrival of the drummer Terry Bozzio, who with Tony Hymas, a keyboard
player, joined the lean, black-clad guitarist in a more savage display of
jazz-rock bravado on numbers including Sling Shot, Big Block and Freeway
Jam.

Things perked up in the second half as the band picked their way through
faithful versions of Pump and Star Cycle (the theme from The Tube).

But then Roger Waters arrived to supply a predictably ponderous What God
Wants, which he was so concerned to get right that he read his own lyrics
off a sheet of paper. With the return of Hall for another stretch of
journeyman bluster on Don Nix’s Going Down and Curtis Mayfield’s People Get
Ready, the concert’s two-star fate was, regrettably, sealed.

As Beck signed off with a spine-tingling interpretation of Lennon and
McCartney’s A Day in the Life, the man’s awesome musicianship was not in
doubt. But his personality is too cold, arrogant and egotistical to provide
the necessary enthusiasm, let alone bonhomie, for an exercise of this
nature to gel. His reluctant encore of Hi Ho Silver Lining — complete with
puking gestures to indicate his disdain for the song — was insulting and
embarrassing.