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Joe Bonamassa says Jeff Beck was the “greatest rock guitar player of all time”
“For six decades he would reinvent himself every decade and come up with something that I’d go, ‘Oh, man. I wish I thought of that.’”
Image: Rick Kern / Scott Legato / Getty Images
Blues virtuoso Joe Bonamassa has opined on why Jeff Beck is, in his eyes, the “greatest rock guitar player of all time”.
In a recent interview with Meltdown of Detroit’s WRIF radio station, Bonamassa reflects on the musical legacy of the late Beck, as well as his personal experience sharing a stage with one of history’s most epic guitar heroes.
“I’ve done a bunch of shows with him in Europe, festivals we did, these bills with him. And his show was always amazing,” Bonamassa says [via Blabbermouth]. “To me, he was the greatest rock guitar player of all time, because for six decades he would reinvent himself every decade and come up with something that I’d go, ‘Oh, man. I wish I thought of that.’”
“He was just so creative and so influential. I mean, when [David] Gilmour says Beck is his favorite… Beck’s at the top of everybody’s lists — it’s either Eddie [Van Halen] or Jeff, and sadly they’re both gone. I mean, it’s, it’s crazy, this world now.”
He adds that “The most entertaining and the most incredible guitar playing I’ve ever heard was when Jeff was just sitting in his dressing room.”
Beck apparently had a “little guitar amp” and was just playing the guitar to pass the time before his show began, though magic still flowed beneath his fingers.
“You just hear everything from Cliff Gallup to these insane phrases and melodies. And you’re, like. ‘The guy’s not human. He’s not human,’” Bonamassa recounts. “And it would just be improv. And he would call me in every once in a while and be, like, ‘Hey, check this thing out.’ And he’d hand me his guitar.”
“And it played high action and it was set up for him. And you’d just go, this guy, he lives in rarefied air, talent wise, that not a lot of people will experience in their life.”