Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill

£30 (hardback)

387 pages

ISBN 978-241-76717-7

George Cole  August 06 2026

The death of guitarist Jeff Beck in 2023 marked the end of a remarkable musical career of an extraordinary musician. For five decades, the 78-year-old had amazed, dazzled and inspired countless fans and musicians. His impact and influence on the sound of the modern electric guitar, and on the generations of guitarists that followed him, cannot be overstated. Beck was associated with many of the giants of rock and jazz including Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, John McLaughlin and Stanley Clarke – all these connections are explored in this book.

Beck’s epic musical journey encompassed many genres: rock, blues, pop, rockabilly, reggae, classical, electronica, World and jazz-rock fusion. Since Beck’s death, several new books have been published about him: Mick Morris’s Jeff, The One Alone, Steve Rosen’s The Original Punk: Jeff Beck Stories, and this book. An authorised Jeff Beck biography is said to be planned for publication next year.

Blow By Blow (named after Beck’s first jazz-rock fusion album, and his biggest selling release) is written by Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill. The former was editor-in-chief of Guitar World magazine for more than twenty-five years, while Gill is a regular contributor to the magazine. Both are eminently qualified to write about guitars, but what about the life and career of Jeff Beck? The answer is an unqualified yes.

The two authors interviewed Beck numerous times over the years, amassing more than thirty hours of recorded conversations. Gill even visited Beck at his home, a vast Grade II Listed Estate called Riverhall, in Wadhurst, Sussex. Although the book contains a lot of information about the guitars and related equipment used by Beck over the years – and there is also a sixteen-page section at the back of the book, which lovingly describes his various axes – this is not a book for guitar nerds. It is pitched at the general reader but contains enough detail to satisfy musicians.

Tolinski and Gill are excellent writers who know how to weave a compelling narrative. Although clearly Jeff Beck fans, the book exposes some of his human frailties and the occasional wrong turning taken on his long musical journey. They also are fine researchers, debunking a number of Jeff Beck myths that have been repeated endlessly in various books and publications.

For example, it is generally believed that Jeff Beck first met members of the Mahavishnu Orchestra – which included John McLaughlin, Jan Hammer and Billy Cobham – in Switzerland on 11 June 1973 (a ‘fact’ even repeated by Beck and Hammer), when the actual location was in Paris, a couple of days later. Likewise, it’s often written that Beck more or less disappeared during the 1980s, but the authors reveal that this was in fact, a productive era for Beck.

Furthermore, Beck’s story is described in context – we don’t just learn when Beck did something, but more importantly why. This book uses a good mix of primary and secondary sources. A number of associates of Beck – both personal and musical – have contributed to this book, including Jimmy Page, John McLaughlin, Keith Richards, Rhonda Smith and Simon Phillips.

Although the book details numerous events in Beck’s life, both on and off the stage, this is essentially a music biography. Off-stage, Beck was a private, introverted man, who seemed to like nothing better than to retreat to his Estate to work on his cars or quietly strum his guitar. We learn the usual things about Beck’s personal life – his love of Hot Rods and his talent for constructing them; his vegetarianism, and his deep concern for animal welfare – for a time, his home was a cat sanctuary, housing dozens of the animals.

But beyond that, Beck’s personal life is a blank canvas. Johnny Depp, Beck’s last musical collaborator, is described as a close friend of Beck’s, and is one of the book’s contributors. But we are given very little insight into the nature of their friendship. Beck first married Patricia Brown in 1963, when he was nineteen. The marriage lasted four years. Although Beck’s second wife Sandra (they married in 2005 and were together until to his death) and Ernest Chapman (Beck’s manager for almost four decades), are listed as contributors, there are no direct quotes from either of them. And the authors steer clear of Beck’s tangled relationships with various women over the years.

Jeff Beck’s career is described in chronological detail, beginning with his birth in Wallington, Surrey on 24 June 1944, to Arnold and Ethel Beck.  His older sister Annetta was a big influence on his subsequent musical career. In 1957, she suggested that a 13-year old Jeff Beck, go to the local cinema to watch the film The Girl Can’t Help It, which included a scene where Gene Vincent and The Blue Caps played ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula.’

It was an epiphany, a defining moment, a point which ultimately determined Jeff Beck’s future. He was captivated by the sight and sound of the music – especially the guitars. Annetta later introduced Beck to another teenager with a keen interest in guitars – Jimmy Page, the future founder of Led Zeppelin. They remained lifelong friends, even though there was the occasional bump along the road in their friendship.

Beck had a hard time convincing his parents to buy him a guitar (at one point, even trying to make his own at home) but they were persuaded in the end. From there, it was a case of Beck developing his guitar skills – he was self-taught; learning to play by watching other guitarists and from listening to records. He never learnt to read music. His inherent talent soon got him into a series of local bands, including The Tridents.

Beck’s life reached a major turning point in March 1965, when he joined The Yardbirds. The band started out as a blues band with a young Eric Clapton mesmerising audiences and fellow guitarists with his phenomenal playing – his radical new style of playing blues-rock was soon widely copied by countless other guitarists. Clapton was a blues purist, and when the Yardbirds had a pop hit with the song ‘For Your Love,’ he decided to leave the band.

Jimmy Page was offered Clapton’s gig, but at the time, he was one of the busiest guitarists on the London session scene, and so he recommended Beck for the gig. The timing was right for both band and Beck: The Yardbirds were transforming from blues to psychedelia, introducing new sounds and instruments into their music. Beck was just the man for the job, as Chris Dreja, the band’s rhythm guitarist, explained to the authors: ‘We knew Jeff was a genius from the word go. He wasn’t a traditionalist like Eric but a daring experimenter…He excelled at crafting soundscapes.’

An example of this could be found on the band’s recording ‘Heart Full Of Soul,’ which had Beck creating a sitar-like sound on his guitar, and using a fuzz box. This was well before The Beatles used a sitar on ‘Norwegian Wood,’ and when Rolling Stones’ guitarist Keith Richards used fuzz on ‘Satisfaction.’ The authors add that even Hendrix was inspired by Beck’s playing. This is just one of many examples in the book which describe Beck’s trailblazing influence on the sound of the guitar.

Jimmy Page eventually joined The Yardbirds, initially as a bassist, and then in a short-lived dual lead guitar line-up with Beck. But tensions were rising in the band over its musical direction, and they came to head in October 1966, when Beck walked out in the middle of a gruelling US tour.

The book tracks how Beck, by now out of the band – and feeling overshadowed by the rise of Eric Clapton and his band Cream, and by the arrival of a new kid on the block called Jimi Hendrix. –  picks himself up and forms the first of two Jeff Beck Groups (JBG1 and JBG2). The first included Rod Stewart, a singer with a raspy, soulful voice that Beck loved. Sadly for Beck, the producer he chose to work with, Micky Most, wasn’t so impressed, and forced Beck to sing on a pop tune, ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining,’ which became both a hit and a musical albatross for Beck.

The authors describe how the JBG1 developed, with Beck, Stewart, bassist Ronnie Wood (future Rolling Stones member) and drummer Micky Waller. Later on, keyboardist Nicky Hopkins – one of the most in-demand session musicians on the British music scene – joined the band. JBG1 released two well-received albums – Truth (1968) and Beck-Ola (1969), but there were fall-outs and firings, and the band split up acrimoniously part-way through a US tour – just before the JBG1 were set to play at Woodstock.

Micky Most’s role as Beck’s manager and producer is well documented, but less well known is the role Peter Grant played in Beck’s career, one of the book’s many revelations. Grant is best known as Led Zeppelin’s manager, but for a time he managed both Jimmy Page (who was forming Led Zeppelin) and the JBG1. Things cooled between Grant, Beck and Page, when Beck heard an early pressing of Led Zeppelin’s first album. Beck was shocked and felt that Page had ‘stolen’ the heavy blues-rock sound from his band (both bands recorded similar arrangements of Muddy Waters’ ‘You Shook Me.’).

One of the most intriguing episodes in Beck’s musical career was when Most, drummer Cozy Powell and Beck, flew to Tamla Motown’s fabled recording studios in Detroit. The plan was to record an album featuring covers of Motown hit songs like The Four Tops’ ‘Reach Out, I’ll Be There.’ Beck was keen to play with Motown’s house band, The Funk Brothers, which included bassist James Jamerson. But the recording sessions were a grave disappointment. The Motown band was a tight ship, with the musicians used to having the music arranged and written out on charts before starting a recording. But Beck wanted a more improvisational approach, which The Funk Brothers considered both sloppy and disrespectful. Jamerson walked out of the studio, and the music from the sessions has never been released.

The second iteration of the Jeff Beck Group (JBG2) included Powell, bassist Clive Chaman, keyboardist Max Middleton (who would play a pivotal role in Beck’s musical direction over the next half decade) and vocalist Bobby Tench. The band recorded two albums, playing a mix of blues, rock, funk and R&B.

It was during this period that Beck signed a now unbelievable ten-record deal with the Epic label, part of CBS Records. Clive Davis, then head of CBS, told the authors, ‘We signed him on a ten-album deal because we thought of him more like a jazz great – a musician people would always be interested in, no matter what comes in and out of fashion.’  Beck was also fortunate in that the new head of Epic – Ron Alexenburg – would prove to be a great champion for the guitarist over the years, and the new contract gave him a lot of creative freedom and flexible deadlines.

The authors also untangle another fascinating episode in Beck’s musical career, again involving Motown. In May 1972, the JBG2 spent a week at Electric Lady studios in New York working with Stevie Wonder. The plan was that Beck would play on a couple of numbers destined for Wonder’s next album, Talking Book, and in return, the Motown artist would write a couple of songs for Beck.

One of those songs was ‘Superstition,’ which became a worldwide hit for Wonder. Motown Records and its legal department are often painted as the villains in an episode that seemingly robbed Beck of a sure-fire hit, by insisting that Wonder release his version of the song. Although legal action was threatened, the authors also suggest that Beck was partly to blame, because he was too slow to record and release the song before Wonder’s version came out.

The sessions with Stevie Wonder also heralded the break-up of JBG2, with Chaman and Beck having a blazing row in the studio and Beck disbanding the group on the spot. Beck’s next venture was a power trio, Beck, Bogert & Appice. Although the band’s debut album – released in 1973 – was well received, and the band’s tours attracted large crowds (and big bucks from promoters), personal animosity between Beck and bassist Tim Bogert, plus Beck’s growing perception that rock power trios were becoming passé, saw him breakup BBA in May 1974.

Jazz Views readers will find the next section, which covers Beck’s sonic explorations of jazz-rock fusion between 1974 and 1980, especially interesting. Beck was inspired to go down this route after hearing John McLaughlin’s guitar playing on the track ‘Right Off,’ on the Miles Davis album Jack Johnson. The drummer on that tune was Billy Cobham. John McLaughlin’s band, The Mahavishnu Orchestra (which included Cobham) was another big influence, as was Billy Cobham’s first solo album, Spectrum. The keyboardist on both of these projects was Jan Hammer. The book describes the warmth and respect there was between Beck and McLaughlin, which continued throughout the rest of Beck’s life – McLaughlin was one of the many artists who played at Beck’s memorial concert in May 2023. Beck would later perform on stage with McLaughlin, and guest on McLaughlin’s 1995 album The Promise. But one mystery – not explored in the book – is why Beck and Cobham never played together, although Beck played ‘Stratus,’ (from Cobham’s Spectrum album) in concert.

Beck decided that his next project would be a solo instrumental jazz-rock fusion album. He recalled Max Middleton to help him plan the album and asked George Martin to produce it. Martin was best known for his work with The Beatles, but Beck chose him because he had recently produced the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s 1974 album Apocalypse, an ambitious work that saw the jazz-rock band joining forces with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Middleton not only composed or co-composed many of the tracks on Blow By Blow, but he also brought in the album’s rhythm section, bassist Phil Chen and eighteen year-old drummer Richard Bailey. He also arranged a reggae cover of The Beatles’ ‘She’s a Woman.’

Martin brought out the best in Beck’s playing, sometimes cajoling; sometimes forcing the temperamental guitarist to re-do a solo. Beck enjoyed working with both Martin and Middleton. There were many highlights on Blow by Blow including, the frenetic ‘Scatterbrain,’ ‘Freeway Jam,’ with its infectious shuffle groove (which, as the authors astutely note,  bears more than a passing resemblance to ‘Right Off’), the epic ballad ‘Diamond Dust,’ and a beautiful rendition of the Stevie Wonder song, ‘Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers,’ which became Beck’s signature tune.

Between recording Blow by Blow and touring the US to promote the album in April 1975, Beck turned down the opportunity to join The Rolling Stones. The US tour started a month after the release of Blow by Blow, and Beck’s tour band was Middleton on keyboards, Wilbur Bascomb on bass and Bernard Purdie on drums.  Beck’s band initially supported The Mahavishnu Orchestra, but then something strange happened – in the US, Blow By Blow became a runaway hit, peaking at number four in the music charts and being certified a Gold record six months after release (in1986, it turned Platinum).

The success of Blow by Blow surprised everyone. Epic executives feared it might fall between two stools – too jazzy for rock fans and too rock-orientated for jazz fans, but Beck put its success down to the fact that it: ‘Simplified John McLaughlin and complicated rock and roll.’ The result was that Beck was offered the spot of the headline tour act, but out of respect for McLaughlin, declined. Instead, the two bands took it in turns to headline, and at the end of a concert, would jam together on-stage.

The success of Blow by Blow radically transformed Beck’s financial position and he was able to purchase Riverhall on the royalties he received. In fact, he was so wealthy that he became a tax exile, moving to the USA for two years, to avoid Britain’s punishing top tax rate. During a break in the US tour, Beck was invited to guest on Stanley Clarke’s album Journey to Love (he would play on three more of Clarke’s albums).

When it came to recording the follow-up to Blow by Blow, Beck assembled part of the old team – producer George Martin, Max Middleton and Richard Bailey. Phil Chen had joined Rod Stewart’s band, so Beck used his touring bassist Wilbur Bascomb.

The success of Blow by Blow proved to be a two-edged sword for Beck. On the one hand, it cemented his reputation as a guitar virtuoso, and gave him financial security, but the album’s huge success put pressure on him to deliver the goods on the follow-up album. Beck composed very little of the music he played, and as result, had little material when he started recording his new album in mid-September 1975.

Two numbers were recorded, a driving jazz-funk number, ‘Head For Backstage Pass,’ and a cover of the Charles Mingus jazz classic ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.’ Inspired by John McLaughlin’s acoustic guitar version on the 1971 album ‘My Goals Beyond,’ Beck recorded his version live in the studio with a Fender Stratocaster guitar.

The authors describe Beck’s performance on this song as pivotal, ‘This track marked a turning point – the moment he fully transitioned from his blues-rock roots…to the iconoclastic, expressive style that defined the rest of his career.’

Their description of Beck’s playing on ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’ is exquisite: ‘The performance is dazzling. The supple touch of bare fingers on strings, microtonal bends, deft use of the Strat’s vibrato bar to bend notes up and down precisely to pitch, and dynamic textures that morph from mellow, hornlike tones to percussive stabs of dissonance are all there in a dazzling, emotion-filled five-and-a-half-minute performance. The influence of brass instruments on Beck’s touch and tone is unmistakeable, from a smoky midrange that evokes Miles Davis’s muted trumpet to abrasive overtones reminiscent of a saxophone’s growl.’

After this, things changed and Bailey was replaced by Narada Michael Walden, the drummer who succeeded Billy Cobham in the Mahavishnu Orchestra – Beck had met him on the US tour. After recording Max Middleton’s only composition on the new album, ‘Led Boots,’ the band then recorded four numbers (which made up half the album) composed by Walden, including ‘Love Is Green,’ a ballad which had Beck playing acoustic and electric guitars.

Another impact of the success of Blow By Blow was that Beck became even more of a perfectionist, much to the dismay of Martin. Beck was making such slow progress that Martin was forced to leave the project a couple of months in due to a prior recording commitment. Assistant producer Chris Bond took over the reins, although Martin would oversee the album’s final mixes.

But even then, Beck wasn’t finished, deciding that what the album really needed was Jan Hammer’s synthesiser sound. Beck flew to Hammer’s studio in New York State with the master tapes, where he laid down some new guitar solos and Hammer overdubbed synth parts on four tracks. Hammer and Beck also recorded a new Hammer composition, ‘Blue Wind,’ which became a concert favourite for years. Hammer mixed five of the album’s tracks. The new album, called Wired, was released in summer 1976 and went Gold within three months. It would become Beck’s second (and last) Platinum recording. The authors relate a funny tale: Beck contacted Martin to say that he wanted to redo parts of his solo on ‘Good Bye Pork Pie Hat,’ only to be informed by the bemused producer that the record had been on sale for two months!

Working with Hammer cemented a strong musical and personal bond between the two musicians, and the two went on joint tour of the US between 1976 and 1977. From it came Beck’s next album, Jeff Beck with the Jan Hammer Group Live. In 1978, Beck began working on his next recording, which was also planned as jazz-rock fusion album. Naturally, Hammer was involved and he flew to London to record half a dozen songs with Beck.

Although Max Middleton wasn’t involved in the recording of the new album, he did have some influence, because he recommended a young drummer to Beck – Simon Phillips. Although he was only twenty-one at the time, Phillips was an experienced player on the London session scene. He had also played with Jack Bruce.  Phillips would be Beck’s number be drummer of choice for the next few years.

Beck, Hammer and Phillips began recording together, although the guitarist only used three of Hammer’s songs. One of them, ‘Star Cycle’ became another concert favourite and was often played as the opening number

In between the sessions, Beck teamed up with Stanley Clarke to go on tour in Japan and on Continental Europe. When the two musicians were looking for a keyboard player, Phillips suggested an old colleague of his in the Jack Bruce band, Tony Hymas who, like Middleton and Hammer, would become one of Beck’s longest and closest musical associates.

After the Clarke/Beck tour, the guitarist enlisted the services of producer Ken Scott (another producer with a strong Beatles connection) to co-produce the new album. Beck, Scott, Hymas, Phillips and bassist Mo Foster (who had played with Hymas and Phillips on various recording sessions) decamped to Abbey Road studios to record the rest of the album. Hymas and Phillips wrote four new songs, including ‘The Pump, ‘Space Boogie’ and ‘El Becko.’

When the new album – called There & Back – was released in 1980 it received mixed reviews and sales were not as strong as those for Beck’s previous two albums. But the There & Back tour of 1980-81, which involved the same studio band and covered Japan, the USA and UK, was a huge success, climaxing with the band’s last gig at the Hammersmith Odeon in London, when Jimmy Page joined Beck onstage.

The authors argue that the four-year gap between There & Back and Wired was too long, and that by then, the music scene had moved on from this type of sound. It marked the end of Beck’s jazz-rock fusion era, and it was time for the guitarist to move onto new pastures.

Some have described the 1980s as Beck’s lost years, but as the book reveals, he was a busy man. His guitar playing was enlisted by a number of artists including Mick Jagger, Diana Ross, Tina Turner and Cozy Powell. He also played in benefit concerts and did soundtrack work.

Beck also received an unexpected demand from the Epic label – record a hit album and use a vocalist. At the time, Epic was under immense financial pressure and firing hundreds of staff. It needed big-selling albums to turn things around, hence the call for Beck to record a commercial album. As it happened, the enormous success of Michael Jackson’s Thriller album (and the rise of the Compact Disc, a factor not mentioned in the book) would later transform Epic’s fortunes.

Epic hooked Beck up with the hottest producer at the time – Nile Rodgers, who had had great success with his own band Chic, as well as David Bowie, Diana Ross, Madonna and Duran Duran. But the resulting album, called Flash, and released in 1985, turned out to be one of Beck’s poorest, swamped in drum machines and cheesy synth sounds.

In 1989, Beck teamed up with Tony Hymas and drummer Terry Bozzio to record arguably his last great album, Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop, which included the solo guitar piece, ‘Where Were You.’ Tolinski and Gill state: ‘Beck’s elegant and elegiac performance sounded unlike anything that he or an electric guitar had ever produced. Backed by Hymnas’s soft synth-string swells, Beck’s Strat soared majestically with textures that evoked both voice and wind instruments…the secret to this otherworldly performance lay in Beck’s unparalleled touch.’

Beck’s final three decades are covered in the book’s last eighty-one pages, and it covers all the Grammys, Industry Awards and honourary degrees he picked up on the way. It also includes the three techno albums Beck recorded between 1999 and 2003 – Who Else!, You Had It Coming and Jeff, and his last three studio albums, Emotion & Commotion (2010); Loud Hailer (2016) and 18 (2022), the last recorded with Johnny Depp. Tolinksi and Gill do their best to put a gloss on these works, but they were a disappointing end to a magnificent musical career. But there were many other highlights during this final period, including Beck’s five-night appearance at Ronnie Scott’s jazz Club in November 2007, which generated critical acclaim and healthy CD, DVD and Blu-ray sales for Beck.

We learn many things about Beck in this book and one surprise was the various health issues he had, because Beck always looked trim and fit, even in his late seventies. But a serious bike accident when he was a boy, and later on, two major car crashes (one of which took Beck months to recover from), caused severe head injuries – Beck was plagued with headaches throughout his life. He was also prone to ear, nose and throat infections; had contracted a disease similar to Legionnaires Disease, and had had suspected meningitis. He also suffered from tinnitus. The authors speculate that these afflictions, plus a lifetime of being on the road, might have compromised Beck’s immune system and contributed to his sudden death from bacterial meningitis.

Despite all his talent and despite all the accolades he received from fans, the press and his peers, Beck was never really satisfied with his playing. He was very similar to two jazz artists who were also virtuosos: saxophonist Michael Brecker, and guitarist Allan Holdsworth. It was as if these three musicians heard sounds in their heads that could not be replicated in the physical world, and so they were seldom satisfied with what they played. They even looked to electronic instruments to expand their sonic horizons – Brecker with the Electronic Wind Instrument (EWI), and Beck and Holdsworth with the guitar synthesiser.

Beck was a wonderful guitarist, but like all humans, he had his frailties, as this book discloses. He tended to bottle up his emotions until they suddenly erupted, so instead of trying to resolve any issues by discussion or debate, he would abruptly extricate himself from a situation. The book chronicles a catalogue of events where Beck walked out of a band mid-tour, abruptly broke up a band, scrapped projects with little or no notice, or went AWOL. This often left his fellow musicians in a very difficult position.

His role as band leader in JBG1 left much to be desired, as Rod Stewart noted, ‘He wasn’t a good band leader. He never really looked after me and Ronnie Wood. There were some weeks we barely got paid and struggled just to eat…the only time we’d see Jeff would be at the gig. There wasn’t any real camaraderie, especially during our visits to America.’ Nicky Hopkins added, ‘Beck was totally unsuited to be leading a successful band.’

When the second Jeff Beck Group recorded their album, Rough and Ready, the songs were written by various band members, but Beck’s management persuaded them to assign all compositions to Beck, with the promise of splitting the royalties, but this didn’t turn out to be the case.

In Beck’s defence, at the time, he was still learning the art of how to be a band leader, and over the years, he led many happy and successful bands. Beck would even receive requests to reform bands from previous band members.

Beck never achieved the financial success enjoyed by Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page, but nevertheless, he had far more financial security than most of the musicians he worked with. This gave him the luxury of being able to take his time over a project (the Wired album, for example, was recorded over an eight-month period, while previous albums had been completed in weeks) or scrapping a project before its completion. Tours could be cancelled at the last minute. Musicians – some whom may have turned down lucrative sessions or tours to work with Beck – could be left in a precarious position whenever he did this.

A host of projects that Beck never finished or released are noted: a power trio with songs composed by Simon Phillips; a guitar, keyboards and drum trio that included Simon Phillips and Philippe Saisse; a recording session with percussionist Martin Ditcham and drummer Richard Bailey exploring World music rhythms; tracks with drummer Stewart Copeland of The Police; an album produced by Toto guitarist Steve Lukather; a second Guitar Shop album; a band composed of Beck, guitarist Jennifer Batten, bassist Tony Levin and drummer Terry Bozzio. It’s highly unlikely that any of the music created by these projects will ever be released, not least because Beck lost a lot of his tape archive in a house flood, and he had apparently insisted that none of this material should be released after his death.

We also see the better side of Beck, not least his championing of women musicians, such as guitarists Jennifer Batten and Carmen Vandenberg; bassists Tal Wilkenfeld and Rhonda Smith, and singers Beth Hart and Imelda May. As Tony Hymas told the present writer: “I think he was a really good bloke. By that I mean he cared about people. I can think of a few anecdotes where it was obvious that he was concerned about people. He was a good human being, never mind all the musicianship – that goes without saying. He was a good guy.”

Any quibbles about this book are minor. The authors do a great job in distilling and describing Beck’s career, but one wishes the book was at least a hundred pages longer, because Beck had such a long, varied and interesting career. There were times when one wished for more detail about an event, and I suspect the authors had to jettison lots of great material in order to stick to their word limit.

Beck’s musical career is not easy to follow – band line-ups constantly change, and the sheer number of tours, concerts and recording sessions can be difficult to keep up with. A timeline of Beck’s career, or at the very least, a list of his various band line-ups would have been helpful.

The book has sixteen pages of photographs, but only one of them shows a personal side of Beck’s life – a photograph of him and his wife Sandra taken in 2005. The books by Rosen and Morris offer many more interesting images, including pictures taken at Beck’s home Riverhall, as well as photos of album covers, posters, press clippings and magazine covers, giving a more rounded view of Beck’s career.

There is no doubt about Tolinski and Gill’s passion for Beck’s playing, but occasionally the hyperbole gets ahead of them. On page 309, they describe the recruitment of the young bassist Tal Wilkenfeld, noting that, ‘Beck was so impressed [with her playing] he gave Wilkenfeld something he had never offered a bass player before: a solo spotlight, right in the middle of ‘Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers,’ no less.’ But back in 1980, on the There & Back tour, bassist Mo Foster was routinely given a couple of bass solos per show –  including one during ‘Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers.’

The only error that jumped out at me was the reference on page 199, to John McLaughlin leaving Miles Davis’s band before 1971. Although McLaughlin occasionally sat in on Miles’s gigs (one of the best known being the Cellar Door show on 19 December 1970), he was never an official member of Miles’s band. References to the physical appearances of Jan Hammer and Max Middleton are both unkind and unnecessary.

And the present writer was staggered to see that during the discussion of Beck’s 2003 album Jeff – the last of his electronica trilogy – there was no mention of the song ‘Seasons,’ which features one of Beck’s most moving guitar solos. Here’s what musician Steve Barney – who played drums on the track and was in the studio when Beck put down his solo – told the present writer about it: “The original idea was the tough hip/hop groove you hear/with the spoken word sample (which was inspired by Jeff wanting a New York telephone operator). Jeff just blasted over it and we all nearly fell over with his stunning playing. I distinctly remember sitting in the studio when Jeff played the middle breakdown section with the solo – I nearly cried; it moved me so much. Jeff, being so humble, came back into the control room and said: “Any good boys?”

But none of the above detracts from Tolinksi and Gill’s towering achievement. No other book gets you closer to understanding and appreciating the sound, magic and spirit of the guitar genius who was Jeff Beck.