“He looked at them as tools; it didn’t matter much to him”: Joe Perry explains why Jeff Beck didn’t have sentimental attachment to his guitars
Joe Perry has reflected on Jeff Beck’s lack of sentimental attachment to his guitars, noting how the late legend only viewed them as a means to an end.
Remembering Beck in the new issue of Guitarist, Perry – a self-admitted Beck superfan who “saw Jeff on every tour” – reveals the late virtuoso’s surprisingly pragmatic approach to his instruments.
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“Before Aerosmith, I’ll never forget him walking down the stairs after a show, and I was the only one at the backstage thing,” says Perry. “I didn’t ask for an autograph or anything; I just had to shake his hand and tell him I thought he was the best.”
Things changed when Perry started to “get a little Aerosmith notoriety”; he’d get to meet Beck backstage and “I’d always try to get my hands on his guitar, just to see what the magic was all about,” says the guitarist.
To his surprise, the instruments were far more ordinary than one would expect for a man so often hailed as the god of guitar.
“I was always struck by the fact that they were usually new guitars, like a top-of-the-line Fender, except for a couple of those Les Pauls that [he was] famous for,” Perry explains. “But I never saw him with anything on the road other than a new Strat.”
“Another thing that I was surprised about was how heavy the strings he was using were – and that the action was kind of high on the guitar. I was a little surprised – but again, it was just a regular white Strat. There was nothing special about it; it was very minimal.”
After Beck’s death, his wife handed his number three Strat to the Hollywood Vampires – the rock supergroup featuring Alice Cooper, Johnny Depp, and Perry himself – to play on tour.
“I got to play Beck’s Bolero on his number three Strat for that whole tour. It was just a regular Strat with a small headstock and Noiseless pickups – a straight-up Custom Shop Strat, it wasn’t fussy,” says Perry.
According to Perry, “there were always guitars waiting on the couch or leaning against the wall” over at Beck’s house: “I don’t think I ever saw a guitar in a stand. I think he had the old Tele in one room and an old Strat in another,” the musician recalls. “But I really think he found his voice when he just stuck to the Strat. With the variety of tones, there’s just something about the Strat where that guitar was almost designed for him.”
He continues: “With his guitars, though, I don’t think he was as attached to them. He looked at them as tools; it didn’t matter much to him, at least from what I can tell. You would think he’d have been more particular about that stuff, but, to him, an off-the-rack guitar was fine.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
