Jeff Beck's final recording is thought to be his contribution to Mark Knopfler's charity single Going Home, released in March 2024. However, an artist as prolific as Beck will always have other sessions up their sleeve – and now Manfred Mann’s Earth Band guitarist Mick Rogers, in a new Guitar World interview, says that he might very well have the last recording Beck ever did.
“I went down to his house, his manager – a great friend of mine, Colin Newman – put us two together,” Rogers tells GW.
“We had a play together, and I believe I’ve got the last recording Jeff Beck ever did in the studios. We got together with some rockabilly guys and did an album which still hasn’t been released.
“I spent a day with Jeff and the famous white Strat was sitting on the couch. I thought: ‘Jeff, pick it up and play it!’ He was very sheepish, but what a guy! We could empty a room because we were just talking about rockabilly and how he grew up – we were both Cliff Gallup fans.”
As to why the potentially historic recording has never been released – well, it seems Beck wasn’t entirely happy with his tone.
“We played a track called Lucille by Little Richard, but nothing came of it because Jeff was playing through his dodgy Marshall and didn’t like the sound,” Rogers explains.
"He said: ‘We’ll do it again, later on.’ Of course, he then went on tour with Mr Depp. When I listen to the track now, I think: ‘Jeff, there’s nothing wrong with your sound.’ He could have played through a paper cup, and it still would have sounded like Jeff Beck! He was just wonderful.”
The Rogers-Beck session took place on August 24, 2022 – just a month after the release of 18, Beck's album alongside Johnny Depp. The album release was followed by an extensive tour, which Rogers alludes to in the interview, kicking off on September 23 in Del Valle, Texas and wrapping up on November 12, in Reno, Nevada – just two months before Beck passed away.
2022 also saw Beck feature on the title track of another record, Ozzy Osbourne's 13th studio album, Patient Number 9. Although no exact date of when Beck actually laid down his tracks in the studio has been revealed, we can safely assume he did so sometime between February 2020 and 2022 – as, upon the release of Ordinary Man in 2020, Osbourne announced that he had started working on its follow-up with super-producer Andrew Watt.
As for Mark Knopfler's star-studded Going Home, the date for when Beck recorded his reverb-soaked 20-second scene setter was never disclosed – but in a 2024 interview with Guitar Player, the Dire Straits guitarist did confirm that Beck's contribution was home-recorded as opposed to Rogers' in-studio session. Therefore, it seems highly likely that Rogers is indeed in possession of Beck's last-ever studio recording.
Guitar World's full interview with Mick Rogers will be published in the coming weeks.
