English guitar legend Jeff Beck, a two-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, has died at the age of 78. The cause appears to have been a sudden case of bacterial meningitis.
His death was announced in a statement Wednesday afternoon by his longtime publicist.
It read: "On behalf of his family, it is with deep and profound sadness that we share the news of Jeff Beck's passing. After suddenly contracting bacterial meningitis, he peacefully passed away yesterday. His family ask for privacy while they process this tremendous loss."
Beck died at a hospital near his home in England, his publicist said in response to a query from the Union-Tribune.
The guitarist rose to fame in the 1960s as a member of the band The Yardbirds, in which he replaced Eric Clapton, before striking out on a solo career with his own band a few years later.
The lead singer in the first edition of the Jeff Beck Group was the young Rod Stewart.
The Yardbirds marked the only time in his career that Beck had to audition. He quickly got the job, even though he neglected to bring a guitar with him, as Beck recounted with a chuckle in a 2010 Union-Tribune interview.
"I didn't have one, because I'd sold it, so they gave me Eric's old guitar," Beck said, as he recalled walking into a London nightclub filled with other guitarists eager to land the job.
"I played two songs and the other guitarists all ran out of the room!"
Beck spoke glowingly of Clapton, with whom he toured in 2010, and fellow English guitar great John McLaughlin, with whom Beck toured in the 1970s.
"I wish I had a little piece of either of them," Beck said in his Union-Tribune interview. "What I'm envious of with those two is that they seem to know exactly where they're going, and I have no idea of where I'm going."
Beck remained active as a solo artist until his most recent tour concluded last November.
His instrumental command and dazzling virtuosity were matched by his sublime taste, remarkable purity of tone and his ability to pull off seemingly impossible instrumental feats. His playing sometimes seemed finger-breaking and often sounded otherworldly.
More impressive, he did so not with high-tech special effects, but largely with his fingers.
"I try to avoid using technology in a cheap or tacky way," Beck said in a 1999 Union-Tribune interview.
"I think there is a future with machinery linked to humans playing instruments with real emotion. If it sounded for one minute like it had been put in a mixer and chopped up, I wouldn't be interested. I still have to have some angle on the time (signature) shifts, so that — even if you were an expert — you'd have difficulty understanding who did what where.
"That's been my trick all along, this musical sleight-of-hand, where people can't say: 'I know what this is.' It's a little Phil Spector-ish, that 'Wall of Sound' approach, where nobody knew how he got it, but it had that magic about it. That's what I try to get."
Geoffrey Arnold Beck was born June 24, 1944, in Wallington, England. Inspired by electric guitar pioneer Les Paul, Beck took up the instrument as a teenager. He began playing professionally in the early 1960s and never looked back
Beck soared whether playing blues, rock or fusion-jazz. He may well be the only guitarist to have declined an invitation to join the Rolling Stones after Mick Taylor abruptly left the band in 1974.
"I turned them down," said Beck, who was so coveted by England's most famous active rock group that he wasn't even asked to audition for the position.
"(Famed producer) George Martin had made an offer to make an album with me, which I'd accepted, and I wasn't going to go back on my word to him."
The result of that collaboration with Martin, The Beatles' longtime producer, was 1975's "Blow by Blow." It was Beck's fifth solo outing and still the bestselling release of his career.
The all-instrumental album created a template — rock power, blues-drenched emotion, jazzy sophistication and funk-fueled propulsion — that helped solidify his reputation as one of the greatest electric guitarists of the 20th century. He didn't make albums with regularity, but when he did it was usually a notable event.
"I'm trying to find something in the old guitar that's peculiar to me, and that doesn't happen every weekend," Beck said in his 1999 interview. "It just happens every so often, or maybe on the spur of the moment, where I race home and grab the guitar and try to pick up ideas that sprung out earlier that day.
"The secret is not to let it go. So many times I've tossed off good things in the studio, and needed somebody around to pick up these bits I chuck off ...
"I don't sit down to try and dazzle anybody. The shortest distance is from the conception of an idea to its execution, with the least amount of aggravation. That would be a dream for me, to get a great solo on tape without knowing I did it.... So I'll try to do my best to make sure the band is rehearsed, to the point we can count a song in and make the magic happen and keep surprises coming."
Beck's last surprise came in summer 2022 when he teamed up with actor and avocational musician Johnny Depp on the album "18." While the instrumental numbers featuring Beck were up to his usual high standards, the selections with Depp singing were largely banal.
Beck and Depp toured the U.S. last fall.
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