Jeff Beck - Style and Influence

Style and Influence

One of the most influential guitarists in the history of rock music, Jeff Beck has cited his major influences as Les Paul, The Shadows, Cliff Gallup, Ravi Shankar, Roy Buchanan, Chet Atkins, Django Reinhardt, Steve Cropper and Lonnie Mack. Of John McLaughlin, he said: "he has given us so many different facets of the guitar and introduced thousands of us to world music, by blending Indian music with jazz and classical. I'd say he was the best guitarist alive."

While Beck was not the first rock guitarist to experiment with electronic distortion, he nonetheless helped to redefine the sound and role of the electric guitar in rock music. Beck's work with The Yardbirds and The Jeff Beck Group's 1968 album Truth were seminal influences on heavy metal music, which emerged in full force in the early 1970s.

Read more about this topic:  Jeff Beck

Famous quotes containing the words style and/or influence:

    It is the style of idealism to console itself for the loss of something old with the ability to gape at something new.
    Karl Kraus (1874–1936)

    The improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence: as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)