Jeff Beck interview: no regrets from reluctant guitar god

Telegraph.co.uk

A phone rings in the middle of my interview with Jeff Beck. “F--- off!’ he snarls, comically. But then he looks closer at the digital display. “Oops, sorry, it’s Eric, I better take this.”

It is Eric Clapton, Beck’s fellow guitar god, calling to discuss a planned performance together. “It’s in D, Eric. Nah, don’t worry about that, I’ll do all the riffs,” chatters Beck. “You just play fills and solos. I’ll do everything else. We’ll give it a shot, anyway, if it doesn’t work, heave ho.”

It is a fascinating glimpse into the private world of guitar heroes. Not least because, at 65, remarkably fit, muscular and alert, it is Beck who appears to be calling the shots with arguably his more celebrated peer, giving some indication why he is so often referred to as the guitarist’s guitarist.

St. Blues Guitar Workshop

I recently discovered a guitar maker on Facebook. St Blues Guitar Workshop has been around for a while but just off my radar. Here's a snip from the website.

St. Blues Guitars was born in the heart of the Delta, where country tangled with the blues and spawned the true birthplace of Rock & Roll, Memphis. On the street now called Elvis Presley Boulevard, across the way from Graceland, Mike Ladd and Tom Keckler were doing something magical with guitars at Mike Ladd’s Guitar City. Seems whenever these boys laid hands on someone’s guitar, it just played a whole lot better. Hell, they even customized one for the King ordered by his father. You can see him play it in “Aloha From Hawaii”.

After Mike Ladd’s Guitar City, Keckler worked as the guitar guru at the legendary Strings and Things music store, where his skills and legend continued to grow. Here is where the “Bluesmaster” body was first designed, built from a telecaster esquire that Keckler was looking to modify.

In 1978, Keckler joined Tom Anderson and David Schecter out in California to turn Schecter Guitar Research from a parts supplier to a guitar company. But anyone who’s ever lived in Memphis knows you can’t stay away long and in 1983 he came home to continue his guitar work, and formed St. Blues Guitars with the founders of Strings and Things in 1984. Using the body shape that Tom had created some years before, the first St. Blues model was created and not surprisingly named the “Bluesmaster”. Sometimes you hit it just right. This unique guitar stands up to any classic design, and people who know a great guitar were quick to notice. Soon you would find a Bluesmaster in the hands of Eric Clapton, Bono, Albert King, Elliot Easton, Marshall Crenshaw, Glen Frey, Billy Gibbons... We could go on but this isn’t a book.

EMI music licensing talks falter with Sony

Reuters

EMI Group Ltd is struggling to reach a deal to license its catalogue of recordings, with Sony Corp on the verge of pulling out of discussions with the British music company, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

The newspaper cited unnamed people familiar with the matter as saying that EMI needed to clinch a licensing deal by Wednesday in order to satisfy a covenant of a loan agreement with Citigroup Inc (C.N).

A cash advance from a music licensing group would help it meet that test, the newspaper said.

Charlie Gillett, Disc Jockey and Historian, Dies at 68

New York Times

Charlie Gillett, who turned his youthful zeal for rock ’n’ roll into an influential career by writing one of the first serious rock histories and, as a disc jockey in London, helping to discover talents like Dire Straits and introduce the new genre of world music, died on Wednesday in London. He was 68.

The British Broadcasting Corporation said he had suffered from an autoimmune disease and died of a heart attack.

As a broadcaster, journalist, author and musicologist, Mr. Gillett (pronounced GILL-et, with a hard G) strove to bring deeper, broader dimensions to people’s appreciation of popular music. His book “The Sound of the City: The Rise of Rock and Roll” (1970) described how rock evolved from more or less authentic regional styles recorded by independent companies to a vast, homogenized business ruled by major labels.

Music legend Phil Spector roughed up for mouthing off to fellow inmate, says pal Steven Escobar

New York Daily News

Has Phil Spector gotten a bloody taste of jail-yard justice? The hot-tempered music legend is minding his tongue after having several teeth knocked out by a fellow inmate at the state prison in Corcoran, Calif., two Spector confidants tell us.

"Phil has quite a mouth on him," says longtime pal and defender Steven Escobar. "Not everyone understands his humor. He said the wrong thing to the wrong inmate in the yard."

Lacking any of his trusty firearms, Spector wound up with a bruised nose, black eye and the loss of a couple of caps, according to Escobar.