I felt like a salmon moving upstream in the river of steel that is LA traffic, fighting on a Friday night to get to the Universal Amphitheater in time to see one of my all time favorites, Jeff Beck. Traffic ground to a halt by the Staples Center. Lakers game, forgot about that. Am I going to have enough time? More delays trying to get on to the 101 and then smooth sailing up to the Universal Studios parking lot, where a thousand other steel salmon were jammed. Spawning? Another twenty minutes burned just to park. Oh well, let's hoof it through the CityWalk Circus and get into the show. Leave the question of why they made such a nice venue so difficult to get to for another time.
When I finally got to my seat Willie Porter was well into his warmup set. Either a folksie blues singer, or a bluesy folksinger from Wisconsin, he won the audience over with his solo singing and enthusiastic six-string work. No small trick as a serious amount of milling-around was going on, but he took it all in stride. He told short stories to introduce some songs, especially a story about a nude lady confronting him a couple windows away from his apartment. That set up a tune called "Paper Airplane"; I guess he wanted to fly over to her. Later he challenged the audience to build a song with him, ad-libbing lyrics from suggestions like Sylvia, bong and Lunkshaven (!?) I bet he didn't know what it meant, either, but he rolled with it anyway. He also got high marks for a more serious song called "Breathe," which he wrote for a friend with cancer. Good job! Willie definitely has a great voice. I've seen better guitar players, but few better entertainers. Put him on the list for further investigation.
Once upon a time the Yarbirds did something called "Having A Rave Up." Rave means something quite a lot different now, but the modern meaning was more what this particular old Yardbird was all about at this show. It seemed like much of the audience was older guitar freaks from the Seventies though, not so much the Rave Set. Some Fragrance de Bud was in evidence, just like the old days.
Beck came out with his band about 9:35. The stage, which had been curtained off during Porter's set, was now revealing an enormous drum kit that featured a big metal circle from which hung the cymbals. There were plenty of foot pedals at stage left, but the front area was curiously bare, populated by one lone wah-wah pedal. Not even a mike stand. Not a night for vocals. Behind the band were two large circular screens, already showing colorful geometric patterns cast by projectors in the ceiling. They were four people, rhythm guitarist Jennifer Batten, bassist Randy Hope-Taylor, and drummer Steve Alexander, plus Jeff himself, dressed down in jeans and a black vest over a black tanktop. His hair was the same unkempt mop it's been since the sixties--wait was it thinning out on top? Not much, really. Give him credit, he's looking great for 56 and he's certainly not slowed down like some other Yardbirds guitarists.
Actually there were five in the band if you count whoever put together the keyboard loops that played behind the band on most songs, giving the show that modern electronic feel he's explored on his last two albums. I couldn't quite tell if Jennifer was controlling some of samples through the pedals she had at her station, but that wasn't the only thing she did. Every once in a while Jeff gave her a few lead licks and she showed first rate chops. I found myself thinking it would have been great if Jan Hammer could have made it. An hour later when the band launched into the opening of "Rice Pudding" I was aching for Nicky Hopkins's beautiful piano interlude, but I didn't dwell on it too much. The stage was set for Jeff and he plunged forward fearlessly, amazing everyone with play that was alternately aggressive and emotional, but always beautifully fluid and seemingly effortless.
We were treated to punchy instrumentals like "Earthquake," "Roy's Toy" and "Dirty Mind" from Beck's terrific new album, You Had It Coming. They were selling 25th Anniversary
T-shirts for his album Wired in the lobby, but there was only a slight nod to that material--a few bars of "Led Boots," which morphed to something else pretty quickly. In a way You Had It Coming was like an update on Wired because just as it had followed a landmark album, Blow By Blow, Coming is a successful followup to last year's rave-up, Who Else. Perhaps the best new song--scratch that, new arrangement, it's an old song--was "Rollin' and Tumblin'," featuring Jennifer off the second guitar chores and doing a carbon copy of Imogene Heap's work from the new album. It was the only real singing for the whole night though.
Excellent lighting effects were hitting the audience throughout. During a lovely slower tune, "Nadia," again from the new LP, the backdrop and parts of the drum kit turned into a sea of blue. Again it was partly a nod to the rave feel of the music, also perhaps making up for the lack of live keyboards and almost zero vocals. Jeff hardly needs them anyway, as he was Marshalling incredible sounds out through two different Stratocasters. He kept changing between a white one and another with a cream colored body, occasionally pantomiming mock annoyance with the stage hand that brought them out. I couldn't see why he needed to switch so often but he was into a lot of string bending. Maybe he was getting them re-tuned every song. Regardless, he always planted his left leg and let the Strats rest on his right, usually with his right foot on tiptoe, somehow getting extra English on the sustain with his hip. It was classic Beck, and he was in fine form through the whole set.
Jeff saved his most brilliant work for last, a simply stunning version of the Beatles' "Day In The Life." Here his lyrical lead work simply shone, evoking all the original's lyrics and pulling on everyone's heartstrings. The crowd went nuts, pulling him back for an encore of "Suspension," which brought the show in for a soft landing.
It was a bit short, perhaps, only an hour and a half of music, but it was a rare delight to see a true master of the electric guitar in concert. More than memorable, it was practically an honor to see him play again.
