Renowned as a pioneering guitarist who pushed the boundaries of the instrument to places unknown to most of his contemporaries, Jeff Beck, who has died from bacterial meningitis aged 78, could more than hold his own with fellow luminaries such as Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton (all three of them played in the Yardbirds). Yet unlike them, Beck was something of a reluctant celebrity, unwilling to pursue the superstardom that his musical gifts could have brought him.
“When Led Zeppelin made it so big, I was jealous, absolutely jealous as hell,” Beck said in 1986. “But I’m glad I carried on as I was. I personally couldn’t have put up with that mass adulation.”
