Jeff Beck was once asked to follow in Eric Clapton’s post-Yardbirds footsteps when he was scouted by John Mayall for the Bluesbreakers.
In the 1960s, Beck and Clapton both cut their teeth in the Yardbirds. After Slowhand left in 1965, Beck was drafted in as his replacement. And, when Clapton departed his subsequent seat in Mayall’s band shortly after, Beck was high up on the list to replace him yet again.
The prospective move made sense. The Bluesbreakers was a fellow incubator of British blues and rock music. It would go on to welcome Peter Green, Mick Taylor, and other guitarists destined for greatness among its ranks over the years.
Mayall had earmarked Beck to fill the vacant guitar spot. But this time things were different. The project wasn’t quite what Beck was looking for.
“He did,” Beck told Guitar World readers in May 2010, when asked whether Mayall ever approached him.
“John called my mum several times. He found my mum’s number, and she said to me, “Oh, that John Mayall sounds very nice!” [laughs] But I didn’t want that – I didn’t want to be playing blues all of the time.”
The blues-heavy direction didn’t appeal to Beck, who had grander designs on experimenting with a more distinctive rock guitar sound. Plus, he didn’t think he could live up to his predecessor.
“I’d seen Eric with them, and he was fantastic, really,” Beck reflected. “He did the job better than I could have, and I just didn’t want to have that challenge. My musical taste was changing radically from 12-bar blues.
“I might have done better in that band than in the Yardbirds, but I certainly would not have been given the same kind of free rein to do the experimenting that I did in the Yardbirds”
Mayall had shown interest in Beck before. He’d attended a Yardbirds gig before he broached the idea of the two teaming up. He even gave some rather pointed feedback.
“He was very straightforward. He never embellished or gave us any flowery comments about the gig,” Beck remembered, “He said, ‘The audience loved it, but there was not much blues, was there?’
“And I thought, ‘Excuse me, but this isn’t a blues band.’ It sort of was, but he’s a purist and he was listening for Little Walter-style harmonica solos.
“I didn’t want to be mimicking Chicago blues musicians forever. My thinking was, We’re not them, we’re not Black, we’re British middle-class kids and let’s get on and do our own music. We had a bit of disharmony about that, but not to take away from John’s dedication to it.”
Mayall got a no, Peter Green got the gig, and six months after leaving the Yardbirds (having been fired on tour in the US in October ’66), Beck released his first solo single Hi Ho Silver Lining, with Beck’s Bolero as the B-side.
A year later he dropped his seminal debut album, Truth. The rest was history: Beck went off in his own direction and became one of the all-time greats of rock guitar.
There’s no doubt he made the right call, but still, we can’t help but wonder what Beck in the Bluesbreakers would have sounded like…
