Tag: Jeff Beck

Honeydrippers – Sea of Love

I immediately liked this song when I heard it in 1984.  The song originally was by Phil Phillips with the Twilights and they took it to #2 in 1959. Phil Phillips and George Khoury wrote this song. I knew Robert Plant wanted to distance himself from the hard sounds of Led Zeppelin when I heard this. I went out and immediately bought the single.

This version of the Honeydrippers included Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. I had forgotten that Brian Setzer was in it also but it makes complete sense.  The members were…

Robert Plant – vocals
Jimmy Page – guitars
Jeff Beck – guitars
Paul Shaffer – keyboard
Nile Rodgers – guitar, co-producer
Wayne Pedzwater – bass
Dave Weckl – drums
Brian Setzer – guitar
Keith “Bev” Smith – Drums

That is some kind of band… a lot of great players in famous bands in this group. The song peaked at #1 in Canada, #3 on the Billboard 100, #12 in New Zealand, and #56 in the UK.

Robert Plant was actually quite horrified with this song’s success for The Honeydrippers. The A-side was “Rockin’ At Midnight,” with “Sea of Love” as the B-side. But the single got flipped. Plant feared that this would destroy his reputation and he would be typecast as a crooner, so he deliberately cut off the career of the Honeydrippers.

He thought about bringing them back in the 21st century with Ahmet Ertegün, but at the latter’s passing Plant put the idea on permanent hold. Robert can really sing those 50s hits quite well. I remember seeing him on the broadcast of the Concert for Kampuchea playing with Rockpile.

“Sea Of Love”
Do you remember when we met?
That’s the day I knew you were my pet
I wanna tell you how much I love you

Come with me, my love, to the sea
The sea of love
I wanna tell you just how much I love you
Come with me to the sea of love

Do you remember when we met?
Oh, that’s the day I knew you were my pet
I wanna tell you, oh, how much I love you

Come with me to the sea of love
Come with me, my love, to the sea
The sea of love
I wanna tell you just how much I love you
I wanna tell you, oh, how much I love you

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John Lennon – Isolation

Many people posted this song during the lockdown and I can see why.

I always liked the song and understood that isolation doesn’t equate to loneliness. You can be in a crowd of people and yet feel isolated or alone. You can be physically isolated from others yet still feel very much connected to others.

The bass player on this track was Klaus Voormann, who was a friend of the Beatles from their Hamburg days. He was also an artist… he is the artist who designed the cover of Revolver. Ringo Starr also lends a hand with drums on this track.

JLPOBCover.jpg

The song was released on his true debut album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band in 1970. Arguably one of if not his best album. Like Paul’s debut this one was not big in production but unlike Pauls…this album was not light pop songs. You can feel John releasing his inner feelings for everyone to see on this album. Not an album to play to get a party going. You can hear John’s disillusionment with life, fame, and his three former bandmates.

This was during the time John Lennon went to see Doctor Arthur Janov in scream therapy. A way to bare his soul for his feelings like his mom that was killed when he was a teenager.

John Lennon: ‘Isolation’ and ‘Hold On John’, they’re the rough remixes. I just remixed them that night on seven-and-a-half [inches per second tape] to take them home to see what else I was going to do with them. And then I didn’t really, I didn’t even put them onto fifteen [IPS], so the quality is a bit hissy on ’em too. By the time I’d done everything, I started listening. I found out it’s better that, with ‘Instant Karma’ and other things, you remix it right away that night. I’d known that before, but never followed it through.

I usually don’t pay much attention to covers. I ignore actors turn singers but I did find a very good version of this song out there. In 2020 Jeff Beck and Johnny Depp recorded this song and Beck’s guitar work is great. Depp also does the vocals justice in this.

Isolation

People say we got it made
Don’t they know we’re so afraid
Isolation
We’re afraid to be alone
Everybody got to have a home
Isolation

Just a boy and a little girl
Trying to change the whole wide world
Isolation
The world is just a little town
Everybody trying to put us down
Isolation

I don’t expect you, to understand
After you caused so much pain
But then again, you’re not to blame
You’re just a human, a victim of the insane

We’re afraid of everyone
Afraid of the sun
Isolation
The sun will never disappear
But the world may not have many years
Isolation

Jeff Beck – Beck’s Bolero

I hardly ever post instrumentals but this one is special. Keith Moon on drums, John Paul Jones on bass, Nicky Hopkins on keyboard and Jimmy Page,  on 12-string guitar along with Jeff Beck on slide. John Paul Jones said the group that played on Beck’s Bolero was going to be called Led Zeppelin…They were kicking around the idea of touring

Jimmy Page is credited with writing the song but Jeff has said no that he worked more of it out.

Jimmy Page: “On the ‘Beck’s Bolero’ thing I was working with that, the track was done, and then the producer just disappeared. He was never seen again; he simply didn’t come back. Napier-Bell, he just sort of left me and Jeff to it. Jeff was playing and I was in the box (recording booth). And even though he says he wrote it, I wrote it. I’m playing the electric 12-string on it. Beck’s doing the slide bits, and I’m basically playing around the chords. The idea was built around (classical composer) Maurice Ravel’s ‘Bolero.’ It’s got a lot of drama to it; it came off right. It was a good lineup too, with Keith Moon, and everything.”

Jeff Beck: “No, Page didn’t write that song,” Beck has insisted. “We sat down in his front room once, this tiny, pokey room, and he was sitting on the arm of a chair and he started playing that Ravel rhythm. He had a 12-string, and it sounded so full, really fat and heavy. And I just played the melody. And I went home and worked out the other bit [the up-tempo section].”

This song was the B side to Hi Ho Silver Lining which peaked at #14 in the UK in 1967. The song was later on Jeff Beck’s Truth album.

From Songfacts

Beck recorded this with Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, Keith Moon and Nicky Hopkins during a single-day recording session in 1966. They planned to record a whole album, but contractual obligations prevented them from recording together again, and this was the only song from that session that was released. This Beck/Page/Jones/Moon/Hopkins combination had the makings of a supergroup, and it nearly happened, but they couldn’t find a suitable lead singer, failing to pry Steve Marriott away from Small Faces. Page and Jones then formed Led Zeppelin.

Yardbirds – Shapes of Things

This is the Yardbirds Jeff Beck edition. Great song that peaked at #11 in the Billboard 100, #3 in the UK and #7 in Canada in 1966. Beck’s guitar solo in this song is fantastic as he uses sustain, distortion. and some eastern influence. This was shortly before Jimmy Page joined the group.

From Songfacts.

When we spoke with Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty, we asked him about writing a hit song. He replied: “That’s probably the hardest thing to try and do. Every time we tried to do that it never really succeeded. I suppose we were lucky in that when we did ‘Shapes of Things’ it was like a hit song, but we were really coming from not trying to create a sort of a 3-minute piece of music, it was just something that seemed natural to us. We started with the rhythm, we used a bass riff that came from a jazz record, got a groove going with that and then added a few other bits from elsewhere, other ideas that we’d had. And I think it was a great success for us, it was a good hit record that wasn’t really selling out. And it was original.”

Explaining how they composed the song, McCarty added: “With ‘The Shapes of Things’ I came up with a marching type of rhythm that I tried to make interesting. And at the end of each line we’d build up like we used to do with some of our stage stuff – the rave ups. And then the bass riff came on top of that. And the bass riff was loosely based on a Dave Brubeck song, sort of a jazz song, around a doo doo doo doo doo doo, and then the chords came over that. The chords were very basic, came between the two tones, I think G and F, and then resolving it in D, each verse. And then the tune came on top of that. In fact, I remember putting the backing track down, which sounded great. I wasn’t at the session where Keith made up the tune, and when I heard the tune, I thought, Oh, that’s great. It’s a real surprise. He made up the tune, and then we had this sort of ‘Come tomorrow,’ but that was part of the song, anyway, at the beginning. So it was an exciting song to be involved in.”

Bassist Paul Samwell-Smith told NME staffer and press officer Keith Altham that he wrote this song about the destruction of the planet. He added: “I wrote it in a bar in Chicago. I just lifted part of a Dave Brubeck fugue to a marching beat. It’s a sort of protest song.”
Jim McCarty told us: “‘Shapes of Things’ was very much about the state of the situation in the country with the Vietnam War, so it was sort of an anti-war song.”

In 1995, 3 years after The Yardbirds were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the band reformed, eventually releasing the album of new material Birdland in 2003. Bass player Chris Dreja says of this song on their website: “I think ‘Shapes of Things’ is one of the finest things the band ever did. It was the first recording done at Chess in Chicago. They just nailed our sound. It’s a great song to play live. When you hit that chord for the solo part, then a little pause, then you get that BANG where the solo comes in. It’s just a magic moment.”

Drummer Jim McCarty (August 2011): “We were definitely surprised when we discovered that we could write hits without outside writers. With Jeff Beck it became very much a team effort. Some of us did some things well and some of us did other things well. We put all of those things in a pot and it just all seemed to work. I always fancied ‘Shapes Of Things’ as being the Yardbirds’ best single. That song had all the elements. Good tune, good lyrics, good rhythm and a great guitar solo by Jeff. That song was really the band at that point.”

 

Shapes of Things

Shapes of things before my eyes,
Just teach me to despise.
Will time make men more wise?
Here within my lonely frame,
my eyes just heard my brain.
But will it seem the same?

(Come Tomorrow) Will I be older?
(Come Tomorrow) May be a soldier.
(Come Tomorrow) May I be bolder than today?

Now the trees are almost green.
But will they still be seen?
When time and tide have been.
Fall into your passing hands.
Please don’t destroy these lands.
Don’t make them desert sands.

Chorus, Lead.

Soon I hope that I will find,
Thoughts deep within my mind.
That won’t displace my kind.

Yardbirds – Heart Full Of Soul

The Yardbirds had three of Rock’s greatest guitar players pass through them. Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. Heart Full of Soul peaked at #9 in the Billboard 100, #2 in the UK and #2 in Canada in 1965. From the opening, it hooks you.

Jeff Beck gave the song an eastern feel by the way he played the intro.

From Songfacts.

This was written by Graham Gouldman, who later formed the band 10cc. Gouldman was a prolific songwriter who also came up with songs for The Hollies, Cher, The Shadows, and Herman’s Hermits. For The Yardbirds, he provided three of their hits, also composing “Evil Hearted You” and “For Your Love.” Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty said in our 2010 interview: “‘Heart Full of Soul,’ which was very moody, gave us the ability to play the riff in sort of an Eastern way, give it an Oriental touch. Another very good song.”

Lead guitarist Jeff Beck employed an early use of a fuzz box on his lead part. The original arrangement called for a sitar playing the lead guitar part, but they instead opted for Beck’s sitar-sounding guitar.

The roots of sitar blended into rock started in November 1964, when Brian Auger engineered the first recording of “Heart Full of Soul” by the Yardbirds. An authentic Indian sitar player was brought into the studio, as well as a tabla player who could not get the 4/4 time signatures right. Since The Yardbirds were a road group and the original could not be played to live audience, Jeff Beck stood in and used his fuzz machine with a tone blender that created a similar and extremely effective sound.

 

 

Heart Full Of Soul

Sick at heart and lonely, deep in dark despair
When you want her only, tell me where is she where?
And if she says to you, that she don’t love me
Just give her my message, tell her of my plea
And I know, if I could have her back again, I would never make her sad
I got a heart full of soul I got a heart full of soul
She’s been gone such a long time, longer than I can bear
But if she says she wants me, tell her I’ll be there

And I know, if I could have her back again, I would never make her sad
I got a heart full of soul I got a heart full of soul
Sick at heart and lonely, deep in dark despair
When you want her only, tell me where is she where?
And if she says to you, that she don’t love me
Just give her my message, tell her of my plea
And I know, if I could have her back again, I would never make her sad
I got a heart full of soul I got a heart full of soul
I got a heart full of soul!

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_Full_of_Soul