Royal Albert Hall, London

It’s always An Occasion when Mr Beck plays in London and this was a chance to see the stellar band lineup featured on the ‘Live At Ronnie Scott’s’ club album and DVD play a packed Albert Hall on a warm summer night, with the Wireless Festival in full flow over the road in Hyde Park.  Beck could play on any bill because his work takes in many styles but this is his night, the extra treat #1 being an opening set from Irish rock’n'roll and torch singer par excellence Imelda May.

May sings the back off selected songs from her ‘Love Tattoo’ album (see review here) with her bassist playing a double bass until the end of the set when a Shadows Burns sixties electric bass was featured.  Drums, electric and acoustic guitar and sharp trumpet  runs made up the musical backdrop along with May’s spirited percussion.  The band sound like a Fifties jukebox, punchy and trebly but the richness of Imelda’s voice giving a ‘now’ sound that finds favour with an audience comprising many guitar players of course and drummers keen to see Vinnie in Beck’s band. May burns through ‘Love Tattoo’ and other rocky songs before blazing a path through ‘Johnny’s Got A Boom Boom’ and its jagged drum breaks. Had Brenda Lee performed with The BlueCaps, it would have sounded close to this and having Jeff Beck take an interest in your career is something of a boost, ain’t it ? Glamour and punch in spades..

A roar greets Beck’s band shuffling on stage, Jeff in his echoes-of-Buck-Rogers white ensemble and ready to make his Strat shout, cry and whine. There is is no player that I have seen bar the late Roy Buchanan and Danny Gatton who can get such a personal sound from an electric guitar. Every nuance, trill, bend, swoop, chug and flick from his fingers sounds 3-D. When Paul Butterfield’s band came over here in the Sixties to play, Mike Bloomfield told a writer that he thought the electric guitar should sound ‘like a horn, like Jeff Beck plays’. Much of the time tonight, you could be hearing a violin or cello, such is Jeff’s use of the volume knobs on his guitar. Effectswise he uses a compressor, a touch of fuzz and a smidgeon of flange and doesn’t touch his wahwah -you can tell I was sitting behind the band, getting the band’s foldback.

Kicking off with ‘Beck’s Bolero’ with bassist Tal Wilkenfield (joyous and jumping throughout the show) giving her best to the staccato rhythm and keys man Jason Rebello throwing in regal tones and watching Beck like a hawk whilst trying not to appear to. Jeff says little, clearly pleased with the audience reaction to the performance and enduring the Cockney shouts that some local citizens feel obliged to add to the show. He has a line in Chaplinesque shrugs and shucks and nods that serve as his response before he launches into the next piece. Beck doesn’t play any long pieces, preferring to jump from style to style and pack more selections into the show. He is particularly impressive on the Wailers-inspired dub passages and the plaintive ‘Angel (Footsteps)’ as well as the driving ‘Stratus’ which bubbles along spitting riffs and tumbles.

The crowd whoop with delight at the ‘Goodbye/Brush With The Blues’ earthy riffing and stratospheric high-register bite of the guitar against nightclub bass. Tal takes a rumbling aching bass solo on ‘Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers’, egged on by Beck. Towards the end of the set and briefly shaking his head as he plays the ‘holes in the Albert Hall’ line as he plays it, Beck treats us to his stroked and then fired take on the Beatles ‘Day In The Life’ and the audience gasps as a collective. Heartbreak played from the soul and as affecting as music can be.

If icing on the cake were needed, when the band return for encores the rig of local guitar man Dave Gilmour is uncovered and we have the Pink Floyd axeman onstage drifting into a pastoral, psyched-out ‘Jerusalem’, the two guitar styles blending yet still starkly different with Gilmour stately and biting and Beck by nature more fluid and reactive. To say that this goes down well would be understatement of the year. Then just for the fun of it we have Gilmour launching into the first line of Beck’s ancient pop hit ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’, with Imelda reappearing to sing along and a dual guitar solo straying little from the original one on the 45. A peaceful guitar and keys coda piece completes the show from a fabulous band.

Curiously this evening, nothing illustrates better the artistry of Jeff Beck than the exquisite solo he conjures up during a version of ‘Lilac Wine’ during his set and featuring a cameo vocal from Imelda May, returning in a full-length green dress to sing her heart out. The audience surrendered to this pairing and rightly so…

Pete Sargeant      www.fairhearing.co.uk