Top 67 Quotes & Sayings by Jeff Beck

I do a very poor man's pedal steel on the Stratocaster.

A lunatic lifestyle on the road doesn't permit you to get too hip to stuff as you should.

I don't organize myself sufficiently to get an album of material together, book the studio, and go. I need to be kicked; I need to be forced physically to go in. That's how it works for me. I'll get a great idea in the house, and it'll stay there unless somebody comes and drags it out of me!

I play purely from the heart, y'know, and so if it doesn't work the first couple of hours, forget it.

I'm not committed to putting myself up for a blues guitarist, even though I love playing the blues.

You stop anybody on any street, around the world, and they know who Eric Clapton is. They don't know who I am!

I was really small when jazz broke through in England and I can still remember sneaking off to the living room to listen to it on the radio - much to my parent's disapproval.

Nothing is more annoying than a great singer getting drowned out by a loud guitar.

I try to become a singer. The guitar has always been abused with distortion units and funny sorts of effects, but when you don't do that and just let the genuine sound come through, there's a whole magic there.

The only way you can get Scotty Moore's tone is with a big hollowbody guitar.

I'm a very emotional person. If I've got something on my mind, that would stop me from giving my best.

Listen to the great guitarists of the Fifties. They didn't do that nasty sort of industrial distortion. They played musical compositions as solos - Scotty Moore, Cliff Gallup, Django Reinhardt. There wasn't a bad note in any of those solos. I listened to that and stayed with those rules.

I have to have people around who are of a certain strain of humour. I can't deal with people who have no humour.

I loved Motown. I loved the musicality and the sound.

I was going to write an autobiography once. I started writing it, and then I thought, 'No, let them dig around when I'm dead.'

When you get guys coming up to you in clubs or restaurants or somewhere, and they say how much they've enjoyed your playing on records, then that pays off dividends every day; every time they say it, you think, 'I'm glad I did that.'

If I'm on form and I'm not being bothered too much by mental problems or whatever, I can whip out something good. That's why I've done quite a few overdubs for Tina Turner and things like that, because even before she made this comeback I said yes to her, just because I love Tina Turner.

I've become very conscious of how easy it is for people to lie.

Sometimes when I do an overdub solo, they'll keep four or five of my attempts and then mix the bits that they like to make a solo up out of them. It's not against the rules, really - I can learn my own solos, then. But that's the whole beauty of multi-track recording, isn't it?

The right time to record is when you're not quite ahead of yourself.

The Les Paul was more challenging because of the weight of it, but the tone was there that the Fender will never have and vice versa. So you have to make a decision as to what you're going to have as your main instrument. After seeing Hendrix, I thought, 'I'll stick with the 'Strat.'

Mahavishnu's drummer Billy Cobham was the best I'd ever heard. Not loud, that's not the secret - powerful as hell when he wanted to be - but 90 per cent of the time, he was just dancing with the drums, you know? Just like a butterfly, all over them.

I like an element of chaos in music. That feeling is the best thing ever, as long as you don't have too much of it.

The fun that I've had needs to be seen on the screen. I like the thought of a bunch of people laughing at what I laughed at - because my life is surreal, completely wacko.

I don't care about the rules. In fact, if I don't break the rules at least 10 times in every song then I'm not doing my job properly.

I couldn't not play a Les Paul guitar. Les always used to point to my Strat and say, 'Why do you have that piece of crap around your neck?' I'd say, 'Yours are too heavy. I had to drill holes in it.'

Cliff Gallup is one of my heroes; I'd dearly love to meet him.

I like the wildness of Buddy Guy.

It's easy to hurl abuse at those awards ceremonies like the Oscars and all that, which we tend to do. We tend to vent our anger at things which we feel are unjust or undeserving. But when you're the recipient, it makes it a lot different.

If the song makes it and people like it, then I guess that's all that matters, really.

I thought there couldn't be a better backdrop for some kind of powerful music than a big orchestra. My wish to hear how a guitar would sound in front of an orchestra has always been there.

I cherish my privacy, and woe betide anyone who tries to interfere with that.

I don't understand why some people will only accept a guitar if it has an instantly recognizable guitar sound. Finding ways to use the same guitar people have been using for 50 years to make sounds that no one has heard before is truly what gets me off.

I play the way I do because it allows me to come up with the sickest sounds possible. That's the point now isn't it?

It's a diabolical business. I can't imagine how hellish it must be to be hounded like Amy Winehouse and people like that. I have a little peripheral place on the outskirts of celebrity, when I go to premieres and that sort of stuff, which is as close as I want to get.

If you were to plot my success or failure, it goes, it very seldom stays on a high plateau.

When they said there was gonna be about 100,000 people at Woodstock, and it went up to 200,000, I just blanked off and thought, 'I don't want to do this.' If they're filming it, it's too nerve-racking.

It wasn't the muso thing that got me recognition in the beginning. It was doing 'Wild Thing.'

After I saw Jimmy [Hendrix] play, I just went home and wondered what the f*** I was going to do with my life.

I've never stuck around long enough to know if anyone would miss me. That's rock 'n' roll, though. Here today, gone tomorrow.

I play the way I do cause it allows me to come up w/ the sickest sounds possible. That's the point now isn't it?

Some are skeptical. My mom thought the guitar was going to fizzle out in two weeks, that it was just a fad-and that was in 1958.

I was interested in the electric guitar even before I knew the difference between electric and acoustic. The electric guitar seemed to be a totally fascinating plank of wood with knobs and switches on it. I just had to have one.

As long as there's something original going on, that's all that matters.

That old funny-shaped bit of wood is still staring me in the face every day saying 'come on, you haven't started yet!' It's infinite.

I don’t care about the rules. In fact, if I don’t break the rules at least ten times in every song, then I’m not doing my job properly. Emotion is much more important than making mistakes, so be prepared to look like a chump. If you become too guarded and too processed, the music loses its spontaneity and gut feeling

A lot of solos I hear sound so incredible, but they sound like somebody practicing. They sound a bit soulless - fiery, but at the same time, lacking in spirit and soul.

I don't care about the rules, if I don't break the rules at least 10x every song then I'm not doing my job.

There was mass hysteria in the Chess Recording Studio when I did the "Shapes of Things" solo ... they weren't expecting it, and it was just some weird mist coming from the East out of an amp.

The Strat covers the complete spectrum of human emotion .. the tremolo enables you to do anything - you can hit any note known to mankind

Yes, it's in my left ear. It's excruciating... I mean, it's the worst thing 'cause it's not... It never... It does go away - it's not true to say that it doesn't but, uhh... It doesn't... The doctors say it won't... It isn't actually going away - you've just gotta suppress... They try to come to terms with what it actually... Why some people fear it - that's the psychology behind it. They know it's there but why is it such a horrible sound? Well, you can say why is a guy scratching at a window with his nails such a horrible sound - I couldn't put up with that! This is worse!

My first wife said, 'It's either that guitar or me,' you know -- and I give you three guesses which one went.

Can't stand it. Too many amps, too much volume, it's just flat-out ear assault. Speedy guitars leave me not feeling detached but physically upset. When you think of all the subtleties that were built into the guitar and amps for you to discover they completely cover the whole lot with a rack of effects. The guitar doesn't need that.

If you don't have an album or you don't have any tune, you can't start.

I've tried to become a singer with the guitar and not let any technological licks run my life. Just write the licks and play them as best as I can as a part rather than ad libbing.

I never really felt at home with that - the headbands, the roses, the feet, the peace sign, all that bollocks. That wasn't me at all; I felt like a fish totally out of water during the mid-'60s thing.

If you can make it sound exciting with a joke drum machine, you know you've got something.

Things turn out better by accident sometimes. But you can't organize accidents.

Nowadays music is as disposable as a McDonald's wrapper.

... by far the most astonishing guitar player ever has got to be Django Reinhardt ... Django was quite superhuman, There's nothing normal about him as a person or a player.