Blow By Blow

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Try to imagine Joe Satriani doing something like 'Echo' in the '80s if "Blow by Blow" had never existed. All in all, I could recommend this to pretty much all jazz-rock fans, most prog rock fans, and people who are looking for some good technical instrumental music. I’ve only ever heard songs from the stereo mix on the radio and boomboxes growing up and this is the only copy I’ve ever owned on LP but this platter is really quiet when it should be and super dynamic. The album is gorgeous sounding, due in part to the ability of the players involved of course, but also the production from George Martin.

When you’re surrounded with very musical people like Max Middleton and Clive Chaman, you’re in a prison, and you have to play along with that. During this period, Beck decided to record an all-instrumental album, bringing back keyboardist Max Middleton from the second Jeff Beck Group. Next, Bailey introduces the listener to the frantic Scatterbrain, one of my favorite songs on the album. Wonder and Beck had become friends a few years earlier and collaborated on Wonder’s 1972 record Talking Book. The mid ’60s were okay, because every day was a hurricane in the Yardbirds and I could afford to look at it with contempt; around me were a lot of things I had nothing to do with, like flower power and awful things like flared trousers.BECK himself delivers some of the tastiest guitar chops in all of the 70s jazz-fusion world ranging from behind the scenes rhythmic backup to fully fueled in the spotlight soloing.

It can get a bit repetitive if you're not used to the type of instrumental song structure at play here, but if you are, you'll love this. Constipated Duck" is the worst titled here and probably lays an egg as the set's weakest track, "Air Blower" blows more hot than cold, sounding at times almost like a forerunner to Stevie's "Contusion" on next year's "Songs In The Key Of Life" aided by Martin's neatly contrapuntal string arrangement and "Scatterbrain" is fussily busy with more Wonder-esque synth work backing crisp drumming and imaginative playing by Beck. Speaking to Classic Rock, Beck cited the track as one of his career-defining moments in a 2018 Classic Rock Magazine interview. Having honed his chops with BBA, BLOW BY BLOW found BECK at the top of his game with jazz funk grooves as the basis for his tasty soling style and rhythmic virtuosity. Its a nice change to be listening to another "fun" Jeff Beck song, after enduring the passionate Cause We've Ended As Lovers.Although both men had been toiling in the British music industry for a decade — Beck dating back to early bands like the Tridents and eventually the legendary Yardbirds—the planned collaboration would be the first time they’d worked together.

Stevie also apparently thought about giving Beck first dibs on "Superstition" but quite rightly nixed that, no doubt the minute he played back his own version. Yes, Beck's guitar is naturally to the fore but often the sonic palette leans towards Wonder's synth-type keyboard sound, which I'm all in favour of, not just because I'm such a fan of his early 70's work, plus I just think it brings an agreeable heat to proceedings to stop the album flying away into the deep-space vacuum-soloing stratosphere. Back to the start then and is that really Beck playing variations on James Brown's "Sex Machine" riff on "You Know What I Mean" and is there some rhyming slang there I'm missing? Reflecting in a 2018 Classic Rock Magazine interview, Beck noted of the track’s particular alchemy: “I couldn’t believe it when we went back and listened to it in the control room.Freeway Jam", from its title on down, is more traditionally rockist which leaves the elegiac "Diamond Dust" to glisten its extended way to the fade, again boosted by a sympathetic Martin string setting. In the words of Duncan himself: “I worked on each detail of the guitar, so that it would be something unique and worthy of Jeff’s talent.

Part two leaps into action with a scream from Keith Moon and the melody line is ditched in favour of multiple interwoven layers of guitar effects including feedback, phase and echo – all rather experimental soundscaping techniques for the time. Like many, Beck was also aware of Martin’s pre-Beatles career producing comedy records (like with Beyond the Fringe, the ensemble that included Peter Cook and Dudley Moore). So here Wonder repays the favour with two tunes, the first "Cause We've Ended Now As Lovers", he'd already produced in a superb vocal version with his then wife Syreeta on her "Stevie Wonder Presents. His virtuoso skill easily outshines other great (and better known) guitarists, like Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page.Arriving at a studio to meet with Martin, he arrived to find the producer sifting through outtakes and sounds from the “Day in the Life” sessions.