{"id":331847,"date":"2025-12-23T17:03:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T17:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/331847\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T17:03:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T17:03:11","slug":"the-awful-song-jeff-beck-hated-with-a-passion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/331847\/","title":{"rendered":"The “awful” song Jeff Beck hated with a passion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jeff<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Grant Gouldon)<\/p>\n

Tue 23 December 2025 15:34, UK <\/p>\n

Most classic artists have a troubled relationship with their iconic songs. These tunes often play a crucial role in their rise to fame, but there\u2019s a fine line between a record that elevates an artist and one that becomes an albatross around their neck. Jeff Beck<\/a> seemed immune to this burden, given his track record for timeless instrumentals, yet he still thought \u2018Freeway Jam\u2019 was far from his finest hour on Blow By Blow.<\/p>\n

It is down to the artist to decide on the creations that give them the most pleasure. Audiences are allowed to share their opinions and love or loathe songs as they see fit. But, surely, it is hard to argue against the idea that an artist has the best working knowledge of their own music. Beck had enough experience to know what reached his heights and what didn\u2019t. <\/p>\n

For someone who had just left The Yardbirds, though, Beck was in a bit of a unique position. Eric Clapton had already shown the world what was possible after leaving the blues rock troubadours, and Jimmy Page was about to set the rock scene on fire with Led Zeppelin, so it wasn\u2019t out of the question for Beck to reach even further as well.<\/p>\n

While he eventually got Rod Stewart in the group to sing alongside him, Beck usually did his best work with his fingers. Across every minute of Blow By Blow, his melodies on guitar are far better than anything a singer could have hoped to write over the top of them, especially when interpreting songs like The Beatles\u2019 \u2018She\u2019s A Woman\u2019, which manages to sound even more aggressive than Paul McCartney\u2019s vocal.<\/p>\n

Considering that every other song was carefully constructed, the idea of having \u2018Freeway Jam\u2019 towards the end wasn\u2019t a bad idea at all. It\u2019s one thing to get the audience to pay attention to everything the guitar is saying, but having a small moment to tear it loose and play whatever you want was a good alternative to being tied to the same melodic line.<\/p>\n

\"Jeff<\/a>Jeff Beck on stage with his guitar. (Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still)<\/p>\n

Still, that didn\u2019t stop Beck from dragging it through the mud, eventually telling Guitar World<\/a>, \u201cActually, I hate that tune! It\u2019s pretty awful. I could care less if people still like it. It felt like a slowed-down Irish reel to me.\u201d Then again, it\u2019s saying something when one man\u2019s botched job is the litmus test for what other guitarists use as a model.<\/p>\n

Some of the greatest songs of all time make it from the minds of their creators to becoming held up as standards by which to test other musicians. \u2018Freeway Jam\u2019 has become such a song, like \u2018Stairway to Heaven\u2019 before it. <\/p>\n

Regardless of Beck\u2019s feelings about it, \u2018Freeway Jam\u2019 feels more like a right of passage for any guitar player these days than an actual song. Whereas most try to get \u2018Smoke on the Water\u2019 or \u2018Iron Man\u2019 under their fingers first when starting on the instrument, \u2018Freeway Jam\u2019 is the kind of track that shares a similar relationship with Van Halen\u2019s \u2018Eruption\u2019, almost like a challenge for other players daring them to figure out how they came up with it. <\/p>\n

Although Beck wanted to separate himself from the entire record<\/a> after a while, there\u2019s no denying that he captured a little bit of magic here. Fresh out of The Yardbirds, most of Blow By Blow is the sound of a guitarist restless within his own artistry and trying desperately to break some new ground, and a lot of that brilliance does come down to \u2018Freeway Jam\u2019.<\/p>\n

There is a definite theme running throughout the song, but just because it\u2019s a jam doesn\u2019t mean that it\u2019s a lesser version of Beck\u2019s catalogue. If anything, it was an opportunity for Beck to find his groove, and this is one of the meanest that he had ever put on tape. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Grant Gouldon) Tue 23 December 2025 15:34, UK Most classic artists have a troubled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,30322,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-331847","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-jeff-beck","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}