Top 30 Jeff Beck Quotes

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.

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?

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.’

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.’

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

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

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

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.’

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

I like the wildness of Buddy Guy.

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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 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 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.

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