Yesterday I made note of a dearth of head-nod-inducing instrumental beats in my cache of new music. Though this beat famine only reared it’s head after the New Year it’s grown troublesome in the ensuing months. Thankfully I have plenty of old LPs chock-full of the beats and grooves that today’s beatmakers might sample when crafting their neck-exercise music to turn to when contemporary artists can’t be counted on to drop the beats that get the nugget moving.
Though he’s best known for his work with The Yardbirds and his collaborations with Rod Stewart & Ron Wood, guitarist Jeff Beck is esteemed by crate-diggers as well. Not for either of those facts. Nor even his status as one of Britain’s pre-eminent Rock guitarists. But for beats. This notoriety stems from the release of his 1976 LP Wired, or more specifically one particular song on that LP. And I guess it would be fairer to credit drummers Narada Michael Walden and Ed Green with the accomplishment, since they’re the ones who actually banged the skins on the song in question. But Beck’s name is the one on the cover, so it’s another feather in his cap.
If Walden’s name sounds familiar, it should. As a producer and songwriter he’s racked up number one hits with the likes of Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin and Mariah Carey, scoring himself a bunch of gold & platinum plaques and other awards along the way. He’s not the only recognizable name in Beck’s band on Wired either. Czechoslovakian composer and keyboardist Jan Hammer, best known for scoring the stylish ’80s cop drama Miami Vice and providing it’s energetic theme-song, is there on synthesizers. Veteran Jazz and Funk sessioner Wilbur “Bad” Bascomb, whose “Black Grass” is a breakbeat classic in it’s own right, handles bass. And it was all recorded under the supervision of producer George Martin, whose work with The Beatles is legendary.
All of the incongruously noteworthy collaborators in the world wouldn’t matter a hill-of-beans if they didn’t have any beats though. But thanks to the oft-sampled Walden-composed tune “Come Dancing” Beck and company have got that more than covered. “Come Dancing” gets it right from jump, with it’s shuffly-but-hard-hitting break right in your face. And when the rest of the instruments — bass, clavinet, guitar — kick in, the result is a bubbly Funky-Jazz jam that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on an old CTI Records release, or any of the records Bob James produced or arranged during the same era.
Since it is after all a showcase for an electric guitar virtuoso, the remainder of Wired isn’t what I would call beat-centric. Beck does give the drummer some again on album opener “Led Boots,” a manic-paced Prog-Rock-meets-Jazz-Fusion joint with grunting clav/bass notes, wailing guitars, screaming synths and a pounding drum-track that strikes a Weather Report-esque pose. And while proggy workouts like “Blue Wind” and “Sophie” are imminently listenable and intermittently groovy, and the album as a whole works wonderfully as background music, the neck knows that “Come Dancing” is the livest wire here.
-El Keter
