When Jeff Beck arrived with the Yardbirds nearly 50 years ago, the departing Eric Clapton’s legend loomed large. Beck then set about dismantling it. Where they had been blues-focused before, Jeff Beck took the Yardbirds into uncharted psychedelia.
His relationship with Clapton, perhaps predictably, had its ups and downs.
“I joined the Yardbirds in February of ’65, and I’d never saw sight or sound of Eric with them before that,” Beck told Guitar World. “My only connection to him was hearing the rest of the band talking about him, that he used to do this, that and the other. I got pretty pissed off with it, like, ‘Shut up, I’m here now!’ For the first couple of weeks, all I heard was, ‘Oh, Eric, the girls love him in this place,’ and I’d say, ‘All right, enough of that!'”
Over the ensuing five decades, both went on to make their names as solo artists, as well. But rarely, save for one-off moments like the ARMS concert in 1983, did the twain meet. Not until five years ago, in fact, did they mount a joint tour — something Eric Clapton told Rolling Stone they couldn’t have done any earlier “because we were enemies, basically.”
Immediately following Clapton into the Yardbirds, however, gave Jeff Beck a different perspective. As the anniversary of his arrival looms, it’s clear that Eric Clapton was both a thorn in Beck’s side and a talisman who spurred him on.
“He said we were enemies, but that was more on his side,” Beck muses. “I was subservient to him when I joined the Yardbirds, because he was such a big ‘face’ there. But when I developed my own wacky style with the Yardbirds albums, I didn’t feel in any way that I was encroaching on his patch at all, nor have I ever since then.”
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