The Late Jeff Beck 'Couldn't Deal' with the 'Looseness' of Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones

12/17/2024 12:45 PM

"I like to have bottled attention and discipline," the late musician said. "Get the damn thing done, and then you can mess around"

Jeff Beck couldn't get no satisfaction as part of The Rolling Stones.

In a resurfaced interview the late musician gave in 2011 to Loudersound, Beck, who died in 2023, said he wasn't compatible with the work style of the iconic rock band.

Beck attempted to join The Rolling Stones after guitarist Mick Taylor left the band in 1974. "I told them I don't do auditions. And I wouldn't have fitted in. I never had any regrets."

"I didn't want to spend my life playing 'Brown Sugar,' " he continued. "I think they'd probably made their best records by then, with Mick Taylor. He gave them a lot. A big old badge of sound."

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Beck also said that their rehearsal process didn't work for him, especially when it came to the frontman. "I couldn't deal with their looseness," he recalled. "I was rehearsing [with the Stones] and I hardly ever saw Mick Jagger."

"When he did arrive, someone else f---ed off. I'm there to work, and they're going: 'Shall we pop over to Las Vegas, or Barbados?' No! I like to have bottled attention and discipline."

"Get the damn thing done, and then you can mess around," Beck continued, calling it "crazy." Beck wound up recording his first solo album that year, Blow By Blow, and released it in 1975.

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In 2023, Keith Richards spoke about the rumors surrounding Beck's attempt to join the Stones. "We felt that Jeff had his own furrow to plow and that he was not a team man," Richards, 80, told Guitar Player.

"He was a soloist to the max. He was such an individualist. It wouldn't have worked with the Stones at all. We're all about teamwork," he continued, emphasizing that despite Beck not matching with the Stones, he was talented nonetheless.

"But don't get me wrong, he was a tremendous player. The odd times we got together, I was always amazed by the stuff that he did with his tremolo bar. He was one of the best, man, and he's going to be missed."

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Jagger, 81, paid tribute to the late guitarist, who was featured on Jagger's first solo album She's the Boss in 1985, on X (formerly Twitter).

"With the death of Jeff Beck we have lost a wonderful man and one of the greatest guitar players in the world. We will all miss him so much."