Jeff Beck - With Jan Hammer Group Live (1977)

 (U.K 1965 - 2023)

I was lucky enough to see their performance at Festival Hall in Melbourne, Australia on Feb 1st, 1977. I was literally Blow by Blown away! This album is a good representation of what I heard on stage and I was in total awe throughout the whole concert.

Jeff Beck with the Jan Hammer group LIVE is an astounding performance captured. It has a really good sound for a live recording, and a wonderful range of music. They seem to be having so much fun on stage together playing this music. My personal favorite is "Scatterbrain" on the B-side, followed by the powerful "Blue Wind". So wonderfully tight, hot, and full of nervous energy. I can only imagine what it felt like to be on stage playing together. Jeff Beck knows how to play as an ensemble player as well as a lead guitarist. This you will hear throughout the performance.

Jan Hammer's uncanny ability to simulate the pitch-bending qualities of an electric guitar on his Minimoog synthesizer made him an explosive duet partner with rock's Jeff Beck on this live album -- the third of Beck's successful flirtations with jazz-rock. While leaning toward the Mahavishnu Orchestra brand of jazz-rock, with the word "rock" heavily emphasized, this is a looser, less lock stepped variant. The song selection is split almost equally between Hammer and Beck's repertoires, with Hammer's remake of his techno/mechanized "Darkness/Earth In Search of a Sun" making the biggest splash.

No precise dates and locations are given for the live recordings. The 'Wired' tour began in June 1976 and ended in February 1977, with 117 shows performed in total.

A&R man Tom Werman suggested that the date at the Astor Theater in Reading, PA (31 August 1976) yielded the best performances, and was going to provide the bulk of the album at the time of his involvement in the project. Beck mixed this along with other recordings at Allen Toussaint's studio in New Orleans. Then Jan Hammer decided to mix the album himself, and did so with Dennis Weinreich at Scorpio Sound Studios in London, England.

The stereo spectrum of this album duplicates the stage set-up with guitar positioned center right, keyboards center left, violin right and drums and bass center.

RIP Jeff Beck  (10/01/2023)

Jeff Beck, one of the most skilled, admired and influential guitarists in rock history, died on Tuesday in a hospital near his home at Riverhall, a rural estate in southern England. He was 78. The cause was bacterial meningitis, Melissa Dragich, his publicist, said.

During the 1960s and ’70s, as either a member of the Yardbirds or as leader of his own bands, Mr. Beck brought a sense of adventure to his playing that helped make the recordings by those groups groundbreaking.

Jeff Beck married Sandra Cash in 2005, and she survives him.

To his fans, and to himself, Beck was so deeply identified with his guitar — particularly the Fender Stratocaster — that he seemed inseparable from it.

“My Strat is another arm,” he told Music Radar. “I’ve welded myself to that. Or it’s welded itself to me, one or the other.”

He once stated “It’s a tool of great inspiration and torture at the same time. It’s forever sitting there, challenging you to find something else in it. But it is there if you really search.”

Jeff Beck was a true legend, an amazingly talented guitarist, and one of a kind. Heartfelt condolences to the Beck family, so very sorry for your loss.

This post consists of FLACS ripped from CD and includes full album artwork for both vinyl and CD formats.  This album is one of my favourite jazz rock albums and was a clever release at the time as it complimented his Blow By Blow and Wired LP's.  It stands as a wonderful tribute to his amazing musical career and contribution to jazz / rock in general. He will be sadly missed.

Tracklist

Freeway Jam   7:22

Earth (Still Our Only Home)    4:38

She's A Woman 4:26

Full Moon Boogie   6:10

Darkness/Earth In Search Of A Sun   7:52

Scatterbrain 7:26

Blue Wind 5:47

Personnel:

Jeff Beck - guitar, bass guitar, special effects

(The Jan Hammer Group)

Jan Hammer - Moog, Oberheim and Freeman string symphonizer

synthesizers, electric piano, timbales; lead vocal on "Earth (Still Our Only Home)"

Tony "Thunder" Smith - drums; lead vocal on "Full Moon Boogie"

Fernando Saunders - bass, harmony vocals; rhythm guitar on "She's A Woman"

Steve Kindler - violin; string synthesizer on "Darkness"; rhythm guitar on "Blue Wind"

 

Jeff Beck/Jan Hammer Live Link (286Mb)