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Buddy Miles and Jeff Beck on The Midnight Special
- Thread starter Dr. Cheese
- Start date
Jeff beck guitar
Buddy Miles drums
Ollie Brown percussions
Max Middleton keys
Billy Preston keys host
Willie Weeks bass
Quite the band and episode
Got to play w/ Buddy Miles back in the 90's. By that time he was living way too much of the R&R lifestyle. Still a nice guy and I was thrilled to have the opportunity.
“He’d say, ‘That’s really the most dreadful noise I’ve ever heard.’ And I’d say, ‘That’s what I want!’” Jeff Beck and former Beatles producer George Martin made a jazz-fusion classic. It's getting a new look
The guitar legend's 1975 landmark comes to life in a new video released from the 'Midnight Special' archives
www.guitarplayer.com
A bit of sloppy history reporting in that…“He’d say, ‘That’s really the most dreadful noise I’ve ever heard.’ And I’d say, ‘That’s what I want!’” Jeff Beck and former Beatles producer George Martin made a jazz-fusion classic. It's getting a new look
The guitar legend's 1975 landmark comes to life in a new video released from the 'Midnight Special' archives
The article entirely sidesteps the second version of the Jeff Beck Group, featuring Bobby Tench on vocals, Clive Chaman on bass, Cozy Powell on drums, and was the first instance of Max Middleton working with Beck on keyboards. Stylistically a night and day difference from the Stewart/Wood lineup, this band moved on from the hard blues-rock sound to a soulful funky vibe, inspired by Beck and Powell having jammed with Motown musicians including Stevie Wonder. It also served as a transition to what was on Blow By Blow, and the band Beck, Bogert, and Appice certainly did not evolve from this second configuration.
That trio was out of step; what had initially transpired was that the original Beck group(featuring major contributions from keyboardist Nicky Hopkins, who went from session player on the first album to full member on the second)had played gigs with the disintegrating Vanilla Fudge. Beck was impressed with the rhythm section, they wanted to play heavier music, so there was talk of the two camps joining up, retaining Stewart on vocals. The situation with Rod was in no better shape(plus Wood had been an ally), then Beck suffered an auto accident that kept him out of commission in 1970.
Tim and Carmine forged on, enlisting guitarist Jim McCarty and vocalist Rusty Day to form the band Cactus, which was definitely in the mold of the original Beck group and Led Zeppelin. By the time Beck had recouperated, his musical interests were leaning more towards R&B, hence the second JBG, but by the time that group fell apart, and Cactus having run out of steam(approximately late 1972), the three decided to finally give it a go. However, what might have been fresh in '69/'70 sounded dated in 1973…that album was something of a disappointment overall, in spite of the "Superstition" cover, and seemed like a backwards move.
Even Beck knew it. He became enthralled with the emerging fusion movement, the Mahavishnu Orchestra in particular, and having had enough of dealing with frontman vocalists, made the then-bold move of going entirely instrumental. He wisely re-enlisted Middleton for support, plus Chen and Bailey. When he toured the album in the summer of '75(hitting the road with the second Mahavishnu band), he had Bernard Purdie on drums and Wilber Bascom on bass.
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Max Middleton was always my favorite Beck keyboardist, and the second Beck group was always my favorite of his bands with vocals, Chaman and Cozy were studs!
