Vivian Campbell on Jeff Beck: “It was equally inspiring and depressing to witness him live. You go there thinking you’re a guitar player and leave realizing you’re a guitar owner!”

“I first saw Jeff when he toured with Stevie Ray Vaughan on the Guitar Shop album. I saw their co-headline tour at a sports arena in downtown LA. It was equally inspiring and depressing to witness Jeff Beck play live. You go there thinking you’re a guitar player and you leave realising that you’re a guitar owner!

“He was just in a league by himself. He was in a class of one. There was no-one who did what Jeff did. It was technical, but there’s nothing anyone can play that somebody else can’t figure out. You could get yourself a Strat like he played and with enough practice you could play like Jeff Beck, but what was amazing about Beck was always the inspiration. It was the ideas that he had.”

The floating bridge

“In later years he got into playing that Strat with the floating bridge. The way that he would play with his fingers – to play any sort of guitar music with your fingers is incredibly liberating. You’re opening up these avenues that just don’t exist to those of us that play with a flat pick. It’s not unusual to go to Nashville and see people play with their fingers.

“In bluegrass or country that’s expected, but to use those techniques and expand upon those techniques and in more of a rock format was something that hadn’t been done before. His expanding on those techniques involved pinched harmonics with his thumb, just getting all sorts of tonal delicacy that you don’t get using a pick, all whilst controlling the volume with his pinky, swelling and giving the guitar that majestic effect.”

The master of reverb

“Jeff obviously grew up in the era before we had all these fancy guitar effects that we have nowadays. He was a master exponent of reverb, which I think is overlooked. Reverb was it, basically, and tape delay. He had a very cultivated ear for the use of reverb. It kind of went over my head the first time I would listen to some of his stuff, and then I go back and think, ‘Oh, it sits so well there because it’s a very clever use of reverb.’”

The Jeff Beck experience

“It all mostly comes down to: ‘How the fuck did he think of that shit?’ All other guitar players, we have our patterns we’d always go back to, your physical patterns to play your licks. Jeff did that on occasion but more often than not he was exploring. He seemed to be just pushing boundaries and exploring ways to express himself beyond the norm. That was always the appeal to me, and then to witness it live.

“To witness any music live is a much more immersive experience and that’s really what it’s all about. To go to a Jeff Beck show and to surround your body with the majesty of his music was just a great uplifting experience, but then you go home when you look at your guitars and it’s like somebody let all the air out of a balloon. I didn’t know if I wanted to play them or sell them!”

Big boots to fill

“I didn’t set out to try an emulate Jeff on my cover of Led Boots [from the tribute album Jeffology, 1995]. That’s just how I was playing at that time. I was using the Tom Anderson Strats, so I also had a floating bridge, albeit a Floyd. That wasn’t so terribly long after the Guitar Shop album, which was a big album for me.

“I did like being able to have the floating bridge and shimmer chords, to get that more lyrical vibrato on single notes, and to do interesting things when you pull up on the bridge.

“I guess obviously I’ve been influenced by Beck to an extent and I think that was probably the zenith of it around that time. I’m not conscious of having any particular licks in the song where I’m like, ‘Oh, this is a real Beckism.” It naturally filtered into how I was playing at the time.”

The guitarist’s guitarist

“I was fortunate to see him play live a couple of times. It was akin to a religious experience. It was at the Greek Theater the last time I saw him play. You look around the room and there’s guitar players everywhere like [Etta James/Paul McCartney guitarist] Brian Ray, Steve Lukather, Mike Landau and all these LA session players. We all went to bow at the altar of Jeff Beck because we all felt the same way.”

Master of nuance

“When I was in Sweet Savage, so I was probably 17 or 18 at this time, the other guitarist Trevor Fleming said, ‘Have you ever heard this guy Jeff Beck?’ He gave me a cassette of Blow By Blow. I listened to that for several days and I remember copying a lick from it. That’s still part of my repertoire.

“To be honest it wasn’t life-changing for me to hear that record. It wasn’t until later years when I realised just how head and shoulders above everyone else he was. It was in the later years with the Stratocaster and the floating bridge, that’s when he really became this master of nuance.”

The player

“It’s inspirational that at his stage in his life and his career he would still be wanting to push that envelope and wanting to get there. I don’t get the impression that he thought a lot about wanting to move the goal posts on how the instrument was played. He just did it.

“It seems almost godlike that he had this connection to inspiration when he was playing, and he had the tools in his hands to express it. But I never got the impression that Jeff thought much about guitar playing. I think he just played.”