mynameiskenny's Full Review: Beck-Ola [Remaster] by Jeff Beck Group
If I'm going to be really honest with this review, I'm going to have to admit that the main reason I bought Beck-Ola was the great big apple on the front cover. I mean, look at it! It's just this picture of this small room filled from wall to wall with this one gigantic green apple! Definitely the finest use of fruit as record cover art I've ever seen, even beating out Andy Warhol's infamous yellow banana on The Velvet Underground and Nico.
But there's more to this album than mere fruit flavoring. Jeff Beck, one of the more underrated guitarists of the sixties, was a member of the Yardbirds, playing alongside future superstar Jimmy Page and replacing future superstar Eric Clapton. After leaving the group in '66, he started the Jeff Beck Group with keyboardist Nicky Hopkins, future Rolling Stone Ron Wood, and a pre-suck Rod Stewart on vocals.
On the back of the picture of the enormous green apple, you'll find some interesting liner notes. "Today, with all the hard competition in the music business, it's almost impossible to come up with anything totally original," it reads. "So we haven't." And indeed, the sound of this album is loaded with the heavy blues-riffage that Cream, Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin were all doing in 1969. There are a few things that set this album apart from those bands, however. For one, none of those groups had a piano player, nonetheless one as fantastic as Nicky Hopkins (also a session player for the Stones); he adds a whole new texture to this album. Beck himself bends riffs and spins out solos as well as Jimmy Page or Clapton. Finally, the throaty, soulful singing of Rod Stewart was much different than the screech of Robert Plant, and this album is a reminder that long ago, before he flushed all his talent down the crapper, Rod Stewart was one of the finest vocalists of his time.
Adding to the self-depreciating charge of unoriginality is the fact that two of seven songs on Beck-Ola are covers. Elvis covers, in fact. The covers of "Jailhouse Rock" and the opener, "All Shook Up," both turn old standards from The King into hard-rock gems, filled with Beck's inventive soloing and Rod pours his soul into matching Elvis note-for-note with as much intensity as Elvis had back in his heyday. Beck builds "Plynth (Water Down the Drain)" and "Spanish Boots," (along with most of the songs on the album) with powerful, meaty riffs that hit you with the weight of a giant green apple, Rod Stewart sings his heart out, the other band members match them throughout with pure skill and heart. There are also two instrumentals: The first, "Girl from Mill Valley," is about the only track that isn't an overpowering hard rock number. Instead, it's a beautiful and slow piano piece written by Hopkins and adds a much needed break from the overall heaviness of the entire album. The other, album closer "Rice Pudding," is a seven minute long jam that finishes the album off quite well (although the song itself ends quite abruptly; I'm thinking maybe there's a problem with my copy).
After this album, the Jeff Beck Group were pretty much done. This album didn't turn out to be a big hit, and the creative differences broke the band apart, with Rod Stewart and Ron Wood joining The Faces. Jeff Beck (after recovering from a major car crash in 1970) formed a new Jeff Beck Group, and later the power trio Beck Bogart and Appice. For the most part, Beck's career has been pretty inconsistent since this album; he dabbled in jazz fusion and only sporadically released records from 1970 onward, and he would never again reach the apple-sized heights he had with this album.
Recommended:
Yes
Great Music to Play While: Getting ready to go out
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
![Beck-Ola [Remaster] by Jeff Beck Group](http://di1.shopping.com/images1/pi/59/3d/2b/2001990090-177x150-0-0.jpg)
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.