'I feel that I'm kind of underrated...'

In 2008, Harvey Goldsmith got a phone call that changed his life...and revived Jeff Beck's career.

- By Gary Graff

Harvey Goldsmith received a surprising phone call during late 2008. “I had just literally arrived in New York,” Goldsmith, the U.K.’s best-known concert promoter, recalls via Zoom from a holiday in Portugal, the day after Beck’s death was announced. “She said, ‘I’m sitting here with Jeff Beck.’ I said, ‘Oh, that’s nice, send him my best,’ and she said, ‘He wants to talk to you.’”

Beck got on the phone. “‘When are you coming back?’ I said, ‘I’ve only just got here. Why?’” Goldsmith continues. ‘And he said, ‘I feel that I’m kind of underrated and not really being recognized the way I feel I should be. Can you help?’”

That question would kick off a relationship lasting more than five years, during which Goldsmith helped to raise Beck’s profile considerably in both music and pop culture. And while they did not necessarily end as lovers, as the song says, Goldsmith was, like many others, devastated by the death of someone he considered an amazing musician and an equally “amazingly good-natured soul.”

Goldsmith and Beck knew each other. In addition to promoting shows and tours, Goldsmith helmed landmark events such as the Concerts for Kampuchea, Live Aid, benefit shows for the Prince’s Trust and the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concerts and had worked with Beck on the ARMS Charity Concerts for Multiple Sclerosis during 1983. The two had also crossed paths when Goldsmith was helping Mick Jagger put together solo tours during the mid-and late-80s and Beck was slated to be part of the band.