JEFF BECK & Jimmy Page

As teenagers, they jammed and traded licks. As young men they changed the sound of rock and roll. In 1999, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page sat down to riff about their history together and apart, for a rare reunion of two rock guitar giants.

- BRAD TOLINSKI

TWO OF THESE guitarists, Page and Beck, met as teenagers, and became fast friends, spending hours trading information and jamming together at Page’s house, learning all the latest Scotty Moore, James Burton and CliffGallup licks. Using Jimmy’s two-track tape machine — a rarity in those days — they started making their own primitive recordings. And they got pretty good at playing their guitars — frighteningly good, in fact. Every note they played was unequivocal, brimming with force, passion and purpose.

It’s a fascinating tale how these two players, by using the fundamentals they’d taught themselves and then by merely following their artistic impulses, came to throw off the dull, mannered strictures of ’60s pop and pioneered guitar techniques and sonic advances that would revolutionize and define a new era of rock. Distortion, feedback, power chords, extended jamming, false harmonics, exotic tunings, and the controlled use of the whammy bar — all sprung from the minds and fingers of the two guitarists from the suburbs of Surrey.

Both of you started playing the electric guitar when it was still a relatively exotic and unusual instrument. What inspired you to pick it up?

JEFF BECK I was galvanized by the rock and roll movies of the day, particularly The Girl Can’t Help It [1956], which featured performances by Eddie Cochran, Little Richard and Gene Vincent & the Blue Caps. That movie completely did me in, particularly seeing the Blue Caps, who looked really dangerous. It started me wanting my own guitar.