[GirlySports]

With the 45th pick, 604flames selects Jeff Beck in the guitar category.

One of the most influential lead guitarists in rock, Jeff Beck has helped shape blues rock, psychedelia, and heavy metal. Beck's groups have been short-lived, and he has probably been handicapped by the fact that he doesn't sing, but his aggressive style -- encompassing screaming, bent sustained notes, distortion and feedback, and crisply articulated fast passagework -- has been more important than his material.

He established his reputation with that band, but he left in late 1966 and after a short sabbatical released a version of "Love Is Blue," played deliberately out of tune because he loathed the song. In 1967 he founded the Jeff Beck Group with Ron Wood and Rod Stewart; the band's reworkings of blues-based material laid the groundwork for '70s heavy metal. Clashing temperaments broke up the group after two acclaimed LPs and several U.S. tours. Stewart and Wood went on to join the Faces [see the Small Faces/the Faces entry], and Stewart continued to use drummer Mickey Waller on his solo albums until 1974. Beck was planning to form a band with Vanilla Fudge members Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice when he was sidelined for 18 months with a fractured skull he sustained in a car crash. (A car aficionado, Beck has been in three crashes and was once sidelined for months after getting his thumb trapped under a car.) When he recovered, Bogert and Appice were busy in Cactus, so Beck assembled a second Jeff Beck Group and put out two albums of Memphis funk laced with heavy metal. When Cactus broke up in late 1972, Beck, Bogert, and Appice returned Beck to a power trio format, but weak vocals hampered the band, and it dissolved in early 1974.

Beck then went into the first of many periods of hibernation. In 1975 he reemerged in an all-instrumental format, playing jazzy tunes. He toured as coheadliner with the Mahavishnu Orchestra and started an on-again, off-again collaboration with former Mahavishnu keyboardist Jan Hammer in 1976 with Wired (#16). During the later '70s Beck reportedly spent most of his time on his 70-acre estate outside London. He and Hammer worked together on the 1980 album There and Back, but Hammer did not join Beck for his 1980 tour, the guitarist's first in over four years. In 1981 Beck appeared at Amnesty International's Secret Policeman's Ball, and in 1985 he toured Japan. Flash, which includes Beck's sole charting single, "People Get Ready" (#48, 1985), with Rod Stewart on vocals, and the Grammy-winning "Escape," written by Hammer, peaked at #39. Four years later Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop With Terry Bozzio and Tony Hymas (#49, 1989) garnered the Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. Crazy Legs, an homage to Gene Vincent's Blue Caps and rockabilly guitar legend Cliff Gallup, met with mixed reviews.