The signature tune Jeff Beck called awful: “I could care less if people like it”
Most classic artists have a troubled relationship with their iconic songs. These tunes often play a crucial role in their rise to fame, but there’s a fine line between a record that elevates an artist and one that becomes an albatross around their neck. Jeff Beck seemed immune to this burden given his track record for timeless instrumentals, yet he still thought ‘Freeway Jam’ was far from his finest hour on Blow By Blow.
For someone who had just left The Yardbirds, though, Beck was in a bit of a unique position. Eric Clapton had already shown the world what was possible after leaving the blues rock troubadours, and Jimmy Page was about to set the rock scene on fire with Led Zeppelin, so it wasn’t out of the question for Beck to reach even further as well.
While he eventually got Rod Stewart in the group to sing alongside him, Beck usually did his best work with his fingers. Across every minute of Blow By Blow, his melodies on guitar are far better than anything a singer could have hoped to write over the top of them, especially when interpreting songs like The Beatles’ ‘She’s A Woman’, which manages to sound even more aggressive than Paul McCartney’s vocal.
Considering that every other song was carefully constructed, the idea of having ‘Freeway Jam’ towards the end wasn’t a bad idea at all. It’s one thing to get the audience to pay attention to everything the guitar is saying, but having a small moment to tear it loose and play whatever you want was a good alternative to being tied to the same melodic line.
Still, that didn’t stop Beck from dragging it through the mud, eventually telling Guitar World, “Actually, I hate that tune! It’s pretty awful. I could care less if people still like it. It felt like a slowed-done Irish reel to me.” Then again, it’s saying something when one man’s botched job is the litmus test for what other guitarists use as a model.
Regardless of Beck’s feelings about it, ‘Freeway Jam’ feels more like a right of passage for any guitar player these days than an actual song. Whereas most try to get ‘Smoke on the Water’ or ‘Iron Man’ under their fingers first when starting on the instrument, ‘Freeway Jam’ is the kind of track that shares a similar relationship with Van Halen’s ‘Eruption’, almost like a challenge for other players daring them to figure out how they came up with it.
Although Beck wanted to separate himself from the entire record after a while, there’s no denying that he captured a little bit of magic here. Fresh out of The Yardbirds, most of Blow By Blow is the sound of a guitarist restless within his own artistry and trying desperately to break some new ground, and a lot of that brilliance does come down to ‘Freeway Jam’.
There is a definite theme running throughout the song, but just because it’s a jam doesn’t mean that it’s a lesser version of Beck’s catalogue. If anything, it was an opportunity for Beck to find his groove, and this is one of the meanest that he had ever put on tape.
