Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop

Jeff Beck | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 12, 1989)
• Original Release Date: October 3, 1989
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B0000026KQ
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  MiniDisc  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (46 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #92,610 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the greatest guitar albums ever recorded, August 24, 2003

By 

Carl Savich (Detroit, MI, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop (Audio CD)

GUITAR SHOP is without a doubt one of the greatest guitar albums ever recorded. This is what playing electric guitar is all about. This album is an essential primer on the electric guitar. GUITAR SHOP comes closest to capturing the futuristic electric guitar elan of the 1960s Jeff Beck sound. There are shades of SHAPES OF THINGS, OVER UNDER SIDEWAYS DOWN, BECK'S BOLERO, TRAIN KEPT A ROLLIN, and HAPPENINGS TEN YEARS TIME AGO. There is the hard rock/heavy metal sound of the Jeff Beck Group as well as the jazz-rock fusion of BLOW BY BLOW and WIRED. There are no words to describe the effect of this album. GUITAR SHOP is Jeff Beck at his very best.

Every guitar player should own GUITAR SHOP. This is what it is all about. This is what virtuosity and musicianship sound like.

The best track on the album is WHERE WERE YOU, which has become a guitar classic and a Jeff Beck signature song. WHERE WERE YOU is arguably the best record Beck ever cut. Jeff Beck composed this track and so put his own musical and artistic vision into it. That is what is so remarkable. We see that guitar playing is all in the mind, not in the fingers or in the amplifier or the guitar brand or the pick you use. It is all in the mind. That is the secret revealed on this album. You cannot teach that. That is why every guitarist in the world should own this album. Every guitarist has to have his or her own voice or musical vision. That is the secret to playing great music. Today, all guitarists play the same styles that they imitate from what they are hyped into believing is the best. Guitarists play hackneyed cliches and unimaginative riffs that are just so much garbage and noise,i.e., musical trash. There is no originality or artistic vision, just copycat, plagiarism, xerox copies of what the "stars" play. It is all musical ... that makes one want to vomit and throw one's guitar in the garbage can or break it against the wall. Guitar music sounds so ... and one-dimensional. Guitar music sounds like it is created by cretins and morons. Yes, it is that bad. But, then, GUITAR SHOP came out in 1989....It was like a blind man who had regained his sight. This was what playing the guitar was all about. And Beck gets some remarkable sounds out of his guitar. SAVOY is just breathtaking. How does Beck do that? Again, it is all in the mind. TWO RIVERS is a remarkable slow ballad. Beck shows that less is more here. He shows what one can do with just a few notes...and some musical talent.

Every song on this album is remarkable and a revelation. It is all killer, no filler. It shows what all the fuss was all about.
Why did Jimi Hendrix want to meet Jeff Beck in 1966 when Chas Chandler brought him to the UK? Why did Jimi listen to and study Jeff Beck's guitar playing? Why did Jimmy Page say that Jeff Beck is the best guitarist that there is? This album shows us why. Beck's vision for the electric guitar is awe-inspiring. It is an artistic vision unlike any other. We all owe Jeff Beck our gratitude for taking the guitar out of the boring and banal into the unexplored country. GUITAR SHOP is more than just another album. It is a milestone. It shows us the possibilities of the guitar.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everything is being Done!, May 3, 2003

By 

Eric E. Weinraub (Issaquah, Washington United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop (Audio CD)

After what most consider a disasterous outing, Flash, Jeff really came roaring back with this one fully decked out with long time contributer Tony Hymas on keyboards and ex-Frank Zappa/Missing Persons drummer Terri Bozzio. I found that if I put this on, I had to listen to the rest until it ended. There is a real continuity and flow that makes each song blend so well together. The production is good and the musicianship is top notch. This would be among my 5 mandatory JB releases, which also includes Blow by Blow, Wired, There and Back, and Truth.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Emotional, innovative guitar work, August 31, 2003

By 

FloydWaters - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jeff Beck's Guitar Shop (Audio CD)

"As far as rock guitarists go he's got to be my all-time hero," says Pink Floyd's keyboardist, Richard Wright, in Record Collector magazine, when he named this album as one of his favorites. "He started as a blues guitarist just like Clapton, but he's investigated the possibilities of the instrument much more. You probably won't know this, but when Syd left Pink Floyd we actually asked Jeff Beck to join, he was our first choice. He was doing OK at the time so he turned us down." Given that Mr. Wright is in a band with a guitar great like David Gilmour, this certainly constitutes a ringing endorsement. Indeed, Jeff Beck is the only guitarist capable of putting a chill down my spine like Mr. Gilmour can. I first heard him play on Roger Waters' solo work Amused to Death and was deeply moved. This album comes from around the same time period, so if you like that style and want more, this is a great place to start.

"There's one track on Guitar Shop called Where Were You? that's just this beautiful, melodic guitar sequence. I loved it so much that I took that feel for an instrumental called Sweet July on my new solo album [Broken China--1996]." How correct Mr. Wright is! This is most definitely the highlight of the album. Mr. Beck seems to sing and cry through his guitar as naturally as if it were his own voice, and how well he pulls at the listener's heartstrings! If you like Pink Floyd's song "Marooned", you should have excellent luck with this track, which I consider to be worth the price of the entire CD.

The rest of the album also amazes me, thanks to how little Mr. Beck uses to create his tone. Rather than relying on heavily in effects the way David Gilmour does, Jeff Beck's strength is pure technique and creativity. Who would think the sound of a guitar (seeming to be) having its strings put on and tuned up could be turned into something innovating and entertaining? Yet this is part of what happens on the title track. I will say that although heavier in parts, listeners should not expect an extremely serious album--there is some definite and quirky humor in places. "Guitar Shop" most certainly, but so is the track with the repeated line "Nothing--nothing is being done!"

Yes, the sound can be rather 80s in places--but Jeff Beck's guitar work is quite simply too mindblowing, too heartwrenching, to turn down. Guitar Shop is certainly a must-have!