Rock legend Jeff Beck has passed. Some people's impact is never measured in mega record sales or mainstream recognition. RIP https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/jan/12/legendary-rock-guitarist-jeff-beck-dies-aged-78
Sad, sudden news. I was lucky enough to see him live in 2009 and he was just a wizard of the guitar. He came across as a very shy modest man who was overwhelmed by the response of the crowd in the Ulster Hall (his first time ever in Belfast). Not being a singer or especially a songwriter, he probably didn’t receive the widespread accolades of Clapton, Hendrix or Page, but he was very much the guitarist’s guitarist. In fact, I remember the Observer newspaper used to have an experts’ expert column every week, where they’d ask experts in a given field who their favourite of their craft was. They did guitarists one week and almost all of them (it included Gary Moore, Phil Collen and others) opted for Jeff.
And to add insult, Robbie Bachman has also died. In the words of his brother, Randy, "Maybe Jeff needed a drummer." BTO gets kind of overlooked and marginalized when we think of classic rock, but they rocked pretty hard back in the day.