The Jeff Beck Group: Beck-Ola (Remastered + Expanded) CD Track Listing

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The Jeff Beck Group Beck-Ola (Remastered + Expanded) (1969)
Beck-Ola (Remastered + Expanded)\n2006 Epic/Legacy\n\nOriginally Released June 1969\nCD Edition Released March 26, 1991\nRemastered CD Edition Released July 4, 2000\nUK Remastered + Expanded CD Edition Released June 15, 2004 \nUSA Remastered + Expanded CD Edition Released October 10, 2006\n\nAMG EXPERT REVIEW: When it was originally released in June 1969, Beck-Ola, the Jeff Beck Group's second album, featured a famous sleeve note on its back cover: "Today, with all the hard competition in the music business, it's almost impossible to come up with anything totally original. So we haven't. However, this disc was made with the accent on heavy music. So sit back and listen and try and decide if you can find a small place in your heads for it." Beck was reacting to the success of peers and competitors like Cream and Led Zeppelin here, bands that had been all over the charts with a hard rock sound soon to be dubbed heavy metal, and indeed, his sound employs much the same brand of "heavy music" as theirs, with deliberate rhythms anchoring the beat, over which the guitar solos fiercely and the lead singer emotes. But he was also preparing listeners for the weakness of the material on an album that sounds somewhat thrown together. Two songs are rehauls of Elvis Presley standards ("All Shook Up" and "Jailhouse Rock") and one is an instrumental interlude contributed by pianist Nicky Hopkins, promoted from sideman to group member, with the rest being band-written songs that serve basically as platforms for Beck's improvisations. But that doesn't detract from the album's overall quality, due both to the guitar work and the distinctive vocals of Rod Stewart, and Beck-Ola easily could have been the album to establish the Jeff Beck Group as the equal of the other heavy bands of the day. Unfortunately, a series of misfortunes occurred. Beck canceled out of a scheduled appearance at Woodstock; he was in a car accident that sidelined him for over a year; and Stewart and bass player Ron Wood decamped to join Faces, breaking up the group. Nevertheless, Beck-Ola stands as a prime example of late-'60s British blues-rock and one of Beck's best records. \n\n[In June 2004 EMI released a digitally remastered edition of Beck-Ola featuring four previously unreleased bonus tracks: "Sweet Little Angel," "Throw Down a Line," and early versions of "All Shook Up" and "Jailhouse Rock."] -- William Ruhlmann\n\n\nAMG EXPERT REVIEW: A year after Jeff Beck recorded Truth, he came back with the even heavier Beck-Ola. Although the songwriting seems diluted, and the addition of Nicky Hopkins on piano added spice in all the wrong places, Beck-Ola is still a gut-slamming good time. Notable tracks include "Spanish Boots" and "Plynth (Water Down the Drain)." -- Tom Graves\n\nAmazon.com Editorial Review\nWhile Truth, the first Jeff Beck Group album, has often been touted as the blueprint for Led Zeppelin and much of the bombastic blues rock that followed, the group's sophomore outing arguably comes closer to fitting that bill. Which is to say it's decidedly heavier, if less ambitious and more narrowly focused, than its heralded predecessor. Beck and company (a young Rod Stewart in peak form, Ron Wood on bass, Tony Newman on drums, and here augmented by keyboardist Nicky Hopkins) don't get much more adventuresome here than reworking Elvis Presley chestnuts "All Shook Up" and "Jailhouse Rock" with almost comic lugubriousness, especially in the drunken, sinewy tones the ax prodigy coaxes from his instrument. That tightening of dynamics thus transforms the lovely Hopkins instrumental showcase "Girl from Mill Valley" into a placid island in a sea of greasy grooves. Truth gave us Beck's tasteful, if quirky heart, Beck-Ola is a jolt of his prodigious musical libido--and damned if less almost isn't more. This reissue features a long overdue remastering from the original source tapes. --Jerry McCulley \n\nAMAZON.COM CUSTOMER REVIEW\nJeff Beck Group's : Play Loud, April 15, 2006 \nBy J P Ryan (Waltham, Massachusetts United States)\n"Truth" was a forward looking, meticulously recorded excercise in hard rock blues power, folk and exquisitely controlled dynamics, a template for Led Zeppelin's debut the following year sonically, and structurally, with its exploration of hard rock and acoustic contrasts (Pages's famous 'light and shade' phrase comes to mind) and Beck and Stewart's guitar/voice call and response, not to mention riffs and rhythms(play "Ain't Superstitious" right after "How Many More Times," or "Shapes Of Things" after "Good Times Bad Times") and even actual songs ("You Shook Me" is all Beck guitar raunch, with deep supple bass, but fleet and under three minutes). The JBG, after a year-an-a-half of nonstop gigs and schizoid Mickie Most-produced singles, created an exciting and powerful statement,and even more than Cream wrote a blueprint for the direction hard rock would take in the next two decades, not just Led Zep, who clearly borrowed heavily but did forge their own identity while Beck's greatest lineup was allowed to fall apart in acrimony, but others later in the '70s such as Bowie (Beck's playing clearly influenced Mick Ronson and the pair used "Truth" engineer Ken Scott to capture the vivid sound of their early '70s classics) to lesser lights AC/DC and Van Halen. \n\n1969's "Beck Ola" is something else, almost unbelievably wild, with its pedal to the floor and sometimes veering off the highway in a crash of ripped metal and glass shards. The sound is all grungey guitar skronk, vast, deep, rumbling bass from Ron Wood, and wry, witty lyrical variations on usual blues-rock themes from Rod Stewart, who had certainly evolved into a more confident lyricist and singer. They reinvent a pair of Elvis classics, stunning in an era of rote rock and roll nostalgia (recall Cat Mother or Sha Na Na or the countless Chuck Berry covers revisited by less inspired bands) and everyone plays with such unrestrained intensity and abandon they inspired Hendrix ("In From The Storm") and somehow made a record that recalls the Stooges for sheer incendiary impact. New drummer Tony Newman attacks his kit, in contrast to the stylish minimal funk of Motown influenced Mick Waller, a classy musician for any drummer to replace. The sound on the second album is harsh, dense, its amphetimine energy focused and astonishing and chaotic, exuding the go-for-broke feel before the music and the band implode a month after the album's release, unable to even pull something together for Woodstock. Rod Stewart and Ron Wood had clearly developed a partnership (extended into the Faces' great career and Rod's absolute best-ever solo work), and wrote the majority of the material, sometimes abetted by pianist Nicky Hopkins, Newman, or Beck himself. The closing "Rice Pudding" is a tour-de-force of hard riffing, lyrical passages, and a stunning range of guitar comping and effects, yet it's never self-indulgent, and the band more than keeps up with Beck. The tape-splice ending, of course, was famously appropriated by the Beatles for "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" a few months later. The one quiet, almost meditative moment, a gorgeous soul-ballad, a lovely and slow-simmering instrumental courtesy of Hopkins, is one of the late pianist's most accomplished creations - and that's something for a guy who played on classics by the Stones, Beatles, Kinks, Who, and Airplane to name a few. Norman Whitfield's work with the Temptations likely influenced the congas and hard funk of "Plynth," which the Faces revisited as a slashing slide guitar feature. The 2005 U.K. remaster (on EMI) is a superior transfer to the US version for detail and color and overall excitement, though I'll admit the dryer sounding US edition an interesting contrast - it may may be mastered from an original U.S. master. EMI's reissue of Donovan's "Barabajagal", featuring three collaborations with this edition of the JBG group, has a noteably different feel (and even some different mixes) from the US edition. Both artists were produced by Mickie Most, and both had their work issued by Epic in the U.S. \n\nFinally, the bonus cuts are most welcome: an 8-minute slow blues (B.B. King's "Sweet Little Angel,") highlighted by truly scorching guitar - a massive and awsome sound - was recorded in November 1968, in between the band's two albums, with Mick Waller still on drums. Hank Marvin's "Throw Down A Line" is a fascinating track, evidence of Beck & co.'s interest in Motown and contemporary r&b and funk. The lyric has some understated social commetnary not unlike Norman Whitfield's work of the period ("Plynth" from "Beck-Ola" suggests the Group's Norman Whitfield influence, but with a harder, more aggressive approach. "Throw," has a more deliberate pace, a brooding track with slow burning guitar coming to the fore during the last minute. "All Shook Up" (recorded in January 1969 - "Beck - Ola" was recorded that April) again is less ferocious than the later take, funky rhythm and a cleaner sound with splashes of Beck's edgy guitar. Finally "Jailhouse Rock" is even more absurdly low-end than the album version, a fat rubbery bass rattling the windows, a great one to have but not superior to the take the band chose for the final cut. \n\n\nAMAZON.COM CUSTOMER REVIEW\nOuch! My Ears!, March 29, 2007 \nBy Bop Man (USA)\nTo better understand Jeff Beck's Music, you must better understand Jeff, first. Considered by many to be the best Rock guitarist of all time, he didn't always receive the recognition that he thought that he deserved. Having to step in as a replacement guitarist for Eric Clapton when he joined the Yardbirds may have fanned the flames in the beginning. And after pioneering in Distortion, Feedback, and Fuzz Tone, he dropped out and formed his own band, but before the TRUTH album was released, Jimi Hendrix came to town and stole some of Jeff's thunder, doing exactly the same things Jeff was doing on stage years earlier with the Yardbirds. If that wasn't bad enough, Jeff had a fit when he heard those early Led Zeppelin records. His good pal, Jimmy Page, stole alot of his ideas and drove them into the ground! (By the way, whatever happened to "Pagey"?) So Jeff really had an ATTITUDE by the time BECK-OLA was recorded. There's alot of Thunder and Lightning on this record! Perhaps those Zeppelin Lps helped steer Jeff in this direction after all, because it was a complete departure from the TRUTH album. BECK-OLA has a Live feel to it, and alot of noise, too. There was alot of tension within this group at the time, getting ready to explode, and it did. Too Bad. \n\n\nHalf.com Details \nProducer: Most, Mickie \n\nAlbum Notes\nPersonnel: Jeff Beck (guitar); Rod Stewart (vocals); Nicky Hopkins (piano); Ron Wood (bass); Tony Newman (drums); Micky Waller (drums).\nRecorded at De Lane Lea, 1969.\n\n2000 CD Edition Digitally remastered by Chris Herles.\n2006 CD Edition Digitally remastered by Vic Anesini (tracks 1-7) and Peter Mew (tracks 8-11)\n\n1969's BECK-OLA would prove to be the last Jeff Beck album featuring the vocal talents of Rod Stewart and future Rolling Stones guitarist Ron Wood (although Wood plays bass here). An all-time '60s heavy rock classic, BECK-OLA proves that this Beck lineup could have ruled the hard-rock roost had it remained together just a bit longer (the group split up right before a scheduled appearance at the Woodstock festival). Still, you can't go wrong with a pair of turbo-charged, radically reworked Elvis Presley covers ("All Shook Up" and "Jailhouse Rock") or the Led Zeppelin-worthy stomp of "Spanish Boots."\n\nIndustry Reviews\n4 stars out of 5 - BECK-OLA signified an ability to fuse guitar heroics with post-British blues boom vitality, plus a side order of West Coast whimsy...\n\n\nROLLING STONE REVIEW\nThis is a brilliant album, dense in texture, full of physical and nervous energy, equally appealing to mind and body. There is a guiding intelligence which enables these five excellent, assertive musicians to work with and not against each other. The group benefits from the addition of Nicky Hopkins, the most perfect of rock pianists (although his playing is sometimes over-shadowed by the electrical sturm and drang around him, something of an occupational hazard for pianists). Ron Wood's very prominent bass provides the rhythmic background of the album, and Tony Newman's drumming is solid and wonderfully varied, especially on "Spanish Boots" and "Plynth," Rod Stewart's voice is a little high and raspy, but this is a matter of personal taste; the singing itself is emotive, displaying a good grasp of blues-rock singing technique. The rasp, in fact, is somehow appropriate; it's really the vocal equivalent of electric distortion.\n\nBeck himself, of course, is the star. His playing doesn't quite have the excellence and logic of Clapton, but his ideas are unsurpassed. Outside of Jorma of the Airplane, Beck plays the most unpredictable guitar lines in rock, yet manages to combine them with a heavy blues feeling. He is capable of enormous speed and precision, yet his technique is almost always in service to a fertile, bizarre imagination. Listen to the eastern, Arab quality of his playing on the Yardbird's "Heart Full of Soul" and "Over Under Sideways Down." Beck miraculously manages to adapt this quality to a straight blues--the most obvious case being "Let Me Love You" on Truth--a very unlikely fusion.\n\nMuch is made of Beck's egotism (in concert he will interrupt a song to play, by himself, Earl Scrugg's "Beverly Hillbillies Breakdown"), but really, he has the resources to support it.\n\nTruth, the other Beck album, contained individually outstanding cuts, particularly some ingenious reworking of traditional blues, but the entire album was not so much good or bad as patchy. "Greensleeves" and "Ol' Man River" came across as fillers, and another cut was an old B-side. Beck-Ola has greater esthetic unity, but the problem of working up material still remains. The new album has only seven cuts (five of which are original) and a playing time of under thirty minutes.\n\nBeck-Ola includes two oldies, "All Shook Up" and "Jailhouse Rock". While Beck throws in a little new-fangled feedback on the latter, the original echo, sounding very campy by now, is preserved for Stewart's voice. This cut contains the strongest vocal performance of the album (Stewart's best singing altogether is on a very soulful number called "Drinking Again," which for some reason is not on the album). The Beck Group's "Jailhouse Rock" boils with all the virulence the Fifties could muster. There's a change of pace with "Girl From Mill Valley"--a lovely, wistful gospel tune written by Hopkins, which towards the end teeters unfortunately on the edge of Mancini-land. The addition of a vocal part would have made it even better.\n\nThe last cut, "Rice Pudding," is teeming with ideas. There's lots of rhythmic interest and a driving, syncopated riff which is returned to regularly as if for recharging when the semi-improvisations start to wear thin. There is the same kind of mood control, even metabolic control, which the Stones displayed on cuts like "The Last Time." In the middle of the finale, the tape is cut, leaving the listener hanging unmercifully in the group's thrall until the release of the next album. (RS 39 -- Aug 9, 1969) -- BEN GERSON
This rock cd contains 11 tracks and runs 48min 43sec.
Freedb: 9f0b690b
Buy: from Amazon.com

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