Steve Rosen’s latest book is titled ‘The Original Punk – Jeff Beck Stories: From Yardbird to the Guitar Shop.’ The author of ‘Tonechaser – Understanding Edward: My 26-Year Journey With Edward Van Halen,’ Rosen originally wrote a book about Jeff Beck back in 1978. ‘The Beck Book’ was the first biography ever published but was only printed in Japan. Rosen has now revisited that book and completely revised and updated it, featuring many new and rare interviews.

Included in ‘The Original Punk – Jeff Beck Stories: From Yardbird to the Guitar Shop’ are archival conversations with key figures in Beck’s life, including Jimmy Page, Stevie Wonder, Ritchie Blackmore, Donovan, Pete Townshend, Frank Zappa, and many more. Many of the artists interviewed here have sadly passed away, making this collection of conversations all the more rare and valuable. For more details and purchasing information, visit Rosen’s site.

The title, ‘From Yardbird to the Guitar Shop,’ indicates what’s inside. Rosen initially interviewed Beck in 1973 and would speak with him three more times through their last conversation in the late ’80s. Thus, the new book focuses on Beck’s very early pre-Yardbirds days and concludes around the release of 1989’s ‘Guitar Shop.’ Here’s a sneak peek at Chapter 2 from ‘The Original Punk – Jeff Beck Stories: From Yardbird to the Guitar Shop’:

Steve Rosen

Chapter 2: Picking Up Broken Pieces

Though [Jeff Beck’s father] Arnold [Beck] had instilled a love of music in his son, he did not measure Jeff’s interminable plucking and plonking on his homemade guitar as anything more than squawks and squeals solely meant to irritate him. Seemingly, he supported his son’s endeavors, encouraging him to indulge in music and arts while at school, but that may have simply been his way of tolerating the noise.

Even his mother, who had tried to push him into church choirs and taking up piano, cello, and violin, could recognize the burgeoning talent streaming from her son’s fingertips. But she too had grown weary and weathered by having to endure barely tolerable sounds emanating from the instrument.

In a landslide of pent-up rage, Papa Beck destroyed Jeff’s most important thing in the world. Demoralized and demeaned, the young bright-eyed boy was not defeated but only grew more determined than ever. “My old man threw it out in the garden because I had a row with him. He busted it and that was the thing I wanted to do so much.”

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Looking at the splintered scraps of the guitar lying there on the ground was a slap in the face. Humiliated and heartbroken, all he could think about was putting the pieces of his dream back together.

“I’d go down to the local music shop and wait ’til the place was pretty packed out and I whipped one of these pickups right out of the shop. It sold for about two pounds, this pickup, which was about six dollars. Oh, boy, I couldn’t have cared if I’d got thrown in jail for six months. I had my pickup and there was a little hole waiting for that pickup for about eight months and it fitted perfectly because I had already got the dimensions from a plan and it just slipped in there with two screws and boy, I was the king!

“I used to deliberately carry my guitar around without a case so everyone could see what it looked like. I used to ride a bike with it, stick it on my back and ride a bicycle. I could see then it just wasn’t a fly-by-night thing because of the expressions on people’s faces when they saw this weird guitar … that was something boring like a violin or a sax in a very stock-looking case. It was bright yellow with these wires and knobs on it. People just freaked out.”

Jeff Beck rose to early fame as a member of the Yardbirds. (John Pratt / Keystone, Getty Images)

And there Jeff began his journey—the great exploration—in tracking down sounds, cataloging them, making sense of them, giving them shape and substance inside his own head. The irresistible urge to cradle an instrument in his own hands, to caress the strings and fondle the smooth and refulgent veneer overwhelmed him. Like a hunter stalking prey, Beck’s senses were heightened as he set out to discover the great woody mammoth.

The pursuit wasn’t always in service of artistry. The response from friends and strangers alike buoyed the young man’s self-image. His devotion to the instrument—his attraction to and awe of the sounds created by its strings—and the important sense of stature instilled in him by the very idea of playing guitar pushed him toward achieving greater musical realization.

The guitar served as an anodyne—a tool that both calmed and comforted him while simultaneously revving him up. If at home his hunger for words of encouragement was never satisfied, all he needed to fill that yearning was strumming a few chords. Prodded by his own common sense—and perhaps gentle parental guidance—he sought out someone with greater knowledge: a teacher—a grand mentor who might impart all secrets that lay within the fretboard through years of playing experience. Alas, this quest yielded nothing but a wasted afternoon.

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“I went for one lesson on a Spanish guitar but not the one my friend loaned me because there were rumors going around my school that you couldn’t possibly play any guitar—any electric guitar—unless you had proper classical training. I was a bit thick then and said, ‘Right, okay, where do we start?’ And I went straight up to the guy who gave lessons—and he knew less than I did.

“I said, ‘Now listen here; if I’m gonna get on, I just better leave and go home,’ because he didn’t even have barre chords right. I’d read up before my first lesson; I learned a few shapes and stuff; I expected this man to teach me everything in minutes. And he said, ‘Right now practice this—no playing; just practice putting your finger across the neck.’ And I went like that [as I am conducting this interview, Jeff is holding my Fender Stratocaster and places a finger on the neck]and said, ‘Right; where do we go now?’ He said, ‘Well that’s it; I want you to go home and practice that for a week.’ I said, ‘Well I at least want to hit the strings once’—and he said ‘No way.’”