Poolside with Jeff Beck - Guitar God of Few Words

Tune Up The Motor

In 1991 on a business trip to L.A., I had a few hours to kill. Those days I always stayed at the Sunset Marquis, a block off Sunset on Alta Loma near La Cienega.

One day I had slack time between meetings and decided, instead of trucking down the street to Tower Records, to sit by the pool.

Into the next chaise lounge dropped a scruffy guy with a shag haircut and the large J.C. Whitney High Performance Auto Parts catalog in his hands. JEFF BECK !!!

Nobody makes a guitar sound like Jeff Beck can

We soaked up the sun in silence and with furtive glances aplenty I tried to determine the make & model of car he was parts-shopping for.  No luck though, as that catalog is written in 4-point type, like a phone book.

After a while I caught his eye and said "Are y'findin' anything in there?" Jeff's response was a lackadaisical shrug. "Whatcha lookin' for?" I asked.  "Nothin' in particular. Everything."  Brief silence. "Well, good luck!"

Four years later I had a pair of tickets to see Beck/Santana outdoors on a perfect summer night at Wolf Trap Farms in Virginia, and work interfered. Instead, I gave those tickets to Michael, a young friend and colleague who brought an exquisitely beautiful date for what he described as a splendid, enchanted evening.

I wished I'd been the one to use that ticket - but the following spring, when my friend died of leukemia, I was glad he'd had his own magical night in the company of this guitar god.

The Sunset Marquis: Where Rock Stars and Nobodies Alike May Mingle

...After all, Jeff and I'd already become fast friends!