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Jeff: The One, Alone
BLACK & WHITE edition.
342 pages, Hardcover
Published July 1, 2025
About the author
Mick Morris
14 books3 followersMick Morris is a musician and writer based in the South East of England. He was educated at Dover Grammar School for Boys, Mid-Kent College, and the University of Kent at Canterbury (UKC).
Mick has always written, mostly short stories, poems and academic texts, but until 2017, his published work had been confined to strictly musical avenues: songs, CDs, articles for music magazines and the guitar tutor book `Play Straight Away'.
In 2017, he decided to publish a small book about the limerick as a form of poetry. `The Life of The Limerick' proved very popular and, encouraged by its success, he followed up with `Six-String Stories', a compendium of quotes, anecdotes and short stories about the guitar and those that play it. His next book, `Tall Stories' is described as a collection of `fanciful tales of history and imagination'. `Division', described as a Brexit Thriller, is Mick's first full-length novel.
Mick has always written, mostly short stories, poems and academic texts, but until 2017, his published work had been confined to strictly musical avenues: songs, CDs, articles for music magazines and the guitar tutor book `Play Straight Away'.
In 2017, he decided to publish a small book about the limerick as a form of poetry. `The Life of The Limerick' proved very popular and, encouraged by its success, he followed up with `Six-String Stories', a compendium of quotes, anecdotes and short stories about the guitar and those that play it. His next book, `Tall Stories' is described as a collection of `fanciful tales of history and imagination'. `Division', described as a Brexit Thriller, is Mick's first full-length novel.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 14, 2024
If ever a book was a labor of love for its author, it’s this one.
Morris’s book begins and ends with Jeff Beck’s sudden illness and death. In between, while you’re reading the book, Beck is alive, with us in the present again.
That’s what Morris accomplishes.
He begins with Beck’s birth and childhood, with his parents begrudgingly permitting him to swerve away from his father’s love for jazz and his mother’s for classical piano, to his own fascination with fifties rock and roll and rockabilly.
Ironically, or maybe not, as Beck’s career progressed, he never really left any of those influences behind, incorporating jazz flavors and classical turns into his recordings and performances. Who else do you know who has recorded rockabilly, blues, hard rock, surf guitar, jazz/rock/blues fusion, Les Paul tributes, and has accompanied Luciano Pavarotti, and done it all not just masterfully but with his own distinctive interpretations?
We lost Beck, but we have his story, written by a fan and fellow musician.
Morris has done a lot of homework. His book is not based so much on original research as on a mining expedition into everything Beck recorded, every session, every tour, every interview he could get his hands on. It’s all public stuff, but it’s Morris’s own personal experience of Beck’s musical life.
There’s very little here on Beck’s personal life, although it does shine through, maybe more than in other bios — his love for hot rods, his reflections on his career struggles, his frustrations with his own musical direction.
Really, it’s that last theme that stood out most in my own reading. Between the Yardbirds and Beck’s emergence as a dedicated solo player, there were all those groups, albums, and performances that kind of meandered. There were great moments, like Beck’s Bolero, actually recorded while he was still in his Yardbirds days, Morning Dew, Going Down, but there were also odd moments, like Rod Stewart’s Old Man River on the very first Jeff Beck Group album, or Beck’s own acoustic Greensleeves on that same album. When he joined up with Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice, it kind of started to come together, and we thought he had hit his stride.
But we couldn’t imagine what happened next, when he abandoned that blues rock track, and, as Morris tells it, heavily influenced by John McLaughlin and by Billy Cobham’s Spectrum recording, he found a much, much higher, better, more unique stride. That was the stretch starting with Blow by Blow, through Wired, There and Back, and Guitar Shop. Ironically, again, having left any semblance of a popular genre, this was the music that broke through, both in terms of his genius and his financial success.
Rather than compare Morris’s book with the other comprehensive musical biography of Beck (Hot Wired Guitar, by Martin Power), I would just recommend reading both. Morris’s book isn’t perfect. It is independently published and bears some marks in the copy editing and in the printing and binding. And I did trip hard over one mistake — a misidentification of Imelda May as the vocalist on Beck’s You Had it Coming recordings of Rollin’ and Tumblin’ and Dirty Mind (it was Imogen Heap) — but the mistake stood out so starkly just because I’d come to trust Morris’s details on just about everything else.
But what matters is Morris’s contagious love of Jeff Beck’s work, and his ability to make Beck live again as you read. If you’re a Beck fan, you’ll want to read this — you’ll have the same experience i had.
Morris’s book begins and ends with Jeff Beck’s sudden illness and death. In between, while you’re reading the book, Beck is alive, with us in the present again.
That’s what Morris accomplishes.
He begins with Beck’s birth and childhood, with his parents begrudgingly permitting him to swerve away from his father’s love for jazz and his mother’s for classical piano, to his own fascination with fifties rock and roll and rockabilly.
Ironically, or maybe not, as Beck’s career progressed, he never really left any of those influences behind, incorporating jazz flavors and classical turns into his recordings and performances. Who else do you know who has recorded rockabilly, blues, hard rock, surf guitar, jazz/rock/blues fusion, Les Paul tributes, and has accompanied Luciano Pavarotti, and done it all not just masterfully but with his own distinctive interpretations?
We lost Beck, but we have his story, written by a fan and fellow musician.
Morris has done a lot of homework. His book is not based so much on original research as on a mining expedition into everything Beck recorded, every session, every tour, every interview he could get his hands on. It’s all public stuff, but it’s Morris’s own personal experience of Beck’s musical life.
There’s very little here on Beck’s personal life, although it does shine through, maybe more than in other bios — his love for hot rods, his reflections on his career struggles, his frustrations with his own musical direction.
Really, it’s that last theme that stood out most in my own reading. Between the Yardbirds and Beck’s emergence as a dedicated solo player, there were all those groups, albums, and performances that kind of meandered. There were great moments, like Beck’s Bolero, actually recorded while he was still in his Yardbirds days, Morning Dew, Going Down, but there were also odd moments, like Rod Stewart’s Old Man River on the very first Jeff Beck Group album, or Beck’s own acoustic Greensleeves on that same album. When he joined up with Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice, it kind of started to come together, and we thought he had hit his stride.
But we couldn’t imagine what happened next, when he abandoned that blues rock track, and, as Morris tells it, heavily influenced by John McLaughlin and by Billy Cobham’s Spectrum recording, he found a much, much higher, better, more unique stride. That was the stretch starting with Blow by Blow, through Wired, There and Back, and Guitar Shop. Ironically, again, having left any semblance of a popular genre, this was the music that broke through, both in terms of his genius and his financial success.
Rather than compare Morris’s book with the other comprehensive musical biography of Beck (Hot Wired Guitar, by Martin Power), I would just recommend reading both. Morris’s book isn’t perfect. It is independently published and bears some marks in the copy editing and in the printing and binding. And I did trip hard over one mistake — a misidentification of Imelda May as the vocalist on Beck’s You Had it Coming recordings of Rollin’ and Tumblin’ and Dirty Mind (it was Imogen Heap) — but the mistake stood out so starkly just because I’d come to trust Morris’s details on just about everything else.
But what matters is Morris’s contagious love of Jeff Beck’s work, and his ability to make Beck live again as you read. If you’re a Beck fan, you’ll want to read this — you’ll have the same experience i had.
September 30, 2024
Like Jeff Beck, this book is a masterpiece! The author did a remarkable job of bringing the Jeff so many of us knew and loved to life. Jeff was always complicated and emotional, but oh did we love him. I remember my mother complaining about the posters of him I had on my wall in 1973. She said he was so grungy looking how could I be interested in him. I told her that wasn’t fair he just got done working on his car! I had the privilege of seeing him in 2016 and, although he never really spoke to the audience and seemed rather shy, he put on a show that was incredible. Once while in high school a student in one of my classes said he saw him the night before and Jeff didn’t say hello, goodbye or get lost, but it didn’t matter because the guitar did the talking. It did. He was a visionary, a maestro, a legend and a genius. He was also a down to earth man who loved working on his home, his cars, caring for his animals and his beautiful wife. Like his good friend Jimmy Page, he was born and made for the guitar. There will never be another but there will continue to be new fans forever once they hear his magnificence. History will record that we were amongst the most fortunate of people that we were here when Jeff was here. This book was compassionately and lovingly written and for those of us still grieving after nearly two years, I thank you Mick Morris for reminding us of the blessing we received and continue to enjoy because Jeff Beck once walked among us. May he rest in peace.
March 5, 2024
Jeff Beck was the greatest. Mick Morris lays out his legacy in this book.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews