Rock guitarist. Civil name Geoffrey "Jeff" Arnold Beck. He was a British rock guitarist and multiple Grammy Award winner. Rolling Stone listed him fifth among the 100 greatest guitarists of all time in 2011. Like many guitarists of the early 1960s in England, Jeff Beck earned his living as a session musician. In 1965 - after Eric Clapton switched to John Mayall - the Yardbirds were looking for a new lead guitarist. Beck was one of the first guitarists to experiment with electronic fuzz distortion and noise. After a legendary but brief lead guitar duet with Jimmy Page, he left the group in late 1966. In early 1967 he released his solo single "Hi Ho Silver Lining/ Beck's Bolero", which became a big hit, Beck sang here himself. In the same year he formed a new band, the Jeff Beck Group, it included Rod Stewart (vocals), Ron Wood (bass), Micky Waller (drums) and Nicky Hopkins (keyboard). The group produced two albums, Truth (1968) and Beck-Ola (1969). In 1968, the psychedelic rock band Pink Floyd wanted to recruit Beck as a guitarist. Tensions developed in the Jeff Beck Group, and in 1969 Stewart and Wood dropped out to join the Faces. Ron Wood then joined the Rolling Stones in 1975. After the second failure of the Jeff Beck Group (which fell apart in 1972), Beck formed the trio Beck, Bogert & Appice (BBA) with Carmine Appice (drums) and Tim Bogert (bass), both formerly of Vanilla Fudge and Cactus. This group also attracted attention mainly in specialist circles and soon disbanded. At least they had a hit with Stevie Wonder's Superstition and Beck played solo guitar in Lookin' for Another Pure Love on Wonder's album Talking Book. In 1975, Beck released an instrumental, very jazz-inspired solo album, Blow by Blow, to critical acclaim. This was followed by a collaborative effort with jazz rock keyboardist Jan Hammer and his band for the album Wired (1976), which also met with great acclaim. During this period Beck also produced two albums by the group Upp, on which he also played himself. In the 1980s and 1990s Beck released albums only occasionally: Flash (1985, including some tracks together with Rod Stewart and Jan Hammer), Guitar Shop (1989), Crazy Legs (1993, a tribute to his idol Cliff Gallup, guitarist of Gene Vincent), Who else (1999), and You Had It Coming (2001). Jeff Beck won the Grammy for the third time in the category of Best Rock Instrumental Performance for his track Dirty Mind from the album You Had It Coming. Along the way, he played as a guest musician in other musicians' projects (for example, Jon Bon Jovi's Blaze of Glory and Roger Waters Amused to Death in 1992). In 2022 Beck released the album 18, a collaboration with Johnny Depp. The same year Ozzy Osbourne's album Patient Number 9 was released, with Beck playing lead guitar on the title track, among others. The gifted guitarist made his last appearance on November 12, 2022 in Reno, Nevada alongside Johnny Depp. Jeff Beck died of bacterial meningitis on January 10, 2023 at the age of 78.

Source: Wikipedia