Joe Bonamassa has recalled the poetically stormy evening during which Jeff Beck blew his mind with an unforgettable Crossroads Guitar Festival set.
The bluesman was speaking at the recent Crossroads Festival – Eric Clapton’s star-studded charity event, at which he is a frequent performer. Asked to name his favorite memory of Crossroads gone by, Bonamassa is quick to recall a performance where the Weather Gods were on lighting duty.
“My best Crossroads memory [is from] 2010, is Jeff Beck playing Nessun Dorma,” he says. “I was watching him play it from the stands. I snuck out front and as he was playing it, and it was starting to crescendo, this storm cloud had come over, and the clouds were purple.
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“It was the most amazing visual to go along with some of the most amazing guitar playing I’ve ever heard in my entire life.”
A spine-tingling take on the opera classic lifted from Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot, it featured on Beck’s superlative 2010 album, Emotion & Commotion, before he brought it to the stage at Crossroads.
Atop slowly moving strings, Beck, sharply dressed in an outfit seemingly built around his iconic White Strat, put Pavarotti in his place. When people talk about players who can make a guitar sing, this is the kind of example that should be presented; the emotion he gets out of his whammy bar alone is outstanding.
“It’s quite a ludicrous choice,” Beck once told Guitar Player of his decision to take on such an iconic piece of music. “When I heard Pavarotti sing it, I thought, ‘All this is is sophisticated blues.’ He bellows out those notes the way a blues singer would.”
“No one’s done it on guitar, as far as I know,” he added. “It just somehow has a majestic feel, playing simple one-note melodies.”
The song was nominated for Best Pop Instrumental Performance at the 2011 Grammys, though from three nominations, the only award Beck took home that night was for Hammerhead, which won the Best Rock Instrumental Performance.
Beck, who famously turned down the chance to replace Eric Clapton in the Bluesbreakers, passed away in 2023.
Mark Knopfler says he was planning on making an album with Beck before his death, while the last-known recording he made looks unlikely to ever see the light of day.
