The Jeff Beck Group - BBC Sessions (1967-1968)

In the late 1960s, the Jeff Beck Group was known for featuring Jeff Beck on lead guitar and Rod Stewart on lead vocals. This album consists of songs they played for the BBC (with one exception, which I will explain below). There have been so many official albums of BBC material by different artists over the decades that I'm surprised none of these performances have been officially released.

The sound quality is generally very good, but it's variable. Some of the BBC sessions were recorded very well, some not so well, and some weren't recorded at all and apparently have been lost forever. There also have been multiple versions of some songs floating around on bootlegs. I carefully checked all the versions I could find and picked the best ones. There were only a couple of songs performed more than once that made it to bootlegs. I didn't include any duplicates, because the extra versions weren't that different and has poorer sound quality.

One typical problem with BBC recordings is when the BBC DJs talked over the beginnings or endings of songs. Luckily, the DJs seemed to respect the musicianship of the band enough to not talk over the music much. There were only about three cases where I had to make edits to patch over the talking. Those have "[Edit]" in the song titles.

The song "Shapes of Things" was especially tricky. Sometimes, the BBC performances were broadcast overseas in versions without the DJ talking. That was the case here with "Shapes of Things." Furthermore, by chance, the overseas version was recorded with much better quality. But unfortunately, about a minute of Jeff Beck's guitar solo was edited out of that version. So what I did was I edited the guitar solo in from the lower quality version. There were brief pauses in the music at both ends of the cut out section, so it was easy to add back in. Although the quality for that section is noticeably lower, it isn't so bad since there aren't any vocals there.

As I mentioned above, all the songs here are from the BBC, except for one. That one is "Love Is Blue." Apparently, the band only played the song in concert once, even though they released it as a single. The recording of that song comes from a bootleg with excellent quality - except for the vocals, which are terrible. But since this song is an instrumental, that doesn't matter. Due to the great sound quality, and the lack of any audible crowd noise, I figure it fits in well with the other songs here.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 Hi Ho Silver Lining (Jeff Beck Group)
02 [I Know] I'm Losing You [Edit] (Jeff Beck Group)
03 Let Me Love You (Jeff Beck Group)
04 Stone Crazy [Edit] (Jeff Beck Group)
05 Rock My Plimsoul [Rock Me Baby] (Jeff Beck Group)
06 The Sun Is Shining [This Morning] [Edit] (Jeff Beck Group)
07 Tallyman (Jeff Beck Group)
08 I Ain't Superstitious (Jeff Beck Group)
09 Beck's Bolero [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck Group)
10 You'll Never Get to Heaven [If You Break My Heart] (Jeff Beck Group)
11 You Shook Me (Jeff Beck Group)
12 Loving You Is Sweeter than Ever (Jeff Beck Group)
13 Love Is Blue [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck Group)
14 Shapes of Things [Edit] (Jeff Beck Group)
15 Sweet Little Angel (Jeff Beck Group)
16 Rice Pudding [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck Group)

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The cover art photo is a promotional photo from 1967. Once again, thank to PJ of his "Albums I Wish Existed" blog, who put the cover together for me.