At one time, I admired Jeff Beck a great deal. Hero stuff. I got to meet him in Dallas Tx and ya know, he was just a regular guy after about ten minutes. The other worldly nature of his talent became way reasonable after I got to know him just a bit. Crazy? Beck was more regular than Clapton, who impressed me as being both shy and withdrawing at that same Dallas event.
Never meet your idols and expect greatness. The idols fall out.
I had a beer with Roy Buchanan at the bar after a gig he did in Cleveland Ohio at the Agora. It was closing time. Roy was past closing time by miles. Nice, not belligerent as he is often portrayed, but toast. He told me he hated doing no where gigs but he just wanted to play better. He had to gig to make money for his wife and kids, and to play more. He needed to get better, he said. If you don’t know, in 1963 Roy was the most dangerous guitar player in the world. Google the song from’63 called “the jam” Roy plays crazy for ‘63 on that record. Roy had been to prison for dope and quit playing guitar and taken up cutting hair before he was recovered. The man I met could still play with unique techniques and do it live, but he could not sustain that level of performance throughout the gig. He was no longer on a pedestal after that meet, but, was a regular guy more or less. He was never a star like Beck or Clapton either. But I still knew him as one in 1975 even after meeting him, he was just different.
