Survey’s indicate about 5% of all American adults admit to experiencing tinnitus. I use that qualifier in my first sentence because many people do not admit to having unintentionally damaged their hearing; especially musicians and audio “professionals” (using the term very tightly tied to the monetary definition of “professional”). Using that conservative number, at least 16 million US citizens are hearing tones (and probably voices for a loony percentage of that group) that don’t exist in the acoustic world. There is a financial reason for not admitting to tinnitus for many people in music, so expecting honesty from a group that is incentivized to lie about hearing deficiencies is irrational. For example, a recording engineer who admits his hearing is damaged badly enough that silent moments in a mix are filled with a variety of unrelated tones needs a younger, more physically capable assistant to be useful.
A great description from Dr. Amy Sarow on NPR’s 1A program from a few days ago, “What’s happening for those with tinnitus, the brain is searching for sound. And if you have some degree of hearing loss, which is the case for 80 to 90% of those with tinnitus, the brain says ‘Humm, something isn’t right here.’ And so it starts to increase the spontaneous firing rate of the nerve [intended to receive a specific frequency content] and this hyperactivity creates the perception of sound where there isn’t any.” Something about that “spontaneous firing rate of the nerve” explanation really struck an audible note with me. [pun intended] For years, I used an Automatic Gain Control (AGC) electronic analogy to explain the noises we hear in tinnitus. That wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t entirely accurate either. And it wasn’t even slightly as elegant as the biological explanation.
One of the problems with that analogy is that it implies that the tinnitus frequency is directly related to the note you are hearing. That isn’t always the case. That spontaneous firing rate is likely to be more of a mechanical value generated by resonances in the nerve than a tone-loss relationship. I used to believe that the tinnitus tones were the frequencies lost by the hearing damage and that is also only sort of true.
More importantly, though, it is absolutely useful to understand that the very narrow spectrum of sounds that a typical hearing test provides (see at left) don’t give you much of a picture of potential damage. For example, you might test in the “normal” range at 1000Hz, but be functionally deaf at 1100Hz. Noise-induced hearing damage can be that specific. That mitigates against the value of a traditional, low-tech audiologist’s office test, but it really makes the new over-the counter programmable hearing aids look like the ideal choice for anyone even moderately technical.
90% of the British Invasion went over or under my head. I was not a Beatles fan, but I liked the Who a lot and Stones fairly well. The rest of that lot was just elevator noise. But Jeff Beck changed my world. And now he’s gone. Since I heard the news, last night, I’ve had my office stereo system on an endless Jeff Beck loop. I own eight of his eighteen albums, plus two Yardbirds records, which amounts to about seven hours of non-stop Jeff Beck. Not nearly enough.
Geoffrey (Jeff) Arnold Beck (24 June 1944 - 10 January 2023) was four years older than me and light years beyond me musically from the moment I first noticed his guitar playing in “Jeff’s Boogie” on the 1966 Yardbird’s record (on Epic Records at the time, in “Simulated Stereo”). A friend and I travelled from Dodge City, Kansas to Denver, Colorado in ‘66 to see the Yardbirds. Specifically, to see the guy who played “Jeff’s Boogie.” Sadly, I don’t remember a lot about that show. It was in a fairly small venue, there were a pile of those weird looking Jordan amps on the stage, we weren’t able to get particularly close to the state, and I didn’t learn a thing from watching Jeff play. He was at least that far over my head when he was 21 and I was 17. I stupidly thought his guitar was fretless, based on his fluid technique and went home to rip the frets out of my Airline electric, rendering it useless.
The second time I saw Jeff in concert was in 1976 at the Music Hall in Omaha’s old Civic Auditorium. He was touring to promote the “Wired” album with the Jan Hammer band; Believe it or not, Billy Joel’s band was the intro act; talk about an odd couple. Mrs. Day and I had front row seats, stage right smack between Hammer’s keyboards and where Jeff stood. There was nothing between me and Jeff except a few feet and I still learned . . . nothing from watching him play. The band I was in at the time covered “Freeway Jam” and often ended our practices with “Scatterbrain.” “Scatterbrain” was slightly past my level of competence, which is why that song did not make it into our setlist, ever. There was a moment when Jeff appeared to be concentrating and I briefly imagined that if I could just get to the point where I could play the song at that speed, I’d have finally caught up to Jeff after a decade of floundering in his wake. Then, he noticed that Hammer was waving a scarf over his head while he played the song’s Lydian scale riff. Jeff walked over to Hammer, had a short conversation, and he laughed and they began to double-time the song (roughly the tempo of this 1976 live recording). At the new impossible pace, he didn’t look even slightly pressured.
Around that time, poor, sad little no-solo-hit-wonder John Lennon was whining about the credit George Martin received for turning their pitiful little bar band into a massive success, “"When people ask me questions about 'What did George Martin really do for you?,' I have only one answer, 'What does he do now?'” What George was doing about that time was Jeff’s “Blow by Blow” and “Wired.” Can anyone remember anything other than “Give Peace a Chance” or “Whatever Gets You Through the Night” from post-Beatles-Johnny? One more reason I do my best to avoid Beatlemania.
This is a quirk, I know, but vocal music rarely connects to me emotionally. Blow by Blow's "Diamond Dust" is one of the songs that practically reduces me to putty, especially when I'm listening to it on headphones. Pat Metheny's "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" is another song that effects me that strongly. This Rolling Stone interview has Jeff talking about the clarity of sound, purpose, and musicality George Martin brought to the studio and Jeff's music: "Jeff Beck Remembers George Martin: ‘He Gave Me a Career’." This one of my favorite stories from that interview, "Beck has particularly vivid memories of the album’s last track, the gorgeously orchestrated 'Diamond Dust.' When they first cut the song, Beck thought his band’s version 'sounded a bit lame.' But Martin suggested adding a string section to emphasize the drama in the melody. 'When he finished it, he came wafting in and said, 'This reminds me of a French love movie!'' Beck laughs. 'I said, ‘You’ve just spoiled the whole effect! I might not put it on the album!’ He didn’t realize it was the worst thing he could have said to me. But I thought it was beautiful. George lit a fire under it.”
In 2011, my daughter Holly (through a connection from her Guitar One column of the time), got a couple of amazing seats at the Minneapolis State Theater for Jeff’s group of the moment. I swear my wife was the only non-guitarist in the audience. Every time I looked away from the stage at the audience everyone around me was fumbling air guitar, totally baffled at every note Jeff played. Me too, of course. Finally, I learned something from watching Jeff play, “There are no picks in his fingers!!” said my hillbilly-self probably out loud to nobody in particular. Holly, of course, had figured that out either before or after the interview and we had a conversation about my big breakthrough. I watched some YouTube and learned even more. Jeff’s biography documentary, Still on the run: the Jeff Beck story, gave me more insight than I needed or wanted to know about his genius. As Jan Hammer said, “Jeff is the guy who took the instrument of guitar into the furthest reaches of guitar universe and nobody ever - nobody even comes close.“
I think I’m going miss his smile the most. Not just that he was having a great time on stage, but that “Did you see what I just did?” look that every guitar player within earshot heard, saw, loved, and desperately wished they could do. Even at 78, he was pulling off stuff nobody else in the world could do. Nobody. We’ll never hear anything like Jeff Beck again.
This is one of the few moments I wish I could believe in a life-after-death. The world would be far less empty if I could imagine Jeff is still playing guitar somewhere, anywhere. Today, his live version of “Elegy for Dunkirk” seems particularly sad and relevant. When I saw him perform this song live at the State Theater in Minneapolis in 2011 (not listed on the setlist, but he did play it), it was heart-stopping then. Today, a part of me wishes my heart had stopped with his.
