An old pal of late rock legend Jeff Beck fondly remembers his love for his guitar.
And apparently not even a pretty lady could come between Beck and his instrument — at least during his early days as the guitarist for the Yardbirds.
PR pioneer Connie DeNave tells Page Six, “I once teased him and said, ‘Any woman meeting you, they’re going to be jealous of that guitar’.”
“[Beck] laughed, and responded, ‘They should be!’,” DeNave recalled.
She was the band’s publicist when they first crossed the pond from England until they split in 1968.
She remembered Beck as being “quiet and very serious about his music.”
“He didn’t want to make a mistake. He might’ve been vulnerable outside as a man, but the music was perfectly safe in his keeping,” she said.
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“In my head, he was always creating or searching — even sitting in a room by himself or in a crowd. Those were the early memories,” she added.
DeNave, 88, is shopping her autobiograhy “I Rocked and I Rolled” about her days as a music publicist for rock bands like the Rolling Stones and Dave Clark Five.
She said Beck, who died suddenly last week after contracting bacterial meningitis, was never affected by the fame as the band got more popular.
Beck replaced Eric Clapton as guitarist in the Yardbirds and was with the band for 20 months.
“He loved that guitar — even when the band broke up, he did what he loved. The music was so solid in him that he didn’t ever walk the halls of fear. He always held on to his music,” she said.
The twice Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee toured with friend Johnny Depp in 2022. People magazine reported that Depp was at his bedside before his death.
