“I had already become more serious as a guitar player, thanks in large part to Van Halen. Reading up on other guitarists, Jeff Beck’s name kept coming up. Plus, at this point, Blow By Blow was the biggest-selling instrumental record of all time. Everybody seemed to know about it. If I was going to check out Jeff Beck, this seemed to be the logical choice.

“When I first heard it, parts of it were a little over my head. Jeff definitely had some jazz influences, and I wasn’t yet listening to jazz. There’s a Charlie Mingus tune, though it’s treated as something of a blues number. And Scatterbrain is pretty heady, too. It wasn’t long before I started to grasp it, though, and then I really got into it.

“To this day, I’ll put it on and think that it sounds great. It kind of changes the atmosphere.”