El Becko part II

from Guitar World April 1999

GW (Alan Di Perna): There are ethnic flavors
on this record: Arabic, Bulgarian... Do you
listen to a lot of music from that world?

Jeff Beck: Yeah, I was completely smitten
with the Bulgarian Choir - the Mystery Voices.
[Mystere des Bulgares]. That is the deepest music
I have ever heard pass my ears. That and Vishwa Mohan Batt,
this guy who plays slide Indian style. It's almost
too exquisite for words, the way he can control
the bottleneck and make it sound like Ravi Shankar.
If you don't see him play, you might not even guess
it's a bottleneck. It's hard to believe it's
not a guy who's bending a string from the same position
a sitar would. I saw him about three years ago
in a chapel in north London. Fantastic. People were just
breathless watching.

GW: You've also been known to engage microtonal,
sitar-like bending.

JB: Oh yeah. Who knows from where. The stuff that's
bombarded my ears over the years. Your brain is a computer
isn't it? It's a recording machine. Some of these sounds
leak through and some don't.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interestingly enough, unless this was edited together
from different interviews, he doesn't realise what his
influences are and why he makes those microtonal bends!

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