Jeff Beck was at his busiest in 1984, becoming the collaborator of the year whilst being maybe the least group-oriented person in all of rock music. You had collaborations with Tina Turner on her smash-hit comeback Private Dancer, his first meeting with Stevie Ray Vaughn, he guested as the lead guitarist on Mick Jagger’s first effort at a solo album She’s the Boss, oh, and he rekindled his love-hate relationship with Rod Stewart to make possibly the weirdest Jeff Beck cut of his entire career: a starring role in the song and video of Infatuation.
Infatuation… there’s a lot to be said. It’s a weird song, creepy premise, and a terribly weird video that’s saving grace comes from the amazing MTV interview done with it’s “stars” - two people who look like they’ve never spoken.
Love-hate was an oversimplification of the way these two people felt about each other: it was more admire-doesn’t care, hate-hate, loathe-indifferent, hate-hate, neutral-neutral when going through all the stages by their own accounts. At any given moment via media they were contradicting each other, Beck saying he misses Stewart’s friendship, Stewart saying he never once looked Beck in the eyes. Beck saying he was betrayed by Stewart joining Faces, Stewart saying Beck fired him. Stewart saying he wants to repair their relationship, Beck saying he wasn’t aware they didn’t have one. They both also had this issue of spinning their own narritives about what exactly happened in their lives. If you go by Stewart's account of the story, there was a supieriority complex so huge within Beck that the rest of the band was bound to unravel sooner rather than later. Beck fired the rhythm section, Stewart went with them in a sign of solidarity. If you go by Beck's account, Stewart had never left and he was to wake up one morning to find him already the lead singer of a new band that he had only fraternized with to get back at Beck in some really backwards way. The real story is probably closer to being that Beck had abandoned his band shortly before Woodstock '69 [where they were billed to play] and the band deciding that was the end and all going their separete ways after becoming slightly disillusioned by Beck's poor leadership skills than what either of them say. A lot of this could be boiled down to their personalities: Beck not really being a big team player during the 70s, Stewart being the biggest twat in pop music at the exact same time, but there is a lack of communication that makes it hard to believe they ever really had a conversation at any point from the date of their meeting till the time they planned to record this song [nearly a decade later, mind you].
Stewart and Beck looking like a couple in 1968, and the earliest interation of the Jeff Beck Group already looking dysfunctional in '68 as well [left to right: Mickey Waller, Beck, Stewart, and Ron Wood]
Beck, about the session for Infatuation, said “He had half an album done with Michael Omartian [the producer], a guy I'd never heard of, but who was a fan of mine. I had decent tracks to play on and a producer who liked my playing. Then Rod didn't turn up at the sessions which upset me, didn't even bother to come and listen to what I was doing. He said he had a date and had to sort out his kids. I can appreciate that (voice bristling with sarcasm), running around with women, hiding from wives and girlfriends. I finished my tracks and said 'Rod, why don't you come down and just listen to what I've done? Just for ten minutes.' He said, 'Uh I can't, I'm flying to Hawaii to write the rest of the lyrics.'" Which, in reality, only adds to the absurdity of them ever working together. Beck didn’t get to move past his miserable experiences on the album before being ushered into the video, in which he told MTV about his role “I can’t do any fancy stuff. I’m just gonna stand there and play the notes I play on the record - I can’t dance or any of that Michael Jackson stuff.” after being asked in jest about what he may be doing in one of his first “starring” roles in an MTV video. Beck does appear in the video - miming the solo with his pink Jackson Soloist, signed by Tina Turner from his time on the Private Dancer sessions [with matching pink Chucks, may I add].
Beck with his pink Jackson Soloist used on Infatuation, engraved by Tina Turner, for a 1985 cover shoot with Guitar World magazine
What gets even crazier is the collaboration went so well [apparently??] that the duo had planned a co-headlining tour for the following year. The original plan was a 70 city tour where Beck would play a 15 minute set during Stewart’s show. The tour lasted 7 dates. Beck had, for the second time in Stewart’s career, just gotten on a plane and left the tour before communicating his departure. He told MTV, of course, but Stewart found out only after the man had left, saying to Rolling Stone in 1986 “It was so good to work with Jeff, it really was - until the tour started. And I still love to play with him. He's his own worst enemy as many of us are." Ouch! Beck states he left for about three reasons: 1.) he didn’t like his short time on stage, 2.) he didn’t like the audience of, in his words, "housewives”, and 3.) “Rod wasn't in vogue at the time and he was still doing his bum wiggling act"- something he stated made the tour “doom-ridden”. In Stewart’s book, he championed Beck for lasting longer than anyone thought he would in the position of not being the center of attention, which is one of the nicer things either said about the whole ill fated tour. The most inspiring quote from this back and forth came from Beck himself, who in 1985 told Musician Magazine: "As each day passed and I was out on the road with him, it was painfully obvious we weren't going to come remotely close to what I had in mind. I saw the rough repertoire list that he wrote up for the show and he was doing fifteen or twenty songs before I even came on stage, I was a sideshow. I thought when I came on we were going to go places, blow up a few buildings. But he had no plans for that at all."
Photos taken to promote the ill-fated tour by Ann Clifford and Chris Jensen
The best part of every piece of collaboration between these two is how you get the sense they never once had a conversation. Fran Lebowitz is accredited to the quote “the opposite of talking is not listening, it’s waiting”, which is pretty damn applicable here. Very similar to all their back and forth via the 1970s, these two never once were on the same page. In fact, I don’t think two people could be on two further pages while planning a 70+ date tour across North America, they were in different books in two different libraries. It’s particularly interesting how Beck’s more genuine critiques of the tour boiled down to him never discussing what he thought about what was going to happen, just criticizing what did. In an almost prophetic way, the other two songs Beck guested on are pretty interesting in this larger context: Can We Still Be Friends and Bad for You. Beck was on a synth-pop tour, led by a popstar decked out in neon suits in the mid-80s - a fish much too far from water. They would work together again, this time for a Beck project, in 1985. Their cover of People Get Ready showcased just how good musically the two were, and were almost fated to be even if they couldn’t get it together to go much further. It’s something that leads all the way back to their days in the Jeff Beck Group, a relationship that had a more than difficult way of manifesting. If anything, the tour was a career move disguised as getting the band back together. Stewart was doing “great” for an “old” artist in the 80s, if anything only gaining more traction than he already had, and Beck was gaining a brand new following due to all his public appearances and features on so many popular pieces: a collaboration could’ve only ever been in the cards. However, it’s clear this question was never considered during the planning stages: have you ever seen two less compatible people?
The music video for Infatuation:
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