All Shook Up (with The Jeff Beck Group)

The Zoo Crew is spinning a real heavy one for all you Zoo Freaks out there, and this track from Jeff Beck with The Jeff Beck Group has got that raw, bluesy stomp that still hits hard after all these years. "All Shook Up" off the Beck-Ola album takes the old Elvis Presley number and turns it into something growling and mean, with Beck's guitar tearing it up while Rod Stewart howls over the top. Beck and the boys recorded the whole album in just a handful of days back in April of 1969, over at places like De Lane Lea Studios, and they weren't messing around with fancy polish. Beck himself put a note on the cover saying it was almost impossible to come up with anything totally original with all the competition out there, so they hadn't, but the accent was on heavy music and you could decide if it fit in your head. That sums up the vibe pretty well.

Rod Stewart later looked back and figured they were lagging a bit by leaning on covers like this one and "Jailhouse Rock," calling it a couple of Elvis hits when maybe they should have had more of their own stuff ready. He said the sessions had some clashes with producer Mickie Most, and Beck was getting moody about the whole deal. Still, that version of "All Shook Up" shows what the group could do when they let loose, turning a bouncy little rocker into a blusey stomper with Nicky Hopkins pounding the piano and Ron Wood holding down the bass. An early take of the song got cut earlier at Abbey Road, shorter and a bit different, but the album version is the one that stuck as part of that heavy sound they were pushing. Beck talked about how they were pioneering that big, heavy rock approach, and it showed in how the guitar squared off against the vocals in a way that influenced a lot of what came after.

You can dig deeper into the artist's world over at the official Jeff Beck website, which keeps the legacy going with news and classic album looks, including one on Beck-Ola itself. There is also the official Facebook page, the Instagram account, and the X page for updates from the estate and fans. For dedicated listeners, the long-running Jeff Beck fan site has been around since the late nineties with deep dives into the early years, and the Chrome Oxide collector pages cover the Jeff Beck Group discography including details on this album and track. All of that sits right alongside the freeform rock we keep spinning here at THE ZOO.

Beck got his start way back in Wallington, Surrey, born in 1944, and he was hooked on the electric guitar from the time he was a kid. He heard Les Paul doing "How High the Moon" on the radio when he was about six and told his mom that was for him, tricks and all. As a teenager he built his own instruments out of cigar boxes and fence posts with model airplane wires for strings, and he soaked up the rockabilly of Cliff Gallup with Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps. After some art college and odd jobs like painting and spraying cars, he played in local outfits like the Tridents and with Screaming Lord Sutch, experimenting with distortion and feedback. His sister introduced him to Jimmy Page, and that connection led to him replacing Eric Clapton in the Yardbirds in 1965. He brought a wilder, more experimental edge to the band before striking out on his own.

By 1967 he had put together the first Jeff Beck Group with Stewart on vocals and Wood on bass, and that lineup cut Truth the next year before moving on to Beck-Ola. Beck wanted a heavier direction, swapping drummers and bringing Hopkins in full time, and the covers like "All Shook Up" let them show off that power without needing a pile of originals. Stewart has said Beck was a great guy but not always the smoothest bandleader, with pay sometimes late and tensions running high, and the group fell apart not long after the album when Stewart and Wood headed off to the Faces. They had even been lined up for Woodstock but never made it. Beck kept going though, always chasing new sounds on the guitar, from jazz fusion to whatever else caught his ear, and that restless spirit is what made tracks like this one feel so alive. The Zoo Freaks know a good heavy cut when they hear one, and this is the kind of record that keeps the freeform rock rolling.