Word: waller
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This is not to say however that Jeff Beck, for all his domineering guitar activity, would be anything without the consistent and helpful backing that he gets from the rest of his group. Leaving aside Nicky Hopkins for the moment, it is clear that Waller, Stewart, and Ron Wood, who plays bass, are above average as performers in their own right, and superb in combination with Jeff Beck...
...thundering and the light show irrelevant. Jeff Beck a streaming presence jerking, in sweat, on his guitar laying sheet after sheet of sound authoritatively down. The great Nicky Hopkins in one corner of the stage hunched over piano holding together the music with his discreet and rippling underpinning. Mick Waller on drums, his eyes fixed on Beck, face contorting, eyes glazed, his arms chopping, producing a sharp and clear rattling as each drumbeat rams more or less neatly into Beck's flying notes. Rod Stewart, the singer, a man of flinty beauty, and a fertile smile, has a tingling roughness...
Hopkins and Beck work marvellously together in concert, especially on the long and extended blues solos that will never find their way onto a record in entirety. Not to mention the special thing that Beck and Mick Waller have going. (It is the virtue of the Jeff Beck Group that even within the together sound there is room for special partnerships.) Waller, drumming, is anguished in expression and his hands fly at Jeff's beckoning. Beck stands right by his shoulder watching the drum rallies shake the notes out of his guitar so they slip into the crevices...
...Jeff Beck Group doing their great staples "Rock My Plimsoul," "Shapes of Things." Hopkins begins with a solo burst. Beck leads into the vibrant theme lines and then starts screeching from his guitar with his finger slashing. Hopkins' shimmering piano, Waller's hammering beat, Wood on throbbing whipping bass. Music stops and Stewart sings a line...
Beck repeats it deep, and the band is together again in a coherent ball of jarring, flaring sound. Beck takes off once more on guitar careening over into a feedback wail, he stops, scratches twice, Hopkins and Waller supply connecting riffs, Beck plays a horn blast. Amid all this discord, Beck, stroke of genius, does a willowing eddy of tune straight out of B.B. King. An abrupt stop again, Beck thumps the side of his guitar and bounces on his knees, Waller slams down harshly twice, Beck reels off long liquid strings picking up the early song tune. He starts...