What Jeff Beck’s Death Meant To Me
We all got the terrible news yesterday that Jeff Beck - one of the greatest guitarists of all time - passed away suddenly at age 78 after a brief illness.
I followed his career from the mid-60s when he was a member of The Yardbirds, through his groundbreaking albums with the Jeff Beck Group featuring Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood, through his Beck, Bogert & Appice collaboration with two of the guys from the Vanilla Fudge, through his guest appearance on Stevie Wonder’s Grammy winning albums in the mid-70s, and on and on to today. A remarkably talented guitarist. And he looked like he never aged! Which made it all the more stunning when he died after such a brief illness. It was totally unexpected.
Life constantly throws us unexpected events - good and bad. We all take for granted that we will be here tomorrow, next week, next year. We rarely stop and contemplate our mortality. When the pandemic hit, though, I think many people did think about their mortality. I know that I did. At the beginning - before vaccines - we didn’t know if we got Covid whether it would be like a passing flu or we would die from it. We were scared. It made many of us stop and evaluate where we were in our lives and what more we wanted to accomplish with whatever time that we had left.
The pandemic actually spurred me to my highest level of creativity. I recorded and released two albums. I wrote a bestselling book. And I started my Follow Your Dream Podcast.
Jeff Beck’s untimely death shows us once again that there are no guarantees in life. My podcast is all about encouraging people to follow their dream, as I did. Everyone has or had a dream. But many of us never pursue our dream because life gets in the way: marriage, kids, job, obligations. You turn around one day and realize that your dream has faded away. I believe, though, that you’re never too old, and it’s never too late, to follow your dream. You never want to look back at any stage of life and regret that you didn’t give your dream a chance.
It’s not about success or failure. It’s about taking your best shot and knowing that you tried. So follow your dream.