Jeff Beck

Before you do anything else with Flash, drop the needle on the last half of "Ambitious," the
album's chug-a-funk leadoff track. Just as singer Jimmy Hall steps back from the song's
skeletal tune and jackhammer rhythm with a Tarzanlike "yeah!" Jeff Beck's guitar suddenly
shoots up into the mix like a runaway jet, cutting a reckless path through Nile Rodgers' spit
'n' polish production with sawtooth distortion and heat-ray feedback. Then, in a... More >

With his customary focus, loyalty, and consistency of taste, the mercurial guitarist plumbs a "new" idea copped from such innovators as Foreigner and Duran Duran--funk-metal fusion. Pitting Rod Stewart (on a convincing if utterly context-free "People Get Ready") and Arthur Baker (out to produce Foreigner and Duran Duran and apt to do a damn good job of it) against Wet Willie's vocalist and Cactus's drummer, he nevertheless turns in the best LP of his pathologically spotty career by countenancing Nile Rodgers's production on five tracks. So what do we have here? We have half a good Nile Rodgers album, more or less. (Grade: B)