Over my years of teaching myself to play guitar in an era before the Internet and Youtube, I aped the styles of an awful lot of guitar players: Eric Clapton, Pete Townsend, Keith Richard, Mark Knofler, Mike Campbell, Hendrix…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
…but there were a few that I could never even think about copying. The fingers on my left hand just didn’t move fast enough to copy Eddie Van Halen or Nils Lofgren. The fingers on my right <\/em>hand didn’t move fast enough to do Richard Thompson very well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And I could never figure Jeff Beck out at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Beck – who played in the Yardbirds after Eric Clapton and efore Jimmy Page, before going solo – died yesterday at 78, of bacterial meningitis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n