''Wired'' is the third solo album by the British guitarist

Jeff Beck Geoffrey Arnold Beck (born 24 June 1944) is an English rock guitarist. He rose to prominence with the Yardbirds and after fronted the Jeff Beck Group and Beck, Bogert & Appice. In 1975, he switched to a mainly instrumental style, with a focus ...

, released on

Epic Records Epic Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America Sony Corporation of America (SONAM, also known as SCA), is the American arm of the Japanese conglomerate Sony Group ...

in 1976. An instrumental album, it peaked at No. 16 on the ''Billboard'' 200 and was certified

platinum Platinum is a chemical element with the symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a dense, malleable, ductile, highly unreactive, precious, silverish-white transition metal. Its name originates from Spanish , a diminutive of "silver". Platinu ...

by the

RIAA The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/o ...

Background and content

Of the album tracks, four are originals by Narada Michael Walden and one by

Jan Hammer Jan Hammer () (born 17 April 1948) is a Czech-American musician, composer, and record producer. He first gained his most visible audience while playing keyboards with the Mahavishnu Orchestra during the early 1970s, as well as his film scores fo ...

Max Middleton David Maxwell Middleton (born 4 August 1946) is an English composer and keyboardist who was originally a docker on the London docks. Middleton is known for his work on the Fender Rhodes Electric piano, the Minimoog synthesiser and his percussiv ...

contributed the homage to

Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin were an English rock band formed in London in 1968. The group comprised vocalist Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham. With a heavy, guitar-driven sound, they are ci ...

, "Led Boots", and Beck chose to interpret the

Charles Mingus Charles Mingus Jr. (April 22, 1922 – January 5, 1979) was an American jazz upright bassist, pianist, composer, bandleader, and author. A major proponent of collective improvisation, he is considered to be one of the greatest jazz musicians and ...

ode to saxophonist

Lester Young Lester Willis Young (August 27, 1909 – March 15, 1959), nicknamed "Pres" or "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and occasional clarinetist. Coming to prominence while a member of Count Basie's orchestra, Young was one of the most i ...

, "

Goodbye Pork Pie Hat "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" is a jazz instrumental composed by Charles Mingus, originally recorded by his sextet in 1959 and released on his album ''Mingus Ah Um''. It was subsequently released on his 1963 album, ''Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus' ...

", from the classic 1959

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

album ''

Mingus Ah Um ''Mingus Ah Um'' is a studio album by American jazz musician Charles Mingus which was released in October 1959 by Columbia Records. It was his first album recorded for Columbia. The cover features a painting by S. Neil Fujita. The title is a co ...

''. These last two tracks were long-time staples of Beck's performance repertoire.

Reception

''Wired'' received mostly positive reviews when it was released. In ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...

'', the reviewer cited it as being full of "fire and imagination". However,

Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...

faulted it as technically proficient but soulless, calling it "mindless trickery". Engineer Peter Henderson later said of the album, "I listened to that a few years later and it sounded like it had been recorded direct to cassette. I don't think it was one of my finer moments."Buskin, Richard (July 2005)
CLASSIC TRACKS: Supertramp's 'Logical Song'
''

Sound on Sound ''Sound on Sound'' is an independently owned monthly music technology magazine published by SOS Publications Group, based in Cambridge, United Kingdom. The magazine includes product tests of electronic musical performance and recording devices, a ...

''. Writing for

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

, Mark Kirschenmann said, "Within a two-year span, the twin towers ''Blow by Blow'' and ''Wired'' set a standard for instrumental rock that even Beck has found difficult to match. On ''Wired'', with first-rate material and collaborators on hand, one of rock's most compelling guitarists is in top form." The album peaked at No. 16 on the ''Billboard'' 200 in August 1976, spending a total of 25 weeks on the chart. In the UK it spent five weeks on the chart and reached No. 35. The album has been certified

by the

Release history

In addition to the conventional two channel

stereo Stereophonic sound, or more commonly stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configuration ...

version the album was also released by Epic in 1976 in a four channel

quadraphonic Quadraphonic (or quadrophonic and sometimes quadrasonic) sound – equivalent to what is now called 4.0 surround sound – uses four audio channels in which speakers are positioned at the four corners of a listening space. The system allows for th ...

edition on

LP record The LP (from "long playing" or "long play") is an analog sound storage medium, a phonograph record format characterized by: a speed of rpm; a 12- or 10-inch (30- or 25-cm) diameter; use of the "microgroove" groove specification; and a ...

and

8-track tape The 8-track tape (formally Stereo 8; commonly called eight-track cartridge, eight-track tape, and eight-track) is a magnetic tape sound recording technology that was popular from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, when the compact cassette, wh ...

. The quad LP release was encoded in the SQ matrix system. The album was first released on CD in 1985 in Japan. In 2001 a remastered stereo edition of the CD was reissued internationally. The album was reissued in stereo in the United States on the hybrid

Super Audio CD Super Audio CD (SACD) is an optical disc format for audio storage introduced in 1999. It was developed jointly by Sony and Philips Electronics and intended to be the successor to the Compact Disc (CD) format. The SACD format allows multiple aud ...

format in 2016 by

Analogue Productions Analogue Productions is a record label specializing in the manufacture and distribution of reissue LP record albums, CDs and SACDs that primarily include jazz, blues, rock, folk and classical styles of music. The company is a division of Acous ...

. The same year it was also reissued by Epic in Japan as a hybrid multichannel SACD. The Japanese SACD version has the entire stereo album, but also adds the complete quad album on the same disc adapted for 5.1 surround sound. This marks the first time that the quad version has been reissued in a digital format.

Track listing

* Note: "Head for Backstage Pass" is incorrectly listed as being 3:45 on some LP centres; 2:42 is correct.

Personnel

– guitars *

–

Hohner clavinet The Clavinet is an electrically amplified clavichord invented by Ernst Zacharias and manufactured by the Hohner company of Trossingen, West Germany, from 1964 to 1982. The instrument produces sounds by a rubber pad striking a point on a tension ...

, Fender Rhodes electric piano *

–

synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

(on "Led Boots", "Come Dancing", "Blue Wind" and "Play with Me"), drums (on "Blue Wind") *

Wilbur Bascomb Wilbur D. Bascomb Jr. is an American bass guitarist. He is the son of jazz trumpeter Wilbur "Dud" Bascomb, who played with Erskine Hawkins and Duke Ellington. Career In the 1970s, Bascomb worked with James Brown(1974),bass (except on "Blue Wind") * Narada Michael Walden – drums (on "Led Boots", "Come Dancing", "Sophie", "Head for Backstage Pass" and "Play with Me"),

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

(on "Love Is Green") * Richard Bailey – drums (on "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" and "Head for Backstage Pass") *

Ed Greene Ed Greene is an American drummer and session musician. In 1971 he recorded with Donald Byrd (''Ethiopian Knights'', 1972), together with Thurman Green, Harold Land, Bobby Hutcherson, Joe Sample, Bobbye Porter Hall, David T. Walker, and Wilton ...

– second drum kit (on "Come Dancing")

Additional personnel

George Martin Sir George Henry Martin (3 January 1926 – 8 March 2016) was an English record producer, arranger, composer, conductor, and musician. He was commonly referred to as the "Fifth Beatle" because of his extensive involvement in each of the B ...

– producer * Chris Bond – assistant producer * Jan Hammer – producer on "Blue Wind" * Pete Henderson, Dennis McKay, John Mills, John Arias –

engineers Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limit ...

Geoff Emerick Geoffrey Ernest Emerick (5 December 1945 – 2 October 2018) was an English sound engineer and record producer who worked with the Beatles on their albums '' Revolver'' (1966), '' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' (1967) and ''Abbey Road ...

–

mixing engineer A mixing engineer (or simply mix engineer) is responsible for combining ("mixing") different sonic elements of an auditory piece into a complete rendition (also known as "final mix" or "mixdown"), whether in music, film, or any other content of a ...

* Bruce Dickinson – reissue producer

References

External links

Jeff Beck - ''Wired'' (1976) album review by Mark Kirschenmann, credits & releases
at

Jeff Beck - ''Wired'' (1976) album releases & credits
at

Discogs Discogs (short for discographies) is a database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. While the site was originally created with a goal of becoming the la ...

Jeff Beck - ''Wired'' (1976) album credits & user reviews
at ProgArchives.com
Jeff Beck - ''Wired'' (1976) album to be listened
as stream on

Spotify Spotify (; ) is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 456 million monthly active us ...

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wired (Album) Jeff Beck albums Jazz fusion albums by English artists 1976 albums Epic Records albums Albums produced by George Martin