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Lot Essay
After Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart had successfully reunited in the studio to record ‘People Get Ready’ for Jeff’s 1985 album Flash, and three tracks for Rod’s 1984 album Camouflage, the pair even attempted to tour together in support of the latter. ‘The problem with this, from the outset,’ wrote Rod in his 2013 memoir, ‘was that it all too obviously cast Jeff in a supporting role, which he was pretty much guaranteed to hate, however handsomely remunerated. The tour was set for 74 dates over four months. Behind the scenes, a lot of people were muttering and saying, “This is doomed — he won’t last two shows.” But they were all wrong. He lasted three. And then he left, saying something about how the audience were all housewives, which was a little bit rude of the old scamp.’ Around this time in mid-July 1984, custom luthier Grover Jackson was finishing work on a second Jackson Soloist, this time in bright orange to match one of Jeff’s beloved hot rods (Jeff would apparently send Grover paint chips for a perfect colour match), with the intention of delivering the guitar a week or so into the tour. After getting the call that Jeff was no longer doing the tour and had flown back to Los Angeles, Grover grabbed the finished orange Soloist and headed over to the Sunset Marquis Hotel to deliver it in person. He recalls sitting in Jeff’s hotel room as he tried out the new guitar with a little Pignose amplifier, when Jeff began playing the tracks from his 1968 debut album Truth. ‘These were songs that were formative to me,’ Grover told us, ‘and here I was in a hotel room with Jeff Beck playing my guitar… it was maybe the most transcendental moment in my life.’
A second orange Soloist was delivered at some point, presumably intended as a touring spare that was now surplus to requirements. Certainly, by November 1985, both are mentioned in Guitar Player: ‘[The pink Jackson Soloist] is the first one Grover Jackson built me. He has now made me a couple of orange ones. The guitars are the way he gave them to me. I haven’t touched them.’ Jackson elaborates: All three have Seymour Duncan's Alnico II pickups, the middle one being a RWRP reverse winding, reverse polarity. So on a 5-way switch, you get humbucking in the 2 and 4 positions. One orange one has a Floyd Rose, and the other has a standard Fender-type tremolo. They are all equipped with ebony fingerboards. Jeff likes his necks thin and narrow, 1 5⁄8" at the nut sort of like an early-'60s Strat, but a little thinner in the back. These are standard Soloists, with the exception of one of the orange ones. He took a Magic Marker and drew an original Telecaster bass type of pick-guard on the guitar, and asked us if we could make one and put it on there.’ Evidently, this is the model with original Floyd Rose tremolo and custom pickguard. The second orange Soloist was sold to guitar technician Jim Barber in 1987, around the time that both Beck and Barber played on Mick Jagger’s second solo album Primitive Cool, and today resides in the collection of Armand Serra.
Jeff is seen striking a pose with this orange Soloist in outtakes from the album cover shoot for Flash by photographer Deborah Feingold, one of which featured on the cover of Musician magazine in May 1985. Most notably, the guitar features heavily in the music video for lead single ‘Ambitious’, directed by James Yukich and filmed at A&M Chaplin Soundstage in California. Running with the theme of ambition, the video featured multiple cameos from an assortment of 80s celebrities auditioning for the role of lead singer, including Donnie Osmond, Joyce Brothers, Abby Dalton, Cheech Marin, Hervé Villechaize, and Jimmy Hall, who had recorded the vocals for the original album track. Beck accompanies the hopeful auditionees on this orange Soloist throughout, until taking the spotlight for his squealing solo, thrashing the whammy, the acid orange guitar glowing like a beacon on the dingy soundstage. The Soloist was captured in various still publicity portraits of Jeff shot on the set of the video by photographers Richard Knight and Henry Diltz. Following the album release in July 1985, the music video for ‘Ambitious’ debuted on MTV in September 1985. By the time Jeff next played live on stage in mid 1986, he had been coaxed back to Fender. Yet, like the pink Soloist, this guitar still held a spot in Jeff’s home studio guitar rack as of 2009, as seen in the Robert M. Knight documentary Rock Prophecies.
A second orange Soloist was delivered at some point, presumably intended as a touring spare that was now surplus to requirements. Certainly, by November 1985, both are mentioned in Guitar Player: ‘[The pink Jackson Soloist] is the first one Grover Jackson built me. He has now made me a couple of orange ones. The guitars are the way he gave them to me. I haven’t touched them.’ Jackson elaborates: All three have Seymour Duncan's Alnico II pickups, the middle one being a RWRP reverse winding, reverse polarity. So on a 5-way switch, you get humbucking in the 2 and 4 positions. One orange one has a Floyd Rose, and the other has a standard Fender-type tremolo. They are all equipped with ebony fingerboards. Jeff likes his necks thin and narrow, 1 5⁄8" at the nut sort of like an early-'60s Strat, but a little thinner in the back. These are standard Soloists, with the exception of one of the orange ones. He took a Magic Marker and drew an original Telecaster bass type of pick-guard on the guitar, and asked us if we could make one and put it on there.’ Evidently, this is the model with original Floyd Rose tremolo and custom pickguard. The second orange Soloist was sold to guitar technician Jim Barber in 1987, around the time that both Beck and Barber played on Mick Jagger’s second solo album Primitive Cool, and today resides in the collection of Armand Serra.
Jeff is seen striking a pose with this orange Soloist in outtakes from the album cover shoot for Flash by photographer Deborah Feingold, one of which featured on the cover of Musician magazine in May 1985. Most notably, the guitar features heavily in the music video for lead single ‘Ambitious’, directed by James Yukich and filmed at A&M Chaplin Soundstage in California. Running with the theme of ambition, the video featured multiple cameos from an assortment of 80s celebrities auditioning for the role of lead singer, including Donnie Osmond, Joyce Brothers, Abby Dalton, Cheech Marin, Hervé Villechaize, and Jimmy Hall, who had recorded the vocals for the original album track. Beck accompanies the hopeful auditionees on this orange Soloist throughout, until taking the spotlight for his squealing solo, thrashing the whammy, the acid orange guitar glowing like a beacon on the dingy soundstage. The Soloist was captured in various still publicity portraits of Jeff shot on the set of the video by photographers Richard Knight and Henry Diltz. Following the album release in July 1985, the music video for ‘Ambitious’ debuted on MTV in September 1985. By the time Jeff next played live on stage in mid 1986, he had been coaxed back to Fender. Yet, like the pink Soloist, this guitar still held a spot in Jeff’s home studio guitar rack as of 2009, as seen in the Robert M. Knight documentary Rock Prophecies.