"Cosa Nostra Beck-Ola" aka "Beck-Ola" by THE JEFF BECK GROUP [feat ROD STEWART] (October 2006 UK Epic/Legacy 'Expanded Edition' CD Reissue and Remaster) - A Review by Mark Barry...

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"...All Shook Up..."

While the Magritte painting of an apple on the front cover artwork roared "Beck-Ola" as the title to his second solo album after The Yardbirds - the flip-back rear and black and silver Columbia Records labels rather confusingly credited the LP as "Cosa Nostra Beck-Ola" by Jeff Beck and not a more accurate The Jeff Beck Group.

In fact, when you read the highly enlightening liner notes to this brilliant CD reissue (JB remembers with brutal precision) – it's a small wonder according to our main man that either album made it out anywhere. By his own admittance – his 1968 "Truth" album debut was recorded in four days flat while number two pushed out the studio recording time boat to a whopping six days in April 1969, both produced by Mickie Most who seemed hell-bent on moulding the pretty ex Yardbirds Guitarist Jeff Beck into the next David Cassidy popping out "Hi Ho Silver Lining" pop ditties until he puked - whilst at the same time being utterly contemptuous of the Hard Rock/Blues Rock Jeff Beck along with Zeppelin were creating in Blighty in that stunning year (1969).

The short 7-track record only materialised because a second US tour was imminent and new material was needed to support that trek – but they’d nothing. So out come the Elvis Presley covers – the instrumental jams, a throw in from Rod and Ronnie, a love song to his absent gal from Nicky and the beast is cobbled together with you suspect Victor Frankenstein standing over an acetate of SCX 6351 shouting "It's Alive! It's Alive!"

But my God look at this band – 50 years on and the line-up still raises hairs just looking at it. The barnstorming extraordinaire lungs of Rod Stewart, future Faces pal and Rolling Stones guitar man Ronnie Wood as the rhythm section Bass Player, the demure but brilliant sessionman Nicky Hopkins on keyboards (he didn’t do live too well), JB on Guitars of course and the uncouth Keith Moon madman that was Tony Newman on Drums. On paper it had the makings of a truly ginormous super-group like say Blind Faith or Derek & The Dominoes. But tempers, personality clashes, egos, mercurial talent and musical direction kiboshes (not playing Woodstock because they weren’t together enough as a band) quickly ripped the whole wild child apart. But cobbled together or not – and with four brilliant outtakes that elevate this disc properly upwards - man what a recorded legacy. Let's get all shook up...

UK released 10 October 2006 - "Cosa Nostra Beck-Ola" aka "Beck-Ola" by THE JEFF BECK GROUP on Epic/Legacy 82876 77351 2 (Barcode 886919829822) is an 'Expanded Edition' Digitally Remastered CD with Four Bonus Tracks that plays out as follows (48:41 minutes):

1. All Shook Up [Side 1]

2. Spanish Boots

3. Girl From Mill Valley

4. Jailhouse Rock

5. Plynth (Water Down The Drain) [Side 2]

6. The Hangman's Knee

7. Rice Pudding

Tracks 1 to 7 are his second studio LP "Cosa Nostra Beck-Ola" aka "Beck-Ola" by THE JEFF BECK GROUP - released July 1969 in the UK on Columbia SX 6351 (Mono) and Columbia SCX 6351 (Stereo) and August 1969 in the USA on Epic BN 26478 (Stereo Only). Produced by MICKIE MOST - it peaked at No. 15 in the US LP charts and No. 39 in the UK. It was reissued September 1971 in the UK as "The Most Of Jeff Beck" in different artwork on EMI's budget label Music For Pleasure MFP 5219. The CD uses only the STEREO mix.

BONUS TRACKS (All Previously Unreleased, PETER MEW mixes done in April 2003):

8. Sweet Little Angel

(B.B. King cover version recorded live in the studio 19 Nov 1968 at Mirasound Studios in New York, second version recorded that day with Mick Waller from the "Truth" line-up on Drums)

9. Throw Down A Line

(Hank Marvin cover recorded at Trident Studios, London, 7 February 1969)

10. All Shook Up (Early Version)

(Presley cover recorded at Abbey Road, London, 8 January 1969 – between the third and final album version)

11. Jailhouse Rock (Early Version)

(Presley cover recorded at De Lane Lea Studios early April 1969 on 4-Track)

The 16-page booklet isn't the most beautiful thing I've ever seen but it is very, very informative – sporting new liner notes from noted writer and music historian CHARLES SHAAR MURRAY with full-on contributions from the Guitar Maestro himself. You get black and white photos of JB in the studio and at Fillmore West in 1968 - Rodders in full microphone manhandling pose and another one of him looking ill at ease with a guitar strapped around him (what do I with this). JB recalls that Nicky Hopkins had a girlfriend at Mill Valley so he dedicated that song to her and his viewing of Drummer Newman tearing it up with Little Richard and Gene Vincent – convinced him that Tony was just the right kind of thug for the job of turning Motown into Rock-Soul or something thereabouts. The CD label has a pic of JB on it and the Rene Magritte painting of 'La Chambre d'Ecoute' that adorns the front sleeve of the album is used as the back inlay beneath the see-through CD tray.

Sony's long-standing Audio Engineer VIC ANESINI handles the LP while EMI/Abbey Road Sound Boffin PETER MEW carried out the fantastic remixes and Remasters on the unreleased session outtakes. Anesini has done hugely prestigious names – Presley, Paul Simon, Santana, Mott The Hoople, Nilsson, Spirit and loads more and his magic touch has brought all that latent power to the fore. This CD Rocks - threatening almost all of the time to get snotty, rowdy and salacious with your amp and speakers.

Keeping to his liner-notes promise of 'heavy music' contained within but in a new/old sort of hybrid form - Beck gets proceedings under way with a kick-em-in-the-teeth near five-minute cover of the Elvis classic "All Shook Up". Even the Early Version in the Bonuses feels electric - Rod in stunning vocal form repeating phrases and singing the song like its new. You can hear Beck, Hopkins and especially Wood on the Bass swinging as Rod roars "I'm in the mood for love..." with a proper swagger. Then it gets even heavier - Ronnie, Jeff and Rod getting writing credits on the ragged rocker "Spanish Boats". Rod got a day job in Bethlehem while Beck distorts that guitar and the ensemble kicks in just before two minutes with the impact of a truck (love that guitar vs. piano battle that ends the all-over-the-place Production). After the snot-nose statements of the two lead-in tracks, Nicky Hopkins gorgeous love song "Girl From Mill Valley" comes on like a magical instrumental interlude (I put on CD compilation as a sort of chill pill). But then its back to rocking business as they end Side One with "Jailhouse Rock" - a rough and ready version with Rod almost lost in the echoed vocals but Beck displaying hair-raising guitar chops (God what they must have been like live when they were ripping this sucker out).

Side 2 gives us some fab Alex Harvey dangerous and menacing riffage in "Plynth (Water Down The Drain)" – Hopkins, Wood and Rod credited as the writers. The Faces would return to it in a radically different slide-guitar form as "Around The Plynth" on their 1970 debut album "First Step" (the "Five Guys Walk Into A Bar..." Box Set for Faces contains an equally slasher take from a 1970 BBC Session version). All five get writing credits for the heavy-heavy bludgeon that is "The Hangman’s Knee" – a prison cell and lawyers tale of woe punctured by grungy guitar work from an unleashed JB. The 7:22 instrumental minutes of "Rice Pudding" was recorded 19 April 1969 and if any one track on the album screams Heavy Hard Rock – then this guitar-wailing drum-whacking riff-beast is it. But then at 3:18 minutes it cleverly mellows into Hopkins piano accompanied by long low slide notes from Beck panning from speaker to speaker until it eventually returns to the opening guitar slash. Even now it’s a bruiser – the kind of song that would be difficult to make in 2019 – and maybe that’s why I admire its ragged audio tangents so much (fantastic musicality in that fade out passage)...

As I've already pointed out, the Bonus Cuts elevate this CD Reissue into the stratosphere. Opening with an absolute blinder – a huge Blues take on B.B. King's "Sweet Little Angel" – Rod is in storming $20 bill form while the Beck led band sounds like the only serious rival Led Zeppelin ever had (shockingly good stuff). Even though he barely masks his loathing for Mickie Most and his Pop Single attempts - I like "Throw Down A Line" - not nearly as bad a tune as JB seems to think it is. The four-track "Jailhouse Rock" early version is tripping–over-itself ragged and I love it for that – ending a great sounding CD reissue on a high.

Beck would morph his musical journey into Prog Rock mixed with Jazz-Funk-Soul instrumentals that would by the George Martin Produced "Blow By Blow" and "Wired" LPs in 1975 and 1976 take the world by storm (check out his Stevie Wonder written Syreeta cover of "'Cause We Ended As Lovers" on "Blow By Blow"). But this is where the rough boy started, and 50 years on, this Granny Smith still slaughters...