The Guitar Magic and Mayhem of Jeff Beck, with biographers Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill: The Echoes Interview
When John Diliberto was growing up, there were three musicians that formed a holy trinity of guitarists: Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck. Beck was the first to push the electric guitar into psychedelia with The Yardbirds before taking the instrument into the stratosphere. Beck plucked his final string on January 10, 2023, leaving behind one of the most adventurous and chaotic careers in rock. Now, biographers Brad Tolinski and Chris Gill have published Blow by Blow: The Jeff Beck Story.
Chris Gill: He’s really probably one of the most pure form of an artist that I’ve encountered in my career. He was really relentless in his pursuit of of a sound, of not just a sound, but sounds of what he heard of music.
We connected with them to explore our common love of Jeff Beck, and they took us on a journey through his many incarnations: from psychedelic blues rocker to fusion adaptor to fearless electronica experimenter. Along the way, there was an unexpected stop at Vangelis. Chris Gill and Brad Tolinski have been around the rock music block for decades. Tolinksi was Chief Editor of Guitar World Magazine for a quarter century. He’s written books on Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, The MC5 and a history of the electric guitar. Along with Gill, he co-wrote Eruption: Conversations with Eddie Van Halen. Gill is a Guitar World writer and a contributor to books on Eric Clapton and a previous Jeff Beck book. They have both interviewed Jeff Beck many times and seen him live even more.
| Start Time | Artist | Song Title | Album |
|---|---|---|---|
| Echoes Monday, August 10, 2026 – Program 2632A | |||
| First Half Hour | |||
| 0:01:00 | Angelo Badalamenti | Twin Peaks Theme | Soundtrack from Twin Peaks |
| 0:06:00 | David Helpling & Scott Reich | Shadows Stars and Dreams | Through the Thought Horizon |
| 0:11:16 | Sheila Chandra | Ever So Lonely/Eyes/Ocean | Echo |
| 0:15:22 | Michael Stearns & Robert Rich | The Ground Remembers | Reunion of Breath and Waves |
| 0:22:44 | The Durutti Column | Time Present and Time Past | Renascent |
| 0:29:30 | Shambhu | Resilience (excerpt) | Lotus Dreams |
| Second Half Hour | |||
| 0:30:00 | Interview: Blow by Blow the Jeff Beck Story | ||
| 0:50:07 | Jeff Beck | Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers | Blow by Blow |
| 0:54:57 | Jeff Beck | Beck’s Bolero | Truth |
| 0:59:00 | Marco Zavros | Two Birds (excerpt) | Ray Donovan |
| Third Half Hour | |||
| 1:01:00 | Delerium | Keyless Door (featuring Azure Ray) | Music Box Opera |
| 1:06:00 | Bioscope | Vanishing Point Part III | Gento |
| 1:16:17 | Fern Murphy | Midnight Chorus | Via Negative |
| 1:20:06 | Laney | Facade | Facade (single) |
| 1:23:00 | Unwed Sailor | Gingerman | High Remembrance |
| 1:29:30 | Michael Hewett | Gold (excerpt) | Victoria Place: Echoes Live 23 (v/a) |
| Fourth Half Hour | |||
| 1:30:00 | Michael Stearns & Robert Rich | Continuous Evolution | Reunion of Breath and Waves |
| 1:34:39 | Eartheater | Crown Jewel | Heavenly Body: If I’m the Bottle You’re the Message |
| 1:38:35 | Jess Lamb | I Am Overflowing | I Am |
| 1:42:14 | break | ||
| 1:43:16 | Peter Phippen & Eric “the” Taylor | Feeling the Question Why | Two by Twilight |
| 1:47:00 | Encounters & Bluetech | Open Mind (Earth Mix) | Earth Resonance |
| 1:54:43 | Chrome Sparks | Sleeper (Feat. Khalid and Jonsi) | Ball of Light |
William Orbit
December 15, 1956 – July 23, 2026
Acclaimed, Grammy-winning and Echoes favorite, William Orbit, has left the planet, departing on July 23 at the age of 69.
William Orbit was one of those shadowy figures in contemporary music. His credits turn up on albums by Madonna, Peter Gabriel, Sting, Kraftwerk and Prince. He made dance music under the names Torch Song and Bass-O-Matic, and recorded five albums of techno-impressionistic music under the series name Strange Cargo, the title of an old Joan Crawford movie.
Orbit made music between worlds, tottering on a faultline between dance and ambient music. He even released electronic renditions of classical works. He grew up on progressive rock but found himself working as a remix artist, turning tunes by Sting and Prince into new variations. That, along with his evolutionary step on Strange Cargo III led to Madonna’s Ray of Light, which he co-produced and partly wrote. In 2006, he released the brilliant Hello Waveforms under his own name, an album that carried forward the luminous electronic sound he brought to Ray of Light.
He continued creating, recording two more Strange Cargo albums, ending with Strange Cargo 5 in 2014, which was never conventionally released. You could stream and download it on Soundcloud and Musicbrainz, but none of that seems functional at this time. Hello Waveforms, in particular, has always stood out for me with its ambient-noir moods. His final album, in 2022, was a beautiful swan song called The Painter. It had all those Orbit elements that made us love him: sensual melodies, seductive grooves and great, sultry singers like Beth Orton, Natalie Walker and Polly Scattergood. He created songs that floated your mind on wisps of incense smoke, but carried you out the window into an urban landscape.
William Orbit took ended his final trip around the sun on July 23, although his death wasn’t reported until nearly two weeks later. He appeared on Echoes twice in interviews, and his music has been a mainstay of the show. His loss is deeply felt. We remember William Orbit on Echoes.
| Start Time | Artist | Song Title | Album |
|---|---|---|---|
| Echoes Tuesday, August 11, 2026 – Program 2632B | |||
| First Half Hour | |||
| 0:01:00 | William Orbit | She Cries Your Name (feat. Beth Orton) | Strange Cargo: Hinterland |
| 0:06:00 | Byron Metcalf & Erik Wøllo | Spanned Times | Spanned Times |
| 0:12:58 | Shearwater | Even Song | The New World |
| 0:16:30 | John Carpenter | Identity | Cathedral |
| 0:19:49 | Lisa Molinaro | Not So Secret Codes | Blind Trust |
| 0:22:55 | Unwed Sailor | Three Jewels | High Remembrance |
| 0:29:30 | Deepspace | High Precision Hydrocleansing Protocols (excerpt) | Water Planets |
| Second Half Hour | |||
| 0:30:00 | William Orbit | Harry Flowers | Strange Cargo III |
| 0:34:20 | William Orbit | Surfin’ | Waveforms |
| 0:38:48 | Madonna | Ray of Light | Ray of Light |
| 0:43:39 | Break | ||
| 0:44:35 | William Orbit | In A Landscape | Pieces In A Modern Style |
| 0:47:10 | William Orbit | Duende (Feat. Katie Laua) | The Painter |
| 0:50:47 | Caroline Lavelle | Turning Ground | Spirit |
| 0:55:18 | William Orbit | My Friend Morpheus | Strange Cargo 5 |
| 0:59:00 | The American Dollar | Second Sight (excerpt) | Atlas |
| Third Half Hour | |||
| 1:01:00 | Ane Brun | Don’t Run and Hide | After the Great Storm |
| 1:06:00 | Michael Stearns and Robert Rich | Inclusions | Reunion of Breath and Waves |
| 1:13:40 | Lisa Gerrard | Space Weaver | The Silver Tree |
| 1:20:39 | Eartheater | Don’t Look Back | Heavenly Body: If I’m the Bottle You’re the Message |
| 1:23:39 | Ryan Farish | Hemispheres | Wild as the Wind |
| 1:29:30 | Jim Kimo West and Michael Whalen | Malibu Breeze (excerpt) | Two Shores |
| Fourth Half Hour | |||
| 1:30:00 | Lisa Molinaro | The Ending Never Stops | Blind Trust |
| 1:33:25 | Djam Karet | The Denouement Device | Sonic Celluloid |
| 1:38:04 | Break | ||
| 1:38:38 | Bioscope | Gento | Gento |
| 1:45:40 | Jeff Beck | Scared For The Children | Loud Hailer |
| 1:51:38 | Ludovico Einaudi | Experience – Live | The Summer Portraits Live |