Jack White Pays Tribute To Jeff Beck With Video Of Them Performing Together

When news broke of Jeff Beck's passing on Wednesday (January 11), the rock world swiftly took to social media to share memories and tributes to the legendary guitarist. For Jack White, that was remembering what he called "one of the greatest thrills of my life," when he, Meg White, and Jack Lawrence had the opportunity to play Yardbirds songs with Beck in 2002 during a show at London's Royal Festival Hall.

White shared bootleg footage from the performance on Instagram alongside a touching tribute. "Jeff Beck, guitar innovator extraordinaire has moved to the next realm. I wrote to him a couple of years ago to show him that I was standing where he once stood inside Sam Phillips studio in Memphis some 50 odd years before. He was amazingly kind and instructional to me over the years," he wrote. "Many shows that I’ve played began moments after listening to his song 'Led Boots' backstage. This bootleg clip that I’m posting is when I had one of the greatest thrills of my life, along with Meg White and Jack Lawrence of the Greenhornes, we were 'the yardbirds' for one night backing up Jeff at the Royal Festival Hall in London. In our rehearsals he plugged straight into an amp, no effects pedals. He was changing the sound of the guitar and doing things people didn’t know were possible from his earliest days on stage. God Bless you Jeff, you must already be chatting with Cliff Gallup somewhere."

Beck died Tuesday (January 10) after a brief battle with bacterial meningitis. He was 78 years old. See White's tribute below.