“I know what kind of welcome you’re gonna give to JEFF BECK!”

Although it’s widely known—or at least widely known among David Bowie fanatics, MOJO subscribers and guitar otakus—that Jeff Beck was the “special guest” at Ziggy and the Spiders’ send-off show at the Hammersmith Odeon on July 3rd, 1973, Beck’s cameo appearance was cut from D.A Pennebaker’s documentary film of the event, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Beck joined Bowie onstage for a blistering two song encore consisting of “The Jean Genie” and a cover of the Chuck Berry number “Around and Around.” There have been several home video releases of the film over the decades and yet none of them have ever restored the Beck footage or even had it as a DVD extra.

It’s not 100% clear why Beck insisted that his footage be edited out of the film, but it’s most likely to do with him not liking what he was wearing onstage that night. Apparently no one had informed the guitarist that the show was being filmed. Even Mick Ronson, no slouch at the time in the goofy clothes department said of Beck’s outfit:

“I was too busy looking at his flares. Even by our standards, those trousers were excessive!”

By the guitar god’s own admission, though, it might’ve been his shoes. In a 2009 interview with The Sunday Times, Beck revealed that it wasn’t his massive flares, but rather his footwear (“the most disgusting pair of dirty-white stack-heeled shoes you’ve ever seen”) that was the reason. He wouldn’t relent:

“Bowie rang me about 10 times and said, “Look, man, I understand about the shoes, ‘cos I didn’t like what I was wearing either.”

Regardless, although the footage of Beck was excised from the cinema and home video versions of Pennebaker’s film, it was broadcast on American TV in 1974 on ABC’s In Concert series and the so-called “Italian Print” of the film included Beck’s appearance. Eventually these made it to the bootleg market and then YouTube, but the audio was always pretty poor. What this is below is the Beck footage restriped with an audio track fashioned from a mono soundboard of the show that night and the soundtrack of the “Italian Print” mixed together. The result is not only the best I’ve ever seen/heard this material, but simply a thrilling thing to watch.

I don’t know what Jeff Beck was worried about. Surely by now the vain pain of seeing himself in this glittery get-up must be long over with. It’s dark and you can barely see his flares let alone his shoes. His performance, though, is off-the-scale and this is—undoubtedly—the single best live performance of “The Jean Genie” that I’ve ever seen. After a crazed guitar duel between Beck and Ronno, Bowie pulls out his harmonica and deftly leads the band into a snippet of the Beatles’ “Love Me Do.”