Early life

Geoffrey Arnold Beck was born in Wallington, Greater London, on 24 June 1944. He began singing at the age of 10 in a church choir and attended Sutton Grammar School and Sutton East County Secondary Modern School.

Beck first experienced the guitar at the age of just six when he heard Les Paul play 'How High the Moon' on the radio. Since that moment he felt compelled to play the instrument.

As a teenager he learned to play a borrowed guitar and made several attempts to build his own instrument, first by gluing together cigar boxes for the body and a fence post for the neck with the frets simply painted on.

He recalled: "The guy next door said, 'I'll build you a solid body guitar for five pounds'. Five pounds, which to me was 500 back then [so] I went ahead and did it [myself].

"The first one I built was in 1956, because Elvis was out, and everything that you heard about pop music was guitar. And then I got fascinated. I'm sure the same goes for lots of people."