Freeway Jam

This driving instrumental was written by Jeff Beck's keyboard player, Max Middleton, and included on his jazz-inflected album Blow By Blow. After doing time in The Yardbirds, Beck formed The Jeff Beck Group with Rod Stewart and Ron Wood. They released two albums, then Stewart and Wood left to form Faces and Beck gathered a new lineup that included Middleton. The first album with this formation was Rough And Ready in 1971, which included a Middleton showpiece he wrote called "Max's Tune." Beck put the group aside in 1973 to form Beck, Bogert & Appice with bass player Tim Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice. When that group split in 1974, Beck found yet another backing band, with Middleton returning, joined by Phil Chen on bass and Richard Bailey on drums. With George Martin (of Beatles renown) producing, they made the Blow By Blow album, which took Beck away from vocal rock and into the land of jazzy instrumentals. It did better than all of his other post-Yardbirds albums, going on to sell over a million copies. The only single from the album was a cover of a Stevie Wonder song called "'Cause We've Ended As Lovers."

"Freeway Jam" didn't get much airplay when it first appeared on Blow By Blow, but the live version released in 1977 on the album Jeff Beck With The Jan Hammer Group Live got picked up by many stations. Beck and Hammer (a keyboard virtuoso) co-headlined a tour in 1976; the version of "Freeway Jam" that appears on the album is from a performance at the Philadelphia Spectrum, October 9, 1976. This version leads off the album and runs 7:11, as opposed to the 4:57 studio version.

Beck played "Freeway Jam" with two other legendary guitarists - Carlos Santana and Steve Lukather - in Japan, on June 1, 1986 for a concert that was later released in some territories as a live album called Rock In Karuizawa. Jan Hammer was part of the band for this show.