I believe it was 1981 and I was a college student at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. My sister, her boyfriend, my date and I were at the big Jeff Beck concert in a large, local arena. It was a little bit more than halfway through the show when I turned to my sister's beau and said, "Do you have a comb?" He acknowledged that he did indeed have a comb and pulled it out of his back pocket to offer it to me. I said, "Throw it on the stage." He said, "What?" and I said again, "Throw it on the stage." Of course, things were pretty noisy with Jeff Beck wailing away on stage and my sister's boyfriend wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed anyway so he said, "What?" This time I yelled at him, 'Throw it on the stage! Throw the comb on the stage!" The guy looked at me, blankly, unable to comprehend any real purpose behind my command and stood there frozen with the comb in his hand. Finally I said, "Screw it." I grabbed the comb from the guy and hurled it onto the stage where it fell about ten feet from where Jeff Beck was playing his guitar. For the next twenty minutes we watched Jeff Beck in rapt attention. "He didn't see it," my date said. "Just wait," was my measured response. Naturally, my sister's boyfriend was kind of pissed off that I had thrown his nice comb onto the stage but we really never spoke to each other that much anyhow so I really wasn't worrying about what he might have felt about the whole thing. As the show began drawing to a close, Jeff Beck was standing only a few feet from the stupid comb. As Beck stalked the stage, he seemed to be walking all around the comb but never looked down or gave any indication that he might have noticed it lying there. 'He doesn't see it!" my date shouted. "Just wait!" I yelled back. Then, Jeff Beck was standing right over the goshdarned comb, his legs splayed in a classic rock guitar-god pose. We were going absolutely nuts in anticipation. "He doesn't see it!" my date screamed as she pounded on my shoulder with her fists. "He sees it!" I screamed back. Suddenly, as if on cue, Jeff Beck reached down, grabbed the comb and viciously attacked the six strings of his electric guitar with the small plastic instrument and then threw it back into the crowd. I'm not sure if I got laid that night and I definitely don't remember my sister's boyfriend's name but you have to admit, it was certainly a night to remember.
by Mitch Myers
copyright 1999 New City Communications, Inc.