POP REVIEW : Beck, Vaughan: A Guitar Duel Between Heroes

Thousands of years into recorded history, zealots still go to war for their gods.

“ Jeff should be taking lessons from Stevie ,” blurted out one impetuous young man waiting in line for the men’s room at the Sports Arena after the musical double-header there Saturday featuring rock-guitar heroes Jeff Beck and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

“Jeff was around for 20 years before little Stevie ever made a record,” came an angrily authoritative voice from down the line.

“Doesn’t matter,” said the first, fearless voice. “Stevie blew his doors off.”

There followed some rancor about seniority and wide-ranging experience counting for something, and seniority not counting for diddley, and so on and so forth as onlookers looked around nervously. It didn’t quite come to blows, but you can just about bet that fisticuffs were exchanged somewhere that night over who was the feistier fretman.

Reminiscent of the days when hippie heretics used to scrawl “Clapton Is God” on London walls, only to have “Hendrix” spray-painted over it as a replacement deity, this debate seems to center on whether you prefer a noisily bluesy approach with a lot of soul, in which case you might vote for Hendrix/Vaughan, or whether you prefer a clear-toned purity of technique, in which case you’d probably go for Clapton/Beck.

Beck’s set was the more eagerly anticipated, since the guitarist credited by many with helping invent heavy metal in the ‘60s and fusion in the ‘70s hasn’t gone on tour in eight years. Vaughan tours with his Texan backing band Double Trouble all the time and is a known, and consistently excellent, quantity.

But, less legendary as he may be, Vaughan seemed to engender more crowd enthusiasm with his opening set, an only slightly abbreviated version of his usual headlining show. Vaughan enjoys the advantage of singing as well as playing, which can’t help but facilitate the level of communion in a rink as unmusical as the Sports Arena. A case could also be made that--vocals or no vocals--Vaughan’s playing style just has more feeling these days than Beck’s, full of technical wizardry as it may be.

That feeling can manifest itself in simplicity, as in a rare slow instrumental, “Riviera Paradise,” that built to a moment in which the guitarist simply plucked the strings up by the tuning knobs while his keyboard player, the equally gifted Reese Wynans, was allowed to take the more melodic part on piano. This wasn’t jazz fusion, it was jazz , and it was exquisite.

Beck had a similarly lovely and quiet moment in his own set with the tremolo-bar solo of “Where Were You,” which, like almost all of the material, came from the new, uneven, all-instrumental “Guitar Shop” album. He also scored with a couple of prime choices from his best-remembered ‘70s solo albums, “Blow by Blow” and “Wired,” that resurrected his fusion of yore.

Much of the flashy new material dominating Beck’s set, though, was oriented toward hard rock (with nods toward reggae, funk and, of course, fusion). Listening to “Stand On It,” which goes directly from metal riff into metal solo, you may find yourself wondering whether you blanked out and missed the rank metal vocal chorus that usually exists solely to break up showoff riffs and solos. Not that hard rock without the lyrics is a bad idea at all, but something significant still seemed missing.

Could it have been the bass? The occasional low, throbbing sounds from Tony Hymas’ keyboards and the double-bass drums of Terry Bozzio hardly began to make up for the missing bottom end needed to complement Beck’s bubbling high notes. After Beck’s first encore, a vocal-free “People Get Ready,” he was joined by Vaughan, who sang and played on “I’m Goin’ Down,” an anti-climax indicative that the gods collectively are not as impressive as the gods individually.