By LARRY ROHTER


LOS ANGELES - At 65, with a distinguished career that dates back to the earliest days of the British Invasion, Jeff Beck remains the greatest guitarist that millions of people have never heard of. But the master instrumentalist in him has resisted making the concessions that would allow him to be heard more widely in an era in which his craft has been reduced to a video game with colored buttons.

The creators of “Guitar Hero” invited Mr. Beck to be an avatar in the game, but he declined. “Who wants to be in a kid’s game, like a toy shop?” he asked dismissively during an interview. “There’s just this mad avalanche of material that’s available, so it’s so hard for aspiring young players to find where they should go” and “not be enslaved to yet another tool or device.”

With a new manager and a forthcoming record on a new label, Mr. Beck is instead trying to resolve his dilemma the old-fashioned way. Mr. Beck and his new band are heading off to Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea before returning to the United States in April, when his first studio recording in seven years, “Emotion & Commotion,” is scheduled to be released by Atco.

“I was almost a recluse, and now you can’t get rid of me,” he said. “It just seems like I’ve picked the right moment to move. There’s a commitment I’ve made over the last year really,” prodded by his new manager and musicians he respects, “and now you’re seeing the results of that.”

Originally Mr. Beck was one of what Jan Hammer, the jazz and fusion pianist and drummer who is a friend and longtime collaborator, calls “the holy trinity” of British guitar players to emerge from the 1960s. Like Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page, the founder of Led Zeppelin, Mr. Beck first came to prominence as a member of the Yardbirds.

As a solo artist for the last 43 years, Mr. Beck has built a reputation as the guitar player’s guitar player. Though notoriously self-effacing, even insecure, about his own talent, he has become a major influence on three generations of players, particularly through his use of harmonics and the whammy bar on the Fender Stratocaster he prefers .

George Martin, who produced the Beatles and the only two of Mr. Beck’s recordings to go platinum, “Blow by Blow” and “Wired,” from the mid-’70s, said, “If I have to think of an electric guitar virtuoso, Beck is my call.” In contrast to musicians who find a single approach , he continued, “Jeff has that ability to be comfortable in many styles: hard rock, jazz, funky blues, even opera.”

Mr. Beck’s career, however, has followed a curious path. Periods of engagement with the commercial side of the music world have given way to interludes of withdrawal, during which he retires to his home in the English countryside to work on his collection of hot rods, listen to obscure records and practice in his living room.

“If you were to plot my success or failure, it goes,” and here Mr. Beck made a series of up-and-down hand gestures, accompanied by the sounds of a car stopping and starting. “It very seldom stays on a high plateau.”

Even today Mr. Beck remains suspicious of the machinery of the pop industry, expressing both puzzlement and disgust at the way the celebrity culture has swallowed other musicians.

“It’s a diabolical business,” he said. “I can’t imagine how hellish it must be to be hounded like Amy Winehouse and people like that. I have a little peripheral place on the outskirts of celebrity, when I go to premieres and that sort of stuff, which is as close as I want to get. I cherish my privacy, and woe betide anyone who tries to interfere with that.”