''Truth'' is the debut studio album by English guitarist

Jeff Beck Geoffrey Arnold Beck (born 24 June 1944) is an English rock guitarist. He rose to prominence with the Yardbirds and after fronted the Jeff Beck Group and Beck, Bogert & Appice. In 1975, he switched to a mainly instrumental style, with a fo ...

, released on 29 July 1968 in the United States on

Epic Records Epic Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. The label was founded predominantly as a jazz and classical m ...

and on 4 October 1968 in the United Kingdom on

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. It was founded on January 15, 1889, evolving from the A ...

. It introduced the talents of his backing band

the Jeff Beck Group The Jeff Beck Group was a British rock band formed in London in January 1967 by former Yardbirds guitarist Jeff Beck. Their innovative approach to heavy-sounding blues, rhythm and blues and rock was a major influence on popular music. Firs ...

, specifically

Rod Stewart Sir Roderick David Stewart (born 10 January 1945) is a British rock and pop singer and songwriter. Born and raised in London, he is of Scottish and English ancestry. With his distinctive raspy singing voice, Stewart is among the best-selling ...

and

Ronnie Wood Ronald David Wood (born 1 June 1947) is an English rock musician, best known as an official member of the Rolling Stones since 1975, as well as a member of Faces and the Jeff Beck Group. Wood began his career in 1964, playing guitar with a ...

, to a larger audience, and peaked at number 15 on the ''Billboard'' 200.

Content and background

After leaving

the Yardbirds The Yardbirds are an English rock band, formed in London in 1963. The band's core lineup featured vocalist and harmonica player Keith Relf, drummer Jim McCarty, rhythm guitarist and later bassist Chris Dreja and bassist/producer Paul Samwe ...

in late 1966, Jeff Beck had released three commercial

singles Singles are people not in a committed relationship. Singles may also refer to: Film and television * ''Singles'' (miniseries), a 1984 Australian television series * ''Singles'' (1992 film), written and directed by Cameron Crowe * ''Singles'' ...

, two in 1967 featuring himself on lead vocals, and one without vocals in 1968. All had been hits on the British singles chart, and all were characterized by songs aimed at the pop chart on the

A-side The A-side and B-side are the two sides of phonograph records and cassettes; these terms have often been printed on the labels of two-sided music recordings. The A-side usually features a recording that its artist, producer, or record company ...

at the behest of producer

Mickie Most Michael Peter Hayes (20 June 1938 – 30 May 2003), known as Mickie Most, was an English record producer behind scores of hit singles for acts such as the Animals, Herman's Hermits, the Nashville Teens, Donovan, Lulu, Suzi Quatro, Hot Ch ...

. Harder rock and

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the ...

-based numbers were featured on the B-sides, and for music on the album, Beck opted to pursue the latter course. Recording sessions for the album took place over four days, 14–15 May and 25–26 May 1968.Murray, ''Truth'' reissue liner notes. Nine eclectic tracks were taken from these sessions, including covers of "

Ol' Man River "Ol' Man River" is a show tune from the 1927 musical '' Show Boat'' with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. The song contrasts the struggles and hardships of African Americans with the endless, uncaring flow of the Mississi ...

" by

Jerome Kern Jerome David Kern (January 27, 1885 – November 11, 1945) was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in ove ...

, the

Tudor period The Tudor period occurred between 1485 and 1603 in England and Wales and includes the Elizabethan period during the reign of Elizabeth I until 1603. The Tudor period coincides with the dynasty of the House of Tudor in England that began wit ...

melody "

Greensleeves "Greensleeves" is a traditional English folk song. A broadside ballad by the name "A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves" was registered by Richard Jones at the London Stationer's Company in September 1580,Frank Kidson, ''English Fo ...

", and Bonnie Dobson's "

Morning Dew "Morning Dew," also known as "(Walk Me Out in the) Morning Dew," is a contemporary folk song by Canadian singer-songwriter Bonnie Dobson. The lyrics relate a fictional conversation in a post- nuclear holocaust world. Originally recorded live as ...

", a 1966 hit single for

Tim Rose Timothy Alan Patrick Rose (September 23, 1940 – September 24, 2002) (unofficial website by long-term correspondent of Rose's) was an American singer and songwriter who spent much of his life in London, England, and had more success in E ...

. Beck acknowledged two giants of

Chicago blues Chicago blues is a form of blues music developed in Chicago, Illinois. It is based on earlier blues idioms, such as Delta blues, but performed in an urban style. It developed alongside the Great Migration of the first half of the twentieth cent ...

in songs by

Willie Dixon William James Dixon (July 1, 1915January 29, 1992) was an American blues musician, vocalist, songwriter, arranger and record producer. He was proficient in playing both the upright bass and the guitar, and sang with a distinctive voice, but he ...

– Muddy Waters' " You Shook Me" and Howlin' Wolf's " I Ain't Superstitious". The album starts with "

Shapes of Things "Shapes of Things" is a song by the English rock group the Yardbirds. With its Eastern-sounding, feedback-laden guitar solo and anti-war/pro-environmental lyrics, several music writers have identified it as the first popular psychedelic rock ...

", a song from Beck's old band. Three originals were credited to "Jeffrey Rod", a pseudonym for Beck and Stewart, all reworkings of existing blues songs: "Let Me Love You" by

Buddy Guy George "Buddy" Guy (born July 30, 1936) is an American blues guitarist and singer. He is an exponent of Chicago blues who has influenced generations of guitarists including Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Stevie Ray Vaugh ...

; "Rock My Plimsoul" and "Blues Deluxe" which respectively derive from " Rock Me Baby" and "Gambler's Blues" by B.B. King. For "Blues Deluxe", Beck overdubbed audience reactions from a

sound effects A sound effect (or audio effect) is an artificially created or enhanced sound, or sound process used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. Traditi ...

record to create a live atmosphere, a choice he later regretted. "Plimsoul" had already been recorded for the B-side to the 1967 single "Tallyman", and the tenth track, an instrumental featuring

Jimmy Page James Patrick Page (born 9 January 1944) is an English musician who achieved international success as the guitarist and founder of the rock band Led Zeppelin. Page is prolific in creating guitar riffs. His style involves various alternative ...

John Paul Jones John Paul Jones (born John Paul; July 6, 1747 July 18, 1792) was a Scottish-American naval captain who was the United States' first well-known naval commander in the American Revolutionary War. He made many friends among U.S political elites ( ...

Keith Moon Keith John Moon (23 August 19467 September 1978) was an English drummer for the rock band the Who. He was noted for his unique style of playing and his eccentric, often self-destructive behaviour and addiction to drugs and alcohol. Moon grew ...

, and future Beck group pianist

Nicky Hopkins Nicholas Christian "Nicky" Hopkins (24 February 1944 – 6 September 1994) was an English pianist and organist. Hopkins performed on many popular and enduring British and American rock music recordings from the 1960s to the 1990s, most notably ...

, "

Beck's Bolero "Beck's Bolero" is a rock instrumental recorded by English guitarist Jeff Beck in 1966. It is Beck's first solo recording and has been described as "one of the great rock instrumentals, epic in scope, harmonically and rhythmically ambitious y ...

", had been edited and remixed for

stereo Stereophonic sound, or more commonly stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configuration ...

from the earlier B-side to "

Hi Ho Silver Lining "Hi Ho Silver Lining" is a rock song, written by American songwriters Scott English and Larry Weiss and first released as a single in March 1967 by English band The Attack, then a few days later by Jeff Beck. The Attack's version failed to cha ...

". Due to contractual conflicts, Moon had been credited on the original album as "You Know Who". The cover art is a

double exposure In photography and cinematography, a multiple exposure is the superimposition of two or more exposures to create a single image, and double exposure has a corresponding meaning in respect of two images. The exposure values may or may not be i ...

photograph of model

Celia Hammond Celia Hammond (born 25 July 1943) is an English former model who has since become known as a campaigner against fur and for neutering of cats to control the feral population. Early life Hammond was born to English parents and raised in Austr ...

, who was dating Beck at the time, by photographer Stephen Goldblatt.

Reception and legacy

Reviewing for ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its ...

'' in 1968,

Al Kooper Al Kooper (born Alan Peter Kuperschmidt; February 5, 1944) is a retired American songwriter, record producer and musician, known for organizing Blood, Sweat & Tears, although he did not stay with the group long enough to share its popularity. ...

called ''Truth'' a "classic" and a contemporary version of the 1966 ''

Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton ''Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton'', colloquially known as ''The Beano Album'', is the debut studio album by the English blues rock band John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. Produced by Mike Vernon and released in 1966 by Decca Records (UK) and ...

'' LP, saying the Beck group "swing like mad on this record." ''Truth'' has since been regarded as a seminal work of heavy metal because of its use of blues toward a

hard rock Hard rock or heavy rock is a loosely defined subgenre of rock music typified by aggressive vocals and distorted electric guitars. Hard rock began in the mid-1960s with the garage, psychedelic and blues rock movements. Some of the earliest ha ...

approach. According to

Pete Prown Pete Prown (born 1963) is an American writer and magazine editor, painter, guitarist, and music journalist. He has worked as the editor-in-chief of ''Guitar Shop'' magazine and contributing editor for ''Vintage Guitar''. His writing has also appear ...

and

HP Newquist HP Newquist is an American author whose books cover a wide range of topics, from medicine and music to technology and terror. He is also a museum curator and musician, and has worked in a variety of fields as a columnist, publisher, industry ana ...

, "although some have claimed that this disc was the first metal album, the sound actually leaned more towards a heavy brand of blues rock." ''

Classic Rock Classic rock is a US radio format which developed from the album-oriented rock (AOR) format in the early 1980s. In the United States, the classic rock format comprises rock music ranging generally from the mid-1960s through the mid 1990s, prim ...

'' magazine ranked ''Truth'' eighth on its list of the 30 greatest British

blues rock Blues rock is a fusion music genre that combines elements of blues and rock music. It is mostly an electric ensemble-style music with instrumentation similar to electric blues and rock (electric guitar, electric bass guitar, and drums, sometimes w ...

albums; an accompanying blurb read, "it was an album that not only helped establish the British blues rock sound, but featured many of its best exponents." Tom Scholz of

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

has listed it as his favorite album on Gibson's online magazine, stating, "I knew Jeff Beck's ''Truth'' album inside out..." Reviewing its historical significance, Sean Egan commented that the ''Truth'' line-up, if it had remained intact, could have produced "a string of classic albums", but its tracklist of covers showed "a lack of songwriting base". Blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa recorded a studio version of "Blues Deluxe" on his 2003 album ''

Blues Deluxe ''Blues Deluxe'' is the third studio album by American blues-rock musician Joe Bonamassa. Recorded at Unique Recording Studios in New York City, New York, it was produced by Bob Held and features nine cover versions of songs by classic blues art ...

'' and recorded live versions on '' Live at Rockpalast'' (2005), and '' Live from the Royal Albert Hall'' (2009). Bonamassa also played "Beck's Bolero", "Let Me Love You Baby" (and "Spanish Boots" and "Plynth (Water Down the Drain)" from the ''

Beck-Ola ''Beck-Ola'' is the second studio album by English guitarist Jeff Beck, and the first credited to the Jeff Beck Group, released in 1969 in the United Kingdom on Columbia Records and in the United States on Epic Records. It peaked at No. 15 ...

'' album) in his Salute to the British Blues Explosion tour featuring the music of Beck, Clapton and Page in July 2016. On 10 October 2006,

Legacy Recordings Legacy Recordings is an American record label that is a division of Sony Music. Formed in 1990 after Sony's acquisition of CBS Records, Legacy originally handled the archives of Sony Music-owned labels Columbia Records and Epic Records. In 2 ...

remastered and reissued the album for

compact disc The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in O ...

with eight

bonus tracks An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78 rpm records co ...

. Included were two earlier takes of "You Shook Me" and "Blues Deluxe", the latter without the

overdubbed Overdubbing (also known as layering) is a technique used in audio recording in which audio tracks that have been pre-recorded are then played back and monitored, while simultaneously recording new, doubled, or augmented tracks onto one or more av ...

applause, and the six tracks making up the three singles by Beck. The B-side to the 1968 single "

Love Is Blue "L'amour est bleu" (; "Love Is Blue") is a song whose music was composed by André Popp, and whose lyrics were written by Pierre Cour, in 1967. Bryan Blackburn later wrote English-language lyrics for it. First performed in French by Greek singe ...

", "I've Been Drinking", was another "Jeffrey Rod" special, this time reconfiguring the

Johnny Mercer John Herndon Mercer (November 18, 1909 – June 25, 1976) was an American lyricist, songwriter, and singer, as well as a record label executive who co-founded Capitol Records with music industry businessmen Buddy DeSylva and Glenn E. Wallic ...

song "

Drinking Again "Drinking Again" is a 1962 torch song, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer and music by Doris Tauber. The song has been recorded by Frank Sinatra ('' The World We Knew''), Dinah Washington ('' Drinking Again''), Aretha Franklin ('' Unforgettable: A Tr ...

Track listing

Personnel

– electric guitars, acoustic guitar on "Greensleeves";

pedal steel guitar The pedal steel guitar is a console-type of steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings to enable playing more varied and complex music than any previous steel guitar design. Like all steel guitars, it can ...

on "Shapes of Things"; bass guitar on "Ol' Man River"; lead vocals on "Tallyman" and "Hi Ho Silver Lining", co-lead vocals on "Let Me Love You" *

– lead vocals, backing vocals on "Hi Ho Silver Lining", possible backing vocal on "Tallyman" *

– bass guitar *

Micky Waller Michael Waller (6 September 1941 – 29 April 2008) was an English drummer, who played with many of the biggest names on the UK rock and blues scene, after he became a professional musician in 1960. In addition to being a member, albeit sometim ...

– drums Additional credited personnel *

– bass guitar on "Hi Ho Silver Lining" and "Beck's Bolero";

Hammond organ The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs generated ...

on "Ol' Man River" and "You Shook Me"; arrangements on "Hi Ho Silver Lining" *

– piano on "Morning Dew", "You Shook Me", "Beck's Bolero" and "Blues Deluxe" * "You Know Who" (

) – drums on "Beck's Bolero";

timpani Timpani (; ) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a membrane called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionall ...

on "Ol' Man River" Additional uncredited personnel *

Madeline Bell Madeline Bell (born July 23, 1942) is an American soul singer, who became famous as a performer in the UK during the 1960s and 1970s with pop group Blue Mink, having arrived from America in the gospel show ''Black Nativity'' in 1962, with the ...

– backing vocals on "I've Been Drinking" * John Carter and Ken Lewis – backing vocals on "Tallyman" *

Clem Cattini Clemente Anselmo Agustino Cattini (born 20 August 1937) is an English rock and roll drummer of the late 1950s and 60s, who was a member of The Tornados before becoming well known for his work as a session musician. He is one of the most prolifi ...

– drums on "Hi Ho Silver Lining" *

Aynsley Dunbar Aynsley Thomas Dunbar (born 10 January 1946) is an English drummer. He has worked with John Mayall, Frank Zappa, Jeff Beck, Journey, Jefferson Starship, Nils Lofgren, Eric Burdon, Shuggie Otis, Ian Hunter, Lou Reed, David Bowie, Mick Ronson ...

– drums on "Tallyman" and "Rock My Plimsoul (single version)" *

– 12-string electric guitar on "Beck's Bolero" * unknown Scottish bagpipe player –

bagpipes Bagpipes are a woodwind instrument using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. The Great Highland bagpipes are well known, but people have played bagpipes for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, ...

on "Morning Dew" * unknown studio orchestra – orchestra on "Love Is Blue" Production personnel *

– producer *

Ken Scott Ken Scott (born 20 April 1947) is a British record producer and engineer known for being one of the five main engineers for the Beatles, as well as engineering Elton John, Pink Floyd, Procol Harum, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Duran Duran, the Jeff B ...

– engineer * Stephen Goldblatt — front cover photograph

References

External links

''Truth''
(

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Flash ...

) at

Radio3Net Radio 3 net is the former ''Radio România Tineret'' (or Radio 3). More than 20,000 albums are stored on Radio 3 net. A few of the prominent features available on the website are "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die ''1001 Albums You Mus ...

(streamed copy where licensed) {{DEFAULTSORT:Truth (Jeff Beck Album) 1968 debut albums Albums produced by Mickie Most Jeff Beck albums EMI Records albums Epic Records albums EMI Columbia Records albums Albums recorded at Olympic Sound Studios