The Jeff Beck recording that blew John Frusciante’s mind: “I didn’t understand”
Truth is one of those albums that exudes electric energy the moment the needle hits grooves of the vinyl. Released in 1968, the album could be considered one of Jeff Beck‘s most fearless offerings, showcasing his ability to tackle a wide range of emotions through guitar playing alone. There’s a technical mastery to the piece that understandably caught the attention of many guitar aficionados, like the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ very own John Frusciante.
Beck’s debut studio album enlisted help from Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood to create an eclectic expanse of sounds that threw flames into the fire of hard rock before Led Zeppelin even got the chance to. Of course, the legendary rock band would release their debut just a few months later from the broken shards of The Yardbirds, but Truth came in swinging, sowing the seeds for rock and heavy metal before it even had a chance to breathe.
The reality of Truth was that it was excellence before the scene even knew what it was. Its line-up was the ideal primer for the impending rock revolution, blending Beck’s masterful guitar prowess seamlessly with the contributions of Stewart, Wood, and luminaries like Jimmy Page and Keith Moon. Fearlessly experimental and boundary-breaking, the album not only carved a path for the evolution of rock but redefined its very essence.
Zeppelin and those that followed suit, like Eric Clapton and countless others, would repurpose Beck’s defiance of convention in Truth and attempt to emulate the guitarist’s flawless instrumental approach. As Frusciante once recalled, discovering Truth was like hearing a real guitarist for the first time. Listening to the album as a kid, he would listen to Beck “pulling all these sounds out of the guitar” before concluding he “didn’t know where they were coming from”.
According to the musician, “gradually discovering Beck’s guitar playing” was a “major moment for me”. He first listened to Beck’s material after his mother bought him Blow by Blow and Wired as a gift, but it was his guitar playing on Truth that really stood out to him during a time when artists like Jimi Hendrix were becoming immensely popular.
Describing his approach, Frusciante said: “He’s doing it mostly on a Les Paul [guitar], and there’s no whammy bar or anything. He uses the whammy bar quite a bit on Blow by Blow and Wired, but on Truth there was no whammy bar and yet you’re always hearing him doing these tricks and making these sounds that I didn’t understand where they were coming from.” Considering the various sounds Beck achieves on the album, it’s easy to see why guitarists like Frusciante may be stumped by his lack of a whammy bar, which are typically used to raise or loosen tensions on the string to create different notes.
Truth was a monumental contribution to the rock genre as it pushed conventional boundaries and created sounds that many felt were impossible in the music world. Not only could Beck deliver surprises in terms of the notes he constructed, but he proved that rock could hold a significant amount of depth and emotion, resonating in ways never before possible.
