‘Truth’: The album Jeff Beck thought Led Zeppelin had ripped off
Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page go back a long way, and for that, you’d expect them to have been good friends the whole way through their careers
For the most part, this is pretty much the case, and the fact that they worked together in the Yardbirds and Jeff Beck Group is illustrative of just how well they combined their talents to produce magic on numerous occasions. Both may have had relatively humble beginnings playing as session musicians in a variety of different projects in the early ‘60s, but their talents were very easily noticed after a short while, and it was only a matter of time before they found themselves in the ascendency towards becoming legends of their instruments.
That said, there was something of a friendly rivalry between the two of them, and it was often called into question who the more talented of the duo was. While both have their merits as guitarists, they also have areas in which they lag behind the other in terms of their ability, allowing the other to stake a claim that they were the true great of the period.
Some would say that Page’s contributions to Led Zeppelin in the years after his and Beck’s collaborations were enough to demonstrate that he was the more gifted of the two, but there are moments where his sloppiness does come into full view. Certain moments on the rock group’s records showcase a light touch from Page where everything is played with the utmost clarity and precision, but on other occasions, he’ll bust out a flurry of notes that feel almost clustered together, and there’s a distinct lack of care being put into his lead playing.
On the other hand, Beck was pretty reliable and consistent in his work, and not only that, but he believed that Page’s work in Led Zeppelin was a carbon copy of everything that they’d previously done together. Not every great guitarist has to be completely original, and some have forged exceptional careers for themselves through the act of mimicry, but as far as Beck was concerned, there was only so much that Page could do before it started to appear as though he was aping his own style.
In a 2009 interview with Classic Rock Magazine, Beck revealed how the two of them had come to know each other in the first place, and that their first encounter actually stemmed from someone else’s disbelief of Page’s shortcomings as a player. “My sister knew Jimmy from Epsom Art School,” Beck explained, adding that she’d told him about the “weirdo” in her class who played guitar. “I’ll take you over there because I’d like to see him play,” she apparently claimed to Beck, adding: “I don’t believe he can play.”
While they did eventually strike up a strong relationship and recorded many early demos at Page’s house, it wasn’t until Page disappeared to form Led Zeppelin that Beck realised that all of Page’s strengths were a result of him borrowing from him. “When I first heard what he’d done with Led Zeppelin, I thought: ‘That’s a little bit more than inspired by the Truth album’,” he claimed, referring to the 1968 album by the Jeff Beck Group. However, he would later concede that Led Zeppelin, while built upon Beck’s influence, were more of a complete package.
“When I finally got over that I realised I needed more than I had. I needed a frontman with girly appeal. [Robert] Plant certainly had that in abundance – the bare chest, golden locks and all that,” he laughed, adding: “We had Rod Stewart.”
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