TRUTH

I listened to this album for the first time in late 1992 in a EMI British CD which also included the "Beck- ola" album. Jeff Beck`s first album is really not very Progressive. I think that at the time the "British Blues Boom" was still very popular, and this album has a mixture of that British Blues style and some Rock Pop influences. The first track, "Shapes of Things", is a song originally recorded by THE YARDBIRDS years before, here arranged again by Jeff Beck and his band collaborators. The most closer to Prog Rock tracks, in my opinion, are "Beck`s Bolero", recorded with a star line-up which included Keith Moon, Jimi Page and John Paul Jones, and a version of "Greenslevees". Among the Blues-Pop songs there are "Morning Dew", "You Shook Me", "Old Man River" and "I Ain't Superstitious" . I think that the producer of this album and Beck himself were still trying to find the right style for him, so this first album and the second are still in this search. He became more Prog influenced in his albums which he recorded in the mid-seventies.

From the Bonus Tracks, I only have listened to "Love is Blue", a song which I have in an old LP (made in my country) which is a compilation of Hit Parade songs from the sixties called "Las que Llegaron al Hit Parade" which I think it was specially released by Capitol /EMI in 1969 as ordered by an old (and still in existence!) AM Radio station in my city. "Love is Blue" is a cover from a successful song originally recorded in the same year (1968) by French Easy-Listening musician Paul Mauriat and by other musicians in different countries (in Mexico it was recorded by a "duet on pianos plus orchestra" called "Los Pianos Barrocos", if I remember well). Despite being a British Hit for Beck, he didn`t like the song. Well, I think that the song is very Easy Listening in style and in arrangements, but the simple melody of the song was played by Beck in a very good Rock style, with him using different sounds from his guitar. He maybe hated the choral arrangements and the "sugar" orchestral arrangements (which include a harpsichord), but the song doesn`t sound bad thanks to Beck`s guitar, in my opinion.