Shapes of Things
When Rod Stewart suggested they record Shapes of Things, Jeff Beck said, “Slow it down, make it dirty and evil.” They did. The version on Truth does not update the Yardbirds original. It breaks the song open and rebuilds it closer to Howlin’ Wolf. Beck played slide fills on a Sho-Bud steel guitar he had just bought. His 1959 Gibson Les Paul went through a Tone Bender fuzzbox for the heavier passages. In the mid-section, Beck and drummer Micky Waller trade drum rolls and crashing cymbals in something that sounds like a chase. Rod Stewart tears through the whole thing with a rawness he had not yet been asked to perform anywhere else. That rawness was the point.
The Yardbirds released Shapes of Things as a single in February 1966. The single reached number three in the UK and number eleven in the United States. Beck played the guitar solo entirely on the G string of a 1954 Fender Esquire, using feedback he had learned to control by finding the resonant points on the neck. He later called it the pinnacle of the Yardbirds. He left the band in late 1966 and formed a new group. Rod Stewart came in on vocals. Ron Wood took bass. Micky Waller played drums. None of them were known beyond London when they went into the studio in May 1968 and recorded Truth in four days. The album opens with Shapes of Things. It was the right choice.
Truth came out on July 29, 1968 through Epic Records in the United States. It peaked at number fifteen on the Billboard Top LPs chart. Al Kooper reviewed it in Rolling Stone that September and called it a classic, comparing it to Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton. The album introduced Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood to a wider audience. Shapes of Things is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s list of 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. Ian MacDonald, writing in Revolution in the Head, identified Beck’s feedback technique as the probable inspiration for Paul McCartney’s guitar solo on Taxman. Fifty-eight years ago today, Beck put out an album with three people nobody had heard of. That was how it started.