The Yardbirds

“I remember reading one quote in some music book I’ve never been able to find again that said – ‘There are exactly four rock bands that matter, and The Yardbirds are one of them.'”

While there were plenty of famous bands that were part of the British Invasion, there aren’t many that can compete with The Yardbirds when it comes to the legacy and the number of legendary and innovative musicians that came from it.

Formation

The band’s original members were

• Keith Relf – Vocalist and harmonical player

• Jim McCarty – Drummer

• Chris Dreja – Rhythm guital

• Paul Samwell-Smith – Bassist

• Top Topham – Leading guitar

The band had formed when Dreja, McCarthy and Topham joined Relf and Samwell-Smith to a band called the Metropolitan Blues Quartet. After playing some gigs, they decided to changed the band’s name to The Yardbirds.

The group gained notice when they became the house band at the Crawdaddy Club (a music venue in England), succeeding the Rolling Stones.

The Eric Clapton Years

in October 1963, a few months after their formation, Topham, the lead guitarist, left and was replaced by Eric Clapton.

For those of you who haven’t heard of him, I recommend you go search him on Google right now, and listen to few of the songs that come up. Briefly, Clapton is one of the best guitarists in the world (I’m not making this up, he is accually rated the second best guitarist in the world according to Rolling Stone’s list of top 100 guitarists, and right after him in number 3 there is another guitarist that was in the band for some time…), best known for his melodic and memorable guitar solos.

The band started as a blues band, and Clapton, who was a blues purist, fitted perfectly.

The Crawdday Club impersario became their manager, and under his guide they started touring Britain and recording.

They recorded two singles at that time, “I Wish You Would” and “Good Morning, School Girl”, before their first major success…

“For Your Love”

“For Your Love” was the band’s first major hit, hitting top of the charts in the UK and Canada, and reached number 6 in the US.

But the problem was that Clapton didn’t like it. He accused the band of making blues music so much as to climb the charts, and consequently left the band the day the single was released.

But before leaving, Clapton recommended another guitarist to replace him – Jimmy Page. But Page, who had a successfull career as a session guitarist, declined the offer, but also offered another guitarist, Jeff Beck.

Jeff Beck

Like Clapton, Beck is a world renowned guitarist that helped shape the music we know today, mainly by introducing new or popularizing less known guitar playing techniques (and FYI, he is number 5 on the Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 greatest guitarists mentioned above in page 4). While in the band, he explored with various guitar effects, such as fuzz, sustain and distortion, that are very common today but were less used at that time. This and his playing style in general helped shape some of the band’s most known hits.

Heart Full of Soul

The first single the band relesed after Beck replaced Clapton was “Heart Full of Soul”, released only three months after “For Your Love”. The song reached number 2 on the charts in the UK and number 9 on the US Billboard Hot 100. In the song you can hear how Beck is making his guitar sound like a sitar. They accually had one the original recording, but were dissatisfied with the result, and therefore he used an effect to mimic the sound, with greate success in my opinion.

I think this is their most known song, and one of their best ones, and I really recommend you listen to it.

Roger the Engineer

Beck was in the band only for a short period, but in that time the band recorded most of their best known songs, despite the fact that he recorded only a single album with them.

The album is known as “Roger the Engineer”, a title stemming from the cover drawing. The album was ranked number 350 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

The album’s best known song, and only single, is “Over Under Sideways Down”, and I recommend you listen to it (the second song in the playlist below), and in this oppurtunity why not give a listen to the full album… (attached below)

I personnally also really like “Lost Woman” which is the first song, becuase of the bass line, and the structure that evolves throughout the song.

The Jimmy Page era

After “Roger the Engineer” was released, Samwell-Smith, the bassist, quit the band during a drunken gig. Jimmy Page who was at the show agreed to replace him for the show, and later he joined full time on bass.

Again, for those of you who havn’t heard of him, he is most known as the guitarist of Led Zeppelin (which didn’t exist at the time), and if you havn’t heard about Led Zeppelin… go check them out, they are pretty cool… (and again, he is ranked at number 2 in the Rolling Stone’s top 100 guitarists. I told you not many bands can compete with them when it comes to the number of famous musicians that came from it…)

After some time, Beck got sick, and Page took over as lead guitarist. When Beck got better, the band reunited but now with both Page and Beck on guitars.

The Page and Beck era

After the band’s reunioun on July 1966, the band started experimenting with psychedelic rock. They released the psychedelic rock single “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago”, which was recorded with John Paul Jones, Led Zeppelin’s future bassist. The band also appeared in the film “Blow-Up”, after the Who declined.

At that time the band recorded very little in the studio. One interesting story from that time was that right before Page joined the band, he, Beck, Paul Jones and the Who’s drummer Keith Moon had a recording session, during which the idea of a supergroup involving these people emerged, but they didn’t think this would really work, and that it would “go over like a lead zeppelin”. Later Page recalled the conversation and from that sentence came the name Led Zeppelin.

Jeff Beck’s Departure

After shooting their scene in Blow-Up in London, the band returned to the US for a show in San Francisco, and to appear on Dick Clark’s “Caranan of Start” tour. After a few shown with the Caravan, Beck stormed out. The band continued on the tour with Page as the sole lead guitarist. Later they caught up with Beck, at which point he had officialy left the band.

After that the band continued without Beck, who began a solo career. Subsequently Page introduced some new and innovative ways to play the guitar, including using a cello bow and the combination of a wah-wah pedal toghether with a distrotion.

Final Days

The band’s last album, Little Games, was released in July 1967 only in the US, and it wasn’t succesfull.

After that the band spent much of the rest of the year touring the US, playing mostly their older hits with new arrangement.

By 1968, the band had seriouse competition in the form of Cream (which included Clapton) and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, who were enormously popular psycedelic rock bands. Despite the success of the genre, Relf and McCarty wanted to pursue a style influenced by folk and classical music, while Page wanted to continue with a more heavy music (for which Led Zeppelin would become iconic), and Dreja was developing an interest in photography.

The band released their final single in January 1969 – Think About It, and the final shows were on 31 May and 1 June in Los Angeles, and on 4 and 5 June in Alabama.

You can hear that on their final single (attached below), their sound has changed from the beginning. An interesting thing is that Page’s parts are closer to what they would sound like in Led Zeppelin. I think that this song has weird chirds, that sound very unusual, at least to my taste.

Later Years

In 1992 McCarty and Dreja reunited with some new members, reformed The Yardbirds and with a new manager they began touring again.

In 2003 a new album, Birdland, was released by a lineup that included McCarty, Dreja and the new members, which consisted of some new material and re-recordings of their greatest hits.

After that the band performed in a few occasions. Later Dreja sat out of the US to recover from an illness, and was replaced by the bands original guitarist Topham. Later, in 2015, Topham left the band as well.

The band, now with only McCarty as an original band member, are touring from time to time.

Influence

As you probably understood by now, the band had a lot of influence over the music today.

First of all, the band set a starting point for three legendary guitarists – Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. Each one of them gave the band, and the world by that, some of their personality and musical ingenuity. They invented new ways to play the guitar, and new ways to play music in general. For some of them, the band was their breakthrouth and first experience with a band, something that I’m sure influenced their career for the better.

Personally, I really like Led Zeppelin, and as I see it probably there would not have been Led Zeppelin, or at least not as it is (or was), without The Yardbirds and it’s influence on Jimmy Page.

Hope you have enjoyed the book.