Long before Disraeli Gears, Blind Faith, and Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs convinced people that Eric Clapton was some kind of “God.” Before the pub-inspired proto-metal of Beck-Ola, and the avant jazz of Blow By Blow signaled the true genius of Jeff Beck. And before Led Zeppelin I, II, III or IV were ever a glint in Jimmy Page’s eye, there was a band called The Yardbirds and they ruled.
The Yardbirds never came anywhere close to matching the mind-boggling chart dominance of The Beatles. They never were able to adopt the same effortless, sneering cool of Mick and Keith and the Rolling Stones. And they couldn’t physically dominate the stage with the same kind of explosive energy as The Who. They were simply the most talented, envelope-pushing band to emerge from the swinging London scene of the 1960s.
The Yardbirds were born in the smokey jazz clubs that dotted the London Metropolitan area in 1963. Their career was initially shepherded by a Swiss emigre, born in the Soviet Union named Giorgio Gomelsky. Gomelsky ran the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, where the Rolling Stones first cut their teeth. When Andrew Loog Oldham showed up one day and swiped the Stones from under his nose, Gomelsky vowed never to let that happen again.
Early on, The Yardbirds honed their blues chops while backing local heroes like Cyril Davies and American legends like Sonny Boy Williamson. Williamson swung through the scene in ‘63 looking to make a paycheck blowing his harp for hordes of young, English blues fans eager to hear the real thing for themselves. Eric Clapton entered the lineup around that time, then split just as soon as the band scored their first Top-5 hit, a bongo-fueled rave-up titled “For Your Love.”
No matter. Enter Jeff Beck, one of the most supremely talented musicians to ever pick up a Telecaster. That’s when things got really interesting. With Beck on board, the Blues was sacrificed at the alter of psychedelia as the Yardbirds twisted their sound in new and unique ways on songs like, “Heart Full of Soul,” “Shapes of Things,” “Over Under Sideways Down,” and “Train Kept A Rollin’.” Fuzz pedals, sitar, and enough feedback to pin your eyes to the back of your brain. This became their hallmark.
The group’s bassist, Paul Samwell Smith quit sometime in 1966. Again, no matter. Jeff Beck simply phoned up his old mate, and one of the best session players in London, Jimmy Page, to fill in. It didn’t take long before Page swapped out four strings for six — Chris Dreja took over on bass — and for a supremely brief moment in time, the Yardbirds could rightly boast the greatest two-guitar lineup ever conceived.
This version of the band only recorded a few songs together before Beck himself departed. The best is called “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago.” The unrealized potential that lives in the grooves of that single, galloping 45 remains one of the greatest “What-if’s” of that entire era.
When Beck left in 1967, Page naturally took the reins. Or he tried to anyway. The band’s management called in a ringer, a renowned pop producer named Mickie Most, to help pilot The Yardbirds back to chart dominance. But when the time came to record, Most’s instincts ultimately failed him. Page could see the future and wanted to record heavier, twisted material; songs like “Dazed and Confused.” Most forced them to lay down treacly pop compositions like “Ha Ha! Said The Clown” instead. The results were obvious.
The final epitaph for the Yardbirds was best summarized in a 1970 essay written by one of their most ardent acolytes, rock critic Lester Bangs. “The Yardbirds for all their greatness would finally fizzle out in an eclectic morass of confused experiments and bad judgments,” he wrote. “Because the musicians in the Yardbirds were just too good, too accomplished and cocky to do anything but fuck up in the aftermath of an experiment that none of them seemed to understand anyway.” From: https://sonicbreadcrumbs.substack.com/p/yardbirds-jim-mccarty-interview
