“The band was extraordinary, not only because of its musicianship, but because it was a band of ideas.”
—Chris Dreja
I was a big Yardbirds fan. The Yardbirds’ Greatest Hits was one of my most-played albums in high school. I later bought their albums and UK imports, and tracked down their obscure singles. The early-seventies band I had at UCLA included one of their songs in our set, and we recorded an original composition much in the group’s style. Jim McCarty, The Yardbirds’ drummer, was the second interview I conducted as a young rock journalist when he was in town promoting Renaissance, his new band with The Yardbirds’ singer Keith Relf. I was inspired to write a lengthy overview on the band that became a cover story for Rock Magazine’s March 15, 1971 issue. In the early days of Rhino Records, I interviewed Jim and guitarist Chris Dreja and produced a Yardbirds picture disc. Most of the quotes in this chapter are from that February 11, 1982 discussion.
Although other artists of the British Invasion had more hits, I rank The Yardbirds third to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones on artistic innovation. Internal problems kept the group from ever reaching their commercial potential, and they ended up falling quite short, being instead remembered for leaving an indelible mark on the evolution of rock, especially in terms of technique and electronic experimentation, and for the development of the lead guitar (and lead guitarist). It might also be argued that, when they occasionally flashed the brilliance they were capable of, The Yardbirds produced some of the best rock ’n’ roll of the sixties.
In May 1963 members of two groups formed The Yardbirds: Keith Relf (age twenty), lead vocals and harmonica; Paul Samwell-Smith (twenty), bass; Jim McCarty (nineteen), drums; Chris Dreja (seventeen), rhythm guitar; Anthony “Top” Topham (fifteen), lead guitar. Keith, who was fond of beat literature, came up with “The Yardbirds,” a term for hobos who hung around railroad yards, after seeing it in Jack Kerouac’s writings. The band’s passion was to play American blues and rhythm and blues of performers such as Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Reed, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Jelly Roll Morton, and Lightnin’ Slim. “The names they had were extraordinary,” observed Chris, “‘Jelly Roll Morton,’ ‘Lightnin’ Slim,’ and ‘Howlin’ Wolf.’ What’s a ‘Howlin’ Wolf’ when you live in Surbiton?”
The group was gigging regularly at London clubs when the members decided to devote more time to their music. Topham, still in school, had to quit because his parents wouldn’t allow him to turn professional. He was replaced by an art school acquaintance of Dreja and Relf’s, eighteen-year-old Eric Clapton, solidifying a lineup that Jim McCarty distilled into “three art school boys and two grammar school boys.” Clapton, whose role models were guitarists Buddy Guy, Freddie King, and B. B. King, made his debut on October 19 at the Crawdaddy club. “What I immediately liked about The Yardbirds was that our entire reason for existence was to honor the tradition of the blues,” he wrote in his autobiography.
Chris Dreja welcomed Eric into the group, and shared his room with him: “It seemed like Eric would go through a style every six months. During that time it was novel to pretend one was an American, and dress in an Ivy League style with a crew cut like Steve McQueen. After that he wore his hair in a bouffant and wore a plastic mac [a cheap Mackintosh raincoat]. Eric was moody and quiet, but he shared our sense of humor.” Similar to Keith, Eric enjoyed reading beat literature, and was a fan of French and Japanese movies.
With his natty blond hair, Keith Relf resembled The Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones. He was the natural star of the group and would later receive the most fan mail. His singing voice was ragged, slightly nasal, and uncultivated, and sounded like a harmonica, an instrument at which he excelled.
During performances at the Crawdaddy, the Marquee, and other clubs, Eric Clapton came into his own. When Clapton first auditioned for The Yardbirds, he couldn’t play the usual melody lines and ended up improvising “as an excuse,” because he didn’t know what else to do. Clapton used lightweight guitar strings that broke frequently. While he changed them, the impatient crowd would slowly handclap in unison, resulting in the nickname of “Slowhand” from “slow hand clap(ton).”
During this early period, Jim kept his day job in a stockbroker’s office. He would show up at gigs wearing his pinstriped suit, a cymbal under one arm, the Financial Times under the other. “I would change clothes in the lavatory and come out as a blues player, like Superman,” he said. “We called him ‘the accountant,’” added Chris.
The proprietor of the Crawdaddy, Giorgio Gomelsky, had been a champion of The Rolling Stones. He wanted to manage them, and even made a film of them performing (which has never turned up). Instead, the group signed with Andrew Loog Oldham, who accelerated them into venues larger than the modest backroom of the Station Hotel where the Richmond club was based. Giorgio had the similarly styled Yardbirds replace them as regulars, and soon signed them to a management contract.
Giorgio Gomelsky, twenty-nine, was a real character, a charismatic, bearded, bear of a man who sprinkled his Russian-accented English with “Baby.” He grew up in the Russian (SSR) republic of Georgia, was schooled in Switzerland, and had contacts throughout Europe. His day job was that of an assistant film editor. He loved jazz and R&B.
The group signed with EMI (CBS label Epic in the US), and throughout 1964 recorded three singles (two issued in Britain) and a live album at the Marquee Club. Recorded in March and not released until December, Five Live Yardbirds was one of the few live rock albums then recorded. It was not all that it could have been. Some clown had had the idea of speeding up all of the ten tracks so they would fit on a single LP disc. Years later this was corrected, resulting in forty-five minutes of astonishingly (for its time) energetic, fast-paced rock ’n’ roll. During the verses on the album’s opener, “Too Much Monkey Business,” Clapton’s guitar sounds restrained, releasing a little energy by sneaking in notes here and there; then as soon as the break comes, all his power is forcefully unleashed. The whole album’s like that. Clapton’s irresistible playing sounds at times like a chicken chasing a fire engine, and at others like a staggering drunken rooster. Although Clapton was the only stellar musician, what strikes me more is how well the musicians jelled, forging a unique sound based on intense drives and climaxes that came to be called “rave-up.”
To everyone’s frustration, nothing sold. “Our contemporaries all had hits,” said Jim, “and we wanted one as well.” As The Rolling Stones and other R&B groups like The Animals and Manfred Mann got a head start on The Yardbirds, there were fewer songs to cover if they didn’t want to repeat what those other artists had recorded. The goal was to have a hit record, not only for the revenue it would generate, but, as Chris pointed out, “to increase our popularity so we could draw a crowd beyond the fifty-mile radius of London.”
While The Yardbirds were hanging out with The Beatles as special guests on their Christmas shows at the Hammersmith Odeon, John Lennon suggested Chuck Jackson’s “The Breaking Point” as a potential single. They also met with a publisher who played them a simple demo with just bongos, a guitar, and a vocal. The composer, Graham Gouldman, was inspired to write songs by The Beatles. He was a guitarist in Manchester band The Mockingbirds. When the group’s label declined to record “For Your Love,” he offered it to The Yardbirds. They liked it. They thought it was different.
Samwell-Smith asked Giorgio to appoint him the band’s “musical director.” In arranging the song for the February 1 session, he kept the bongos on the demonstration record, now performed by Denny Piercey, and hired harpsichordist Brian Auger and standup bassist Ron Prentiss. The band as a whole was restricted to playing during a middle break. As soon as it was finished, they all believed it was that elusive hit.
Even before the group recorded “For Your Love,” a bone of contention for blues purist Clapton, he exhibited passive-aggressive behavior. He showed up late for gigs, and skipped one entirely. He became increasingly argumentative and withdrawn. He quit the group—or caused Giorgio to fire him—days before the single was released.
Despite his expertise, the others were relieved when he left, and felt no longer restricted to the blues. Clapton’s last appearance with the group was on March 3 at Uncle Bonnie’s Chinese Jazz Club. “I didn’t want to be part of a group that was going to be on TV doing Tin Pan Alley songs,” Eric said. A month later he joined John Mayall’s Blues Breakers. “For Your Love” became a big hit, soaring to number three in the UK and number six in the US.
Gomelsky asked Jimmy Page to replace Eric, but he was making too much money as a session guitarist, and recommended Jeff Beck (twenty). Jeff had played with fifteen groups through the years, but was then a member of The Tridents. He wasn’t making much money—he had holes in his shoes—and he was married. He recalled two guys corralling him between sets when The Tridents appeared at the 100 Club, telling him to be at the Marquee on Tuesday at two o’clock. “There’s a ratty van outside with ‘Keith’ written all over it with lipstick,” Jeff recalled. “I’m thinking, ‘It’s The Stones!’ I enter and realize my mistake, that it’s an audition for The Yardbirds. I see Keith Relf puffing on an atomizer. He tells me he has asthma. I thought, ‘I’m joining an asthmatic blues band.’” Jeff took the job in part because it meant more money.
He debuted with the group wearing Eric Clapton’s suit on March 5 at Fairfield Hall in Croydon. “It was horrible when I first started with The Yardbirds,” he recounted to the Daily Bruin’s Salli Stevenson, “because Clapton’s playing was so irresistible that I found myself playing like him. On top of that, Keith Relf told me to play the same way because I was a new guitar player. The first night I ever played with them, I got an ovation of the standing variety for an instrumental I can’t remember the title of. If I hadn’t played that tune, I probably would still have been underdog to Keith.”
Chris was put in charge of cleaning Jeff up, taking him shopping for mod clothes and getting his hair cut: “He was very shy and a bit of a rough diamond, pretty scruffy, working on his car all the time.” Jim added, “Jeff’s really a strange person because basically he’s quiet and nice. He’s got a big insecurity thing. He freaks out on stage, sometimes turning into something else, almost like a monster movie. I think he was uptight following Eric, but then he became a temperamental person anyway.”
When I interviewed Jim and Chris in 1982, they described a promotional film Giorgio had directed of them lip-synching “For Your Love” in a field in Windsor. Their description of the band dressed in medieval costumes and suits of armor was so ridiculous, I thought they were pulling my leg. Years later, in the era of YouTube, it was posted for all to see. The Yardbirds marveled at Giorgio’s ingenuity, but not all of his ideas were good ones.
“Heart Full of Soul,” another Graham Gouldman song, became the group’s next single. Because Giorgio thought a lot of the appeal of “For Your Love” was the prominence of the uncommon harpsichord, he had the idea of introducing novel Indian instruments to a rock arrangement. He hired a sitar player and a tabla player, but the former couldn’t quite get the tempo down and the instrument sounded thin. Jeff Beck stepped in, plugged his guitar into a Tone Bender fuzz box, and came up with a paralyzing electrical riff that made me think of an enormous maniac bee working its way into someone’s flesh.
The group was now playing more concert than club dates, and toured with The Kinks and The Beatles. During the summer, “Heart Full of Soul” climbed to number two in the UK and nine in the US. The group embarked to America for three weeks on September 2. Problems with the American musicians union caused dates to be cancelled.
A factor that affected The Yardbirds on their first tour, as well as limiting the flow of British bands to the US, was a rule enacted by the American Federation of Musicians union. In order to protect the jobs of their members, the AFM restricted foreign musicians from performing in the US unless there was a trade out with that country. For example, if a five-piece rock band from the UK wanted to tour in the States to promote their new record, five American musicians would have to be guaranteed employment in the UK. Those bands hoping to skirt by undetected, or whose management was uninformed, risked having dates cancelled—which is what happened to The Yardbirds—when brought to the attention of the US Labor Department and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Here’s AFM president Herman Kenin’s position in 1964 regarding The Beatles: “We don’t consider them unique. They are musicians and only sing incidentally. We can go to Yonkers or Tennessee and pick up four kids who can do this kind of stuff.”
While in Los Angeles, The Yardbirds taped a couple of Shindig! shows, and on September 9 performed a scene-making party in the Hollywood Hills where they set up behind the living room sofa. Phil Spector, Jackie DeShannon, Peter & Gordon, and members of The Byrds attended. While Jim was packing up his drums into a van, comedian Lenny Bruce hurled a dirt clod at him from an upstairs window. Much more impactful, this is where Jeff met and fell head over heels in love with Mary Hughes, a statuesque blond beauty who had been a featured extra in the beach party movies. Compared with England, Chris Dreja described California as going from “black and white into Technicolor.”
Jim: “Loads of people asked us if we were The Beatles.” Chris: “We used to tell people we were salesmen, that we were selling long hair.” It was a good joke, but it wasn’t so funny when the group was denied entrance to Disneyland because their hair was too long.
With dates now available, Giorgio booked sessions for them in two legendary recording studios. At Sam C. Phillips Recording Studio (also referred to as Sun Studio) in Memphis, they recorded “Train Kept A-Rollin” and “You’re a Better Man Than I.” The legendary Sam Phillips, who had produced Elvis, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis, interrupted a fishing trip to engineer the session. Despite the special circumstances, Keith Relf got drunk and pissed everybody off. He redid his vocals a week later in New York. At Chess Recording Studios in Chicago—the home of Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, and Bo Diddley—they captured Diddley’s “I’m A Man,” which had been part of the group’s live set the past two years. In addition to the magical experiences, the band felt they got a better sound than they had previously in England.
That fall they did lots of gigs in the UK, some in Germany and Belgium. In October the third Graham Gouldman single was released. “Evil Hearted You” boasted fine group vocals, powerful guitar chords, and Beck’s blistering lead. It got up to number three in the UK. Of equal interest was the B-side’s “Still I’m Sad,” composed by McCarty and Samwell-Smith in the mode of a thirteenth century Gregorian chant. Giorgio helped out on the low notes. Despite its unconventionality, it got considerable airplay in both the US and UK. Instead of “Evil Hearted You,” Epic Records in America released “I’m a Man.” It’s the group’s recording that best captures their speeded-up rave-up style, a frenzy of rapidly strummed, muted guitar strings. It made it to number seventeen.
In December The Yardbirds were back in the US for three weeks. At Chess Recording Studios they recorded “Shapes of Things,” which group members—Jeff Beck included—consider their best record. Paul—with Jim contributing later—wrote the song in a Chicago bar about the destruction of the planet. It’s a great record and a distinctly Yardbirds-sounding record. The pulsing guitars discharge a very electric sound, almost as if they were plugged into the power grid. The break spirits the listener away onto an exhilarating magic carpet ride via the Indian melodies of the vocals and lead guitar, which Jeff played on one string. The March 1966 single rose to three in the UK and eleven in the US.
A highlight for Jeff was when Giorgio took him to see Howlin’ Wolf perform in a club that looked like it had recently been converted from a drug store. Jeff: “There were Negroes standing and sitting everywhere eating chicken and rice. And up on the stage was Howlin’ Wolf dressed in a black dinner jacket and sitting on a stool playing some battered old guitar.” Jeff met Howlin’ Wolf and sat in with his backing group.
Attendance on the winter dates was mixed. Only ten fans turned up for a show on Christmas night at the Peppermint Stick Club in Wheatfield, New York. Traveling by small planes in the Midwest during hunting season provided novel traveling companions, according to Jim: “Next to you would be these guys who had been hunting and their dead moose was in the front seat.”
From their numerous tours of the US, The Yardbirds got a good glimpse of the cultures in different parts of the country. The first time they arrived in Los Angeles, they unintentionally drove through Watts, with buildings still smoldering in the aftermath of the riots. Chris: “We were touring the US during a period when aluminum coffins were coming out of the back of the plane at the same time as our luggage, and servicemen were everywhere. Ninety percent of the country was conservative: Bible belt, military, crew cut types, or businessmen. Businessmen with briefcases would see us and walk back for another look.”
Giorgio had an idea to make The Yardbirds the first rock band to play the San Remo Music Festival, held at the end of January in San Remo, Italy. He thought it would be good exposure, and it would ingratiate the group to the Italian record company. A month before, The Yardbirds had recorded the two Italian-composed pop songs (with English lyrics) at RCA Studios in Hollywood, but they weren’t happy about it. Jeff even refused to contribute to one of the songs. The appearance was a misfire and no good came out of it.
The Yardbirds nonetheless had a good relationship with Gomelsky, whom they considered a sixth member of the band. Chris: “We had a good time with Giorgio. He used to look just like Fidel Castro, so we got him an army jacket and the type of peaked hat that Fidel wore. We used to have him paged at the airport: ‘Would Fidel Castro please come to TWA check-in.’” But after one too many bad ideas—San Remo—it was time to make a change. More to the point, where was the money? They were having hits on both sides of the Atlantic, earning more from live performances, but they were making the same wage as a year ago. They didn’t think Gomelsky was cheating them, but that he was bad with finances. When they informed him, he was heartbroken. In order for them to get out of their agreement with Gomelsky, the group agreed to forfeit their artist royalties on all their previous recordings.
At the time, recent hits weren’t thought to have much value, so it was an easy decision to make. Only years later were the group’s masters considered classics, generating income not only from record sales, but from films, TV shows, and commercials. For example, in 1986 Rhino produced The Yardbirds Greatest Hits, Volume One: 1964-1966. It sold around 130,000. For simplicity sake, if the royalty was a dollar an album, $130,000 was paid to Gomelsky with, presumably, no money paid to the band.
Paul’s sister worked for novice manager Simon Napier-Bell as his secretary and recommended him as a replacement. When Simon met with the group, he liked them. He was anticipating meeting “bloody monsters like The Rolling Stones,” but he found them “gentle souls with good manners.” He took over in April 1966. “He worked hard in the beginning,” Jim said, “got us our first-ever advance from the record company. But where Giorgio over-related to us, he couldn’t relate to us at all.”
On May 31 the group entered Advision Studios to record an album for the first time, with Samwell-Smith and Napier-Bell coproducing. Most of the songs were written in the studio—Relf supplied a majority of the lyrics—with the band sharing the credits. The Yardbirds, also known as Roger the Engineer from Chris’ cover illustration of studio engineer Roger Cameron (and, minus two songs, as Over Under Sideways Down in the US), is considered a near-classic, ranking at number 350 on Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time.” It is, indeed, an exceptional album, but not because of the songwriting. Sonically, it’s among the best albums of the period: with extraordinary dynamics, and clarity of both instruments and voices. The band’s sound is consistent through a variety of influences: Indian, African, Australian, chants, blues, and country. There is also a song about suicide, Relf’s “Farewell.”
The album provides a showcase for Jeff’s resourcefulness on nearly every track. Take for example “The Nazz are Blue.” Jeff sings new lyrics over an energetic reworking of “Dust My Broom,” a delta blues popularized by Elmore James. Jeff was a fan of hipster comic Lord Buckley who referred to Jesus as “The Nazz” because he came from Nazareth. (George Harrison’s 1977 hit “Crackerbox Palace” was also inspired by Buckley.) For the solo, Jeff essentially plays one note, using vibrato and controlled reverb to sustain the volume. It’s brilliant, it’s effective, it’s original, and it’s totally Jeff. Its only fault was Beck’s horrible moaning—he insisted on singing instead of Keith.
“Over Under Sideways Down,” developed after jamming around Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock,” was recorded in mid-April to be released as a single in June. A group composition, Jeff contributed the bass and came up with the sinuous violin-like riff on his fuzz-tone guitar. The flip, “Jeff’s Boogie,” showcased Beck’s multiple guitar styles in a swing rhythm.
Jeff was brilliant. In my opinion, the best playing of his career was with The Yardbirds. Regardless on how shaky the ground he perceived himself to be, Jeff rose to the challenge as a member of a team. Rather than taking delight in how well he excelled, though, Jeff felt pressure. It was an internal dilemma, not because his bandmates were unreasonably demanding. In his post-Yardbirds career, his personal dynamic was different. As a bandleader he had more say in his repertoire, and his musicians were more beholden to him.
On June 18 The Yardbirds were hired to headline the Oxford May Ball, a prestigious and well-paid end-of-the-school-year formal dance. Keith had been drinking heavily and his performance deteriorated. He blew raspberries into the mic and rolled around on the stage. He was incapacitated for much of the second set during which the band played instrumentals. It proved to be the last straw for Paul, who was also fed up with touring. “At twenty-three I’m too old for all these screaming kids leaping about,” he said, not long after the gig. “I don’t think I’ll be missed—no one really noticed me on stage. I might just as well have been a dummy.”
“Paul was invaluable, articulate, and bright,” Chris said, “but he was also nervous and high-strung. He was a lovely man, but a square peg in the round hole of rock and roll. Most people thought of him as uptight and officious.” When Samwell-Smith left, they lost the creative heart of the band. He produced their last big hit: “Over Under Sideways Down” climbed to ten in the UK and thirteen in the US.
As it happened, Jimmy Page (twenty-two) had ridden with Jeff to the dance that night. On the way home, he offered to step in and play bass. The timing was finally right for Jimmy to hit the road as a member of a hit rock band. Although Jeff got along with the other members of the group, he felt that McCarty was the only one he could talk to, and was lonely. Having Jimmy join would mean that he finally had a friend in the band, an ally. “Jimmy made a point of getting the right clothes to present the right image,” said McCarty. “We played a gig in Scotland where Beck and Page were wearing old military jackets with German Iron Crosses and they got spat upon. Jimmy seemed interested in instruments of perversion. Every now and then he’d talk about the Marquis de Sade.”
Page wasn’t much of a bass player, but he was too good a guitar player to remain on that instrument. After two months, Chris moved to bass. Jeff: “Jimmy can’t play the bass for toffee; Chris was better.” Jeff and Jimmy got the idea that they could perform Jeff’s previous lead guitar lines in tandem. On September 23, 1966, at the Royal Albert Hall, after a handful of dates without Jeff, The Yardbirds debuted Jeff and Jimmy’s dual guitars, or “stereo guitars” arrangement. When they were focused, it worked brilliantly. But Beck was an undisciplined feel player compared with Page’s precision, and quite often it didn’t work. As Jimmy Page told ZigZag magazine’s Pete Frame in 1972, “That was all well in theory and at rehearsal, but on stage Beck would often go off into something else.” In addition, Jeff hadn’t anticipated sharing the guitar hero spotlight: “I didn’t want my territory being encroached upon. I wanted to be it.”
Not able to articulate his concerns with words, Jeff acted out: he missed dates, played inconsistently when he showed up, and was prone to destroying malfunctioning amps. He even complained of asthma sufferer Keith Relf’s “coughing and sputtering” and the hissing from his inhaler during his solos.
Rumors had been circulating for months that Jeff was going to leave the group. In September, Barbara Sims wrote a letter to the KRLA Beat: “I am a Yardbird fan and as one who follows them as much as I can I would like to ask this. Where is Jeff Beck? He has not played with The Yardbirds on this whole tour but I see him on the [Sunset] Strip with Mary Hughes. Is he no longer in the group and is the rumor true that he is married?”
The Yardbirds toured extensively over the summer, taking a few days off in October to record a new single, “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago,” and to film and record a song for Michaelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up. “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” was Keith’s idea of reincarnation, according to McCarty. Page, McCarty, and John Paul Jones (on bass) recorded the basic track. Beck arrived late and added his parts. In a flood of confusion—sounds of a jet plane taking off and a throbbing European police car siren—two lead guitars lash out. During the instrumental break Jeff mocks a clueless acquaintance, “Why do you got long hair?” At a period when few groups were yet knowledgeable about feedback, the record seemed eons ahead of its time. Now considered a psychedelic masterpiece, it was a commercial flop, managing to get only to thirty in the US and forty-two in the UK. The long guitar solos and jamming were a precursor to what would later be termed the “progressive era” in rock. Many now think of The Yardbirds as founders of “psychedelic rock.” On the UK flip side “Psycho Daisies,” Jeff sings, “California’s my home with Mary Hughes.”
Antonioni wanted a group to smash one of their instruments in a recreated Ricky Tick Club in his new movie. The Who, his first choice, passed. The Yardbirds’ performance, a messy appropriation of “Train Kept A-Rollin” rewritten as “Stroll On,” was representative of a Yardbirds concert except for the tranquil audience and Beck smashing a guitar during an amplifier malfunction, which was more Antonioni’s vision. Decades later fans can appreciate how good the band looks in the well-shot film.
The band was back in the States on October 21 to record a Great Shakes (milkshake powder) radio commercial, and play a number of dates before joining the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars tour on October 28. The Yardbirds were third-billed and felt out of place with the other acts: Gary Lewis & The Playboys, Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs, Bobby Hebb, and Brian Hyland. If you were Jeff Beck, would you want to be stuck on a bus for a month-long grueling tour of the South and Midwest—for little money—or be back in LA snuggling with “the Brigitte Bardot of Malibu,” as Mary Hughes was sometimes called? Jeff claimed he had tonsillitis and hightailed it back to California three days after the tour started.
Soon after, Beck was no longer a Yardbird. As brilliant as Jeff could be as a guitarist, at this point it was good riddance: no longer having to put up with his tardiness, his absences, his sulking, his amp smashing. Jim: “He was a nervous guy who had trouble expressing himself. He kept it all bottled up. I don’t think Jeff fit in. He did with our sense of humor, like doing impressions of Roger Moore in The Saint. He was more from a car mechanic background.” Chris: “Jeff is a man of his emotions. He’s a slightly out of control egomaniac.” Jim: “Jeff and Jimmy would switch off playing lead guitar. Then Jeff started to get worse and kept on packing in tours before we’d finished, so it became the four of us. We’d kicked Jeff out. It was his own fault because he kept on letting us down. But the way we were at the end, the four of us was the best combination we’d had.”
Once American teens had been energized to form rock bands in the styles of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Now it was The Yardbirds’ turn. Count Five, from San Jose, California, copied The Yardbirds’ playing on “I’m a Man” so effectively that they scored a top five single with “Psychotic Reaction” in 1966. Todd Rundgren’s first recorded band, Nazz, even took their name from a Yardbirds B-side. When Vincent Furnier and his bandmates—all big Yardbirds fans—became aware of the other Nazz, they changed their name to Alice Cooper.
Simon Napier-Bell, who successfully managed Wham! in the eighties and took them to China, had his fill of The Yardbirds. He referred to them as a “miserable bloody lot” and singled out Paul Samwell-Smith and Jimmy Page as the most troublesome. He made an arrangement with Mickie Most to take over production, and Most’s partner Peter Grant to take over management, retaining a percentage for himself.
Most tried to “resuscitate” (his term) the group, but was unsuccessful. He recorded four singles with them of which “Little Games” charted the highest, reaching only fifty-one in the US. As a result, the Little Games album was released in America but not the UK. “My involvement with The Yardbirds was nothing, really,” Mickie told me. “It was toward the end and the fire had gone out. It was more out of contractual obligation than anything else. They liked doing the songs.”
It wasn’t as if Most wasn’t trying to have a hit with the group, or that he wasn’t successful with other artists. During the year of recording The Yardbirds, he had nine Top 30 hits in the UK and six in the US. He even hit the Top 20 in the UK with Jeff Beck’s debut single. Mickie recalled Jeff turning up in his office when he was supposed to be on tour in the States with The Yardbirds, telling him that he met a girl who didn’t think he should be in the band anymore. Mickie: “Jeff said, ‘I want to be a pop singer.’ I played him ‘Hi-Ho Silver Lining’ and he said ‘Let’s do it.’ Jeff recorded two guitar solos, almost identical. I liked them both, so I stuck them on.”
It’s clear Mickie wasn’t right for The Yardbirds. “Mickie Most was just impossible to talk to because he was the big producer star,” Jim said. “When you’d start criticizing him, he’d tell you how much money he’d made. Instead of recording singles, we should have been making an album. We hadn’t realized that the market had changed from singles to albums.”
Keith and Jim’s lifestyle eventually caught up with the psychedelic culture that had embraced their music. “When we first went to California we were straight as a die,” Jim said. “We might drink half a pint of beer, but that’s it. We had this great following of hippies and freaks. From the music we were playing, they thought we were acidheads.” Chris added: “People did misconstrue that we were about drugs, when we were really about the music.” But after a while both Keith and Jim got heavily into LSD and smoking pot. Chris continued: “Keith got more involved than the rest of us. He burned incense and candles and turned his hotel room into a Buddhist temple. He bought himself a projector and projected stars on his body to see what they felt like. He’d play East-West by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band or Freak Out! by The Mothers of Invention.”
As Jimmy was new to the band, he was still fresh and had energy. The other three were tired. Chris: “Keith was a sensitive man who wrote great lyrics, but like many alcoholics, he had a schizophrenic aspect to him.” Jeff weighed in: “I think he was manic-depressive. He wanted to kill everybody. He used to read Guns & Ammo [magazine] to work out how to commit the perfect murder.” During their last US tour, even Jim McCarty succumbed. He had a minor breakdown and was replaced for a couple of performances.
On March 30, 1968, the band recorded a live album at New York’s Anderson Theatre. It was finally issued in September 1971. The band performed well and, as at most shows, some numbers were better than others. The standouts for me are “Heart Full of Soul” and “Over Under Sideways Down,” both of which are more powerful than their studio versions. Live Yardbirds Featuring Jimmy Page was available only for a few months. Page convinced CBS to cease shipping the LP because the title attempted to exploit his popularity with Led Zeppelin. Among the new material the band performed, Chris regrets they never made a proper studio recording of “Dazed and Confused” as it was an audience favorite. (Curiously, the song was titled “I’m Confused” and had no songwriting credit.) It’s more familiar as the fourth song on Led Zeppelin’s January 1969 debut album. The song was credited to Jimmy Page, but he didn’t write it.
On August 25, 1967, The Yardbirds headlined the Village Theater in New York. They took in folksinger Jake Holmes’ opening set, entranced with a song he performed from his new album “The Above Ground Sound” of Jake Holmes. The next day McCarty bought a copy from a Greenwich Village record store, and the group worked up their own version, with Keith doing a lyric rewrite. When Led Zeppelin was released with his song—with Page’s new lyrics—Holmes didn’t initiate legal action. He was making a lot of money writing music for commercials for major companies. His most memorable jingles are Dr. Pepper’s “Be a Pepper” and the US Army’s “Be All That You Can Be.” Only decades later, under the threat of legal action, did Page agree to a settlement; the song now credited to “Jimmy Page inspired by Jake Holmes.”
The group completed its US tour on June 5, 1968, and then played a final date on July 7 at Luton Technical College in Bedfordshire before breaking up. Jimmy wanted to continue with the band, but only Chris was onboard. The pair auditioned new members, and it was reported in the press that the new lineup included Robert Plant on vocals and Paul Francis on drums. But Chris had second thoughts, determined he didn’t want to do it any longer, and elected to pursue a career in photography. In September Jimmy’s new band fulfilled an already-booked ten-date tour of Scandinavia as The New Yardbirds. The band played a few newly booked UK dates the following month, and a tour was in the works for the US. Jimmy changed the name to Led Zeppelin only after Chris threatened to sue if he continued to use “The New Yardbirds.”
Despite the creativity of the group as a whole, The Yardbirds are most remembered for having three of rock’s best guitarists passing through their ranks. Jim described how they compared: “Eric impressed me the most, he was a neat player. Jeff, on a good night, had more guts. Jimmy is very adaptable. He can play a wider range than the other two, but won’t. I don’t know why.”
In the decade after the group’s demise, The Yardbirds influence was apparent in Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Cheap Trick, Rush, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and others. Jeff Beck recorded “Shapes of Things” on his Truth album; Todd Rundgren recreated “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” on Faithful; David Bowie covered two of The Yardbirds’ songs on Pin Ups, so did Rush on their 2004 tribute EP Feedback.
“The Yardbirds never quite made it,” Jim said in 1970. “They made it in one way in that they made a sort of fame, but they missed out slightly. If we knew then what we know now, we could have been one of the biggest things.”
Chris: “It was one of those bands where the ingredients were just right. We were an emotionally bound together group of people.”
The Yardbirds were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.
At Rhino we produced a couple of anthologies and reissued Five Live Yardbirds, with the speed corrected. We also tried to do other projects. When The Yardbirds broke up, Jim and Keith formed a group, Together, because they wanted to go in a musical direction like The Turtles. The Turtles’ vocalists Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman wished that their group had a guitar virtuoso like Jeff Beck. I thought of realizing their one-time desires by combining the relevant elements of each group. As The Yardbirds (except for Relf, who died in 1976) played well when they reunited to record as the Box of Frogs in 1984 (with Beck on three songs), I thought of flying Kaylan and Volman over to London to record an album with remaining members Beck, McCarty, Dreja, and Samwell-Smith. It took some persuasion to convince Samwell-Smith, who preferred producing to playing bass. (He had produced the two Box of Frogs LPs, as well as five gold albums and one platinum for Cat Stevens, and a gold album for Carly Simon.) During my phone conversation with him when I was in London in September 1987, he expressed his frustration regarding Jeff: “Sometimes he showed up for a session, other times he wouldn’t.” As this would have been an expensive endeavor for us, I didn’t want to risk our finances if Beck was unreliable, and didn’t proceed.
I also met one of my best friends because of The Yardbirds. In 1973, a few months after I settled into my own apartment and got a listed phone number, I received a call from a stranger: “Are you the Harold Bronson who wrote the cover story on The Yardbirds in Rock Magazine?” Bill Stout was an artist, an illustrator, and a Yardbirds fan. We met and hit it off. In addition to sharing a love of rock ’n’ roll and going to shows together, I tried to involve him as much as I could in Rhino projects. Bill created the original Rhino logo. Over forty years later, we remain friends to this day.