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Am a little surprised that there never has been a specific thread focusing on the Yardbirds, so this will be the one.
I'll go with Rolling Stone magazine's assessment of this group; "The Yardbirds wrote the book on guitar-oriented blues based rock and roll. They were a crucial link between mid 60's British R&B and late 60's psychedelia, setting the groundwork for heavy metal."
Absolutely. And this group spawned three of the greatest guitarists in rock history; Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, and Jeff Beck.
If only Heart Full Of Soul had been on the first LP that would have been a killer album. I'm gonna say the Clapton period, though quite brief, was pretty darn impressive and therefore the one I like. Though he played on most of that first LP, Beck was in on a few numbers too. By the time it was released Eric was long gone and there isn't any mention of him on it. Weird. Strange. Call it what you will. Their blues oriented rock was my favorite period. But like another band of the 60s that comes to mind, Buffalo Springfield, their sum was not quite equal to their parts. There seemed to be a certain cohesiveness that was missing. But they had their great moments for sure.
So right now if you put on Train Kept A-Rollin', A Certain Girl, I Ain't Got You, For Your Love and Over Under Sideways Down I'd tell you that that was one loaded band. And they really were!
Page was the late addition, and he could have taken them to their greatest heights, but there was a meltdown going on at that point that even he couldn't stop. Thus, we got Led Zeppelin - and we are none the poorer for that. The other two guitar players didn't fare too badly over the years either.
Nice thread, HH!
Last edited by square peg; 02-01-2011 at 10:24 PM..
I'm a fan and there is too many to list. I liked all three....... Clapton, Beck, Page, and still do. In my opinion, it was the set up for what was about to come. If it wasn't for these early efforts, who knows what would have happen. Yardbirds all the way!
The Yardbirds, "Got to Hurry"---alternate take that turned up on Eric Clapton's Crossroads box set. This may also have been the earliest recording on which Clapton used a Gibson guitar, by the way (an ES-335, the same guitar he'd end up using on the final Cream tours in 1968).
The backstory---Clapton despised "For Your Love" and the apparent pop direction the Yardbirds were about to take, wanting to stay with the blues. In a bid to keep Clapton from bolting the band, manager/producer Giorgio Gomelsky (he also discovered the Rolling Stones; the Yardbirds took over their Crawdaddy Club residency while Gomelsky still ran the place) came up with this little piece of blues (under the non de plume of O. Rasputin) and promised Clapton the B-side of the single in a bid to keep him in the band.
Clapton cut it in these two versions but he bolted anyway to join John Mayall's Blues Breakers, which is where he did indeed graduate from good to God in a lot of fans' estimations . . .
As for the Yardbirds' later years, here may be two of their least appreciated cuts . . .
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