History
part 2
Yardbirds 1965-1966
Yardbirds #3 March 1965-June 1966
Keith Relf: Vocals, harmonica
Jeff Beck: Lead guitar, backing vocals
Chris Dreja: Guitar
Paul Samwell-Smith: Bass, backing vocals
Jim McCarty: Drums, backing vocals
In the beginning of 1965 the band finally got the big break. "For Your Love" was a hit all over the world and the future looked great.
But Eric Clapton was dissatisfied. He hated "For Your Love" and he didn’t like the band experiments with new music and new sounds. At that point in his career he only wanted to play rhythm&blues. So he quit. The band asked excellent guitarist and studio musician Jimmy Page if he could replace Clapton. But Jimmy preferred to be a studio musician. Instead he recommended another guitarist: Jeff Beck who was in a band called the Tridents.
It was a good tip from Jimmy Page. Jeff Beck wasn’t just an excellent rhythm&blues guitarist. He also liked to experiment with different sounds like distortion, feedback, fuzz box and other advanced things. He was exactly what Yardbirds needed.
With Jeff Beck as lead guitarist, the Yardbirds reached their absolute top and a lot of today’s guitar sounds has its origin in what Beck did in the Yardbirds back in the sixties. He first demonstrated his innovation skill when Yardbirds recorded the follow-up to "For Your Love". "Heart Full Of Soul", another Graham Gouldman song was supposed to have an Indian sitar and Gomelsky hired an Indian sitar player to the session. But the result sounded like a bad demo. Jeff Beck then came up with the idea that he should try to make the guitar sound like a sitar. He was successful with his experiment and "Heart Full Of Soul" became another mega hit for the band in the summer of 1965.
The bands music started to change when Beck joined. Basically the music was still rhythm&blues. But it slowly became more heavy and more psychedelic. Jeff Beck was also interesting to watch. He did a lot of visual tricks, playing with the guitar behind his back and experimenting with weird sounds. A lot of other guitar players started to do similar experiments with sounds and stage tricks. One of them was Jimi Hendrix who saw the band when they toured the US in the end of 1965.
But Jeff Beck was also a moody character who could be very frustrated if things went wrong. During one of the tours in USA he ended a concert by throwing a malfunctioning amplifier out of a window near the stage.
Their first US-tour in the summer of 1965 did run
into some trouble because of problems with the working permits. The band did have a working
permit but the US union that controlled TV appearance, AFTRA (American
Federation Of Televison and Radio Artists) objected to the band appearing on the
TV shows they were booked unless they
It was Gomelsky's intention to establish them
Gomelsky also succeeded to arrange a recording session at Sun Studios in Memphis where they recorded "Train Kept A-Rollin" with Sam Phillips (the man who discovered Elvis Presley) as producer. He was very impressed by the band.
Later this year the band had another success with "Still I’m Sad", an own composition, written by Paul Samwell-Smith and Jim McCarty. The song, a rather gloomy ballad with Gregorian chants was also a lot different from the typical pop songs of that year. The flip side of the single, "Evil Hearted You", another Graham Gouldman song, was also a hit. The band toured in the UK together with Manfred Mann and in the end of the year they did another US-tour which was very successful. During that tour they recorded the legendary rock classic "Shapes Of Things" which was released in March 1966. "Shapes Of Things" is without doubt Yardbirds best song ever. Jeff Beck’s solos and feedback blast throughout this masterpiece which can be labeled as one of the first real heavy-rock songs. It became a megahit all over the world.
An odd event the band participated in was the San Remo Festival in Italy in January 1966. It was a song festival more like the Eurovision Song Contest and Yardbirds appearance in that festival had the same effect as if Iron Maiden should represent England in the Eurovision Song Contest. On several bootlegs from that gig one can really hear how uninspired the band sounds.Musically it was the wrong place for a band like The Yardbirds even if it did make them a big name among rock fans in Italy.
Later in the spring the band and the manager Giorgio Gomelsky decided to part company. Gomelsky was replaced by Simon Napier-Bell. That was a change to the worst. There may have been some different opinions in the band about Gomelsky but he had worked hard for the band and at least had many creative ideas how to promote the band. Simon Napier-Bell was a total disaster. He wasn’t really interested in the band. He just saw it as a stepping-stone for his own career. He was responsible for the problems in the band and the lack of success during the rest of the year.
In May 1966 the band recorded the album "Yardbirds" (later known as "Roger The Engineer because of Chris Dreja’s caricature of engineer Roger Cameron on the front sleeve). This album is a masterpiece, really showing Yardbirds at it’s best. Everything that was typical for Yardbirds can be found on this album. Typical rhythm’n blues-songs, psychedelia, early heavy metal and some really different, exciting tracks which can’t be labeled as this or that. The whole album is exciting and well produced. All songs are written by the band members and the album was recorded in one week which shows the creativity in the band. Unfortunately, the album wasn’t he commercial success the band hoped that it would be, maybe due to bad promotion. One track: "Over, Under, Sideways, Down" was released as a single and became a minor hit. The US issue of the album was also called "Over, Under, Sideways, Down" and is a bit different from the UK issue. But at that point another member left the band.
Yardbirds 1966. From left to right. Chris Dreja, Keith Relf, Jeff Beck, Jim McCarty, Paul Samwell-Smith.
