THE YARDBIRDS’ GREATEST MOMENTS
Six reasons why you ought to love The Yardbirds.
The Yardbirds was the phantom band of the 1960s. In Britain, everyone dug one-stop hits like For Your Love and Shapes Of Things, but no one knew the albums. In America, though, The Yardbirds were such a turn on they inspired future stars like Alice Cooper and Aerosmith to try and copy them. Only they couldn’t. Here’s why.
I WISH YOU WOULD
Their first single, released in May 1964. It was not a hit but this electrifying version of the Billy Boy Arnold blues set the tone for how The Yardbirds would crash through their career. Fuck-you guitar from Eric, sneering vox from Keith, and that wanna-fight harmonica. Check the later Bowie version, he followed it note for note, just ramped up the buzz with better technology. Which was sweet as previously he had always just ripped The Yardbirds off. For instance…
I’M A MAN
Top 20 in America in October 1965. YouTube it. Then YouTube The Jean Genie, Top Five in Britain in 1972. Naughty tea-leaf David. Bo Diddley wrote it, but The Yardbirds owned it. Check the live clips and see Jeff Beck learn his guitar to fly. Note: when in 1973 Beck came on stage for the encores at the famous Bowie Hammersmith Odeon show at which the singer announced his ‘retirement’, the first song they played together was The Jean Genie. Beck killed. Then refused to allow that clip be used in the movie of the concert because, he said, he didn’t like his shoes. Hey Jeff – you the man.
EVIL HEARTED YOU
Graham Gouldman, later of chart-funnies 10cc, wrote this. But it was Alice Cooper who built a career out of it. The lyrics drip bitter. ‘Persuading, degrading, on my knees I try to please…’ While the guitars belly-snake and rattle hum. Cue that noirish detective-movie solo. Alice added the eye-liner and extra layers of leather and headless dolls, but it was The Yardbirds who were truly scary.
SHAPES OF THINGS
First the guitar. This is where psychedelic feedback really began. Not with Jimi Hendrix or Syd Barrett but with bad boy Beck. This is where future-shock rock also began. A song about the environment and no tomorrow. Who else cared about that in 1966?
OVER UNDER SIDEWAYS DOWN
It was their last single of six in a row to go Top 10 in both Britain and America, but what a way to bid adieu. A song about free love, total expression, no limits. Follow the lines, swallow the heat. ‘When I was young people spoke of immorality / All the things they said were wrong / Are what I want to be…’ Whiplash riff, boy-gang hey-hey-hey vocals, Keith pouting. Jeff always bloody fed-up. Taking it out on his old Fender solid. Good times all the times.
HAPPENINGS TEN YEARS TIME AGO
The only recording of the band with both Beck and Page in it. The start of Led Zeppelin (it even has John Paul Jones on bass), the riff was so full of fire, the drums so hooligan, the vocals so ghostly and acid-hazed, if this don’t move the muscles of your mind you’re already dead. But it was not a hit. Beck split before anything even more momentous could be divined. Page was so tragic about it he vowed to continue on alone, forming the New Yardbirds, keeping Jonesy on the rumble and looking for new faces to replace the irreplaceable.