Still a rollinÕ
The latest in a long line of anthologies comes close to capturing the band’s genius. The Yardbirds ★★★★ Live And Rare
REPERTOIRE. 4-CD+DVD
WHEN THE Rolling Stones went big league in 1963, The Yardbirds took over their residency at Richmond’s Crawdaddy Club, remaining forever in their shadows. Five years later, when guitarist Jimmy Page inherited the group name, he jettisoned the ‘New Yardbirds’ tag, instead rebuilding them as Led Zeppelin. Sometimes, it feels as if there was barely a Yardbirds at all, just a training school for guitarists – Clapton, Beck, Page – who all went on to bigger things. And then there was Keith Relf, the ghost-faced frontman with all the arresting discomfiture of a beat-era Ian Curtis, more chimera than built-to-last.
Few doubt their influence: the tough R&B of those early months, the instrumental ‘rave-ups’ that anticipated rock improvisation, that explosive run of mid-’60s singles, experimental pop flashpoints richly textured and volatile. Yet long shadows still undermine the group. For five decades, their relatively slim catalogue has been ceaselessly repackaged and recycled (and only infrequently remastered), further muddying a career already beset by complications.
Live And Rare bears many tell-tale hallmarks of previous anthologies. The material derives from multiple sources with variable sound quality. It’s mostly recorded live with random dips into studio vaults. Several songs – Shapes Of Things crops up nine times – reappear with obsessive regularity. Even the sleevenotes get repetitive. Yet, despite it all, there’s much to commend here.
An indicator of what’s different about this set is the absence of the group’s Crawdaddy Club favourite Smokestack Lightning. Of the 70 audio tracks – disc five is a wonderful, rarities-packed DVD – just nine document those blues boom months with Eric Clapton. Instead, the focus is on The Yardbirds as pop futurists, spearheaded by Jeff Beck’s revolution in volume, velocity and tone, and sexed up by Jimmy Page and his psychedelic Telecaster.
The first three discs cover 1966, ’67 and ’68 respectively. Disc four, drawn from the BBC and other broadcasters, augments those Clapton-era recordings from 1964 with a further 15 featuring Beck. The theming works well and the sound stretches from good to great. Only disc one smacks of the old potpourri, as it lurches from music festivals to toothpaste commercials, from a stray Happenings Ten Years Time Ago 45 to Keith Relf’s fragrant solo single and his frazzled Shapes In My Mind demo.
In the middle of it all is Stroll On, alias Train Kept A-Rollin’, culled from Antonioni’s Swinging London movie Blow-Up. Appearing nine times across the set, it’s the pivotal Yardbirds song, rooted in R&B but driving inexorably towards hard rock. In terms of power and sophistication, both here in abundance, only The Who could rival The Yardbirds. You’d think after seven versions of Over, Under, Sideways, Down, it would be right to ask, as Relf does with crushing despond, “When will it end?” But no. There’s Dazed And Confused to come. Two versions. And on film.