INCITING FRENZIES, WITH FANS “SWINGING FROM THE RAFTERS", THE YARDBIRDS FERAL RAVE-UPS PRESAGED CARACE ROCK, PUNK AND METAL, WHILE STARRING THREE LEAD CUITARISTS FOR THE ACES. SIXTY YEARS SINCE THEIR INCEPTION, THE SURVIVORS REFLECT ON THE BLUES, THE BOOZE AND THE BUST-UPS. "THE REASON WE'RE TALKING ABOUT THE VARDBIRDS NOW IS BECAUSE WE HAD THAT EDGE," THEY TELL MARK BLAKE.
“WHERE’S ERIC?” WONDERED THE AUDIENCE, AS THE OTHER YARDBIRDS ARRIVED ON-STAGE to be inducted into the 1992 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Eric Clapton had declined the invitation, but his successors, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, had joined the rest of the group for the ceremony in Cleveland.
Original bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, drummer Jim McCarty and guitarist-turned-bassist Chris Dreja trooped up to the podium to accept their awards. Then came Jimmy Page, who promised to “keep it short” before introducing vocalist Keith Relf ’s widow, April, and their son, Jason.
This just left Jeff Beck, who’d missed the memo about wearing a suit and was studiedly casual in jeans and a kaleidoscopic patterned waistcoat.
“Somebody told me I should be proud tonight,” he said, with a sly grin and a ruffle of his trademark plumage. “But I’m not, ’cos they kicked me out. They did! Fuck them!” Beck stalked off, Page started laughing and the house band burst into The Yardbirds’ hit Heart Full Of Soul.
JIM McCARTY, CURRENTLY ENJOYING THE WINTER SUN in his adopted hometown in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, still ponders their decision to dump Beck in 1966. “Oh it’s terrible,” he laughs. “I hate saying it, but we fired Jeff Beck. We had to, he kept letting us down.”
This year marks the 60th anniversary of The Yardbirds’ debut single, I Wish You Would, beginning a run of peerless 45s (including For Your Love, Shapes Of Things and Over Under Sideways Down), during which they morphed from post-war English kids mimicking Chicago blues to pioneers of psychedelia and hard rock, and a vehicle for three of the world’s greatest lead guitarists.
“The Yardbirds cast a very long shadow,” said U2’s Edge in his Hall of Fame induction speech. “They felt like a foretaste of the music on its way – Cream, Led Zeppelin and the Jeff Beck Group.”
The surviving Yardbirds are currently revisiting their legacy for a planned film documentary. Relf and Beck are no longer here to contribute, and Dreja suffered a stroke and has retired after a lengthy post-Yardbirds career in commercial photography, so the project is in many ways overdue. The band are more often credited as a breeding-ground for guitar heroes than they are for the music they made, which at its best pioneered the feral British take on R&B that, when exported to the land of its or
