- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- It only takes one spin of The Yardbirds’ Greatest Hits to prove that there is a lot more to the British Invasion than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
The Greatest Music
Ever Recorded!
The Yardbirds – The Yardbirds’ Greatest Hits (1967): It only takes one spin of this magnificent record to prove that there is a lot more to the British Invasion than the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Despite their many hit songs during the height of the British Invasion, what most people know about the Yardbirds – assuming they know the band at all – is that their lead guitarists were, successively, three of the greatest guitar players in the history of British rock: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. All three are ranked in the top five in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the “100 Top Guitarists” (Clapton at No. 2, Page at No. 3, and Beck at No. 5). Others might know that Led Zeppelin arose from the ashes of the Yardbirds after essentially everyone left the band except Jimmy Page.
Also, the consensus is that the first two (true) psychedelic rock hit songs are “Shapes of Things” by the British band the Yardbirds, and “Eight Miles High” by the American band the Byrds; both singles were released in early 1966. The core of the Yardbirds though is Paul Samwell-Smith (bass guitar and producer, and also the band’s lead songwriter), Keith Relf (vocals and harmonica), Chris Dreja (bass and rhythm guitar), and Jim McCarty (drums – not to be confused with guitarist Jim McCarty of Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels and other bands). Together with original lead guitarist Anthony “Top” Topham, the band originally assembled in May 1963 under the name the Blue Sounds before settling on the Yardbirds, a slang term for hobos waiting around for a freight train, with “Yardbird” also being a nickname for legendary jazz musician Charlie Parker. In September 1963, the Yardbirds took over as the house band for the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, London, succeeding the Rolling Stones. As with many of the British Invasion bands, the Yardbirds initially played American R&B and blues songs rather than their own compositions. As reported in Wikipedia about their days at the Crawdaddy Club: “They drew their repertoire from the Chicago blues of Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Sonny Boy Williamson II, and Elmore James, including ‘Smokestack Lightning’, ‘Good Morning Little School Girl’, ‘Boom Boom’, ‘I Wish You Would’, ‘Rollin’ and Tumblin’ ’, and ‘I’m a Man’.” In fact, Eric Clapton left the Yardbirds in March 1965 as a protest when the band finally got a hit single with a song that did not come from this milieu, “For Your Love” (written by Graham Gouldman, later a member of 10cc). I have a Yardbirds CD called BBC Sessions that I fear might be lost to Hurricane Katrina; it gathers interviews and songs that were broadcast by BBC in the latter years of the band’s career. Numerous such BBC Sessions had been recorded and broadcast for some of the biggest British rock bands; though in many cases, the early years’ Sessions were lost, since inexplicably, BBC simply taped over them. One interview that I recall, I assume with Paul Samwell-Smith, talks about the intricate development of “Still I’m Sad” that features droning music, arty lyrics, and a small choir accompanying the band. “Still I’m Sad” is the only song on their second American album Having a Rave Up with the Yardbirds (1965) that is composed by the bandmembers. When asked during the interview whether he was trying to make a ground-breaking or artistic statement, he said, no, he was just trying to make a good “B” side. That really surprised me; I hadn’t thought that most bands put a lot of thought into their “B” sides. I had noticed over the years that even many of the Rolling Stones’ “B” sides are well below the quality of the hit side. The frequent hit songs by the Yardbirds – “Shapes of Things”, “For Your Love”, “Over Under Sideways Down”, “I’m a Man”, “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago”, “Heart Full of Soul”, etc. – hit my eardrums with at least as powerful an impact as the greatest Rolling Stones songs, like “Brown Sugar”, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, “Paint it Black”, “Get Off of My Cloud”, “Sympathy for the Devil”, “Street Fighting Man”, etc. To me though, these songs sound every bit as fresh to me today, probably because they haven’t been played to death on oldies’ radio stations as much as anything else. It wasn’t just the hits though; their album tracks also sound terrific, but it is as a live band that the Yardbirds truly cook. On my first Yardbirds album, The Yardbirds’ Greatest Hits, one live track was included, a scorching cover of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightning”; as much as I love the hit songs that made up most of the tracks, it quickly became one of my favorite songs on the album. “Smokestack Lightning” is taken from the band’s first (British) album, Five Live Yardbirds (1964), described by Bruce Eder for Allmusic as “the first important – indeed, essential – live album to come out of the 1960’s British rock & roll boom”. And how many rock bands have the guts to put out a concert album as their debut release? Five Live Yardbirds wasn’t released in the U.S. until a CD finally came out in the 1980’s, although one side of Having a Rave up with the Yardbirds was composed of four songs from the album. The muddy sound on many of the Yardbirds’ songs over the years has been greatly improved as better master tapes have surfaced; Allmusic notes the Repertoire Records releases of the 1990’s as showing significant improvement. Cheap compilation albums with names like Eric Clapton and the Yardbirds and Jeff Beck and the Yardbirds usually feature assortments of uneven performances, and they also have not helped the Yardbirds’ reputation since the 1960’s. But if you find the right albums, rock music doesn’t get much better than this.