One London blues band launched Clapton, Beck and Page in five years
Between 1963 and 1968 the Yardbirds passed their lead guitar from Eric Clapton to Jeff Beck to Jimmy Page, three players who all later landed in Rolling Stone's top five guitarists. Along the way they took over the Rolling Stones' club residency and cut what one critic calls the first psychedelic rock classic.
The band grew out of the southwest London suburbs in 1963, when singer and harmonica player Keith Relf and bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, formerly of the Metropolitan Blues Quartet, teamed up with Chris Dreja, Jim McCarty and guitarist Anthony Top Topham. After a brief spell as the Blue-Sounds they became the Yardbirds and replaced the Rolling Stones as house band at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, playing Chicago blues by Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley. Their trademark was the rave-up, a jam where the tempo suddenly doubled.
Clapton replaced Topham in October 1963, and club owner Giorgio Gomelsky became manager and producer, sending them on tour backing Sonny Boy Williamson II. Their first big hit, For Your Love, written by Graham Gouldman and featuring harpsichord, reached the Top 10 in Britain, Canada and the US, but it annoyed Clapton, a blues purist who soon quit over the band's commercial direction.
Beck brought fuzz, feedback, sustain and distortion, and an Eastern flavour; his riff on Heart Full of Soul helped put Indian-style guitar into the British charts in summer 1965, and Still I'm Sad had the band chanting like monks. On their first American tour they recorded with Sam Phillips at Sun Studios in Memphis. Shapes of Things, released in February 1966 and their first hit written by the band, reached No. 3 in Britain and beat the Beatles to psychedelia by three months. Relf and McCarty then led the writing of an entire album, nicknamed Roger the Engineer after Dreja's cover cartoon.
When Samwell-Smith quit at a drunken Oxford gig in 1966, Jimmy Page, watching from the crowd, offered to play bass that night, and later shared lead duties with Beck. That pairing made Happenings Ten Years Time Ago and appeared in Antonioni's Blow-Up, the Who having turned the part down. After the 1968 split, Relf and McCarty founded Renaissance. The band gained Rock and Roll Hall of Fame status in 1992.
Source: The Yardbirds
