The Yardbirds: Little Games

THE YARDBIRDS: LITTLE GAMES (1967)

1) Little Games; 2) Smile On Me; 3) White Summer; 4) Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor; 5) Glimpses; 6) Drinking Muddy Water; 7) No Excess Baggage; 8) Stealing Stealing; 9) Only The Black Rose; 10) Little Soldier Boy; 11*) Puzzles; 12*) I Remember The Night; 13*) Ha Ha Said The Clown; 14*) Ten Little Indians; 15*) Goodnight Sweet Josephine; 16*) Think About It.

I believe that conventional wisdom puts most of the blame on Mickie Most — like, here is the only Yardbirds album recorded when they had Jimmy Page himself in the band, and instead of sounding like early Led Zeppelin, they end up sounding like a mix of Manfred Mann with Her­man's Hermits, and whose fault is that? Why, the producer's, of course! What on earth was EMI thinking, hiring the Herman's Hermits guy to mold an album by one of Britain's heaviest and most hallucinatory musical outfits?

To some extent, this might be true — but, truth be told, for the most part the band's slide into novelty territory took place on their single releases, which were just as embarrassing for 1967 as the 1965-66 series was groundbreaking and revelatory. One look at the titles is enough: ʽLittle Gamesʼ, ʽHa Ha Said The Clownʼ, ʽTen Little Indiansʼ — not even The Monkees at their, um, dangliest could boast a series of titles like that. And the music is adequate to the titles: ʽLittle Gamesʼ sounds like a fruity throwback to the era of bubblegummy Merseybeat — a triumphant guitar-cello duet belatedly makes its way to the mid-section in order to throw on a bit of that psychedelic flavor... but it really seems more like a last-minute attempt to save some face than a thoughtful addition to the song. Tony Hazzard's ʽHa Ha Said The Clownʼ is a speedy pop romp more fit for Tom Jones than The Yardbirds; and the decision to cover Harry Nilsson is under­standable — Harry was one of the hottest young songwriters of 1967-68 — but Keith Relf and the boys add nothing to his cute joke about the Ten Commandments that he did not say himself on his Pandemonium Shadow Show original.

If all these had been simply the latest batch of, say, Manfred Mann musical bones thrown to loyal fans so that the band could have enough improvisational freedom on its albums, it would have been understandable. But The Yardbirds, up to that time, had been a singles band almost by defi­nition — and in the year of ʽStrawberry Fields Foreverʼ and ʽWaterloo Sunsetʼ, releasing this kind of stuff as their banners was artistic suicide; and, quite plainly, it was evident that such a thing could only happen to a band that was completely deprived of any sense of direction. Which, I suppose, they were, with Beck and Samwell-Smith already out of the band, Page already thin­king about a project of his own, and the other three clearly insufficient to carry on in the same old way (in fact, when you think that Relf's and McCarty's next move would be to found the folk-prog band Renaissance, it becomes fairly clear that they must have been free of the «Yardbirds spirit» for quite some time before).

In light of all this, it is surprising that Little Games, as an album, is quite listenable on the whole. The bulk of the album, unlike the singles, is not pop — psychedelic, folk, and blues influences, most of them inherited from the band's past, are still rampant here, it's just that they are unable to move forward on any of them. Thus, for instance, the «original» ʽSmile On Meʼ is a loud and crunchy blues-rocker with a nicely fried guitar solo from Page — except that the song is essen­tially a re-write of Otis Rush's ʽAll Your Loveʼ, and even the opening of the solo sounds unhap­pily ripped off from Eric Clapton's performance of it on the Bluesbreakers album. Even worse, ʽDrinking Muddy Waterʼ is a somewhat overproduced version of ʽRollin' And Tumblin'ʼ with slightly new lyrics (all of them taken from blues stock phrasing anyway), credited to Dreja / McCarty / Page / Relf even if the reference to the author is semi-insultingly concealed in the song title (yes, I know that "drinking muddy water" is one of the stock phrases, and that Muddy him­self did not really «write» ʽRollin' And Tumblin'ʼ, but still, a travesty is a travesty). But in the end, Page still makes it worth your while with his array of guitar tones and frantic soloing.

The band's penchant for psychedelia and Gregorian chant flashes once more with ʽGlimpsesʼ, the only track here that actually sounds like a leftover from Roger — quasi-sitars, dark monk chorals, gloomy moods, but the whole thing is more of a stoned, absent-minded groove now than a focused raid on a previously unknown dimension. Really, it is all so confusing that it is hardly a coincidence that the album's poppiest original composition, ʽTinker, Tailorʼ, poses the album's most important and pertinent question: "How can I know just what to be? Please stop and give advice to me". It is even less a coincidence that the album's second poppiest original composition, ʽLittle Soldier Boyʼ (in which they dip into the same pool of British cutesiness that produced some of the Kinks' and Small Faces' contemporary successes), ends the record on a self-destruc­tive note: ʽHe gave a last triumphant cry / And fell into the fireʼ.

If there is one non-suicidal triumphant cry on the album, it belongs to Jimmy Page, whose little exercise in gluing together British and Indian folk elements on his solo acoustic spot ʽWhite Summerʼ is the record's most innovative and artistically valid bit, presaging ʽBlack Mountain Sideʼ and the rest of his acoustic work with Led Zeppelin (indeed, ʽWhite Summerʼ itself became a staple of Zeppelin's early shows). Saying that this is definitely not The Yardbirds, but rather Led Zeppelin, is somewhat harsh, since there is no reason why The Yardbirds, a band that was always open to new influences, could not have made this sound a part of their regular baggage; but on Little Games, it definitely sounds out of place — far more intimate and introspective than anything they'd previously done. (There is one more acoustic ballad here, Keith Relf's quiet, slightly Zombie-like serenade ʽOnly The Black Roseʼ, but it is much less impressive musically, with a standard rhythmic pattern that could be produced by anyone).

On the whole, though, it is much more of a wonder that The Yardbirds had managed to last for so long than that they finally failed to crash the 1967 barrier. In a way, their survival (and not just survival, but triumphant artistic success) had been largely due to sheer luck: a rotating series of Britain's finest guitar talents, plus collaboration with all the right people in the songwriting, pro­du­cing, and managing business (up until Mickey Most, that is) — despite the clear lack of some strong «pivot» in the band, a Ray Davies or a Pete Townshend to drag their mission through fire and water and musical revolutions. Sooner or later, though, that luck had to end, and once they found themselves in the hands of a misguided (and misguiding) producer, it all crashed fairly quickly. Perhaps if Page had been as concerned about making his mark on the band as Beck had been before, things would have turned out differently; but clearly he was not, and besides, as a relative newcomer, he couldn't have routed things his way anyway.

Despite all this, I still recommend the record — it has its fair share of entertaining moments, and at least as far as messed-up swan songs go, this one is fairly diverse. Not a single song, ʽWhite Summerʼ excluded, is a masterpiece on its own, but together they form an oddly grotesque puzzle that, perhaps, should still be judged as quite an intriguing curtain call. At the very least, there is still an aura of helpless, but desperate experimentation here, which is sometimes preferable over cold-hearted calculated formula.

The Yardbirds: Roger The Engineer

THE YARDBIRDS: ROGER THE ENGINEER (1966)

1) Lost Woman; 2) Over, Under, Sideways, Down; 3) The Nazz Are Blue; 4) I Can't Make Your Way; 5) Rack My Mind; 6) Farewell; 7) Hot House Of Omagarashid; 8) Jeff's Boogie; 9) He's Always There; 10) Turn Into Earth; 11) What Do You Want; 12) Ever Since The World Began; 13*) Psycho Daisies; 14*) Happenings Ten Years Time Ago.

The first Yardbirds album to be properly conceived and recorded as an album, rather than a bunch of disconnected singles, was supposed to be simply titled Yardbirds — fate, however, has deter­mined that it be forever known as Roger The Engineer, after a short clarifying scribble by Chris Dreja who wanted all the world to know that the grotesque figure on the front sleeve was Roger Cameron, the band's audio engineer. Unfortunately, as tempting as it is to imagine the album as a conceptual rock opera about the adventures of a humble studio technician in the psychedelic age, this is not to be, because The Yardbirds were simply too disjointed and confused to care about any sort of cohesiveness and conceptuality. Instead, Roger The Engineer is a total mess, retro-oriented one minute and sloppily futuristic the next one — a potential disaster turned into a glorious delight because of the presence of at least one musical genius in the group, and also because it was friggin' 1966, when «messy» and «visionary» were just two sides of the same coin.

In a decisive departure from past times, all the material here was written by the band members themselves — which, naturally, ensured that much of it was very derivative in terms of basic melody, since the creative instincts of most of The Yardbirds did not venture too far away from their R&B foundations. However, after two years of distinguished service they were capable of an occasional great riff; of cool ideas on atmospheric overdubs and psychedelic sound effects; and of projecting their eclectic experience onto LP territory, as just about every sub-genre that was explored on their 1965-66 singles is also represented on the album, from bone-crushing hard rock to sinister Gregorian chants to top-of-the-line blueswailing.

The album gets off to a solid, but inauspicious start: ʽLost Womanʼ is merely another in a stable line of their R&B rave-ups, with a noisy, but not too ecstatic crescendo in the middle and a memorable rolling bass line from Samwell-Smith. Possibly not the best way to immediately make an impression on the progress-spoiled audiences of '66 — ʽOver Under Sideways Downʼ would have made a far more efficient opener: the combination of a rousing "hey!" and a snakey Indian-inspired riff from Beck (incidentally, a similar pattern, but played already on a real sitar, can be heard on Harrison's ʽThe Inner Lightʼ two years later) sounds really novel even for The Yardbirds, as does the marriage of a catchy-bouncy pop melody in the verse with the somber Gothicness of the "when will it end?" reprise. Throw in a bunch of lyrics that deal with liberation, hedonism, and retribution, and all of a sudden, the song stands out as a laconic artistic masterpiece from both the formal and the substantial points of view.

This is the frustration and the charm of Roger The Engineer — you never know what's coming next, a predictable reenactment of some long gone glory or a dazzling futuristic twist. Sometimes both of them come within the confines of the same tune: ʽThe Nazz Are Blueʼ begins as the 5,000th rewrite of Elmore James' ʽDust My Broomʼ, but quickly turns into a playground for some provocative guitar experimentation from Beck that remains exciting to this day (ah, that sweet sustained note at 1:24! it is also interesting that Jeff takes a rare lead vocal on the song himself, something that he would very rarely follow up on in the future). Sometimes the odd twist ends up sounding stupid, at least in retrospect: the contorted Oompa-Loompish Africanisms of ʽHot House Of Omagarashidʼ, made to look even sillier by the «bubbly» effect (are we supposed to have visions of five live Yardbirds, all plucked and boiling in a steamy cauldron?), can hardly be saved even by Beck's shrill psychedelic solo.

But then you also have The Yardbirds surprisingly successfully competing with Manfred Mann in the «ironically sunshine pop» category (ʽI Can't Make Your Wayʼ, whose bounciness makes it a prime candidate for Britain's slyest pop sellout to cover); engaging in melancholic piano Brit-pop with a music hall flavor (ʽFarewellʼ); expanding the borders of heavy rock with a simple, proto-metallic descending fuzz bass riff (ʽHe's Always Thereʼ); capitalizing on the success of ʽStill I'm Sadʼ with another moody piece of Gregorian chant (ʽTurn Into Earthʼ); and pretty much inventing classic Black Sabbath with the first part of ʽEver Since The World Beganʼ: "Ever since the world began / Satan's followed every man / Trapping evil if he can / I tell you now his greatest plan" — tell me, with a straight face, that these lyrics have not been written by Geezer Butler and have not been delivered by Ozzy Osbourne. Okay, so they weren't, but that is the entire Sabbath formula, in a nutshell, over one minute, just without the heavy riffs. Come to think of it, even the unexpec­ted transition into a fast rave-up is Sabbath-like to a certain degree, considering how the bad boys of Birmingham liked to introduce boogie bits in their slow metallic drawls.

Keith Relf, predictably, remains the weakest link. Nice guy overall and a competent singer by the book, he remains incapable of injecting the songs with strong emotion or distinct personality, and this is, perhaps, the harshest blow to the potential of Roger The Engineer — it is all but impos­sible to get deeply involved in them, unless they are flat-out instrumentals (ʽJeff's Boogieʼ). But, in all fairness, this whole thing should have really been credited to «The Yardbirds Featuring Jeff Beck», or even «Jeff Beck and The Yardbirds», the same way John Mayall's Bluesbreakers were smart enough to put «With Eric Clapton» on their quintessential record from the same year — and once you have settled into accepting the vocals as largely a side accompaniment for the lead guitar, rather than vice versa, Roger The Engineer will be on the verge of slipping into the masterpiece category. Because, truly and verily, some of the most outstanding pre-Hendrix era guitar work can be found here, be it the spiralling Indian riff of ʽOver Under Sideways Downʼ, or the beastly sustain of ʽThe Nazz Are Blueʼ, or the finger-flashing arpeggios of ʽJeff's Boogieʼ, or the sick acid tone of the six-string on ʽHe's Always Thereʼ — the first, and one of the finest, full-scale demonstrations of the genius of Mr. Beck.

Whether you are buying the CD or downloading a digital copy, make sure that it is (admittedly, a rare) edition that also adds one slightly later single as a couple of bonus tracks — ʽPsycho Daisiesʼ, the B-side, is a Chuck Berry pastiche with angry garage rock guitar splattered all over it, but the real deal is ʽHappenings Ten Years Time Agoʼ, the only A-side of theirs that features dual lead playing from Beck and the freshly joined Page and remains one of the quintessential psyche­delic tracks of 1966 — in fact, the chaotic, earth-rattling solo in the middle is one of the very few instances of a typically Hendrix-like sound prior to Hendrix, although its most memorable ele­ment is probably the fussy descending guitar riff, which, to me, seems borrowed out of the Link Wray or Duane Eddy textbook, but transferred to a whole new level of intensity (those guys would probably just use the «toppling» chords as a gimmick, whereas here they are put at the skeletal center of the song).

Together with ʽShapes Of Thingsʼ, this song was The Yardbirds' best bet at becoming messiahnic prophets for their generation — with epic and ominous declarations like these, even the lack of a great lead singer was not much of a problem — but, alas, this was not to be because, so it seems to me, nobody in The Yardbirds ever had anything resembling a cohesive, transparent «vision» for the band's music. Roger The Engineer is a clear example of that — it's a mish-mash and a hodge-podge, often brilliant despite the intentions of its authors rather than according to them, or so it reads to me. Naturally, a thumbs up rating is self-evident here, but I also understand why the album never managed to become a timeless 1966 classic along the same lines as contem­porary albums by the Beatles, the Stones, the Beach Boys, or the Kinks. Fortunately, it has always enjoyed a cult status among connoisseurs, and let us keep it that way.

The Yardbirds: Having A Rave Up

THE YARDBIRDS: HAVING A RAVE-UP (1965)

1) Mr. You're A Better Man Than I; 2) Evil Hearted You; 3) I'm A Man; 4) Still I'm Sad; 5) Heart Full Of Soul; 6) Train Kept A-Rollin'; 7)Smokestack Lightning; 8) Respectable; 9) I'm A Man; 10) Here 'Tis; 11*) Shapes Of Things; 12*) New York City Blues; 13*) Jeff's Blues (take 1); 14*) Someone To Love (pt. 1); 15*) Someone To Love (pt. 2); 16*) Like Jimmy Reed Again; 17*) Chris' Number; 18*) What Do You Want; 19*) Here 'Tis (instrumental); 20*) Here 'Tis (version for RSG); 21*) Stroll On.

It is fairly bizarre how The Yardbirds were so screwed up by the LP market in their native country, although it may have been more of a personal than a marketing problem: all through 1964 and 1965, the band members had serious trouble coming up with original material — of the six brilliant songs present on the first side of this album, not more than one was self-penned. And the option of releasing entirely cover-based LPs in 1965 may not have appealed to anybody, what with the major players in the field now having to face the challenge of proving their artistic worth on their own. Nevertheless, the American market would not take this sitting down, and by the end of 1965, dutifully spat out another Yardbirds LP — an embarrassing rip-off by the standards of that time, a priceless masterpiece by the standards of ours.

What Epic Records did was simple: they just took four of the band's A- and B-sides, added two more tracks recorded at the same time but not yet in use, and then, since there was nothing to pad the second side with, simply took a few numbers off Five Live Yardbirds to round out the pack­age — admittedly, since the latter had not been released in the States, this was somewhat legiti­mate (at least the customer was not buying the same stuff twice), but the sequencing was quite silly: by mid-65, The Yardbirds were long past their «rave-up» roots, and putting together Beck-era expe­rimental material with Clapton-era R&B workouts made very little sense (not that it bothered any of the record executives, of course). In today's world, the original release seems extremely silly. However, advent of the CD era and intelligent track sequencing has reinstated the album's reputation: today, the most common edition adds ten more bonus tracks, rounding out the score with at least one more classic single (ʽShapes Of Thingsʼ) and a slew of lesser numbers that are still impressive from a guitar-based perspective.

The quality of the singles on the album's first side remains so astonishing that The Yardbirds, as a result, look like one of the most befuddling Sixties puzzles in my personal book. By all accounts, the band had very little personality — its individual members, with the questionable exception of the gruff, reclusive Jeff Beck, were bores (if not downright squares) — and, as I already said, none of them ever truly matured as challenging songwriters. Yet this small handful of songs they put out over the course of one year is still one of the greatest streaks of its time, easily ranking up there with The Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Who, etc. How they managed this feat, I have not the slightest idea; blaming it all on the spirit of the time still won't cut it. Unquestionably, it was the presence of Beck that acted as a catalyst, yet The Yardbirds were still a group, of which Beck was just one part (and a Johnny-come-lately, too, who could not have a decisive say in everything they did — one reason why he never lasted too long). In the end, it's just a mystery that I personally have little interest in de-mistifying.

While it would be a serious exaggeration to say that each of the six songs on the album's first side (seven, if you throw in ʽShapes Of Thingsʼ — and you rightfully should) had started its own musical genre, it is still a point worth defending, at least for the fun of it. First, ʽMr. You're A Better Man Than Iʼ is one of the progenitors of socially-conscious punk rock. Clearly Dylan-in­fluenced at least in terms of lyrics (it was written by the drummer of Manfred Mann), its verse-to-chorus buildup of rage and indignation is carried off by Relf and the boys splendidly — over the chorus, he seems to picture himself flinging a gauntlet in the face of his imaginary bigoted racist opponent, and then Beck's heavily distorted solo, spiralling upwards in fury and frenzy and ec­stasy, is the imaginary duel... with an undetermined ending, perhaps, but then again, that's life. I have a hard time trying to remember a «political» rock song from 1965 that would kick so much racist butt — so you could check it as the godfather song for Bad Religion and Dead Kennedys, if your heart so desires.

Two of the songs were contributed by Graham Gouldman, in a successful attempt to capitalize on the good luck of ʽFor Your Loveʼ. ʽEvil Hearted Youʼ seems to have been written with the band's «rave» reputation in mind, since the contrasting mid-section is played with fussy Bo Diddley-style rhythmics — but the major focus is on the brooding, gloomy atmosphere of the main section, with Eastern influences and hints of black magic (big difference between the Stones and the Yard­birds: when it came to women, Mick Jagger would always prefer the time-honored practice of bitch-slapping, while Keith Relf was more into the «witchy» side of his female counterparts, and damned if I know which of the two stereotypes is more forgivable). Again, the key moment arrives with Beck's solo — to the best of my knowledge, nobody in the UK at least had managed to wring that kind of tone out of a slide guitar up to that time, and as he rises higher and higher up the scale and as the instrument begins to sound like a throttled kitten, it is almost scary to think of the associations that went through the band's minds as they listened to this...

The other Gouldman song is ʽHeart Full Of Soulʼ, technically similar to ʽEvil Hearted Youʼ (both in terms of lyrics and melodic structure), but where ʽEvil Hearted Youʼ only flirted very tangen­tially with Eastern elements, this here song was first tried out with a sitar (you can still hear the original take as a bonus track on For Your Love), and once that did not work out, Beck simply re-recorded the parts with a special fuzz box. The result is a fascinating mash-up of broken-hear­ted folk-pop and raga borrowings; purists might deride it as bullshit-mystic cultural appropriation, but there's really nothing wrong in appropriating a few raga-like lines to describe a state of ag­gres­sively fermenting melancholy, is there?

The studio version of ʽI'm A Manʼ is probably the most old-fashioned song here, and the one that most clearly justifies the Rave Up tag, but even that one has been modernized by Beck's presence: Jeff's «scratchy» sound is not something you can easily find on the Clapton-era rave-ups, and the wall of noise generated by the band during the coda is almost as impressive as contemporary Who exercises in controlled (or not so controlled) chaos, which is already a huge compliment, so check this as a milestone in the evolution of noise-rock or whatever. Yet clearly, it pales in com­parison to the achievement of ʽStill I'm Sadʼ — not only because it is the only truly original song here (written by McCarthy and Samwell-Smith), but also because it was a unique experiment at the time. The vocal arrangement, making use of Gregorian chant legacy, creates an atmosphere of a black-plague-like funeral procession here — a bit heavy-handed for the description of a failed teenage romance, perhaps, but it falls in the same category of «overblown dark-sentimental mas­terpieces» of the time as do all those Shangri-La's classics: utter sincerity of design and challen­ging butt-throughs into the terrifying world of grown-up music make it an ultimate win, and for once, I am actually happy here that Keith Relf never had a great singing voice. Add a Dietrich Fischer-Diskau to ʽStill I'm Sadʼ, and the song explodes. Leave in the well-meaning, moderately talented nerdy frail British kid, and it survives.

ʽThe Train Kept A-Rollinʼ was not invented by The Yardbirds. The ferociously sexual potential of the song had already been disclosed by The Rock'n'Roll Trio, with Paul Burlison letting it all out with early aggressive guitar distortion in 1956. But it still took The Yardbirds to update that sound for the Sixties — just as it would take Aerosmith to update it for the Seventies (and then rock music died and nobody cared about updating it for the Eighties, I guess). I have no idea whose particular version could be considered the best or «definitive» one, but the immortal riff of the song, I believe, took on its ultimately refined shape with the Yardbirds — although, as a mat­ter of fact, I have to say that the definitive Yardbirds version of the song is the one that was re-recorded for Antonioni's Blow Up: renamed ʽStroll Onʼ, it is fortunately featured as the last bonus track on the CD edition and is unquestionably the single heaviest track recorded in the year of 1966 — by that time, Jimmy Page had already joined the band as second guitarist, so you can catch a rare glimpse of the twin Beck/Page soloing here; and the riff is at least twice as heavy as on the original. Ever imagined a Panzer tank blitzing along with the speed of an express train?...

Finally, even though ʽShapes Of Thingsʼ was released in 1966 rather than 1965, and thematically is more cohesive with the band's first proper LP (Roger The Engineer), there is no better way to conclude this stellar run of singles than with the band's full-fledged conversion to psychedelia, a song that matters almost as much to the genre as ʽTomorrow Never Knowsʼ or ʽPurple Hazeʼ. It is a creative masterpiece — rising out of an almost music-hall melody (you can easily picture somebody like Paul McCartney banging that "shapes! of things before my eyes!" stuff on the piano), going through a ʽWe Gotta Get Out Of This Placeʼ-like R&B bass groove, and finally entering that sonic realm where everything is possible. The second part of the single is the soli­tary domain of Jeff Beck (in fact, he would continue to explore those psychedelic volcanoes on ʽBeck's Boleroʼ and other stuff), but it is the three-stage merger of pop, R&B, and total freakout that really counts — and introduces both the band and their audiences to the concept of true (and deep) thematic development in a pop song. It may lack a single power hook like ʽPurple Hazeʼ, and it may not be as openly mesmerizing as ʽTomorrow Never Knowsʼ — which is why you will never find it in any «top five psychedelic masterpieces» list — but it still has a triumphant ring to it after all these years.

Of the other bonus tracks, besides the already mentioned mastodontic attack of ʽStroll Onʼ, it is necessary to remember ʽJeff's Bluesʼ, an instrumental jam that takes the ʽDust My Broomʼ groove and evolves it into furiously psychedelic guitar soloing (with none of Clapton's contemporary inhibitions). The rest are mostly there to at least somehow justify the Rave Up tag — for instance, two studio takes on ʽHere 'Tisʼ that had previously been played on Five Live Yardbirds — but with Beck in the band, pretty much everything is fun to some degree, even a couple slow blues numbers (ʽNew York City Bluesʼ) that would have been unbearable, had Clapton been replaced by a player of lesser rather than equal caliber. (And oh yes, best part of the bonus tracks: No Keith Relf singing in Italian anywhere in sight!)

There is no way anybody is going to rotate the bonus inclusions more often than the first seven tracks, though — but even if the entire album had been left simply as a modest 20-minute long EP, it would still deserve one of the strongest thumbs up judgements for the masterpiece-heavy year of 1965. If you only want to own one Yardbirds album, this is the one to get: everything else will necessarily look like a disappointment in comparison (and this is coming from somebody who sincerely believes that the band's entire career remains quite heavily underappreciated).

The Yardbirds: For Your Love

THE YARDBIRDS: FOR YOUR LOVE (1965)

1) For Your Love; 2) I'm Not Talking; 3) Putty (In Your Hands); 4) I Ain't Got You; 5) Got To Hurry; 6) I Ain't Done Wrong; 7) I Wish You Would; 8) A Certain Girl; 9) Sweet Music; 10) Good Morning Little Schoolgirl; 11) My Girl Sloopy; 12*) Baby What's Wrong; 13*) Boom Boom; 14*) Honey In Your Hips; 15*) Talkin' 'Bout You; 16*) I Wish You Would (long version); 17*) A Certain Girl (alt. take); 18*) Got To Hurry (take 4); 19*) Sweet Music (take 4); 20*) Heart Full Of Soul (sitar version); 21*) Steeled Blues; 22*) Paff Bumm; 23*) Questa Volta; 24*) Paff Bumm (Italian version).

The Yardbirds never really had a proper studio album out until mid-1966, by which time most of their classic material had already been released as singles. So thank the crooked American market for putting out two Yardbirds albums in 1965 that, in between them, contained all these singles and more — with screwed-up track sequences and some real dreck wedged in between the clas­sics, but still, providing us with some sort of foundation for collecting and reviewing their output. Not surprisingly, both For Your Love and Having A Rave Up were later re-released on CD with tons of bonus tracks, and both these editions are absolute must-haves for any fan of good music, let alone specific fans of early British R&B.

For Your Love, released in the States in June '65, collects all but one of the singles originally produced for the UK market to that point, along with a few album-only tracks culled from session leftovers. As it is, this is really two bands: the majority of the tracks still hail from the Clapton era, but four already feature Jeff Beck as his replacement, recruited after Eric's departure in March 1965. (The official reason has always been quoted as Clapton's frustration at the «pop» turn in the band's sound with ʽFor Your Loveʼ, but he may have been generally dissatisfied with his limited role in the band — in fact, for all of Eric's alleged friendliness and humbleness that you read about in his biographies, it is curious that he never managed to last more than two years in any single band, before giving up on bands altogether). However, the chronological cut-off is quite clear: For Your Love stops precisely before their first truly ambitious and innovative single, ʽHeart Full Of Soulʼ (an alternate take of which, with a sitar part, is included as a bonus track), and so here we have a portrait of the early days of this band, when the only thing that separated it from the rest of the pack was having England's finest young blues guitarist in their midst. First one, that is, then another.

If you rearrange the tracks on the extended CD edition in more or less chronological order, the studio history of The Yardbirds begins with early demos that show them taking their cues from The Animals — ʽBaby What's Wrongʼ and ʽBoom Boomʼ were both done by that band earlier and much better, since Keith Relf is no match for Eric Burdon as a blues screecher, and Eric's lead guitar parts here are surprisingly quiet and muffled, though already fluent and melodic. There's also a Keith Relf «original» called ʽHoney In Your Hipsʼ, an uninspired Bo Diddley imitation that should have earned Keith a good slap in the face — hey man, if you're trying to make a girl by telling her "pretty baby, you got honey in your hips", at least sing it like you mean it; the only thing worse than sexism is bland sexism.

The true story of The Yardbirds begins with Billy Boy Arnold's ʽI Wish You Wouldʼ: here, for the first time, they show that they mean business, with that wonderfully nasty and fuzzy guitar riff, doubled by Relf's harmonica and drenched in cavernous echo for the sake of adding an extra whiff of danger. The band's propensity for «raving up» is also well served here, with all five members joining in for some loud collective racket in the middle. However, I personally prefer the B-side, where they cover Allen Toussaint's joke song ʽA Certain Girlʼ and almost turn it into a dangerous tune — not least because of Samwell-Smith's surprisingly thunderous bassline, but most of all because of Clapton's guitar. To my knowledge, this is the first officially released Eric Clapton solo part on record, and the man does not hold back one bit, delivering a short, but per­fectly constructed, fire-crackling, ecstatic solo that could proudly decorate any of the nastiest garage-rock nuggets of its era: I particularly love it how he is not being afraid of overdriving the sound here — something he'd usually steer clear of in the future.

For the second single, they'd agreed to let Clapton shine on both sides: ʽGood Morning Little Schoolgirlʼ repeats the joke formula of ʽA Certain Girlʼ with a bit extra salaciousness, but the best bit is from 1:18 to 1:39 with you-know-what, as well as the earliest stage of what would later be known as Eric's «woman tone» (not yet, but he is beginning to get there). And with ʽI Ain't Got Youʼ, they finally manage to one-up The Animals, since now they have their own Eric, and he sure knows how to extract the sharpest, snazziest sounds from his six-string... but would it have hurt these suckers to give him just a few extra bars? At least he gets to solo at length on the brief blues jam ʽGot To Hurryʼ, the B-side of ʽFor Your Loveʼ, but here he is not particularly on proto-punkish fire, and this kind of stuff would soon be done much better with John Mayall.

ʽFor Your Loveʼ, contributed for the band by professional hitmeister Graham Gouldman, is really an excellent pop song — though we would hardly expect anything less from the writer of ʽBus Stopʼ and future key member of 10cc. The harpsichord, played by Brian Auger, adds a nice baroque touch, and for the first time in his life, Keith Relf actually turns in a decent performance: as a young romantic with a touch of morbid paranoia (ʽFor Your Loveʼ seems to be sung from a deliriously suicidal point of view, if you ask me), he is much more convincing than as an authen­tic Delta bluesman. Blame it on Eric (who is formally credited for playing on the song, but there is no discernible lead guitar) to not know the difference between conventional and daring pop music: on the other hand, it is also true that ʽFor Your Loveʼ is not much of a Yardbirds song, being neither written by any of the members nor featuring any of their creative instrumental ideas, what with Auger's harpsichord being its most notable musical feature and all.

Finally, we get to the first small series of tunes from the Jeff Beck era, and things slowly start cooking: Mose Allison's ʽI'm Not Talkingʼ is a violent hard rock groove, with no less than three guitar solos from Beck, who wastes little time in experimenting with feedback, bends, wobbles, sustains, and generally makes his guitar sound like a mean and lean drunk driver, spiralling all the way home but somehow making it without crashing the car. ʽI Ain't Done Wrongʼ is more of a group rave-up thing, but even this features Jeff in experimental mode as he works in a suitably evil wah-wah tone in his solo. And The McCoys' ʽMy Girl Sloopyʼ is the first time that the band crashes the three-minute — actually, the five-minute — barrier, but I have never been a major fan of it: like ʽLouie Louieʼ, it is a very, very silly song, and unless your band can credibly pass for a bunch of drunk sailors, you should probably never even try it. The Yardbirds may pass for a bunch of mopey kids with a penchant for sunshades and guitar feedback, but for drunk sailors... not really. Not the most shining of their moments, as is ʽSweet Musicʼ, a pop/R&B hybrid that should have been left to professional crooners.

The bonus tracks on the CD are a mixed bunch, including some of the band's most embarrassing moments, such as an inexplicable decision to venture into corny Italian pop (the early 1966 single ʽQuesta Volta / Paff Bumʼ); an extended take of ʽI Wish You Wouldʼ that adds nothing to the laconic original; and several alternate takes with collector's value only. But they do have that weird sitar version of ʽHeart Full Of Soulʼ — and although the reworked version with Beck's sitar-imitating guitar is decidedly better, it is still a bit underwhelming that they never got around to working in a proper sitar part: that way, they'd have at least something on the Beatles, who would only release ʽNorwegian Woodʼ a few months afterwards. Still, this take is of major his­torical importance for being, in strict chronological terms, probably the first recorded use of the sitar in a Western pop song.

Anyway, if anything, For Your Love simply gives us some examples of two great guitar players honing their chops at the very crack of dawn of the age of Guitar Gods, and for that alone, it deserves a thumbs up. Some of the finest electric leads of 1964-65 are to be found here, as far as technique, melody, and tone are concerned; and although both Clapton and Beck would obviously go on to far more ambitious feats, it might be argued that the proportion ratio of length to quality of these leads has never really been outdone by either of them.

The Yardbirds: Five Live Yardbirds

THE YARDBIRDS: FIVE LIVE YARDBIRDS (1964)

1) Too Much Monkey Business; 2) Got Love If You Want It; 3) Smokestack Lightning; 4) Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl; 5) Respectable; 6) Five Long Years; 7) Pretty Girl; 8) Louise; 9) I'm A Man; 10) Here 'Tis.

Every time I listen to this record, I am reminded of just how irrepairably skewed our modern per­ception is of all those young R&B bands that sprang up all over Britain in the early Sixties. We hear them somewhat timidly recording short, thin, quiet covers of Chicago blues and Chuck Berry in the studio; see them properly dressed and, most of the time, lip-synching to the same studio recordings on scant TV appearances; read condensed biographic descriptions of their early years that largely focus upon their managers, producers, and girlfriends; and, if we are very lucky, treat ourselves to awful quality bootlegs that are a total chore to enjoy.

The club scene, however, is where it was all really happening — where bands like The Animals and The Rolling Stones felt themselves free from public image shackles and studio restrictions long before the psychedelic revolution. This was where you could really go wild, where you could extend your three-minute singles into lengthy jams or dance grooves; at the expense of clarity and precision of sound, perhaps, but with the added benefit of releasing the BEAST inside you. We know the huge difference between a studio and a live Stones, or Who, or even Led Zep­pelin album from the late Sixties / early Seventies, but, if anything, this difference was even larger in the early Sixties — it's just that we don't get to experience it all that often.

Consequently, manager and producer Giorgio Gomelsky's pioneering decision to make the first album by his latest acquisition, The Yardbirds, a real live one was nothing short of entrepreneu­rial genius — and exceptionally favorable for The Yardbirds themselves, a band that had not yet properly found its studio wings, and had a lot going against it in terms of competition. Its strict separation between rhythm and lead guitar left rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja without any active voice whatsoever. In the rhythm section, bass player Paul Samwell-Smith was, at best, competent, and drummer Jim McCarty, even being somewhat more than just competent, was, after all, just a drummer. The weakest link, however, was their frontman: Keith Relf, next to the wildman image of people like Mick Jagger and Eric Burdon, looked and sounded like a well-behaved, clean-cut college student, probably very nice to know, handsome in an almost teen idol sort of way, but clearly loving his blues and R&B idols much more than he could imitate them.

Their best bit of luck came along in 1963, when their lead guitarist Top Topham had to leave for art school and cede his place to Eric Clapton, of The Roosters' (non-)fame. With the young guitar prodigy at their side, The Yardbirds finally had something that nobody else had in the British R&B scene — a top-notch blues guitarist who could not only cop all the black dudes' licks to perfection, but put his own stamp on those as well. However, as their first album clearly shows, The Yardbirds never had the slightest intention of turning into «The Eric Clapton Revue» (or, for that matter, any guitar player's revue, be it Eric, Jeff, or Jimmy). The man was too shy to sing, too stiff to show off on stage, and he did not even take solo turns on at least half of the numbers that they performed — drastically underused, some might say; admirably humble, others might object. Regardless, Clapton's presence on these tracks is a good, but far from the only, reason why Five Live Yardbirds still deserves your attention more than half a century since its release.

The most important thing about Five Live Yardbirds is that it is the only document of its epoch, at least outside the territory of crappy-sounding boots, that lets you hear what a genuine club-based «rave-up» sounded like at the time. Those of the album's songs (recorded, by the way, at the Marquee Club on March 20, 1964) that go well over three minutes usually turn, sooner or later, into loud, noisy, «primitive» jams, with all the band members kicking the shit out of their instruments — about as far removed from one's idea of an Eric Clapton-led band as possible. And in those blessed moments when the band reaches its energetic peak, any individual shortcomings on the part of the players just melt away, and what remains is an awesome tribal groove, perhaps best felt on dance-oriented R&B numbers such as the Isley Brothers' ʽRespectableʼ or Bo Did­dley's ʽHere 'Tisʼ that closes the show. ʽHere 'Tisʼ, in particular, features a mammoth groove from the rhythm section — for a short while, Jim McCarty ceases to be a suburban British kid and becomes one of those Loa-possessed mythical African savages... yes, clichéd praise, I know, but you really don't get such tribal bombast from anybody else in the Britain of 1964.

Straightahead rock'n'roll and blues numbers are, of course, generally saved by the young Mr. ʽSlowhandʼ Clapton — with ʽToo Much Monkey Businessʼ, if you want great lead vocals, hear The Hollies, if you want young punk flavour, your best bet is The Kinks, but if you want top level lead guitar with the rawest, sharpest, screechiest tone of 1964 and the speediest, most easily fluent picking style of 'em all, you'll have nowhere to turn to but The Yardbirds. The sound quality is hardly ideal, and Eric's soloing on ʽFive Long Yearsʼ is too deeply embedded in the mix (you'd have to wait thirty more years to hear Eric truly let rip on the song), but you can already hear all the principal reasons for the ʽGodʼ tag here. That said, ʽMonkey Businessʼ, ʽFive Long Yearsʼ, and John Lee Hooker's ʽLouiseʼ are pretty much the only songs on which Eric gets a proper solo spot — all the more ridiculous considering how often Keith Relf gets a solo spot with his harmonica, which he really only plays because he's a non-guitar-playing frontman and if you are a frontman without a guitar, you have to play harmonica. Like Mick Jagger, you know? Even on ʽGood Morning Little Schoolgirlʼ — the studio version had Eric playing a solo, but this live version only has Keith. What the hell?.. (Admittedly, he is not a bad harp blower, and the perfor­mance on ʽSmokestack Lightningʼ is suitably evil, but too much of this is perfunctory).

Anyway, all criticism aside, Five Live Yardbirds is more than just a priceless historical docu­ment: it is a special experience that lets you penetrate those «wild and innocent days» like nothing else — before egos and drugs took over and added extra wildness, but took away most of the innocence. Never mind that the band remained unable to carve out an unmistakable identity for themselves: Five Live Yardbirds has no need for an identity, as long as a certain nameless power can clench all five of them in its grip from time to time and make them produce such exciting, truly bacchanalian pandemonium. And on top of that, you get a few of those Clapton solos — as a bonus for getting into all the grooves. Thumbs up.

PS: since the dawning of the CD era, Five Live Yardbirds apparently has been released in a million different repackagings, many of which throw on tons of bonus tracks — such as the band's early studio singles (which shall be tackled in a separate review for For Your Love), or additional live performances from the Crawdaddy Club and other venues: seek out the one that has a rippin' version of Chuck Berry's ʽLet It Rockʼ on it, a really tight performance and another great occasion to hear Eric do Chuck Berry, something you would almost never get a chance to hear again in the post-1964 universe.