Only Solitaire Reviews: The Yardbirds

	FIVE LIVE YARDBIRDS
	Album released: Dec. 4, 1964	V	A	L	U	E	More info:
		3	3	3	3	3
Tracks: 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.
REVIEW "Good evening, and now it is time for birdmerizing... yardmerizing... in fact, most blueswailing Yardbirds. Here they are, one by one: the drums — Jim McCarty, the rhythm guitar — Chris Dreja, the bass — Paul Samwell Smith, lead guitar — Eric Slowhand Clapton, the singer and harp — Keith Relf: Five Live Yardbirds!" No idea who was the announcer on that particular night, but it is hard to forget that intro — and hard not to chuckle at the album sleeve photo, poking a different kind of fun at the band’s name. (And for all the Eric Clapton haters out there in the COVID-19 era, this may be the only chance you ever get to stare at your anti-hero behind bars!).
Each time I listen to Five Live Yardbirds, I cannot help being reminded of just how irreparably skewed is our modern perception of all those young R&B bands that sprang up all over the UK in the early 1960s. What we do is hear them (usually with an air of timidity and reverence) recording short, thinly sounding, relatively quiet covers of Chicago blues and Chuck Berry in the studio; see them properly dressed and, as a rule, lip-syncing to the same studio recordings on their scant TV appearances; read condensed biographic descriptions of their early years which largely focus upon their managers, producers, and girlfriends; and, if we are very very lucky, we can occasionally treat ourselves to «raw» bootlegs with awful sound quality, the closest we ever come to true history but also a total chore to sit through and enjoy. The club scene, however, is where it was all really happening — where bands such as the Animals and the Rolling Stones could feel themselves free from the shackles of their public image and the restrictions imposed on them by the record industry, long before the psychedelic revolution shook all these foundations to their core. The club scene was where you could really go wild, extending your three-minute singles into lengthy free-form jams or trance-inducing dance grooves; at the expense of clarity and precision of sound, for sure, but with the added benefit of being able to release the proverbial beast inside. We know the huge difference between a studio and a live Stones album, or a Who album, or a Led Zeppelin album from the late 1960s / early 1970s, but, if at all possible, this gap must have been even wider in the early 1960s — it is just because that era was so poorly documented that we are not constantly reminded of where it was at. 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 (unlike John Lennon, he did not sing, did not write, and did not even laugh and act like a clown, mostly sticking to just wearing a frown). 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 timid, well-behaved, clean-cut college student, probably very nice to know, handsome in an almost teen idol sort of way, and clearly admiring his blues and R&B idols to a much higher degree than being capable of imitating them. In the States, such nice young gentlemen usually went to Greenwich Village and became reverent folkies; in the UK, the same degree of academic reverence could easily be applied to blues and R&B. Which is not to imply that Relf had any sort of scholarly background — his father was a builder, after all — but he did look like an adoring young scholar most of the time, and performed the material accordingly. The Yardbirds’ first of many bits of luck came along in 1963, when their lead guitarist Top Topham had to leave for art school and cede his place to one Eric Clapton, of the Roosters’ (non-)fame. With the young, but still virtually unknown, guitar prodigy at their side, the Yardbirds gained something that nobody else had in the entire 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 the songs as well. Unfortunately, no recordings survive from the Roosters (who were only active for several months in 1963 anyway; Tom McGuinness, the band’s other guitarist, would later join Manfred Mann), but one thing is for sure: much, if not most, of Clapton’s guitar genius had already been manifested before he joined the Yardbirds — you don’t really get to listen to a very young Eric Clapton and go «wow, amazing how he got from this to ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’ and ‘Layla’!» You have no choice, really, but to hunt down all those TikTok videos he recorded in his bedroom in Surrey when he was only twelve... uh, wait a minute. Never mind. Anyway, 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 in later years). 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 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 scarce territory of crappy-sounding bootlegs, which lets you hear what a genuine club-based «rave-up» sounded like at the time. (It was actually not the first live album by a UK R&B band — that honor should probably go to Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated; however, Korner’s live recordings had an even more «academic» feel to them, and were typically performed by middle-aged men with a mixed training in blues and jazz, rather than by exuberant young kids with plenty of rock’n’roll energy to spare). 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 which 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 the Loa-possessed mythical African savages... a clichéd bit of praise, for sure, but honestly, you do not often get such spirited 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 — when it comes to Chuck Berry’s 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 or the Downliners Sect; 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 them all, you shall have nowhere to turn to but the Yardbirds. All of these British bands were united in transforming Chuck’s original solos from a harmlessly playful invitation to dance your hips off into a rallying call for air-punching the lights out of your virtual oppressors; but nobody other than Eric Clapton could bring an almost military-like order and elegance to that onslaught without sacrificing the rage and fury. Come to think of it, you do not often hear Eric Clapton engaging in a fast Chuck Berry number anytime after his Yardbirds days (even in Hail! Hail! Rock’n’Roll, they brought the man on stage to assist Chuck with ‘Wee Wee Hours’, a slow blues), so this is sort of a unique experience to show you that yes, Mr. Clapton could rock’n’roll away like crazy in the early days, before blues purism ate out a large chunk of his youthful abandon. Unfortunately, if quite predictably, the sound quality of the recording is too poor to properly enjoy all the nuances of Eric’s lead guitar — he probably does great on the classic blues tune ‘Five Long Years’, but you would really have to wait thirty long years for the definitive version on From The Cradle; Eric’s thin Fender Telecaster tone can only be discerned through the dense and dark smokescreen of the rhythm section (Samwell-Smith’s bass obscures every note played by the man) and will probably be deemed barely listenable by all who have been spoiled by the cleaner live recording standards from the 1970s and later on. Still, unspoil yourself just a bit, take the record in the context of its time, and it won’t be much of a problem to understand the ‘God’ tag on this young man — which, technically, would not be applied until his stint with John Mayall, but it is already quite clear that a completely new standard for electric guitar playing is being set here. That said, ʽToo Much Monkey 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 is a non-guitar-playing frontman, and if you are a frontman in a rhythm-and-blues band and you do not play a guitar, you at least have to play harmonica. Like Mick Jagger, you know? Even on ʽGood Morning Little Schoolgirlʼ — the studio version of that song had Eric playing a darn fine guitar solo, but this live version only has Keith. WHY? Admittedly, he is decent with the instrument, but neither Sonny Boy Williamson nor Little Walter have much to fear in the competition department. Every once in a while, though, the Yardbirds really come together as a single powerful unit: ultimately, you will never «get» the point of the album if you just think of it as a launching platform for Clapton’s soloing (let alone for Keith Relf’s singing and harp playing). The first such number is ‘Smokestack Lightning’, formerly a creepy voodoo show focused on Howlin’ Wolf’s persona, but here transformed into a collective bombastic ritual, with Relf as the harp-blowing shaman and the rest of the band banging away with all their might to bring all those sleepy spirits out of their slumber. This is where drummer Jim McCarty summons Keith Moon-like powers, both guitarists sacrifice melody for aggressive noise, and we, the listeners, temporarily forget the aura of teenage entertainment that normally rules over this album and begin taking these guys really seriously. This is harder to do on subsequent rave-ups such as the Isley Brothers’ ‘Respectable’ or Bo Diddley’s ‘Pretty Girl’, because these numbers are mostly there to provide a good time for the dancing crowds — ‘Smokestack Lightning’, on the other hand, is much more of a proto-psychedelic jam to which it is much easier to groove while sitting down, nodding your head, and letting yourself be taken far away into a world of mysterious swamps, dense smoke, three-headed alligators, and oddly colored mushrooms — regardless of whether you need some chemical assistance for this or not. Overall, all the inevitable criticisms aside, Five Live Yardbirds is more than just a 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 maybe added some extra wildness, but definitely took away most of the innocence. Because of their long and troubled history, the Yardbirds may not have carved out such an unmistakable identity for themselves as a band as they did for several of their classic songs — but in a way, this recording carves out an identity for the year of 1964 that is much more telling than any of the great studio albums recorded by a variety of artists in that same year. On top of that, you get the earliest bunch of Eric Clapton solos known to mankind, so, what’s not to like? Tech note: since the dawning of the CD era, Five Live Yardbirds have apparently 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 we shall discuss later, 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 extremely rare occasion to hear a young Eric do a fast Chuck number.

	FOR YOUR LOVE
	Album released: June 13, 1965	V	A	L	U	E	More info:
		4	3	4	3	3
Tracks: 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.
REVIEW Back in the day, it was common practice for record labels to not allow their artists to put out LPs until they’d proven their worth with at least one or two substantial hit singles, and upon first glance, that might have precisely been the deal with the Yardbirds: March ’65 = release and chart success of ‘For Your Love’ (the single); June ’65 = follow up with the album of the same title. Extra scrutiny, however, shows that the real situation was more complex. First, the Yardbirds already had an official LP — Five Live Yardbirds — courtesy of Giorgio Gomelsky putting pressure on their record label, Columbia. However, it was only released in the UK (and other members of the Commonwealth), since the band had not managed to make a dent in the US market with their first singles. That situation was reversed with the release of ‘For Your Love’, which became a smash hit across both sides of the Atlantic — and at that point, their American distributor (Epic Records) accepted the idea of a studio LP, while the UK division of Columbia, on the other hand, stalled. The UK, in fact, would not see the release of a proper Yardbirds studio LP until Roger The Engineer in 1966 — and for a good reason, because the Yardbirds never really got together to make a proper studio LP until Roger The Engineer. For the first two years of their existence, they concentrated fully on singles — a decision that ultimately made them a disservice in terms of critical reputation. As great as your individual songs may be (and one might make a strong case for the Yardbirds’ line of 1965–1966 singles as the most musically important and astonishing line of that entire era), people tend to remember those years for the emergence of the album as the more important medium than the single, and if you lived through them without a Rubber Soul, an Aftermath, or a Pet Sounds to your name, well... it’s like you weren’t all there.
So the American market did receive a couple of Yardbirds albums in 1965 — but they were pretty odd bastards, slapped together from widely different periods and sessions, with pretty poor sequencing at that. Take For Your Love, for instance. Most of the songs on it are from the Clapton era of the band, but there is no Clapton on the front sleeve: only Jeff Beck, sitting at a... keyboard? He isn’t even playing one on any of the songs here. The Beck / Clapton material is chaotically interspersed, although at this point the gap between the two eras is not yet quite as huge as it would become by the end of the year — still, they should have probably at least tried to segregate the two groups of songs onto different sides of the LP, because ‘Good Morning Little Schoolgirl’ and ‘My Girl Sloopy’ feel really odd next to one another. Nevertheless, it is at least good to have most of the early Yardbirds studio stuff in one place — and what was lacking would be lovingly assembled by Repertoire Records thirty-four years later and packed into thirteen bonus tracks for the expanded CD release of the album; this is probably the most commonly accessible version these days, and it provides a more or less exhaustive history of the Yardbirds from the earliest demo versions recorded at the R. G. Jones Studio on December 10, 1963, and up to their first attempt to record ‘Heart Full Of Soul’ in April 1965, which ended in failure because the hired sitar player, according to Beck, couldn’t properly nail the 4/4 time signature (!). These sixteen months were not the greatest months in Yardbird history — but they were certainly the sixteen months that put the band on the general musical map and prepared them for greatness. Okay, so we should probably subtract the first three months, because all of the bonus tracks that date from the December ’63 R. G. Jones Studios sessions are sort of... just okay. Most of them are covers of American idols — Chuck Berry, John Lee Hooker, Sonny Boy Williamson, Billy Boy Arnold — performed in a fairly tepid and cautious manner. This early version of ‘Boom Boom’, for instance, feels like the boys are almost afraid to push themselves too far, next to the blazing-cannon rendition of the Animals — and so does ‘Baby What’s Wrong’, for that matter; basically, whenever the Yardbirds try on for size anything that was or would be done by the Animals or the Stones, they inevitably lose big time because of their overall «nice college boy» attitude. What’s worse, at this point in time they were also unable — in the studio, at least — to make the best of their single most musically gifted member: Clapton’s guitar tone on those early demos is thin, and although he already shows an impressive fluency, producing a lilting, harmonious blues sound that had few equals on the British rhythm’n’blues scene, he is being way too modest for all that talent to be properly noted. The first of the Yardbirds’ many sonic mini-revolutions, then, took place sometime between those tentative sessions at the R. G. Jones Studios and their first proper venture into the Olympic Studios in London, which allegedly took place some time in March 1964. You can easily hear the difference when comparing the «long» version of ‘I Wish You Would’, their first single (actually, the early demo version; amusingly, it ended up by mistake on the official 1965 Canadian version of For Your Love, retitled Heart Full Of Soul), and the final product from three months later. The former is a slightly darker, swampier, more menacing cover of Billy Boy Arnold’s original, extolling his trademark riff (which you can probably also recognize on Bo Diddley’s ‘Diddley Daddy’, since that song was also based on an Arnold original) and rather making a musical hero from bassist Paul Samwell-Smith than Eric — it is his chuggin’ train of a bassline that really holds together the «messy», climactic noise sessions in the middle and at the end of the song. It’s a good, tight jam, but the Stones could do that kind of jamming just as well, and maybe even Manfred Mann. However, by the time the boys got to Olympic Studios, they were all set to use advanced studio technology to their advantage — and give themselves as musicians that extra push which takes you out of the crowd and puts you among the chosen few. Just compare the opening bars of the old version with the new. The first thing you’ll probably notice is the extra distortion on the opening guitar riff (not quite sure if it’s played by Eric or, more likely, by rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja). The old one was a lil’ puppy dog cautiously sniffing around the corners; the new one is a gruff, angry beast snappin’ at your heels — the tone is not as thick and rumbling as on ‘You Really Got Me’, yet it is still one of the earliest examples of a seriously hard, crunchy rock riff on a British rhythm’n’blues record. The rest of the band step up their game as well, particularly Jim McCarty, who gives his drums a more bombastic, cymbal-heavy sound than on the demo version. Tellingly, the only member of the band who pretty much stays the same is Keith Relf: his singing and harp playing are nearly identical on both versions (identically stiff, that is). I have seen people complain about the messy, murky production on those early Yardbirds singles, but I have a hunch that they do not quite get the point — Gomelsky and the band were most likely trying to emulate the acoustics of the band’s live sound from all those small, tight-packed, cavernous clubs they were playing in, which is why there’s so much echo and reverb all around and the instruments sometimes congregate in a swampy puddle. It doesn’t quite work, of course, but I have no problem with the production as long as it does not hide the catchiness of the original songs or the enthusiasm of the band. On the other hand, I can also see how some might prefer the older version of ‘I Wish You Would’ — not only is it «cleaner», but it is also longer, thus, more representative of the Yardbirds’ famous jamming style. Basically depends on whether you want four minutes of old-school dark blues or two minutes of a «blues-punk» explosion. Claptonologists world-wide, though, will probably get a bigger kick from the B-side, a cover of Allen Toussaint’s somewhat novel piece of New Orleanian R&B called ‘A Certain Girl’ — originally produced by Toussaint himself, but performed by singer Ernie K-Doe in 1961. Back then, it was a very typical New Orleanian piece distinguished by a very typical humorous New Orleanian attitude — the same one you observe on contemporary releases by Huey ‘Piano’ Smith and similar artists. Why it became so popular in the UK is unclear (an even earlier cover than the Yardbirds’ was by The Paramounts, who would eventually grow into Procol Harum), but in any case, The Yardbirds strip away much of the original’s playfulness and humor (the only «funny» bit still left in is the call-and-response of "what’s her name? — I can’t tell you! — NOOOOO..."), tightening up everything so that the song becomes more of a threat than a joke. Again, the song is dominated by Samwell-Smith’s thick, fuzzified bass, giving it a very unusually heavy aura for early 1964 — and again, the Olympic Studios version is crunchier and more aggressive than the R. G. Jones Studios demo. But what specifically distinguishes the finalized version of ‘A Certain Girl’ is, of course, the guitar break by Eric Clapton. It is not just historically significant — though it is damn well historically significant — as the first ever commercially released example of a guitar solo by soon-to-be «God» of electric guitar playing. It also, well, just kicks ass. Out of nowhere, it bursts through a broken window in your living room, like a zombie dog in Resident Evil, and wreaks tightly controlled havoc for nearly 30 seconds, before vanishing in a puff of smoke, leaving you with your jaw on the floor in a "what was that?..." state of mind — at least, I’m pretty sure that was the kind of reaction quite a few people might have lived through in 1964. Today, it might be easier to understand the impact if, once again, you compare that ferocious guitar break with the solo on the earlier demo version (I pity the poor Canadians who, by mistake, got that version instead). The early version is, well, just a decent guitar solo. The polished Olympic Studios break is a shrill, screechy, crackly blast of distortion, perfectly constructed from a melodic point of view and at the same time full of youthful rage spirit. I could, in fact, argue that, for all the dozens and dozens of magnificent Clapton solos throughout his career, none have managed to surpass the original guitar break on ‘A Certain Girl’ in terms of beauty of tone, technical smoothness, and emotional dynamics. Its only potential flaw is that it is quite short — and, actually, for some people it might not be a flaw at all (I, for one, will certainly take this beautiful brevity over quite a few over-extended Cream jams). The fact that the single did not chart either in the UK or in the US is quite a bit of a travesty — when you consider, for instance, that right at the same time the Stones’ ‘Not Fade Away’ was riding up all the way to #3, you can’t help but feel a little pity for ‘I Wish You Would’ and that criminally underappreciated Clapton solo on the B-side. For some reason, though, the general British public just wasn’t too enamored with the Yardbirds’ take on rhythm’n’blues — which could, of course, be explained by various technical reasons such as lack of proper publicity, although I also suspect that having Keith Relf as the band’s frontman didn’t really help the band get extra attention. (Admittedly, he was quite dashing visually in a Brian Jones kind of way, but it seems as though good looks could actually work against you if you were playing in a «wild» rhythm’n’blues band: ultimately, it was Mick who got all the girls, not Brian, and all of the Yardbirds looked almost pathetically «clean» for a band that took its inspiration from such «dirty» music). Not at all disencouraged by the lack of public interest, the Yardbirds at first persevered, putting out a second single in the same vein, although this time the roles were reversed: the more humorous and playful of the two songs was chosen as the A-side, while the darker and grittier blues-rock number was relegated to the back. Amusingly, I have seen some negative reactions thrown at ‘Good Morning Little Schoolgirl’ for being much more silly and corny than Sonny Boy Williamson’s, Muddy Waters’, or John Lee Hooker’s versions — but this is not the same ‘Good Morning Little Schoolgirl’! This is actually a cover of a novelty number originally recorded in 1961 by «Don and Bob» (Don Level and Bob Love, an obscure rhythm & blues duo who used to record for Chess) which simply borrows its title from the old blues number, but is otherwise a merry teen anthem, rather in the style of the Coasters and other «light» R&B artists of the time. The Yardbirds do it relative justice, though the lyrical matter feels a bit «immature» for their serious image ("won’t you let me take you to the hop, have a party at the soda shop" is a pretty shoddy pick-up line for Keith Relf and the boys) — and once again, Eric tries to save things with a gritty, clenched-teeth guitar solo, a little less distorted than the one on ‘A Certain Girl’ but just as melodic and smoothly fluent, and again feeling like it kinda sorta belongs in a completely different song. The B-side is where it all finally comes together: the band’s cover of Jimmy Reed’s ‘I Ain’t Got You’ finally stands out loud and proud against the (slightly later) competitive release by the Animals — the Yardbirds’ group harmonies are no match against Eric Burdon, but the heavy guitar sound crushes the Animals’ much thinner performance, and Alan Price’s eloquent organ solo is buried by Clapton’s firecracker break, which, combined with the song’s stuttering tempo, is a natural early predecessor of the classic ‘Steppin’ Out’ instrumental in his days with John Mayall. More importantly, the guitar break is now fully coherent with the rest of the song — vocals aside, this is all as pissed-off and nasty as the Yardbirds ever got in their Clapton days. Oh, and there’s none of that cavernous production on ‘I Ain’t Got You’, so this time, Eric’s solo jumps out directly at you, the poor prey, out of the speakers, letting you enjoy that sharpest, shrillest, dryest, crackliest guitar tone of 1964 in all of its red-hot glory. Catch it while it’s hot: the only places where you can feel it to its fullest effect are those early Yardbirds singles and the album with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. By late 1966, it would be gone. The only other recording from that period which made it onto the LP but had not previously been issued as a single is ‘Putty (In Your Hands)’, a cover of a semi-obscure, LP-only Shirelles number from 1962. If you like your mean old riff to be delivered by a mean old electric guitar rather than a dirty brass section, you’ll probably enjoy the Yardbirds cover more than the original — otherwise, there is little to cherish about it, because Keith Relf is Keith Relf, and Eric Clapton is nowhere to be seen (no solo breaks on the recording, true to the original). Gender studies people might give a shoutout to Keith and the boys, though, for turning the rather predictable girl-submissive attitude of the original ("you say hop and I’ll hop, you say come and I come") into boy-submissive — though, frankly, we must admit that none of those performers really gave much of a damn about the words they were singing, as long as the melody was catchy and the energy was flowing. I mean, one minute Keith Relf sings "you can use me, abuse me, without your love I ain’t nothing at all", and the next one he’ll go "all you pretty women stand in line, I’ll make love to you in an hour’s time", and where’s the internal contradiction in that? I don’t see any contradiction. Do you see any contradiction? And now we finally come to the oddest chapter in the history of the Yardbirds, which was pretty packed with odd chapters, but this one certainly takes the cake. Perhaps if Columbia Records did not reject the proposal of young songwriter Graham Gouldman to put out one of his first original compositions, ‘For Your Love’, as the first single for his own band, The Mockingbirds, history would have played out in a different way. As it was, what was not good enough for The Mockingbirds turned out to be quite alright for The Yardbirds — or, at least, a slightly truncated version of The Yardbirds, because Chris Dreja and Eric Clapton only join in with their guitars for the short middle section. Instead, the dominant instrument on the recording is a (fairly simplistic) harpsichord, played by the not-yet-too-famous Brian Auger. The jump from the first two singles to ‘For Your Love’ was the single most ambitious thing in the life of the Yardbirds — before this, their gaze had always been strictly directed across the ocean, but here was a song actually written on UK soil and channelling rather the (somewhat abstract) spirit of the «European art song» than the African-American tradition. Suddenly, it was becoming obvious that Keith Relf and drummer Jim McCarty might have been cut out not for the blues but for the slowly emerging universe of «art-pop» — a suspicion that would be fully vindicated four years later, when, upon the final dissolution of the Yardbirds, the two of them would go on to found Renaissance, and yes, the long road to Renaissance properly starts here, with this recording of ‘For Your Love’, its look-at-me-I’m-so-baroque harpsichord, and the crazyass promotional movie in which the entire band dressed up as knights and musketeers. Naturally, Clapton hated it, though who knows — maybe if they’d thought of a nice guitar break in the middle to butter up Mr. Slowhand, he wouldn’t be so adamant about leaving the band. This definitely wasn’t his kind of music, and although in later years he’d go on to make many recordings that easily qualify as «pop», most of them were still blues-based. The chords of ‘For Your Love’, however, are in more of a medieval folk vein (hence all the suits of armor, I guess), and that was, I guess, just way too «white» for Eric at the time. (Although do give props to Mr. Gouldman for throwing in that middle section which, for a while, pushes the song in a completely different direction — bluesy, in fact!). My own problem with the song is that there is a bit too much repetition: the entire second half adds absolutely nothing to the first one, and the mid-section is too short and simple. Straining a bit, I think I could see Cream covering it, with Jack Bruce giving a much more soulful tint to "I’d give you diamonds bright, things that will excite and make you dream of me at night" (he’d have to use his best "I’ll be with you when the stars start falling" intonations) and then following it up with ten minutes of jamming before reverting to the verse once again. Here, at 2:30, strangely enough, it’s just a tad too short and a tad too long at the exact same time. But still a flash of early art-pop genius from the man who’d go on to give us 10cc. As a bitter reminder of what was more important for the Yardbirds’ historical reputation — Clapton or the harpsichord — we have to consider the B-side to ‘For Your Love’: ‘Got To Hurry’, for some reason credited to Gomelsky even if the base melody is just a standard blues shuffle, reminiscent of Booker T. & The MG’s ‘Green Onions’, essentially just a showcase for Eric’s guitar playing from top to bottom. But who remembers it? Nobody. It’s just a blues jam, and all that soloing does not even have the ferociousness of ‘A Certain Girl’ and ‘I Ain’t Got You’ oozing out of it. No wonder that Eric always gets derided by the cool people for leaving the Yardbirds because they were going «poppy»: given the choice between records like ‘For Your Love’ or ‘Got To Hurry’, it would seem fairly clear that the future belonged to this kind of «innovative pop» rather than that kind of «conservative blues». But then again, why should we even choose sides? Eric’s decision ultimately gave us three more years of The Yardbirds and three years of Cream, so basically a win-win for everybody involved. It was the mid-Sixties, for Christ’s sake — if you had talent at all, almost everything you did would fall on fertile soil anyway. The 21-year old Jeff Beck (actually older than Clapton by almost a year) came in as Eric’s replacement just in time for a couple of recording sessions that yielded enough material to complete the band’s first studio LP — and the first of these recordings should have laid to rest any fears of one of Britain’s most revered rhythm’n’blues combos going «soft» and «artsy» for good. The slashing, choppy chords that open ‘I Ain’t Done Wrong’, the only original composition on the album (credited to Keith Relf, though I’m sure Beck should take most of the credit for transforming a generic 12-bar blues into something seriously different), announce the arrival of an even grittier and dirtier brand of the Yardbirds than ever before, and, more importantly, a much more experimental brand of the Yardbirds. In between the brief opening and closing verses, Beck and the band pull just about all of the stops that could technically be pulled in early ’65. There are aggressive bits of «heavy metal slide guitar», sometimes by itself, sometimes in a call-and-response mode with Relf’s harmonica. There’s weird sound effects that resemble flanging and wah-wah (even if the wah-wah wasn’t properly invented yet!). There’s a proto-punkish barrage of «dirty» chords that nobody had ever considered putting inside a basic 12-bar blues number before. And it’s all captured on a track that nobody even remembers, because it was never released as a single. Even more impressive is ‘I’m Not Talking’, a cover of a relatively recent piano jazz composition by Mose Allison. Allison was in the process of becoming the talk of the town, largely due to the «viral» (for the time) popularity of his ‘Parchman Farm’, already a staple inclusion into the repertoire of many rhythm’n’blues artists; the smarter ones, however, were willing to dig deeper into this weird, not-easily-categorizable artist’s work (The Who would score a big winner in a few years with ‘Young Man Blues’), realizing that his unconventional, modernistic approach to vocal jazz — imagine a cross between Thelonious Monk and Nat King Cole! — could be converted into heavy rock with most fascinating results. Taking a relaxed, pensive, but subtly dynamic original recording, the Yardbirds turn it into a fast-paced, frenetic, hystrionic «new-school-rock’n’roll» number, driven by a metallic riff whose brutal tone puts ‘I Wish You Would’ squarely in the past. Even Relf gets unusually energized for the performance, screaming his head off, but there is no question that the song belongs to Beck — he plays a couple of totally head-spinning guitar breaks for the time. The approach is completely different from Eric’s: where Clapton would put huge emphasis on fluent smoothness, having each single lick flawlessly floating out of the previous one, Beck plays it broken-up and choppy, rarely letting you predict which frets his fingers shall land on next — which makes the solos somewhat harder to memorize, but easier to admire in terms of improvisational freedom. Additionally, ‘I’m Not Talking’ is the first classic example in the Beck canon of the man’s life-long fascination with sustain and vibrato; the protagonist of the song may not be «talking» (by the way, "things like idle chatter / Ain’t the things that matter / That’s one thing I can do without" is quite a sound piece of advice for our age of social media, though, alas, hardly at all realizable), but Beck’s guitar is talking all the way — or, rather, grumbling, wailing, sighing, grinning, and spasming, all due to the guitarist’s mastery of the vibrato mechanism. Listening to this track, it’s as if you are witnessing the birth pangs of the classic hard rock sound. Not a single other guitarist for miles around was doing stuff like that in April ’65 — and the only reason why it fell to Clapton, after all, to be pronounced «God», rather than Beck, is because this kind of sound was way too «far out» at the time for the general public. Again, no need to promote favoritism or generate empty claims of objective superiority: both approaches were and remain perfectly valid and admirable, and I, for one, have absolutely no problem observing ‘A Certain Girl’ and ‘I’m Not Talking’ sharing space on the same chunk of vinyl — in fact, I sometimes amuse myself by imagining an impossible version of the Yardbirds where Clapton, Beck, and Page would all be playing at the same time, sort of like a Lynyrd Skynyrd thing. Wouldn’t that be something? (On second thought, they might have created too much anti-matter in the process, so perhaps better not). Last, but not least, on the album comes ‘My Girl Sloopy’, and while I’m not really a huge fan of its pseudo-Caribbean vibe, it does continue and solidify the tradition of the Yardbirds regularly setting up mini-revolutions in popular music. By the time they finally got to recording it with Beck (although the idea of adding it to the repertoire had already been expressed by Clapton in late ’64), the song was already a staple with contemporary garage bands — the original version, released by The Vibrations on the Atlantic label, was not exactly «rock», but its party attitude and simplistic ‘Louie Louie’-style chord structure were infectious, and it was a good pretext to get the audience on its feet and join in the rave-up. The most commercially successful version of the song would be recorded by The McCoys a few months later, introducing the world at large to the dubious talents of Mr. Rick Derringer — but the Yardbirds went for a much more experimental approach, with «experimental», in this particular case, being the song’s length and structure: at more than five and a half minutes in length, it is an extended jam based on the «I-feel-too-good-to-stop-this» principle. The band just goes on and on, sending out their rays of support to the mysterious «Sloopy Girl», speeding up, slowing down, ad-libbing, whooping, basically just running around in free-form mode. It’s all a bit silly, and the jubilation feels just a bit less than adequate, but it’s one of those «door-opening» moments — of the «hey, I never thought one could get away with something like this» variety. Not sure if this vibe was exactly what Eric was thinking of when he recommended the song to the band, though... And it is at this point that our retrospective finally comes to a pause, breaking off at a rather arbitrary point — at the very moment when For Your Love was released as an album in the US, the band was already witnessing the rise in the charts of its next single, ‘Heart Full Of Soul’, which would open yet another mini-era in Yardbirds history... but that will be the subject of the next review. The Repertoire Records release does throw in, as a bonus track, the earliest version of ‘Heart Full Of Soul’ with the inclusion of a sitar part, but we’ll talk about this later; a few other inclusions from later recording dates can be dismissed as well, like the rather uninteresting pop-rock tune ‘Paff.. Bum’ and the band’s appropriately horrendous contribution (‘Questa Volta’, sung by Keith Relf in perfectly dreadful Italian) to the appropriately horrendous San Remo festival (a place where they belonged about as naturally as Martin Scorsese at Comic-Con). But, well, this is the price to pay for historical accuracy and completionism — for every amazing Jeff Beck solo, you have to endure a bit of Keith Relf trying to be Lucio Battisti. Ah, just... forget about it. In retrospect, For Your Love seems to have become a little lost in the shadow of Having A Rave-Up, its far more mature, diverse, and influential follow-up — in a large part, this is due to the serious anti-Clapton, pro-Beck bias on the part of «discerning audiences» who might sincerely believe that Eric’s role in the band was actually holding them back from achieving proper greatness. It’s not an unreasonable attitude, but in reality, the things that the Yardbirds were doing with Clapton in 1964 were just as groundbreaking — not to mention enjoyable — for that year as the things they would be doing with Beck in 1965 (and then you could always argue that whatever they were doing with Beck in 1965 would be totally eclipsed and obliterated by the achievements of Hendrix in 1967, and so on ad infinitum). The difference is that Eric wanted to stay inside his comfort zone — the blues — whereas for Beck, the blues was never a comfort zone for him in the first place (he himself admitted, in various interviews, that he felt more drawn to jazz and avantgarde before joining the band). But that does not mean that Clapton’s playing on all those early Yardbirds singles did not try to expand that zone, or adapt it to Eric’s own personality, or modernize it in ways that no Chicago player in the 1950s could have dreamt of. Even the new breed of fierce American electric guitar players, such as Freddie King (probably the single biggest influence on Eric at that period), could not really match the combination of tone and fluency achieved by Eric at the time: in fact, if you study the evolution of Freddie’s playing style over the years, you could build up a solid case that it was a back-and-forth process of mutual influence, where American guitarists like King would push British guitarists like Clapton and then take quite a few lessons from them in return. Which is, come to think of it, a perfectly natural process in the tightly intertwisted world of proactive musicians — a big chunk of which around 1964-65 is reflected within this album in quite a beautiful mess.

Recording years	Main genre	Music sample
1964–1968	Classic rhythm’n’blues	Heart Full Of Soul (1965)