If not love, at the very least The Yardbirds demand your respect. Born in an early-60s period when blues was fresh, psychedelica hadn’t dropped its first tab and peers in the British club scene included The Rolling Stones and The Animals, The Yardbirds went on to birth three of the greatest guitarists ever: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page.
The Story of The Yardbirds is a comprehensive and even-handed story of the greatest band on planet earth (for the time period) using interviews from the band members (yes, all three lead guitarists), managers (yes, Peter Grant), producers (yes, Mickie Most), and features plenty of live footage.
I will say the first five minutes worried me on this documentary, as it moved so quickly over Clapton and Beck phases of The Yardbirds — merely saying Clapton in 1965 left when the group was headed in too commercial a direction after “For Your Love.” At this point I was freaking out afraid it would focus too much on Jimmy Page at that point, but I needed to take a breath and just “chill out, man.’
The Yardbirds : “For Your Love”
The film starts with a good blues foundation for the group — including interviews with Clapton talking about commercial viability and his differences. What I love about early Yardbirds material like “Louise” and “I Wish You Would” is you’re listening to Britons absorb, reinterpret and perform American blues that was an entirely new R&B sound for the UK at the time. Of course, The Yardbirds came to tour the states and became bigger here than in England.
After the departure of Clapton, who wanted to retain more of a blues sound, Jimmy Page was too busy in session gigging, so referred them to Jeff Beck. Beck became the lead guitarist at that point and was instructed to learn Clapton’s basic blues riffs at that point. But after hearing Booker T’s “Green Onion,” Beck got really insto substanative blues and jazz, including a healthy obsession with the Motown sound.
Beck’s solos on “I’m a Man” definitely stand out compared to the basic 12 bar blues, but The Yardbirds weren’t about setting up ripping blues solos. “Heart Full of Soul” features Beck borrowing and interpreting an Indian zither sound as the song’s backbone — something (some of my favorite) artists continue doing today.
By the time they hit 1968, Jimmy Page had a huge stockpile of material ready to push new limits of feedback, sustain, fuzztone and new heights in the emerging heavy metal genre. Watching The Yardbirds play “Dazed and Confused” you can tell this was not even Yardbirds 3.0 material. It was much better suited to his new band — a little group called Led Zeppelin.
The 18 page liner notes feature an indepth analysis of the band’s career and use the term “tributary” between white R&B of early-sixties London and the psychedelica and power-chorded heavy metal of the late sixties and throughout the seventies. I think that’s a succinct analysis of the impact one little band can have on the musical world in just under five years.
Beyond the classic interviews — both group and individual — I appreciated executive producer Ira Bruggmann not going sensational (e.g., discussing bad blood in the breakups or finding girls who slept with Chris Dreja). He let the music speak for itself.
The film runs just shy of an hour and in keeping with the period, is only in mono sound. Yet — thankfully — it speaks loudly enough without all the gossipy crap.
