The Yardbirds

For your, well actually, my viewing pleasure I present Yardbirds footage that either I've never seen before (from European TV) or haven't seen since I was a tyke. I got bored today and put Yardbirds into the YouTube search box and sure enough there's some new stuff since I last checked about a year ago. I love the Yardbirds and assume most of you do too. So much has been written about the Yardbirds over the years that I have little to add, except that I still listen to them constantly.

It's been a longstanding love affair, after buying the 45 of Heart Full Of Soul b/w Steeled Blues (I didn't really like their first U.S. hit For Your Love), I managed to acquire their first two LP's-- For Your Love and Having A Raving Up With The Yardbirds in 1966, having traded a copy of Beatles '65 with a neighbor. I still think I got the best of the deal. I was seven years old and I can distinctly remember being aware of how the sound of the guitar was changing-- from the Kinks' "You Really Got Me" to the Stones' "The Last Time" and then the first side of Having A Rave-Up (in my opinion the peak of Jeff Beck's style), the guitar was becoming a rather ominous sounding instrument (of course I was unaware at that time of earlier purveyors of guitar noise like Link Wray and Johnny Guitar Watson). I eventually bought every single second of music the Yardbirds have ever recorded and still get excited when anything new surfaces, especially from the Beck period (Aug. '65-- Oct. '66).

Louise (bottom) is the only footage I've ever seen with Clapton on guitar (my least favorite of the three). There's an interesting version of My Gal Sloopy and I Wish You Would that I've never seen, unfortunately the embedding has been disabled so I can't run it here, but you can catch it here, it looks like Jim McCarty himself provided the footage. The CD re-issues of For Your Love, Having A Rave-Up and Over Under Sideways Down, along with non-LP' singles, bonus tracks and outtakes are essential.