The Most Blueswailing, Yardmerizing Yardbirds

The Yardbirds get name-dropped as one of the greats of sixties Britrock, mainly for their role as the cradle for three of the great rock guitarists: Clapton, Beck, and Page. Unfortunately, this renders them more an answer to a trivia question than a living, (fire)breathing rock band.



Clapton pushed them into the forefront of the British blues rock explosion, but they didn't really become THE YARDBIRDS until purist Clapton left in a huff over their "pop experimentalism". With Beck handling lead guitar duties and the rest of the band free to experiment with oddball pop structures, The Yardbirds quickly became the most interesting, if not necessarily the best, of the British Invasion bands.



Paul Samwell-Smith is responsible for the Gregorian Chant arrangement of this song, and Beck does some really nice accents with his tone knob. Is this a great song? Not really. But it is interesting.

For me, Jeff Beck will always be the trademark sound of The Yardbirds, and probably the biggest raw talent to call himself a rock guitarist. He sunk into horrible fuzak in the 70's (with Miami Vice theme-miester Jan Hammer!), but still, his guitar playing was often mesmerizing. Even a recent PBS show featuring Beck doing an updated version of the same fuzak managed to hold my attention for almost twenty minutes. The only thing that keeps Beck from being an immortal musician as opposed to simply a badass guitarist is his horrible taste in music.



The primetime Yardbirds were built on a blues foundation cemented by Clapton, and revolved around Relf's hipster/hippieisms, Samwell-Smith's songwriting, and Beck's gunslinger attitude . . . and there has NEVER been a guitarist with Beck's articulate aggression. Even overwhelmingly sappy crap such as "Mr. You're a Better Man Than I" is saved by a vicious Beck guitar solo. Or, for a similar hippie blast undercut by Beck, see "Shapes of Things" above.

Initially, Jimmy Page was invited to replace Clapton when EC hit the bricks. Page, who at the time played on damn near every pop song coming out of England, was hesitant to give up his day job. It was Page who recommended Beck. After Paul Samwell-Smith left, Page took over on bass until Chris Dreja could learn the instrument and Page could move to guitar. The idea was that Page and Beck would eventually end up as dueling leads, which they did . . . but only for a short time.




It was a great pairing, which is almost counter intuitive: usually, with egos (and talents) that big, you would expect them to run all over each other. Fortunately, Beck and Page complimented each well, with Page's lysergic grunge rumbling under Beck's slashing . . . Page was always behind the beat, a little funky, while Beck was always in front of the beat, always pushing . . .

They showed up together in an unintentionally hilarious scene in Antonioni's The Blow Up, lip syncing an absolutely blistering redo of "Train Kept A'Rollin'" called "Stroll On":



I love the fact that the crowd stands there like zombies with the exception of one dancing couple. Beck's playing a cheap Hoffner hollowbody which is clearly meant to bite it before the end of the clip, which it does . . . I mean, seriously, wasn't there at least enough room in the budget for him to waste a used Tele? There are bad overdubs of "guitar malfunction" to justify Beck's smashing of the guitar, and to really top it off, they couldn't get all the action in the time it took "Stroll On" to run through, so they do a bad edit and play half the song over again. And, if that weren't enough, the heretofore zombie-like crowd TOTALLY FREAKS OUT when Beck throws his guitar neck off the stage . . . a-and, the hero of the movie makes it out of the riot with the holy talisman, only to discard it when he hits the sidewalk. Here, a painfully unhip Antonioni posits The Yardbirds as the cutting edge of pop/youth culture, a position that they did indeed occupy, even if Antonioni's vision is ridiculous.

In the public's eye, though, The Yardbirds were regressing. Popular with Clapton as their guitarist, each successive release moved further away from the public's interest. It was almost as if the band were reversing the usual movement from cult band to mainstream heroes. By the time Beck was fired, the British public had pretty much forgotten about The Yardbirds . . .



The Yardbirds soldiered on with Page for a bit longer, but, as they say, the gig was up. Always experimental, they also moved away from trying to make hit singles years before a band could sustain itself with album sales. The results were unfortunate, if predictable. Page was an able replacement for Beck, but the band had run out of gas, and Page's nascent vision for the band was still not ready for prime time.



Page had a vision, but the rest of the band was not on board. No one, it seems, was interested in the guitar-heavy psychedelic rock that Page was pushing on the band. Relf and McCarty left to pursue music in a more folk/acoustic vein, while Dreja decided to pursue a career in photography. The Yardbirds left with one last blast that no one noticed. The B-side was a harbinger of things to come and, at the same time, a rocker equal to "For Your Love", "Heart Full of Soul", "Evil Hearted You", "Over Under Sideways Down", "Stroll On", "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago", and everything else they ever did that earned them a place in the pantheon:



Page replaced Dreja with session pro John Paul Jones, Relf and McCarty with unknowns Robert Plant and John Bonham. After soldiering on briefly under the name The New Yardbirds, Page, perhaps realizing that the "Yardbirds" handle no longer had any cache, took Keith Moon's suggestion and renamed the band Led Zeppelin. And so, by 1968, The Yardbirds were done.

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The British Invasion will always be The Beatles and the Stones, with The Who, The Kinks, The Animals, Small Faces, The Zombies, and a few others just behind. Of those, the band closest to my heart will always be the Rolling Stones. The Yardbirds, though, have never gotten their due: they were more than just a world class rock guitar farm club, and more than just the band that preceded Led Zeppelin. The Yardbirds were the most interesting nexus of blues, pop, psychedelia, and hipsterism to emerge in late sixties Britain. I did this spiel because it's time The Yardbirds were recognized for what they were, instead of what they spawned.

If It's Too Loud, You're Too Old; plus, Son of In Rotation

Against my better judgement, I rented a copy of It Might Get Loud yesterday. I found it to be a charming, if inconsequential, little movie. If you think you might enjoy it, then pick it up. If it doesn't look interesting to you, take a pass. It won't dramatically affect you either way.

It Might Get Loud is a summit meeting of sorts between three generations of rock guitar gods: Jimmy Page, The Edge, and Jack White. The Edge is as you expect him: soft spoken and even tempered, ridiculously (and genuinely) humble in spite of his huge world-wide rock star status, and always smiling. Jack White, also as you would expect, does his best to live up to his provocateur status to sometimes cartoonish results. Jimmy Page, though, is the true revelation here: I was a fervent Led Zeppelin fan in my teen years, and over time consumed all kinds of articles, interviews, and videos about the band, yet Page reveals far more of his personality here than anywhere else I've seen.

Some points:

• Page, far from being the dark, mysterious avatar of heavy metal cool he has projected in the past, is an aging music geek . . . and I mean that in the best possible way. One of the highlights of the movie is watching Page's crazy joy while he plays records for the interviewer - jumping up and down and giggling with glee as Link Wray's "Rumble" blasts through the speakers at ridiculous volume, playing air guitar along with every song on the phono (and this is Jimmy Page air guitar, mind you, so that left hand is going crazy) - and just how thoroughly he loses himself in the music. In the past, Page on camera has always seemed so aloof and distant, as if speaking out from under a hallucinogenic blanket. Here he is, at all times, actively engaged and often quite animated.
• You always knew that The Edge was heavily dependent on effects, but the sheer scope of his sound setup surprised me. They moved his rig into the shoot site with a freaking forklift, for the love of god. He has a full time engineer to help him set up and run the rig. To his credit, he is very up front about his dependence on effects. I also like the fact that he neither defends nor apologizes for his effects mania: it's just another way of playing electric guitar.
• The Edge has a really cool home studio that overlooks some body of water. I like that. The master of machinery also pulls out his old Fostex cassette four track to play old demos. That was my little piece of nostalgia.
• It's so cute the way Jack White discovered the blues, as if no rocker before him ever discovered the blues. He makes a strong case for Son House as a gateway drug. His experience on this count mirrors mine, for it was Son House who really got me rolling on my blues journey. For White, the song was "Grinnin' in Your Face"; for me, it was "Death Letter Blues", from the same '65 sessions as "Grinnin'". By the way, if you have any interest in music at all, you need to have Son House's Father of the Delta Blues: The Complete 1965 Sessions. It's even on vinyl, if you swing that way. And, while you're at it, pick up this Son House/Bukka White video. It is, in my opinion, the single most stunning musical document on film. For years, I made everyone who visited my Brown county house watch this video.
  
• Jack White also makes an argument for the superiority of cheap guitars, and anything in general that makes you work harder to make music. The theory is that if you have to fight to play guitar, your music will be better for the struggle. At one point in some Raconteurs live footage, the director zooms in on White's bleeding right hand as he plays a lead, and then shows the bloody Gretsch in all its glory after the set. Speaking as a bloody-handed guitarist who played cheap guitars with bad action for years, I'm not sure how I stand with this idea. I can't speak to how all the Silvertones and Kays affected my technique over the years (well, I can, actually - my left hand is like a vice, and not particularly nimble), but I do know that when I finally picked up a couple guitars with good action, I became a better guitarist. Not just a more technically adept guitarist, but better . . . against Mr. White, I would argue that playing with the guitar is better in the long run, though playing against the guitar has its charms as well. I very much sympathize with the thought, and I agree that smooth proficiency has nothing to do with rock -n- roll.
• White was showing off a mod they made on one of his Gretchs, where a luthier added a bullet mic on a cable spool to the body of the guitar. Now he can just reach down and whip out the mic when he wants to howl instead of play. That is one of the goofiest mods I have ever seen. It also reminds me of John Belushi, samurai guitarist, where he had that SG with a gooseneck mic stand bolted to the body.
• Oh, and while we're at it, Jack, it's a little disingenuous to talk about cheap guitars when you have all those Gretschs lying around.
• The Edge may be the "sound" guy, but White shows the true beauty of the electric guitar with a collection of busted up Kays and Nationals going through that Silvertone Twin Twelve (which looks like it has been modified to a six sixes).
• In spite of his rep as a "sound" guy, The Edge busted out some beautifully lyrical (if way too brief) slide on the "In My Time of Dying" jam.
• White tried to keep up a punk rock exterior throughout, but when Page plugged in his Les Paul and started wailing away, White sat there like a grinning, gaping twelve-year-old with his jaw on the floor. Both he and The Edge appeared as if they were in the presence of a deity.
  

All in all a pleasant, if non-essential, little movie.

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I've decided to revive the In Rotation series in this blog. Looking back, I kind of missed it when it went away. Should you care? I don't know. But, how about this: anyone who reads this should feel free to post their playlists in the "comments" sections of the posts.

In Rotation:

• Morton Feldman: Rothko Chapel
• The Mekons: early 7" singles
• Lupe Fiasco: Enemy of the State mixtape
• Black Flag: Everything Went Black & Live '84
• Sun Ra: Myth Science Arkestra 2000 & Heliocentric Worlds Vol. 1
• John Coltrane: Ascension
• Albert Ayler: Live in Europe
• Debussy: Nocturnes
• Cecil Taylor Unit: s/t
• Scrawl: Velvet Hammer
• The Rolling Stones: Let it Bleed
• Sol Hoopii: Master of the Hawaiian Guitar
• Sun City Girls: Juggernaut & Kaliflower
• LaMonte Young: The Well-Tuned Piano
  

That will do for now.