A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs - Episode 126: “For Your Love” by the Yardbirds

Episode Date: July 1, 2021

Episode 126 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “For Your Love”, the Yardbirds, and the beginnings of heavy rock and the guitar hero.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on “A Lover’s Concerto” by the Toys. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)

A History of Rock Music and 500 songs by Andrew Higy. Episode 126 For Your Love by The Yardbirds. Today, we're going to take a look at the early career of the band that, more than any other band, was responsible for the position of lead guitarist, becoming as prestigious as that of lead singer. We're going to look at how a blues band launched the careers of several of the most successful guitarists of all time,

and also one of the most successful pop songwriters of the 60s and 70s. We're going to look up for your love by the yardbirds. The roots of the yardbirds lie in a group of school friends in Richmond, a leafy suburb of London. Keith Ralph, Laurie Gain, Paul Samuel Smith and Jim McCarty were art school kids who were obsessed with sunny, Terry and Jimmy Reed, and who would hang around the burgeoning London R&B scene, going to see the Rolling Stones and Alexis Corner in Twickenham and the Thielpye Island,

and starting up their own blues band, the Metropolis Blues Quartet. However, Gain soon left the group to go off to university, and he was replaced by two younger guitarists, Top Topham and Chris Dreher, with Samuel Smith moving from guitar to bass. as they were no longer a quartet, they renamed themselves the Yardbirds, after a term Ralph had found on the back of an album cover, meaning a tramp or hobo. The newly named Yardbirds quickly developed their own unique style. Their repertoire was the same mix of Howling Wolf, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Reed and Chuck Berry, as every other band on the London scene, but they included

long-extended improvisatory instrumental sequences, with Ralph's harmonica play. playing off Topham's League guitar. The group developed a way of extending songs, which they described as a rave-up and would become the signature of their live act. In the middle of a song, they would go into a long instrumental solo in double time, taking the song twice as fast and improvising heavily

before dropping back to the original tempo to finish the song off. These rave-up sections would often be much longer than the main song and were a chance for everyone to show off their instrumental skills, with Topham and Ralph trading phrases on guitar and harmonica. They were mentored by Cyril Davis, who gave them the interval spots at some of his shows, and then one day asked them to fill in for him in a gig he couldn't make, at a residency at a club in Harrow,

where the yard birds went down so well that they were asked to permanently take over the residency from Davis, much to his disgust. But the group's big break came when the Rolling Stones signed with Andrew Oldham, leaving Goyo Gamelski with no band to play the Croydadi Club every Sunday. Gamelski was out of the country at his father's funeral when the stones quit on him, and so it was up to Germelski's assistant Hamish Grimes to find a replacement. Grimes looked at the R&B scene, and the choice came down to two bands,

The Ardbirds and them. Grimes said it was a toss-up, but he eventually went for the Arbbirds, who eagerly agreed. When Gimelsky got back, the group were packing audiences in, at the Croodaddy, and doing even better than the Stones had been. Soon Gimelski wanted to become the art bird's major and turned the group into full-time musicians, but there was a problem. The new school term was starting. Top Topham was only 15, and his parents didn't want him to quit school. Topham had to leave the group. Luckily, there was someone waiting in the wings.

Eric Clapton was well known on the local scene as someone who was quite good on guitar, and he and Topham had played together for a long time as an informal duo, so he knew the parts, and he was also acquainted with Dreya. Everyone on the London blues scene knew everyone else, although the thing that stuck in most of the Arbird's minds about Clapton was the time he'd seen the Metropolis Blues Quartet play, and gone up to Samwell Smith and said, Could you do me a favour? When Samuel Smith had nodded his assent, Clapton had said, Don't play any more guitar solos. Clapton was someone who worshipped the romantic image of the Delta Blues Man, solitary and rootless, without friends or companions, surviving

only on his wit and waited down by troubles, and he would imagine himself that way, as he took guitar lessons from Dave Brock, later of Hawkewind, or as he hung out with Top Topham and Chris Dreyer in Richmond on weekends, complaining about the burdens he had to bear, such as the expensive electric guitar his grandmother had bought him, not being as good as he'd hoped. Clapton had hung around with Topham and Dreya, but they'd never had never. really been close and he hadn't been considered for a spot in the yard birds when the group had formed. Instead, he had joined the Roosters with Tom McGuinness, who had introduced Clapton to the music of Freddie King, especially a B-side called I Love the Woman, which showed Clapton for the first time how the guitar

could be more than just an accompaniment to vocals, but a featured instrument in its own right. The Roosters have been blues purists, dedicated to a scholarly attitude to American black music, tempestuous of pop music. When Clapton met the Beatles for the first time, when they came along to an early Rolling Stones gig, Clapton was also at. He had thought of them as a bunch of wankers, and despised them as sellouts. After the roosters had broken up, Clapton and McGuinness had joined the gimmicky Mersey-Beat group Casey Jones and his engineers, who had a band uniform of black suits and cardboard Confederate army caps, before leaving that as well. McGinnis had gone on to join Manfred man, and Clapton was left without a group until the yard birds called on him.

The new line-up quickly gelled as musicians, though the band did become frustrated with one quirk of Clapton's. He liked to bend strings, and so he used very light-gauge strings on his guitar, which often broke, meaning that a big chunk of time would be taken up each show with Clapton restringing his guitar, while the audience gave a slow-hand clap, leading to his nickname, Slow-hand Clapton. Two months after Clapton joined the group, Germelsky got them to back Sonny Boy Williamson the second on a UK tour, recording a show at the Crow Daddy Club, which was released as a live album three years later. Williamson and the yard birds didn't get along, though, either as people.

or as musicians. Williamson's birth name was Rice Miller, and he'd originally taken the name Sonny Boy Williamson to cash in on the fame of another musician who used that name, though he'd gone onto much greater success than the original, who died not long after the former Miller started using the name. Clapton, wanted to show off, had gone up to Williamson when they were introduced, and said, isn't your real name Rice Miller? Williamson had pulled a knife on Clapton, and his relationship with the group didn't get much better from that point on. The group were annoyed that Williamson was drunk on stage and would call out songs they hadn't rehearsed, while Williamson later summed up his view of the yard birds to Robbie Robertson, saying, those English boys want to play the blues so bad,

and they play the blues so bad. Shortly after this, the group cut some demos on their own, which were used to get them a deal with Columbia, a subsidiary of EMI. Their first single was a version of Billy Boy Arnold's, I wish you would. This was as pure R&B as a British group would get at this point, but Clapton was unhappy with the record, partly because hearing the group in the studio made him realise how comparatively thin they sounded as players, and partly just because he was worried

that even going into a recording studio at all was selling out, and not something that any of the Delta Blues men whose records he loved would do. He was happier with the group's first album, a live recording called Five Live Yard Birds, that captured the sound of the group at the Marquis Club. The repertoire on that album was precisely the same as any of the other British R&B bands of the time,

songs by Howling Wolf, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, John Lee Hooker, Slim Harpo, Sonny Boy Williamson and the Isley brothers. But they were often heavily extended versions, with a lot of interplay between Samwell Smith's bass, Clapton's guitar, and Ralph's harmonica, like their five-and-a-half-minute version of Howling Wolf's smokestack like this.

I wish you would made number 26 on the NME chart, but it didn't make the record retailer chart, which is the basis of modern chart compilations. The group were just about to go into the studio to cut their second single, a version of Good Morning Little School Girl, when Keith Ralph collapsed. Ralph had severe asthma and was also a heavy smoker,

and his lung collapsed and he had to be hospitalized for several weeks, and it looked for a while as if he might never be able to sing or play harmonica again. In his absence, various friends and hangars-on from the R&B scene deputised for him. Ronnie Wood has recalled being at a gig, and the audience being asked, can anyone play harmonica, leading to Wood getting on stage with them, and other people who played a gig or two, or sometimes just a song or two, with them, include Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, and Rod Stewart. Stuart was apparently a big fan, and would keep trying to get on stage with them.

According to Keith Ralph's wife, Rod Stewart would be sitting in the back front of, room begging to go on. Oh, give us a turn, give us a turn. Luckily, Ralph's lung was successfully re-inflated, and he returned to singing, harmonica playing, and smoking. In the early months back back with the group, he would sometimes have to pull out his inhaler in the middle of a word to be able to continue singing, and he would start seeing stars on stage. Ralph's health would never be good, but he was able to carry on performing, and the future of the group was secured. What wasn't secure was the group's relationship with their guitarist. While Ralph and Dreher had for a time shared a flat with Eric Clapton, he was becoming increasingly distant from the other members.

Partly this was because Ralph felt somewhat jealous of the fact that the audience had seemed more impressed with the group's guitarist than with him, the lead singer. Partly it was because Georgio Germelski had made Paul Samuel Smith the group's musical director, and Clapton had never got on with Samuel Smith and distrusted his musical instincts. But mostly, it was just that the the rest of the group found Clapton rather petty, cold and humourless, and never felt any real connection to him. Their records still weren't selling, but they were popular enough on the local scene that they were invited to be one of the support acts for the Beatles' run of Christmas shows at the end of 1964, and hung out with the group backstage. Paul McCartney played them a new

song he was working on, which didn't have lyrics yet, but which would soon become yesterday. But it was another song they heard that would change the group's career. A music publisher named Ronnie Beck turned up backstage with a demo he wanted the Beatles to hear. Obviously, the Beatles weren't interested in hearing any demos. They were writing so many hits that were giving half of them away to other artists. Why would they need someone else's song? But the yard birds were looking for a hit. And after listening to the demo, Samwell Smith was convinced that a hit was what this demo was.

The demo was by a Manchester-based songwriter named Graham Gouldman. Gouldman had started his career in a group called The Whirlwind, who had released one single, a version of Buddy Holly's Look at Me, backed with a song called Baby Not Like You, written by Goldman's friend, Loll Cream. The whirlwinds had split up by this point, and Gouldman was in the process of forming a new band,

The Mockingbirds, which included drummer Kevin Godley. The song on the demo had been intended as the Mockingbird's first single, but their label had decided instead to go with that's how it's going to stay. So the song, For Your Love, was free, and Samwell Smith was insistent. This was going to be the group's first big hit. The record was a total departure from their blues sound.

Gouldman's version had been backed by bongos and acoustic guitar, and Samwell Smith decided that he would keep the bongo part, and add, not normal rock band instruments, but harpsichord and bowed double bass. The only part of the song where the group's normal electric instrument is used is the brief middle eight, which feels nothing like the rest of the record. But on the rest of the record, none of the yardbirds other than Jim McCarty play. The verses have Ralph on vocals, McCarty on drums, Brian Orga on harpsichord,

Ron Prentice on double bass, and Denny Piercy on bongos, with Samuel Smith in the control room producing. Clapton and Dreher only played on the middle eight. The record went to number three and became the group's first real hit, and it led to an odd experience for Gouldman, as the mockingbirds were by this time employed as the warm-up act on the BBC's Top of the Pops, which was recorded in Manchester, so Gouldman got to see mobs of excited fans applauding the yard birds

for performing a song he'd written, while he was completely ignored. Most of the group were excited about their new found success, but Clapton was not happy. He hadn't signed up to be a number. member of a pop group. He wanted to be in a blues band. He made his displeasure about playing on material like For Your Love very clear, and right after the recording session, he resigned from the group. He was convinced that there would be nothing without him. After all, wasn't he the undisputed star of the group, and he immediately found work with a group that was more suited to his talent,

John Mayle's Blues Breakers. The Blues Breakers at this point consisted of male on keyboards and vocals, Clapton on guitar, John McVee on bass, and Huey Flint on drums. For their first single with this lineup, they signed a one-record deal with immediate records, a new independent label started by the Rolling Stones manager, Andrew Oldham. That single was produced by Immediate's young staff producer, the session guitarist Jimmy Page. The Blues Breakers had something of a fluid lineup.

Shortly after that recording, Clapton left the group to join another group. and was replaced by a guitarist named Peter Green. Then Clapton came back for the recording of what became known as The Beano album, because Clapton was in a mood when they took the cover photo, and so read the children's comic The Beano rather than looking at the camera. Shortly after that, May all fired John McVee, who was replaced by Jack Bruce, formerly of the Graham Bond organisation.

But then Bruce left to join Manfred Mann, and McVee was rehired. While Clapton was in the Blues Breakers, he gained a reputation for being the best guitarist in London. A popular grafito at the time was Clapton is God, and he was at first convinced that without him the yard birds would soon collapse. But Clapton had enough self-awareness to know that even though he was very good, there were a handful of guitarists in London who were better than him. One he always acknowledged was Albert Lee,

who at the time was playing in Chris Farlow's backing band, but would later become known as arguably the greatest country guitarist of his generation. but another was the man that the yardbirds got in to replace him. The yardbirds had originally asked Jimmy Page if he wanted to join the group, and he'd briefly been tempted, but he'd decided that his talents were better used in the studio, especially since he'd just been given the staff job at immediate. Instead, he recommended his friend Jeff Beck. The two had known each other since their teens,

and had grown up playing guitar together, and sharing influences as they delve deeper into music. While both men admired the same blues musicians that Clapton did, people like Hubert Sumlin and Buddy Guy, they both had much more eclectic tastes than Clapton, both loved Rockabilly, and admired Scotty Moore and James Burton, and Beck was a huge devotee of Cliff Gallup, the original guitarist from Jean Vincent's Bluecaps. Beck also loved Les Paul and the jazz guitarist Barney Kessel, while Page was trying to incorporate some of the musical ideas of the sitar player Ravi Shankar into his. playing. While Page was primarily a session player, Beck was a gigging musician, playing with a group called the Trident. But as Paige rapidly became one of the two first-call session guitarists,

along with Big Jim Sullivan, he would often recommend his friend for sessions he couldn't make, leading to Beck playing on records like Dracula's daughter, which Joe Meek produced for screaming Lord Such and the savages. While Clapton had a very straightforward tone, Beck was already experimenting with the few effects that were available at the time, like echoes and fuzz tone. While there would always be arguments about who was the first to use feedback as a controlled musical sound, Beck is one of those who often gets the credit, and Keith Ralph would describe Beck's guitar playing as being almost music concrete. You can hear the difference on the group's next single. Heartful of Soul was again written by Goldman, and was originally recorded with

the sitar, which would have made it one of the first pop singles to use the instrument. However, they decided to replace the sitar part with Beck playing the same Indian-sounding riff on a heavily distorted guitar. That made number two in the UK and the top 10 in the US, and suddenly the world had a new guitar god, one who was doing things on records that nobody else had been doing. The group's next single was a double A-side, a third song written by Goldman, Evil-Hearted You, coupled with an original by the group, still I'm sad. Neither track was quite up to the standard

of their previous couple of singles, but it still went to number three on the charts. From this point on, the group stopped using Goldman's songs as singles, referring to write their own material, but Goldman had already started providing hits for other groups like the Hollies, for whom he wrote songs like Bus Stop.

His group The Mockingbirds had also signed to immediate records, who put out their classic pop-sike single, you stole my love. We will hear more of Goldman later. In the yard birds, meanwhile, the pressure was starting to tell on Keith. He was a deeply introverted person who didn't have the temperament for stardom,

and he was uncomfortable with being recognised on the street. It also didn't help that his dad was also the band's driver and tour manager, which meant he always ended up feeling somewhat inhibited, and he started drinking heavily to try to lose some of those inhibitions. shortly after the recording of Evil-Hearted You, the group went on their first American tour, though on some dates they were unable to play, as Gimelsky had messed up their work permit,

one of several things about Germelski's management of the group that irritated them, but they were surprised to find that they were much bigger in the US than in the UK. While the group had only released singles, EPs, and the one live album in the UK, and would only ever put out one UK studio album, they'd recorded enough that they'd recorded enough

that they'd already had an album out in the US, a compilation of singles, B-sides, and even a couple of demos, and that had been picked up on by almost every garage band in the country. On one of the US gigs, their opening act, a teenage group called The Spiders,

were in trouble. They'd learned every song on that Yardbirds album, and their entire set was made up of covers of that material. They'd gone down well supporting every other major band that came to town, but they had a problem when it came to the Yardbirds. Their singer described what happened next.

We thought about it and we said, Look, we're paying tribute to them. Let's just do our set. And so we opened for the yardbirds and did all of their songs. We could see them in the back and they were smiling and giving us the thumbs up. And then they got up and just blew us off the stage. Because they were the yardbirds. And we just stood there going,

Oh, that's how it's done. The yardbirds were one of the best live bands I ever heard. and we learned a lot that night. That band, and later that lead singer, both later changed their name to Alice Cooper. The trip to the US also saw a couple of recording sessions. Germelski had been annoyed at the bad drum sound the group had got in UK studios

and had loved Sam Phillips's drum sound on the old sun records, so had decided to get in touch with Phillips and ask him to produce the group. He hadn't had a reply, but the group turned up at Phillips' new studio anyway, knowing that he lived in a flat above the studio. Phillips wasn't in, but eventually turned up at midnight,

after a fishing trip, drunk. He wasn't interested in producing some group of British kids, but Gimelsky waved $600 at him, and he agreed. He produced two tracks for the group. One of those, Mr. You're a Better Man than I,

was written by Mike Hug of Manfred Mann and his brother. The backing track there was produced by Phillips, but the lead vocal was re-done in use. York, as Ralph was also drunk and wasn't singing well, something Phillips pointed out, and which devastated Ralph, who had grown up on records Phillips produced. Phillips's dismissal of Ralph also grated on Beck, even though Beck wasn't close to Ralph, as the two competed for prominence on stage while the rest of the band kept to the backline. Beck had enormous respect for Ralph's talents as a frontman, and thought Phillips horribly

unprofessional for his dismissive attitude. Though the other yard birds had happy memories of the session, not least because Phillips caught their live sound better than anyone had. You can hear Ralph's drunken incompetence on the other track they recorded at the session. Their version of Train kept a roll in, the song we covered way back in episode 44. Rearranged by Samuel Smith and Beck, the Yardbirds version built on the Johnny Burnett recording and turned it into one of the hardest rock tracks ever recorded to that point. But Ralph's drunk sloppy vocal was caught on the backing track. He later recut the vocal more competently, with Roy Halley engineering in New York, but the combination of the two vocals gives the track an unusual feel which inspired many

future garage bands. On that first US tour, they also recorded a version of Bo Diddley's I'm a Man at Chess Studios, where Diddley had recorded his original. Only a few weeks after the end of that tour, they were back for a second tour in support of their second US album, and they returned to chess to record what many consider their finest original. Shapes of things have been inspired by the bass part on Dave Brubeck's pick-up sticks. Samwell Smith and McCarty had written the music for the song. Ralph and Samwell Smith added lyrics, and Beck experimented with feedback, leading to one of the first psychedelic records to become a big hit, making number three in the UK and number 11 in the US. That would be the group's last record with Georgio Gimelski

as credited producer, although Samwell Smith had been doing all the actual production work, as the group were becoming increasingly annoyed at Gamelski's ideas for promoting them, which included things like making them record songs in Italian so they could take part in an Italian song contest. Gamelski was also working them so hard that Beck ended up being hospitalized with what has been variously described as meningitis and exhaustion. By the time he was out of the hospital, Gamelski was fired. His replacement as manager and co-producer was Simon Napier Bell, a young dilettante and scenester,

who was best known for co-writing the English language lyrics, for Dusty Springfield, you don't have to say you love me. The way Napier Bell tells the story, and Napier Bell is an amusing raconteur, and his volumes of autobiography are enjoyable reads. But one gets the feeling that he will not tell the truth if a lie seems more entertaining,

is that the group chose him because of his promotion of a record he produced for a duo called, Anne Farras and Nicky Scott. According to Napier Bell, both Faraz and Scott were lovers of his, who were causing him problems, and he decided to get rid of the problem by making them both pop stars.

As Faraz was black and Scott White, Napier Bell sent photos of them to every DJ and producer in the country. And then, when they weren't booked on TV shows or playlisted on the radio, he would accuse the DJs and producers of racism and threatened to go to the newspapers about it. As a result, they ended up on almost every TV show and getting regular radio exposure, though it wasn't enough to make the record a hit.

The yardbirds have been impressed by how much publicity Faraz and Scott had got and asked Napier Bell to manage them. He immediately set about renegotiating their record contract and getting them a £20,000 advance, a fortune in the 60s. He also moved forward with a plan Gimelski had had of the group putting out solo records,

though only Ralph ended up doing so. Ralph's first solo single was a baroque pop song, Mr. Zero, written by Bob Lind, who had been a one-hit wonder with elusive butterfly, and produced by Samwell Smith. ...and wide-insides, and wild rushing water that all rolled away, and little miss someone does not want to stay. Everyone's moving with places to go.

Beck, meanwhile, he sadly stands still As the water goes one way, the train goes another, Mr. Mr. Zero stands still and... Beck, meanwhile, recorded a solo instrumental, intended for his first solo single, but not released until nearly a year later. Beck's Bolero has Jimmy Page as its credited writer, though Beck claims to be a co-writer, and features Beck and Page on guitars, session pianist Nikki Hopkins

and Keith Moon of the Who on drums. John Entwistle of the Who was meant to play bass, but when he didn't show to the session, Paige's friend, session bass player John Paul Jones, was called up. The Pryve players were so happy with that recording that they briefly discussed forming a group together, with Moon saying of the idea, that will go down like a lead zeppelin.

They all agreed that it wouldn't work and carried on with their respective careers. The group's next single was their first to come from a studio album, their only UK studio album, variously known as Yardbirds or Roger the Engineer. Over Under Sideways Down was largely written in the studio and is credited to all five group members, though Napier Bell has suggested he came up with the chorus lyrics.

That became the group's fifth top ten single in a row, but it would be their last, because they were about to lose the man who, more than anyone else, had been responsible for their musical direction. The group had been booked to play an upper-class black tie event, and Ralph had turned up drunk. They played three sets, and for the first,

Ralph started to get freaked out by the fact that the audience were just standing there, not dancing, and started blowing raspberries at them. He got more drunk in the interval, and in the second set he spent an entire song just screaming at the audience that they could copulate with themselves, using a word I'm not allowed to use without this podcast losing its clean rating.

They got him off stage and played the rest of the set just doing instrumentals. For the third set, Ralph was even more drunk. He came on stage and immediately fell backwards into the drum kit.

Only one person in the audience was at all impressed. Beck's friend Jimmy Page had come along to see the show and had thought it great anarchic fun. He went backstage to tell them so and found Samwell Smith in the middle of quitting the group

having finally had enough. Page, who had turned down the offer to join the group two years earlier, was getting bored of just being a session player and decided that being a pop star seemed more fun. He immediately volunteered himself as the group's new bass player, and we'll see how that played out in a future episode. A history of rock music and 500 songs is brought to you by the generosity of my backer's love.

on Patreon. Each week, Patreon backers will get a 10-minute bonus podcast. This week's is on

a lover's concerto by the Toys. Visit patreon.com slash Andrew Hickey to sign up for as little

as a dollar a month. A book based on the first 50 episodes of the podcast, from Savoy Swingers to Clock Rockers is now available.

Search Andrew Hickey 500 Songs on your favourite online bookstore or visit the links in the show notes. This podcast is written and narrated by me, Andrew Hickey, and produced by me and Tilt Ariser. Visit 500Songs.com. That's 5000-the-numbersongs.com. To read transcripts and line. and get links to hear the full versions of songs excerpted here. If you've enjoyed the show and feel it's worth reviewing, please do leave a review wherever you get your podcasts.

But more importantly, tell just one person that you liked this podcast. Word of mouth, more than any other form of promotion, is how creative works get noticed and sustain themselves. Thank you very much for listening. I can't be...