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| HISTORY |
| Part One: The Yardbirds Part Two: Led Zeppelin' early years |
| Part One: The Yardbirds Jimmy Page "I was offered the chance to join The Yardbirds when Eric (Clapton) left, but I turned it down because I didn't like the way the invitation was put to me. Their manager came over and said 'Oh, Eric's having a holiday'. 'Holiday' was the manager's clever little uphemism for the fact that Eric had split the group. If I hadn't known Eric, or hadn't liked him, I might have joined. As it was, I didn't want any part of it. I liked Eric quite a bit and I didn't want him to think I'd done something behind hi s back." Later, after turning down this offer, Page went to see the Yardbirds at "Oxford or Cambridge Union dance, I can't remember which...". Apparently Keith Relf (the Yardbirds vocalist) had a little much to drink that night and was "... grappling with the mike, blowing his harmonica in all the wrong places and making up nonsense lyrics. He was shouting 'Fuck!' at the audience and eventually he just collapsed back into the drum kit." Paul Samwell-Smith (the Yardbirds bassist) decided that he had all he could take of this and blew up. Page was then called in to replace Samwell-Smith as bassist. "The switch (fromm bass to lead) was necessitated earlier than pla nned. ... It was really nerve-racking, because this was at the height of The Yardbirds' concert reputation and I wasn't exactly ready to roar off on lead guitar." Jeff Beck and Keith Relf had a turbulent relationship with eachother. One day Page walked into the dressing room and Beck had his guitar over his head, ready to bring down on Keith. Instead he smashed it on the ground. "The thi ng is, prior to my joining The yaardbirds, apparently he had pissed around on stage quite a lot - knocking over his amps, just walking off and whatever. At the time I came in, he was in a rut..." When The Yardbirds went to London they decided that they didn't want to work with Beck any longer. They had a meeting and in the end Jeff Beck got up and started leaving. On his way out he asked Page if he was coming too. Page replied "No, I'm going to stay behind." He wanted to try and work it out. Peter Grant I started managing The Yardbirds in 1966. They were not getting hit singles, but they were already intot he college scene here and the underground scene in America. Instead of rying to get plays on all that Top 40 rubbish, I realised there was another market. The Yardbirds were, in fact, the first British group booked into the Fillmore in San Francisco. Otherwise everybody just played hops." If you've ever heard that album ('The Yardbirds With Jimmy Page Live At The Anderson Theater'), you'll know why we had it stopped. What happened was, Eric said to us 'Can we do a live LP?' and they sent down the head of their li ght music department to supervise it. We had an agreement that if the results were good, they could release the album... but if not, they'd just file it away. Of course, it was terrible. This character who'd been recording stuff like 'Manuel's Music Of The Mountains' was strictly into muzak and the concert itself was bad. He'd done things like hanging one mike over the drums so none of the bass drum came through, and he'd miked up a monitor cabinet on my guitar instead of the proper amp through which I was playing all the fuzz and sustained notes... so all that was lost and we all knew it was just a joke. But this fellow assured us it would be all right. 'It's amazing what you can do electronically', he said. Then we went to listen to the master tapes and there were all these bullfight cheers dubbed on it every time there was a solo and it was just awful. You'd play a solo and then this huge 'Raah' would come leaping out at you. There was one number wher e there was supposed to be utter silence in the audience and this guy dubbed in the clinking of glasses and a whole club atmosphere. But we had the right all along to say whether it would be released or not, and made them shelve it." Page made many desperate attempts to keep the band together, but Keith Relf was determined to bring the band down. Getting drunk and singing in the wrong places at gigs became a constant habit of his. There's still a lot of magic attached to The Yardbirds' name, and I find it amazing. I saw that group crumble - not in popularity - and I couldn't believe it when someone said to me that if The Yardbirds had stayed to gether a bit longer it could have been the biggest group ever. But I can see that it might possibly have happened - if we'd stayed together. |
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