Yardbirds
The Yardbirds featured three of rock’s most influential guitarists: Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. Although each went on to excel in other musical outlets, the Yardbirds were a crucial part of the 1960’s British rock scene.1
Although never as famous as other bands of the British Invasion, the Yardbirds were innovators of momentous importance. First and foremost, the Yardbirds are the band that established the supremacy of the guitar, granting dignity to the rock solo and pioneering the use of dissonant techniques such as feedback and fuzztone.2
All of this crassness makes the Yardbirds’ output harder to figure out than that of any other major British Invasion band. Failing that, the two-disc compilation Smokestack Lightning presents their two 1965 Jeff Beck-era LP’s in full, so despite the seemingly random bonus tracks it’s worth owning.3
In the beginning, there was nothing particularly outstanding about the Yardbirds other than their fostering the greatest of then-living young British guitarists, Eric Clapton. They were a decent R’n'B unit, fluent and professional and with enough abilities to drive the audiences suitably wild, but so could a lot of other bands, and quite a few of these “others”, the Rolling Stones and the Animals among them, could do it much better.4
The Yardbirds’ original lead singer, Keith Relf, was electrocuted to death in 1976. The core group has only played once since disbanding, at the 1992 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.5