Recommendations of the Editorial team
You can listen to “somebody”-a song that I wrote for the first Aerosmith album-and you will find that he has the word “Yardbirds” in thick letters. They meant the most of all the British bands of the sixties. Probably because they surrounded this touch of the mysterious. They were incredibly eclectic – the vocals sounded like Gregorian vocals, the melody was unusual, they integrated feedback into their sound – and exactly this obscure fascinated me.
Back then I was in a band called Chain Reaction. We had the opportunity to get to know the Yardbirds when they appeared in the Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut in 1966. A friend named Henry Smith, who at times also acted as our manager, went to school there. He called me and said: “Steven, the Yardbirds will appear there. Do you want to make the preliminary program? “
“I dragged her amplifiers, they grabbed our”
It was the line-up with Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, who played bass at the time. We waited all day until they finally arrived. I dragged her amplifiers, they grabbed our – which was a matter of course at the time. This also resulted in the rumor that I was Roadie of the Yardbirds.
I still remember exactly that they played “Shapes of Things” and “Beck’s Boogie”. I was deeply impressed because they sounded like no other band. Clothes, appearance, hit singles-she didn’t affect all of this. They dealt with tricky harmony questions, with unusual minor chords that were responsible for this incredibly spherical sound.
They heard their unorthodox approach in every song: they grabbed the blues and turned it into “for your love” in pop. There were two concerts in which I was sitting right in front of the stage with an open mouth: in 1966 at this Yardbirds-Gig and in 1969 at Led Zeppelin in the Boston Tea Party.
The Yardbirds appearance was also important to me as a singer because it became clear to me that you don’t necessarily have to have a super voice. It’s about charisma, about attitude. Keith Relf was a white boy who got the optimum out of his voice. And he played an excellent harmonica: even Jagger couldn’t squeeze out of a single note as much as he was.
Jammer is: I know how great the Yardbirds were, but I don’t know if this is generally known.