the Yardbirds

the Yardbirds, 1960s British musical group best known for their inventive conversion of rhythm and blues into rock. The original members were singer Keith Relf (b. March 22, 1943, Richmond, Surrey, England—d. May 14, 1976, London), guitarist Eric Clapton (original name Eric Patrick Clapp; b. March 30, 1945, Ripley, Surrey), bassist Chris Dreja (b. November 11, 1946, London), drummer Jim McCarty (b. July 25, 1943, Liverpool, Merseyside), bassist Paul Samwell-Smith (b. May 8, 1943, London), and guitarist Anthony (“Top”) Topham (b. July 3, 1947, Southall, Middlesex). Later members were Jeff Beck (b. June 24, 1944, Wallington, Surrey) and Jimmy Page (b. January 9, 1944, Heston, Middlesex).

The Yardbirds, who produced three of Britain’s most influential rock guitarists, followed in the footsteps of the Rolling Stones on the western London rhythm-and-blues circuit in 1963–64, their early repertoire consisting almost exclusively of cover versions of songs by artists who recorded for the Chess and Vee Jay record labels. With Clapton as lead guitarist, the band created the “rave-up,” accelerating their playing until it transformed into white noise. Employing distortion and reverb (a succession of echoes that blend into one another to create sonic space), Clapton’s successor, Beck, pushed later hits like “Shapes of Things” (1966) into the realm of psychedelic rock. Page, later the leader of one of the most successful heavy metal–hard rock groups of the 1970s, Led Zeppelin, initially joined the Yardbirds as a replacement for bassist Samwell-Smith. Switching to guitar, Page joined Beck as the band’s colead guitarist—though the two played together on only one single, the visionary “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” (1966), before the band’s short-lived final lineup dissolved in 1968. The Yardbirds were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.