I saw The Yardbirds January 1st, 1966 at the Seattle Center Colliseum when I was 12 yrs old as one of the acts leading to the headliner, The Beach Boys. The line up at the time was all four originals and Jeff Beck (who replaced Eric Clapton a few months previous). This was approx. three months before Jimmy Page joined and by Summer '66 Jeff had left the group. They were fanatastic, inspite of the comparatively primitive PA system in those days (the metal sports announcer's speaker box at the apex of the Colliseum's ceiling was the source of the sound projection for the music shows during that period...The Beatles had used the same system in Summer '64 and Summer '66 at that venue). I witnessed an extremely important part of music history that night!! I met Chris Dreja and Jim McCarty many years later and they remembered the tour and the show.
This is great. You can REALLY hear Jim McCarty's FOOT. Finally. On most of the studio sessions you can only hear his snare drum and cymbals, mostly. Another thing is, this is September of 1968 - pretty late in the game for this incarnation of the band. I mean, the first Led Zeppelin album was only about four months away. Think about that.
This was March 9, 1968. I think in Europe they put the day number first and the month number second. Jimmy Page: On this day 9 March in 1968, I played French TV show Bouton Rouge with the Yardbirds in Paris and Dazed and Confused was performed. That night we played at the Faculte D’Assas.
Jimmy Page made every band he played in great. He"s second to none, GOAT! When he and Plant became Led Zeppelin - Rock and Roll was born, imo. Plant's range, tone and improv during the songs have never been matched! Dazed and Confused belongs to Plant👍
Classic. Recently started listening to the Yardbirds catalog of music. They really did write an amazing amount of great songs, and it's so interesting with the all the different guitarists that now and forever will be musical legends.
Brilliant and well recorded performance capturing the musicianship and energy of the band! There is no substitute for authentic, period performance providing a time capsule of the late sixties ethos.
I saw the new Yardbirds/Led Zeppelin at the kinetic playground in Chicago when they first came over, I wondered what Robert Plant was screaming about….😂
Say what you will about the goofier aspects of Robert Plant's singing, you have to admit that he really draws in the listener with the timbre and flexibility of his voice. Relf, god bless him, was such an unexceptional singer. He's like a guy you'd see singing a free show with a dad-rock band in the downtown plaza of some mid-sized city. He might have made a good punk rock singer had he been 15 years younger--he had the energy and the drive, and singing off key all the time could really work well in punk! Page really got lucky when putting Zeppelin together--he found a couple of unknowns in Plant and Bonham who turned out to be a great match for what he and Jones were cooking up. Here, six months earlier, he's working with three musicians who were on the surface a bigger deal--they had real hits and a solid reputation within the U.K. pop scene--but none of them who were left in the band at this point are really at his level.
Keith Relf suffered from emphysema and asthma almost all his life. You could say he shouldn't have been singing rock & roll, or you could cut him a little slack and say "he did pretty well, considering."
Would it be safe to say that the Yardbirds, especially after Page joined them were the beginning of what would become heavy metal, even before Black Sabbath? Interestingly many of these guys got their very first exposure to rock and roll or rock music in March 1958 when Buddy Holly and his band toured England. Supposedly Mick Jagger, Dick Taylor, Jeff Beck, Chris Dreja, Lemmy Kilmister, Jon Lord and others saw them live.
Where's the heavy metal? No, Buddy Holly may have influenced a new beat, but Jimmy Plant actually plays and writes his music with a purpose. His classical blues take you on a journey, Page will get you there 🎸
@@julesrose4452 The comment about some British musicians seeing Holly live when he was there was a side note. What I meant by the Yardbirds and heavy metal was that Led Zeppelin has been called heavy and this last incarnation of the Yardbirds was proto Zeppelin. Also, for 1966 I think Page's riffs are pretty heavy. Anyway, just my opinion.
@@jeanroberge8251 Yeah, and that makes more sense than month/day/year format that is so common in the USA. It annoyed me so much I stopped using it and now use the format 03 FEB 2024 for everything. As for the Yardbirds, they were touring in France in MAR 1967, which made me think it might be a year typo.
Definitely a cooler band than Zeppelin. Im piggy back off another comment because uts true 👍🏻 again not just page. The whole band. To bad keith relf died so young from being electrocution...smh.. talk about ironic. Bloody hell...🙏🏻rest easy mate.
The studio version (particularly "version 2") is funny because the song is so insipid, and then 2/3 of the way through, Page starts ripping a solo with that nasty overdriven Telecaster tone we all know and love from the Stairway to Heaven solo, including a couple of passing licks you'd recognize from "Stairway". It's like "where did THAT come from?"...then it quickly returns to sounding like a poor imitation of The Monkees.
I think The Yardbirds biggest fault is they didn't write enough good songs in house. The second biggest fault is they didn't have the balls to say no to songs like Josephine.
