Revisiting the Yardbirds

My first encounter with the Yardbirds occurred at age 14 when, as a morose, emaciated Catholic school boy, I took the time to watch the movie I had videotaped the night before. The movie in question was Blow Up (1966). Blow Up, a day-in-the-life drama concerning a possible murder witnessed by a  mod photographer in swinging London, was to have a deep impact upon me. Understandably envious of the photographer's world, which included a Bentley, romps with Jane Birkin, Vanessa Redgrave, Veruschka, and Sarah Miles, I turned time and time again to Antonioni's first English-language film as an escape from Xaverian High School, foul-tempered priests, freshman algebra, datelessness and general melancholia.

What struck me more than the comparative glamour of the photographer's existence was the presence in the film of a group that gave birth to 70s' metal juggernaut Led Zeppelin. This, of course, was the Yardbirds, a musical group far too neglected even by the most astute of today's popular musicologists. Certainly the Yardbirds have not been relegated to obscurity, but they are far less played by classic rock stations than their English peers such as the Kinks, the Who, the Rolling Stones or many others of the British invasion bands of that era.

This is a misfortune. Young people would benefit from further exposure to the band that helped bring to the forefront Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. The amalgam of American blues, soul, rock and roll and psychedelia coalesced to form an enduring body of work. It is my pleasure to share with you what I hope may pique your interest in this criminally neglected parent of so many bands:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zeza1xeWKM (the scene from Blow Up where the Yardbirds perform "Stroll on")
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn6cxaKRwtk&feature=related ("For your Love")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTO7WVxjz3A ("Shape of Things")

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9mQkFpkShg&feature=related ("Heart full of Soul")

P.S. Michelangelo Antonioni and the Yardbirds were unlikely role models for a fourteen-year-old boy coming of age during the George H.W. Bush administration, but they are remembered fondly by the now thirty-seven-year-old author of this piece.