Jimmy Page: The Definitive Biography. Chris Salewicz
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dream of quietness, so we split, but I guess he’s changed a lot since then.’
The song ‘Tangerine’ on Led Zeppelin III is said to have been inspired by Jackie DeShannon.
In May 1965 Bert Berns was back in London, producing tracks for Them’s first album, this time at Regent Sounds Studio on Denmark Street. Clearly uninfluenced by the protests of Billy Harrison, Berns again brought in Jimmy Page, who provided a ‘vibrato flourish’ on an interpretation of the Josh White folk song ‘I Gave My Love a Diamond’.
Prior to the arrival in October 1962 of the Beatles with ‘Love Me Do’, their first Parlophone single, and their subsequent phenomenon, not just as performers but supreme songwriters, British pop music was dominated by material that traditional ‘Tin Pan Alley’ publishers touted to acts. Despite the Liverpool quartet’s success, which led to so many emergent acts writing their own material, by 1965 the Beatles had by no means overthrown this system. The Yardbirds, a group largely from the extremes of south-west London, were an act that demonstrated the severe disparity between their singles, chosen by such a method, and the material in the five-piece group’s live sets – essentially another version of the harmonica-wailing, thunderously paced and mutated rhythm ’n’ blues sound that the Rolling Stones and Pretty Things and other lesser UK groups like the Downliners Sect were somewhat histrionically howling.
The Yardbirds had formed after Chris Dreja, Anthony ‘Top’ Topham and Eric Clapton met at Surbiton Art College. ‘It was through Top Topham’s father,’ said Chris Dreja, ‘who had this amazing collection of 78s from America [that was] not available to anybody. It was black blues music, and that was the initial turn-on, of course. Discovering that music was like the genie coming out of the bottle, really. We had really rather kitsch pop music with no free fall and very little emotion back in the depressing post-war fifties and sixties.
‘And poor old Anthony Topham gets left out, doesn’t he? He was quite pivotal, actually. The band was made up of two halves originally. One half was Top and me at art college, and Clapton was in the same art stream. In Surbiton, Surrey, of all places.
‘At that stage Top Topham was perhaps as agile and skilled a guitar player as Eric Clapton. He was only 16, however, and his career with the Yardbirds was stymied when his parents insisted that he must remain in full-time education.
‘Topham is still a great guitar player. He went on to play for Chicken Shack. Out of all us he was actually the most talented artist around. Clapton and I were all into music, but he got dropped at Kingston Art School because his attentions were elsewhere. But Top’s parents, when we were getting wages from it, grounded him, unfortunately, and that is when we got Clapton. He was really the only professional player we knew out there who had any background in the music we were doing.’
Keith Relf, the group’s singer, knew Eric Clapton better than the pair of students who were at college with him, so he went and ‘tracked him down’, as Dreja remembered. Clapton had already moved on to Kingston College of Art, but had been dismissed after his first year; it was considered by his instructors that he was focused on music and not on art.
By the end of 1964 the Yardbirds had a blossoming reputation and were considered one of the coolest UK acts, clearly on the cusp of breaking out from being a cult attraction, not least because of their by now revered guitarist. The Yardbirds – who otherwise consisted of flaxen-haired vocalist Keith Relf, second guitarist Chris Dreja, bass player Paul Samwell-Smith and drummer Jim McCarty – were managed by Giorgio Gomelsky, who had had the Rolling Stones stolen from him by Andrew Loog Oldham and Eric Easton.
The song that would pull the Yardbirds up to full pop stardom was ‘For Your Love’. One of the first two tunes written by Manchester’s Graham Gouldman, later of 10cc, ‘For Your Love’ had been intended for his group the Mockingbirds, until they turned it down, as did Herman’s Hermits, who in Harvey Lisberg had the same management as Gouldman. Undaunted by this negative response, Lisberg, who was very impressed by ‘For Your Love’, then offered it to the Beatles when they played a season of Christmas shows at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1964. Unsurprisingly, the Fab Four, who had their own abundant source of material, displayed no interest. But supporting the Beatles on these Hammersmith shows were the Yardbirds, and they recognised its chart potential and recorded it.
A good call: the single, released in March 1965, was a big hit. Yet ‘For Your Love’ was at considerable odds with the rest of the band’s previous material. The Yardbirds had already put out a pair of what might be considered more characteristic tunes: ‘I Wish You Would’, a version of the 1955 Billy Boy Arnold Chicago blues tune; and ‘Good Morning, School Girl’, an adaptation of the 1937 Sonny Boy Williamson song, often titled ‘Good Morning Little Schoolgirl’ – a title that in later years would have guaranteed zero radio airtime. On the live version of ‘Good Morning, School Girl’, on the Yardbirds’ first live album, Five Live Yardbirds, the vocal duties on the song were taken by bass player Paul Samwell-Smith and Eric Clapton rather than singer Keith Relf.
He might have been underestimated in his days at the Ealing Jazz Club, but by now Clapton was showing that he was very much his own man, utterly singular in his purist vision of the kind of music he should be playing: he was determined that the next Yardbirds single should be an Otis Redding cover. His stance, and clear supreme abilities on the guitar, were beginning to transform him into a hero for his fans. And in March 1965 the Melody Maker headline told the story: Clapton Quits Yardbirds – ‘too commercial’.
‘I thought it was a bit silly, really,’ said Clapton of ‘For Your Love’. ‘I thought it would be good for a group like Hedgehoppers Anonymous. It didn’t make any sense in terms of what we were supposed to be playing. I thought, “This is the thin end of the wedge.”’
In the story that accompanied the Melody Maker headline, Keith Relf gave his version of what had taken place. ‘It’s very sad because we are all friends. There is no bad feeling at all, but Eric did not get on well with the business. He does not like commercialisation. He loves the blues so much I suppose he does not like it being played badly by a white shower like us! Eric did not like our new record “For Your Love”. He should have been featured but did not want to sing or anything, and he only did a boogie bit in the middle. His leaving is bound to be a blow to the group’s image at first because Eric was very popular.’
Chris Dreja put the problem more succinctly: ‘We had this massive record and we had no lead guitar player.’
Within two weeks Clapton had joined John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. After a couple of months graffiti began to appear around London: ‘Clapton is God’. John Mayall, a bohemian Mancunian who rivalled Alexis Korner as the godfather of the UK blues scene, had already offered Page the job with the Bluesbreakers, but he had turned it down, clearing the way for Clapton.
Page was clearly in demand. The Yardbirds and their manager Giorgio Gomelsky, at the suggestion of Eric Clapton himself, first approached Page to be the guitarist’s replacement.
‘It was thought,’ remembered Jim McCarty, ‘that maybe we could get Jimmy Page because Jimmy was the hottest session player, and Giorgio knew Jimmy. He asked Jimmy if he’d join the band but at that time Jimmy was so busy playing sessions that he wasn’t into joining a live band. He said why don’t you try one of my understudies, a guy called Jeff Beck. So we went down to see Jeff and asked him to join the band.’
Page’s friend Jeff Beck was playing with the Tridents, a rocking blues group he had joined in August 1964, never missing their weekly residence at Eel Pie Island, which would draw up to 1,500 people. Beck accepted the offer.
Page was still shadowed by the ill health that had dogged him during his time with Neil Christian and the Crusaders, and was also aware of the large amounts of money he continued to earn as a session player. But his main reason for turning down the offer, he said, was because of his growing friendship with Clapton. ‘If I hadn’t known Eric, or hadn’t liked him, I might have joined. As it was, I didn’t want any part of it. I liked Eric quite a bit and I didn’t want him to think I’d gone behind his back.’
(This was not the only act of generosity that Page displayed