THE IMPORTANCE OF ABANDONMENT
“… B.B. King was a beacon for all of us who loved that music. I thank him from the bottom of my heart. If you don't know his work, I invite you to listen to his Live At The Regal, because that’s where, for me as just a young musician, everything finally began…” (quoted words by Eric Clapton after B.B. King’s death in May 2015).
Well, Eric, but considering that “Live At The Regal” is a 1965 album recorded on November 21, 1964, what remains, for you, of the period with the Yardbirds, in which you served from 1963 until March 25, 1964?
For us posterity, of whom the poet says the arduous verdict belongs, much, especially for the implications with the history of blues rock on this side of the Atlantic. It is no coincidence that Eric, the only musician to have been inducted three times into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, holds this record both as a solo artist and as a member of the Cream and the Yardbirds!
To better understand such renouncement, it might be useful to listen to the collection “Yardbirds: Eric (Slowhand) Clapton” which contains part of the studio and live recordings made by the band during the period when Clapton wielded the lead guitar among the garden birds, later replaced by Jeff Beck and finally by Jimmy Page. Released in 1975, it contains, on the first side, studio recordings, published as singles in 1964 and 1965, and, on side B, part of the live tracks contained in “Five Live”, recorded at the Marquee Club in London on March 20, 1964, and published in the United Kingdom about nine months later, being, in fact, the first Yardbirds album.
But first, a historical preface is due. Between the late '50s and early '60s, full employment began to offer new opportunities to those kids who grew up during or right after the second world war. Finally, with their own money in their pockets and without having to ask anything from their parents, young people began to spend their entire paycheck on doing what they loved most, that is, and as since forever: motorbikes, drugs, sex, and dancing music!
For the many who have seen the film “Quadrophenia,” there is little to add; for the others (alas!), succinctly, the film, set in 1964, tells the story of a young mod misunderstood at home, a slave to an alienating job, from which he redeems himself only during violent weekends, pills, and music. The main scene of the entire film is the long sequence shot in Brighton, with the gigantic brawl between the mods and the hated rockers, a truly happening event during the Bank Holiday in a weekend in May 1964 on the beaches of Brighton. Both hailing from the working class, the mods and rockers represent two different ways of approaching the ongoing social changes in 1960s Great Britain: the rockers stood as champions of a strong, conservative man’s ideal looking suspiciously at color immigration. Conversely, the mods loved the hectic city life and welcomed the influence of colored youth, especially when it came to music.
And in the City (London), for the mods, clubs began to flourish where one could listen to music coming from overseas: R&B, Soul, and Blues, even though, at the time, it was all perceived as blues. Memorable is the phrase by Keith Richards recalling how club owners asked them to play R&B but, “even if we didn’t know what it was, to not lose the gig, we accepted anyway, as for us, it was all blues”!
Venues like Flamingo, Marquee, 100 Club, and the Crawdaddy Club, which was the first residence of the Rolling Stones and became the place where events that exerted the greatest influence on the English music scene since the times of Liverpool’s Cavern occurred. To understand the place, suffice it to say that "Hey Crawdaddy!" was a song contained in a Bo Diddley live recording born from the fusion of "Crawdad Song" and his song "Hey Bo Diddley." When the Stones reached fame to move to the theatrical tour circuit, Gromelsky, owner of the Crawdaddy, replaced the Stones with the new band: the Yardbirds.
The club scene is where everything was really happening: where groups like the Animals and the Rolling Stones could feel free from the restrictions imposed by the record industry and give birth to fiery live shows. Rows of mods, excited by alcohol and amphetamines their fathers had known during the great war, vented their rage into storms of feedback, distortions, and tribal rhythms, the so-called “rave-ups,” long instrumental performances of blues origin anchored to a structure tending to repetition with an incessant rhythmic beat, at the expense of clarity and sound precision, of course, but with the added advantage of being able to unleash the proverbial beast within us all.
At the Crawdaddy, the Yardbirds gained respectable acclaim, proving to be technically more advanced than the Rolling Stones and Animals, and Clapton’s style began spreading among music enthusiasts. It's here that Gomelsky, according to one of the most credited versions on our hero's nickname origins, decides to call him Slowhand, given that in the pauses between songs, often came slow and syncopated applause aimed at the young Clapton, a well-mannered and shy guy, but who during those vibrant instrumental rides donned the garb of an electric shaman, leveraging an extraordinary improvisational ability.
Returning to the collection, side B features 5 hyperkinetic tracks that more or less faithfully - given the poor recording quality due to the venue's acoustics and the use of a two-track recorder - capture the atmosphere experienced during the performances by the band’s first lineup, consisting of: Eric Clapton, of course, on guitar, Chris Dreja on rhythm guitar, Jim McCarty on drums, Keith Relf on vocals, and Paul Samwell-Smith, bass and vocals; production entrusted to Gomelsky. These are covers, mostly from blues and rhythm 'n' blues origins, possessing the characteristics to translate into the extremely dynamic, powerful, and rock oriented language of the Yardbirds, except for the rock'n'roll “Too Much Monkey Business” by Chuck Berry, which opens the performance contained in “Five Live” after a brief speaker’s introduction and is treated the same way. It turns out to be a shamelessly aggressive, proto-punk cover in line with the treatment given at the time by all U.K. cover bands of the genre to Berry's original, transformed from a joyful dance invitation to a call to brawl. But no one but Eric Clapton could confer class upon the assault without sacrificing its anger and fury.
Unfortunately, the sound quality of the recording is really poor to fully appreciate all the nuances of the lead guitar obscured by Samwell-Smith’s bass, in this and all other live tracks. The thin tone of Eric’s Fender Telecaster, amplified with the meager 30 watts of the then popular Vox AC30, can only be perceived through the heavy smoke curtain of the rhythm section and will probably be considered barely listenable by all those who have in mind the power of Clapton's six strings already from the work immediately following with John Mayall, also thanks to the new equipment used by Clapton: Gibson Les Paul Sunburst amplified by the Marshall JTM 45 whose power is more than 40 Watts (today, laughable, but we are in the early '60s... ) but especially with components giving the Marshall combos a much more aggressive voice than the Vox (the myth tells that the first models came into possession of Eric, Jimi Hendrix, and Pete Townsend, speaking of power...).
Having said this, “Too Much Monkey Business,” is practically the only song where Eric gets an actual solo spot, even though in “Five Live” the lead guitar can also be appreciated in “Five Long Years!” and John Lee Hooker’s “Louise,” but whoever curated the compilation preferred, rightly so, to focus on performances better reproducing the spirit of the band in 1964, which was also the reason for the success of their live performances.
Indeed, 5 Blues and R&B tracks from the mid-fifties follow, played with disdainful ferocity, at a pace and with an energy that no one in Liverpool or Manchester could have matched, and in which Keith Relf earns a solo spot with his harmonica, which he actually plays only because he is a frontman who doesn't play guitar. Sure, he is good with the instrument, but he is neither Sonny Boy Williamson nor Little Walter! It starts with a track by Slim Harpo: "I Got Love If You Want It," B-side of “I’m A King Bee” released in 1957, whose cover by the Kinks will be published shortly before (October ’64) with greater public consensus simply because it is more beautiful.
Better fate befalls "Smokestack Lightning" by Howlin' Wolf: the original version is unattainable, but if he himself called it the best cover of his classic, there must be a reason.
Finally … “the big hits”!!! Two Bo Diddley covers, the artist best suited to the “rave up” treatment: “I’m A Man” and “Here 'Tis” that demonstrate - and on this Eric himself agrees - how the Yardbirds are better live, where they manage to find a balance between traditional R&B tracks, blues respectability, but above all, a remarkable post-war energy.
Therefore, Clapton’s presence on these tracks isn’t the reason why they still deserve your attention almost sixty years after their release. The most important thing is that it's the only document of its era that allows people to hear what a true club “rave up” sounded like at the time: as far removed as possible from the idea of a band led by Eric Clapton!
Little to add for side A, which contains the studio-recorded tracks, established that the live version of “I'm A Man” is more representative, it is pleasing the choice of “Goodmorning Little Schoolgirl”, over the live version, for the nice guitar solo not present live.
“For Your Love” and “Got To Hurry”, sides A and B of the 45 rpm released on March 5, ’65 are, the first the official reason for Clapton’s departure from the Yardbirds for the pop and commercial turn Gomelsky had imposed on the band (along with Relf’s new haircut, too “Merseybeat” for “Slowhand”: the classic last straw!). The second, composed by Gomelsky alias “Rasputin” fits into the trend of instrumental tracks in vogue at the time and dominated by “Booker T. & the MG’s”; memorable Sting’s dance in Quadrophenia to “Green Onions”!
The collection is completed by “I Wish You Would” and “A Certain Girl”, also these A and B sides of a 45 rpm from May 1964 that recall what a young mod who went to clubs would purchase. So much so that the great Bowie would include “I Wish You Would” among the covers in the album “Pinups,” released in 1973 to pay homage to his favorite groups from when he was a mod: Pretty Things, Pink Floyd, Them, Who, and Yardbirds.
By the end of 1964, the Yardbirds had already performed almost two hundred times with an ever-growing following, but this didn’t stop Clapton from leaving the band and triggering a series of events that would lead to the formation of Cream and Led Zeppelin, so: thank you Eric, thanks also for this, besides for what will immediately follow, when the boiling magma, born from the Blues from the Mississippi delta, electrified in Chicago and arrived in cold Albion, will break the crust and flow burningly to ignite the world: LONG LIVE ROCK!
Side 1 – Studio:
- For Your Love – Graham Gouldman
- I’m A Man - Bo Diddley
- I Wish You Would – Billy Boy Arnold
- Goodmorning Little Schoolgirl – H. G. Demarais
- A Certain Girl – Naomi Neville
- Got To Hurry – Oscar Rasputin
Side 2 – Live
- Introduction
- Too Much Monkey Business – Chuck Berry
- Got Love If You Want - Slim Harpo
- Smokestack Lightning – Howlin’ Wolf
- I’m A Man - Bo Diddley
- Here ‘Tis - Bo Diddley
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