Yardbirds
Having A Rave Up

That Jimi Hendrix was the greatest electric guitarist of all time is beyond question. The debate itself about who was the "most prominent guitar figure in rock history" arises not so much from the need to associate a name and a face with such a definition as, to be honest, from an unconscious and perverse desire to relate musicians from different eras and genres on the same value scale, otherwise difficult to relate to each other.

In simple terms, when asking who was the most important guitarist of the past century, one is really asking who was the second most important guitarist, and the answer thus reduces, if one does not consider the numerous nominations in favor of Kurt Cobain, to a three-way contention between the names of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page.

Speaking for them are their brilliant and at the same time tumultuous careers, which have irreversibly altered the course of contemporary music and the approach to the instrument itself. What these three virtuosos have in common, besides an innate musical talent and an intimate and profound passion for Delta blues, is their membership, and more precisely their artistic debut, in the second most prestigious blues university across the Atlantic: the Yardbirds (second only to John Mayall's BluesBreakers).

Although they played the role of lead guitar at different times, there is an album, precisely this "Having A Rave-Up" from 1965, in which contributions from all three are present (even though only Beck appears on the cover and Page's participation is not ratified in the production notes).
The work is more a collection of singles than an album in the strict sense (it would precede by a few weeks the release of "Rubber Soul", the first album conceived as such), where the real common thread is the rave-up, a kind of intense blues that is nothing but the primordial embryo of what will be commonly known as hard rock. The material available is ample and varied, and among the different track lists (which vary from market to market), the beauty of 24 pieces can be counted.

The transition from Clapton's radical and uncompromising blues (the classic "Smokestack Lightning" and "Here 'Tis" above all) to a sound more oriented towards tentative attempts at experimentation that shortly thereafter would culminate in the phenomenon of psychedelia is perceived immediately.
This very change of course was perceived by the young Clapton as a betrayal: the aforementioned tracks are in fact studio recordings of classics by Howlin' Wolf and Bo Diddley that the Yardbirds had already been successfully performing live for some years. Clapton, having graduated with full marks from the Yardbirds, gave way to Jeff Beck and decided to enlist in the BluesBreakers. The eponymous work, "John Mayall & The BluesBreakers with Eric Clapton", was enough to definitively consecrate him and launch the famous series of graffiti with the sacrilegious slogan "Clapton is God".

The entry of Jeff Beck into the lineup marked a turning point in the short yet intense trajectory of the "Yardbirds." Realizing the enormous expressive potential of his instrument, Beck began experimenting with effects such as fuzz and feedback ("I'm A Man" by Bo Diddley), imitating the whistle of a steam train ("The Train Kept A-Rollin'"), thus first introducing the theme of the onomatopoeic guitar, later often used by Adrian Belew and Steve Vai.
However, he also soon realized he could directly influence the very timbre of his instrument, reaching the peak of experimentation in the suave "Heart Full Of Soul", where, thanks to the use of a Fuzz-Box, he managed to mimic the timbre of another string instrument, the sitar, weaving delicate and hypnotic oriental sounds. In reality, this innovation was accidental: the Yardbirds had indeed decided to use an actual sitar in the production of the arrangements (the very first in the rock field and a full six months before "Norwegian Wood" from the already mentioned "Rubber Soul"), but the resulting rhythmic slowdown didn’t marry well with the frenetic pace imprinted on the other tracks, and they opted (not without a good dose of superficiality) for an alternative solution, thus leaving the honor of the primacy to the Beatles.

Also noteworthy is the excellent vocal performance by Keith Relf in "Mr. You're A Better Man Than I", with one of the very first protest songs made in the U.K., and the only track in the bunch written by members of the group: "Still I'm Sad" (McCarty, Samwell-Smith), which features the first (and very likely also the last) incorporation of Gregorian chants in a pop track.

Although almost all the material is derivative, the feeling is not so much one of covering as that of true transfigurations: emblematic in this sense is "The Train Kept A-Rollin'" which is transformed from a carefree Rhythm & Blues into the most violent guitar performance of the time, comparable only to "My Generation" and "You Really Got Me" in terms of sound impact and shock value, a real hard-rock ante litteram.
The intensity of this track also captivated Michelangelo Antonioni who decided to immortalize a live performance in Blow-Up, a film portrait of the Swingin' London of the '60s. The rendition of the track (renamed for the occasion "Stroll On" due to copyright complications) is, if possible, even more unleashed, thanks also to the support that Jimmy Page offers to Beck, who in turn concludes in the best Mods tradition by destroying his instrument à-la Townshend.
Page's contribution can also be appreciated in the track "New York City Blues" (a distant relative of "Since I've Been Lovin' You"), but in hindsight, what results is still a constrained sound, revealing only a small portion of his enormous talent.

This is the first album that absolutely puts the electric guitar at the center of attention, a forerunner of works of the caliber of Are You Experienced and Texas Flood, to name a few, and a precursor of genres and trends that would prevail for over a decade. Certainly one of the most underrated yet most interesting propositions of the entire British invasion and the music scene in general, from one of the most underrated and influential groups in history, whose members founded groups like Cream, Led Zeppelin, Jeff Beck Group, and Renaissance.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Yardbirds