{"id":29758,"date":"2025-09-03T05:30:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T09:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=29758"},"modified":"2025-08-14T13:48:55","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T17:48:55","slug":"take-five-yardbirds-greats-you-might-have-missed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/03\/take-five-yardbirds-greats-you-might-have-missed\/","title":{"rendered":"Take Five: Yardbirds Greats You Might Have Missed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Yardbirds came together in 1963. The band\u2019s original run \u2013 not counting reunions and that time they changed their name to New Yardbirds and then to Led Zeppelin \u2013 was \u201863 to 1968. During that time, the band released two albums in its home United Kingdom, and four (or five if you count a best-of) in the U.S. Despite their messy and confusing discography and revolving-door membership, the group turned out more than its share of enduring classics. The band\u2019s second, third and fourth lead guitarists would all go on to greater fame, but the music that Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page helped create has stood the test of time. On the occasion of the 60-year anniversary of the release of <em>For Your Love<\/em> (the band\u2019s U.S. debut LP), here are five great tracks you might have missed from The Yardbirds.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cTurn Into Earth\u201d from <em>Roger the Engineer<\/em> (1966)<\/strong><br \/>\nEarly Yardbirds tracks emphasized the band\u2019s blues roots; guitarist Clapton left the group when he felt The Yardbirds were turning into a more commercial outfit with songs like \u201cFor Your Love.\u201d But after Clapton left, the group pursued both mainstream and adventurous directions. \u201cTurn Into Earth\u201d features a haunting, psychedelic arrangement \u2013 and more of the Gregorian chant-styled vocals found on \u201cStill I\u2019m Sad\u201d. The tune was also memorably covered by singer-songwriter Al Stewart as a b-side to his 1966 single \u201cThe Elf.\u201d (Fun fact: Jimmy Page played guitar on Stewart\u2019s recording.)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Hw8knrIeBPE?si=CC7ZySlZ7VsmmqYP\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cWhite Summer\u201d from<em> Little Games<\/em> (1967)<\/strong><br \/>\nBy the time of <em>Little Games<\/em>, Page was leading the group. Included on the album was a guitar-and-Indian instrumentation piece, \u201cWhite Summer.\u201d The song would become a live showpiece; Page played it often in Led Zeppelin concerts; he even featured it as a solo spot years later when touring with his \u201880s group The Firm.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iF8f234sLio?si=ElEjHMa__1ccrJUm\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cThink About It\u201d B-side of \u201cGoodnight, Sweet Josephine (1968)<\/strong><br \/>\nThe final release from The Yardbirds\u2019 original run was a non-charting 1968 single. Its B-side featured a song that strongly hinted the direction which Jimmy Page would pursue with the group he initially called The New Yardbirds. \u201cThink About It\u201d even features some licks that would turn up on a song they didn\u2019t release, \u201cI\u2019m Confused\u201d aka \u201cDazed and Confused.\u201d The track finally surfaced as an album track on an expanded reissue of <em>Little Games<\/em> in 1992.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/guO2e25NoSo?si=_874Mjy3vrBeluSW\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cYou Stole My Love\u201d from Cumular Limit (2000)<\/strong><br \/>\nGraham Gouldman was never a member of The Yardbirds, though the band recorded songs he wrote. The most well-known is \u201cFor Your Love,\u201d featuring Brian Auger on harpsichord. Another great Gouldman tune the band worked on \u2013 but did not finish nor release while together \u2013 was \u201cYou Stole My Love.\u201d Small-world fun fact: the song was first recorded by Gouldman\u2019s group The Mockingbirds, with memorable backing vocals from Julie Driscoll, Auger\u2019s band mate in The Trinity.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PJZgIRcIGHs?si=nEA9cfsoFhxEN4OQ\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cDazed and Confused\u201d from <em>Cumular Limit<\/em> (2000)<\/strong><br \/>\nWhile \u201cDazed and Confused\u201d is best known as an epic-length Led Zeppelin song, it dates from Page\u2019s time with The Yardbirds. At that point it was sung by Keith Relf, and featured very different lyrics. The songwriter credit tells us the song was written by Jimmy Page, though in recent years that credit has been amended to note that it\u2019s \u201cinspired\u201d by Jake Holmes, who also wrote for Frank Sinatra, The Four Seasons and others.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HwAlF6L9ZYg?si=XUNwWaX7MZElUdJ3\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Yardbirds came together in 1963. The band\u2019s original run \u2013 not counting reunions and that time they changed their name to New Yardbirds and then to Led Zeppelin \u2013 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29759,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[2408],"class_list":["post-29758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","tag-yardbirds","cat-27-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29758"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29760,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29758\/revisions\/29760"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}