The Yardbirds: The Most Blueswailing Futuristic Way-Out Heavy Beat Sound

The Yardbirds were trailblazers in the rapid development of pop music in Britain between 1963 and 1968. With members including Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, they helped to set the basic template of what has been known ever since as rock music, and gave rise to one of the most commercially successful bands of all time: Led Zeppelin. Peter Stanfield situates the band in the evolution of British R&B and the tumult of the psychedelic era. Obsessively detailed about both the band and 1960s pop culture, this is the book fans of the Yardbirds have always needed.

About the Author :
Peter Stanfield is Emeritus Professor of Film at the University of Kent. His publications include A Band with Built-In Hate: The Who from Pop Art to Punk and Pin-Ups 1972: Third Generation Rock ’n’ Roll, both published by Reaktion Books.

Review :
A much-needed account of one of the most important, least understood bands of the 1960s, brilliantly written and researched by Peter Stanfield. By using only contemporaneous media accounts as his foundational material, Peter Stanfield has constructed an authentic, richly evocative account of the Yardbirds’ transformative journey from youthful blues merchants to pioneering pop futurists, without the distorting filters of hindsight or revisionism. Exactingly researched, it’s the definitive biography of one of the sixties’ most innovative and influential rock groups, written with style, energy and luminous clarity. Not so much a biography of the Yardbirds as an earnest plea that their importance in the story of UK rock be fully recognised, and a righteous endorsement of their significance alongside a comprehensive history of the development of R&B in the UK during the early 1960s. As author Peter Stanfield points out, the Yardbirds went from R&B to psychedelia and acid rock and wound up as precursors to heavy metal via Led Zeppelin, and in the course of this bumpy journey became the training ground for Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page – not a bad legacy by any means. Stanfield’s research has involved a comprehensive trawl through the cuttings of every UK music magazine and elsewhere not only for mentions of the Yardbirds but for the growth of R&B in general. The definitive Yardbirds book. [This book] contains a wealth of detail that brings clarity and focus to the often complex story of The Yardbirds. Richly detailed, nuanced account of Britain’s trailblazing beat combo . . . Via an artful sifting of the contemporary press, coupled with a well-tuned listening ear, author Stanfield’s evocative account unpicks the contradictions at the heart of the group. The Yardbirds draws heavily on primary sources, reviews and interviews from the national and regional press of the day . . . [Stanfield's] reconsideration of the ambition of the Yardbirds is welcome. The band was 'without peer as a live attraction,' and Mr. Stanfield makes one want to step back in time into one of those packed clubs, so hot that, as one writer of the day put it, 'you could have boiled an egg.'