HAPPENINGS TEN YEARS TIME AGO
“Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” is a 1966 song by the English rock band the Yardbirds and was the first single to feature future Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page in the band. Page had recently replaced the original bassist for The Yardbirds, Paul Samwell-Smith. “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” was the second of three recordings pairing Page with incumbent lead guitarist Jeff Beck. John Paul Jones played session bass on the song; Jones would eventually join Led Zeppelin with Page. The song encompasses the musical genres psychedelic rock, psychedelic pop, and has been described as a prototype of heavy metal music. The single reached #30 on Billboard in the U.S. and #43 in the UK charts. “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” appears as number 3 in Record Collector’s “100 Greatest Psychedelic Records”, a list in chronological order. (More from Wikipedia)
The frequent hit songs by the Yardbirds – “I’m a Man”, “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago”, “For Your Love”, “Heart Full of Soul”, “Shapes of Things”, “Over Under Sideways Down”, etc. – hit my eardrums with at least as powerful an impact as the greatest Rolling Stones songs, like “Brown Sugar”, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, “Paint it Black”, “Get off of My Cloud”, “Sympathy for the Devil”, “Street Fighting Man”, etc. To me though, these songs sound every bit as fresh to me today, probably because they haven’t been played to death on oldies’ radio as much as anything else.
(May 2014)
