THE NEW YARDBIRDS
The Yardbirds are an English rock band, formed in London in 1963. Jimmy Page and Chris Dreja, with a tour of Scandinavia scheduled for late summer 1968, saw the break-up of the band as an opportunity to put a new lineup together with Page as producer and Peter Grant as manager. They appeared on contracts, promotional material, ticket stubs, and other collateral as “The Yardbirds” or “The New Yardbirds” for three shows in October 1968, with the Marquee Club date reported as the Yardbirds’ “farewell London appearance” and the Liverpool University show 19 Oct. announced as the Yardbirds’ “last ever appearance”. (More from Wikipedia)
Many people don’t realize that Led Zeppelin is a successor band to the Yardbirds. After Keith Relf and Jim McCarty left the Yardbirds in mid-1968, lead guitarist Jimmy Page was about the only bandmember left. He set about finding new musicians for his next band that was sometimes called the New Yardbirds. When the four bandmembers in Led Zeppelin started played together, the first song they did was “Train Kept A-Rollin’”. Jimmy Page recalls of that session (as quoted in Wikipedia): “We did ‘Train’ . . . It was there immediately. It was so powerful that I don’t remember what we played after that. For me it was just like, ‘Crikey!’ I mean, I’d had moments of elation with groups before, but nothing as intense as that. It was like a thunderbolt, a lightning flash – boosh! Everyone sort of went ‘Wow’.”
(June 2015)
