Easy Action deserves an award for perseverance in the face of impossible odds, taking three years to realise the DVD of 2008’s historic MC5/Primal Scream Meltdown double-header, spending two years longer putting together this ultimate collection of aural Yardbirds documentation; they’ve used microsurgery where necessary to graft sections together and spice up ancient recordings.
This inestimably influential group was only active for five years, but gave the world three of its all-time stellar guitarists in Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, while creating a unique mystique through their string of evocative, groundbreaking singles between 1965’s For Your Love and 1968’s Goodnight Sweet Josephine swansong.
First of all, the packaging is gorgeous: a 45-shaped box accommodating 32-page booklet (boasting remarkably candid photos), gig postcards, 7” single coupling 1963’s Baby, What’s Wrong with I Wish You Would, and five CDs. With the aid of numerous radio interviews conducted in the US or Europe at the time, these effectively tell the band’s story, from the previously-unheard alternate take of 1963’s Honey In Your Hips to March 1968’s landmark Peel session, on which Dazed And Confused pointed to where Page’s creative seeds were soon to blow and change the world.
Disc One presents the bluesy 1963-64 Clapton days, with standards such as Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, Smokestack Lightnin’ and I’m A Man, captured at the Marquee, Crawdaddy or 1964’s National Jazz And Blues Festival (where they indulged in rarely-played Chuck Berry covers as Authentics singer Mick O’Neill stood in for Keith Relf, hospitalised with a punctured lung). That the set also boasts the only remaining previously unheard Yardbirds tracks with Clapton (cut from the acetate of an EMI demo session) perfectly illustrates the seriousness of a project which can also contain 1968’s MacLean‘s toothpaste advert.
By Disc Two and 1965, when Clapton departed for purer blues outlets, to be replaced by Jeff Beck, The Yardbirds are playing the songs which made their name: strikingly-original outings including Evil Hearted You, Heart Full Of Soul, You’re A Better Man Than I, Shapes Of Things and For Your Love, along with their motoring take on Johnny Burnette’s Train Kept A-Rollin’. Tracks are drawn from BBC sessions (some previously though lost), Dutch TV and that year’s Richmond Jazz And Blues Festival.
Disc Three covers the major changes of 1965-66, The Yardbirds’ ongoing rapid progression kicking off with the psych-charged Happenings Ten Years Time Ago, Psycho Daisies and Over Under Sideways Down, plus further versions from the previous disc’s tracklist. This material was culled from assorted London studios, French gigs, the NME Pollwinners Concert and further unearthed radio sessions.
By now, The Yardbirds were possibly the most cutting-edge pop group next to the Stones – and more experimental. Disc Four’s 1967-68 selection roars in with Shapes Of Things and other singles mainly drawn from European gigs, plus an August 1967 US Army broadcast. Disc Five consists entirely of BBC recordings, including March 1967’s overlooked mini-masterpiece Little Games and the aforementioned Peel session, which also included the West Coast-influenced Think About It and Page’s acoustic excursion, White Summer.
This lovingly-compiled, feverishly hyperactive set might include five different versions of some songs, but it’s fascinating to hear the band’s rampant evolution as musical trends catch up with them and they strive for the next phase. It’s to Easy Action’s credit that none of the 150 or so components sound superfluous or barrel-scraping while, even held against that exalted trio of axeman, the late Keith Relf emerges with his enigmatic charisma further boosted.
