While the Yardbirds are rightly famed for having kickstarted the careers of three British guitar legends – Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page – the band was far more than a mere nursery for six-string superstars.

Their freewheeling mid-song interludes (dubbed “rave-ups”), deft combination of blues and harder-edged sensibilities, and willingness to engage with non-mainstream ideas such as Gregorian chant exerted a powerful influence on their mid-'60s contemporaries and presaged many developments in the worlds of experimental and heavy rock.

In its heyday, the group enjoyed success on both sides of the Atlantic with such hits as For Your Love, Heart Full of Soul, and Shapes of Things.

Like many other low-enders, the band's founding bassist, Paul Samwell-Smith, started out as a guitarist. “When the Yardbirds started, under the name of the Metropolis Blues Quartet, Keith Relf was playing guitar, and playing rather well,” said Samwell-Smith in the March 2017 issue of Bass Player. “So I volunteered to play the bass – well, someone had to!”

The Surrey, England-born musician cites Ricky Fenson of the Cyril Davies Band as an early influence. “He blew my mind when I watched them play. I copied much of his style, as did others, including Bill Wyman.”

The Yardbirds' first studio album, Yardbirds – a.k.a. Roger the Engineer and released in the States as Over Under Sideways Down – opens with Lost Woman, a riff-based number that features a prime example of the band’s rave-up style.

Samwell-Smith – who also served as the album's co-producer – believes the song was likely recorded live in one take, with the bass guitar sound captured using a miked Marshall rig comprising an amp and a four-speaker unit.

“I used my Epiphone Rivoli bass, a short-scale model that I used for everything, and which made it easier to play chords. In fact, I found it easier all around to reach the notes – those long-scale Fender Jazz models sounded fantastic, but they scared the hell out of me. I used black nylon tapewound strings to reduce the friction, as I played a lot of chords and slid up and down the fretboard a lot. I found with wire-wound strings I'd wear my fingers down.”

Following a hi-hat count-off, the bass announces the song's foundational hook: a bobbing pick-plucked riff built around the G minor pentatonic scale. This riff continues through the guitar-free intro and verse, accompanied by drummer Jim McCarty's throbbing tom-tom ostinato and Relf's vocals.

Samwell-Smith changes tack for the chorus, deploying root-5th power chords (enlivened by an occasional 6th) while adding beat four color to the C and D chords with a minor-3rd-to-major-3rd half-step. “These are the classic Jimmy Reed-type blues chords, which I used a lot.”

Following a repeat of the verse and chorus, the song segues into the rave-up section at 00:51 via the pivotal D7#9 chord. Here, the bass, harmonica, and a single guitar hammer out a snappy unison line. Dig how the bass duplicates the bluesy bends of the guitar and harmonica throughout this section. “That was me just trying to be a guitar player, yet again.”

At 01:21, the bass drops to a low, 3rd-fret G, heralding a slow, whole-note climb up the G minor pentatonic scale that extends under Relf's wailing harp solo and Jeff Beck's off-the-cuff axe-work.

Samwell-Smith takes over Dreja's hypnotic 16th-note G's at 02:06, gradually adding in the 5th and octave above, as the rave-up careens toward an abrupt climax. This is followed by a return to the main riff at 02:39, and a recap of the verse and chorus before closing out over a raucous G9 chord at 03:05.

Regarding the band's slow-build interludes, Samwell-Smith explained: “It was something we always did in our live performances, so it was easy to agree on the basic shape of the improvised part and make it up on the spot. It relied on eye contact to indicate when the rave should end and the riff come back, which was usually me, since I had to get back to the riff double-sharp.”

Samwell-Smith quit the band shortly after finishing the Yardbirds album to pursue a career as a producer, later working with such artists as Carly Simon, All About Eve, Cat Stevens, and Jethro Tull. “I was so tired of touring endlessly, always traveling for hours to a gig miles from anywhere.

Making the album was a brief period of sanity for me; I think we spent five consecutive days in the studio, and I loved it. It was definitely what I wanted to do. So when we finished the album and went back on the road, I realized that I had to change my job.”

In the mid-'80s, however, Samwell-Smith teamed up again with Yardbirds founding members Dreja and McCarty to form Box of Frogs, which recorded two blues-rock albums featuring a host of musical buddies, including Beck and Page.

Born in Surbiton, Surrey, on 11 November 1945, Christopher Walenty Dreja was the son of Polish airman Alojzy Dreja and Englishwoman Joyce Guillan. While at Kingston School of Art, Chris met fellow guitarist Anthony ‘Top’ Topham. The two jumped on the bandwagon of electric rhythm and blues on which The Rolling Stones were riding high.

Dreja and Topham formed The Metropolis Blues Quartet, adding drummer Jim McCarty, singer/harmonica player Keith Relf and bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, and changed the group’s name to the Yardbirds. Still only 15, Topham quit when the others ‘turned pro’.

Although overshadowed by three legendary lead guitarists – Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page – Dreja was an essential core member who co-wrote many of the band’s songs. He was a stabilising influence, hailed for his gentle manner, and, even among these mega talents, his musical contribution was never questioned. He viewed his role as the glue that held the often-fragile elements together.

“I’m part of the rhythm section,” he explained to ClassicBands.com. “My ears have to be open to all the nuances going on with the lead player. I guess like John Lennon and Brian Jones, we’re not up front, but we kind of keep it all sticking together.”

Regarding his star lead players, Dreja told Vintage Guitar magazine: “I had a close kinship with Eric as our art-school background was the same and we had a similar sense of humour. Jeff, on the other hand, was quite a moody guy, and his main conversation was through his guitar.

“As a natural guitar genius, when he was ‘on’ it was a privilege to jam behind him. Jimmy was a real professional. I liked that period because we became a four-piece and I got to play my bass really loud!”

In 1966, Samwell-Smith left the Yardbirds to work in music production, and Page took over on bass. He and Dreja swapped roles when Beck became ill, and it stayed that way for a brief but legendary moment in pop history. Beck left at the end of 1966.

Dreja inherited Samwell-Smith’s Epiphone Rivoli bass guitar from Page, but a Cherry Red dot-neck Gibson ES-335 was his primary six-string, sometimes alternating with a Fender Jaguar or Jazzmaster.

Dreja played on all the Yardbirds’ hit singles, including For Your Love featuring Clapton; Evil Hearted You, Heart Full Of Soul, Shapes Of Things and Over Under Sideways Down with Beck; and Happenings Ten Years Time Ago, which made the Billboard Hot 100 with Page on lead. The original Yardbirds only released two albums, Five Live Yardbirds and Yardbirds, better known as ‘Roger The Engineer’ after Dreja’s innovative cover artwork.

Chris Dreja remained a Yardbird until 1968 when the band became The New Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. Page offered him the bass guitarist’s role, but Chris chose to pursue photography.

He took the group shot of Led Zeppelin for the band’s debut album, and in his New York studio captured Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, The Righteous Brothers, and Ike and Tina Turner, among others.

In 1983 Dreja, McCarty and Samwell-Smith formed Box Of Frogs with Medicine Head’s John Fiddler on lead vocals. They produced two well-received albums, Box of Frogs in ’84 and Strange Land in ’86, that included Beck, Page, Rory Gallagher, Graham Gouldman and Steve Hackett.

In 1992 Dreja and McCarty reconvened as the Yardbirds, with Ray Majors and then Dr Feelgood’s Gypie Mayo on guitar. Steve Vai’s Favored Nations label released Birdland under the Yardbirds moniker, with Dreja and McCarty, plus Mayo and guitarists including Vai, Joe Satriani, Steve Lukather, Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter, Brian May, Slash and Beck.

Dreja had a history of cardiovascular issues, and a series of strokes saw him retire in 2013. He died of strokes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in London on 25 September 2025.

Jimmy Page said of his old friend: “Chris Dreja … passionately played with the iconic Yardbirds on rhythm guitar and then the bass. I hadn’t seen him in a while, and I wish I had. RIP Chris.”

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty has looked back on Eric Clapton's spell in the band, and reflected on why the blues guitar great left for John Mayall's Bluesbreakers.

During the 1960s, McCarty played with three of Britain's greatest guitarists under the Yardbirds bracket. Clapton was the first of that trio, and was later to be followed by Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page – both of whom also left to explore other projects.

“They were all learning how to do it,” McCarty says, reflecting on that wild, history-making spell with Guitar Player. “They were all part of the team. We were all trying to play and having good fun playing that sort of music. And they were all very different.”

None of their stays were permanent. Clapton, especially, had his reasons.

“Eric was coming from a difficult upbringing, because he wasn’t really brought up by his parents,” the drummer details. “He was brought up by his grandmother, who he thought was his mother. That gave him a challenged outlook on things, and I think he took the blues up as his personal crusade.

“He was totally dedicated to the blues, and very ambitious. Eric was obviously gonna go somewhere,” McCarty continues. “You knew that, yes, one day he’ll be a big star, ’cause he was driven to do that, and he was getting a reputation while he was playing with us.”

During this period, many British players looked overseas to the Black blues guitarists of America who gave birth to, and pioneered, the genre for inspiration. Clapton was among those doing his homework.

“He used to copy blues solos – Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy or Buddy Guy or somebody – and copy them note for note before he got his own thing going,” McCarty says. “But he loved blues and he was very, very serious about it, even though he did actually mess around quite a lot with us in terms of jokes and funny voices.”

Disharmony crept in, though, with McCarty believing Clapton was unhappy with the band's progress – or lack thereof.

“We were trying to get a hit single. We were quite desperate, actually,” he confesses.

Indeed, Clapton had accused the band of selling out when they agreed to record Graham Gouldman's For Your Love. He jumped ship to Mayall's group, which, as history dictates, also had a knack for making guitar stars who would go on to bigger things.

There was another reason, too. As Clapton reflected after Mayall’s passing last year, his new bandleader “rescued” him when he was on the brink of quitting music entirely.

Chris Dreja, one of the founding members of the Yardbirds, has died aged 79.

His passing, just weeks before his 80th birthday, has been confirmed by author and former Decca Records press officer David Stark. The guitarist had been battling a long-term illness.

Dreja was a continual and integral force in a band that pushed the electric guitar to new heights in the 1960s, and that helped launch the careers of three British guitar greats: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page.

Born in Surrey on November 11th, 1945, Dreja grew up in post-war Britain and as American imports increased, he became highly influenced by the music of Duane Eddy and Chuck Berry.

He befriended fellow guitarist Top Topham while studying at the same pre-college art program. Influenced by folk and blues, they ditched acoustic guitars for electrics, and their tandem would become a key foundation for the Yardbirds.

The band established itself in the burgeoning British rhythm and blues scene, taking over from the Rolling Stones as the house band at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond.

Topham was later replaced by Eric Clapton, while Dreja handled rhythm guitar duties during the Clapton and Beck eras. He pivoted to bass upon Samwell-Smith’s departure, after an initial three-month spell with Jimmy Page on bass.

Dreja co-wrote a score of songs on the Yardbirds record, which has become lovingly known as Roger the Engineer due to the cover art, which he drew. It’s the only record to have featured Jeff Beck on all of its tracks.

When the band broke up in 1968, Page reportedly asked Dreja to play bass in his new band, which would become Led Zeppelin. He declined to pursue his love for photography.

But that didn’t end the pair’s working relationship, with Dreja going on to shoot the back cover of their debut album and photograph the band multiple times. He was said to have enjoyed the anonymity of being associated with photography over his role in the Yardbirds.

He would also go on to shoot Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, Ike and Tina Turner, and many more big cultural figures.

Page has since reacted to the news, highlighting the vigour with which Dreja played, regardless of instrument.

“I heard today of the passing of musician Chris Dreja, who passionately played with the iconic Yardbirds, on rhythm guitar and then the bass,” he writes on Instagram. “I hadn’t seen him in a while, and I wish I had. RIP Chris.”

In later life, Dreja played in the Yardbirds spin-off, Box of Frogs, in the 1980s, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. He then returned to rhythm guitar on the Yardbirds' 2003 comeback album, Birdland.

Singer-songwriter Jake Holmes has revived a copyright lawsuit against Jimmy Page over the songwriting credits for Dazed and Confused.

According to an investigation conducted by Rolling Stone, Holmes is claiming that he hasn't received proper credit or royalties for the earlier versions of the track performed by the Yardbirds – one of which features in the recently released documentary, Becoming Led Zeppelin.

Despite reportedly sending a cease and desist to Page and the other defendants last month, Holmes hasn't received a reply, which led him to file a lawsuit.

Holmes wrote Dazed and Confused in 1967, even recording it for his album, The Above Ground Sound of Jake Holmes. After Holmes opened for the Yardbirds at a Greenwich Village gig in New York, Page allegedly took a liking to the track, and in the years that followed, the Yardbirds would perform their own rendition. However, it was never properly recorded, until Page revisited it for Led Zeppelin's debut album.

As Holmes would later comment in Greg Russo's book Yardbirds: The Ultimate Rave-Up, “That was the infamous moment of my life when Dazed and Confused fell into the loving arms and hands of Jimmy Page” – complete with the infamous descending riff that is unmistakably similar to Holmes' original.

While Holmes was aware that the song had found its way onto Led Zeppelin's eponymous debut album, he did not take any action. In the early ’80s, Holmes tentatively wrote to the group and asked for a co-credit but received no reply. It was only in 2010 that Holmes sued Page for copyright infringement – a case dismissed “with prejudice” in January 2012 after an out-of-court settlement.

The new lawsuit notes that over the past three years, several archival Yardbirds recordings of the track have since come out. According to Holmes, these have been falsely credited to Page and, as a result, he has allegedly been cheated out of royalties.

Furthermore, Holmes argues that in Becoming Led Zeppelin, the Zeppelin version is properly credited as “Written by Jimmy Page, inspired by Jake Holmes,” unlike the Yardbirds version, which simply says “Written by Jimmy Page.”

“The Yardbirds’ performance of Dazed and Confused in the film is a performance of the Holmes Composition,” the lawsuit states.

“Defendants have thus committed multiple acts of willful infringement by continuing to use the Holmes Composition without authorization and in the face of both specific knowledge of Plaintiff’s rights and Plaintiff’s cease and desist demand.”

In other Led Zeppelin news, newly unearthed Super 8 footage of the band performing in Denmark in 1979 has surfaced online after 45 years – complete with the original audio.

Matt's Guitar Shop has developed quite a reputation for acquiring high-profile guitars and then giving them a new lease on life in the hands of current touring musicians.

After last year's successful experiment of lending out Steve Jones' 1974 Les Paul Custom to not one, but three musicians – Yungblud, Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong, and Sum 41's Deryck Whibley – Matt's Guitar Shop is now replicating that proof of concept with their recently acquired Yardburst: Jeff Beck's circa ’59 Gibson Les Paul, which fetched $496,484 (£403,200) at auction earlier this year.

“To me, with my taste for Jeff Beck’s journey and my love for the British Blues Explosion, this guitar was the sleeper hit of the whole auction,” says Matthieu Lucas, the owner and curator of the guitar menagerie.

“Everyone was focused on other pieces, but the Yardburst showed up early in the sale – and that’s what made this beautiful, unexpected story possible. It felt like fate. A moment where everything aligned.”

However, Lucas didn't just store it in a safe somewhere, collecting dust. Instead, he conspired with Lenny Kravitz's longtime guitarist, Craig Ross, to take it out for a spin on the entire European leg of the Blue Electric Light tour.

“Funny thing – this is actually the first time I’ve ever lent one of my guitars out for an entire European tour,” confesses Lucas. “I called Craig – I think he was in Germany – and told him the idea. He was immediately into it, super-happy.

“We locked it in a few weeks before the Paris show. Actually, just days after the auction, I sent Craig a photo of the guitar, and he had the same reaction I did – this guitar is a living icon.

He continues, “Lending him the Yardburst meant as much to me as if it were going to Slash, Billy Gibbons, Lenny… you name it. People don’t always realize how lucky they are to hear Craig Ross live right now.

“Craig even mentioned that Jeff Beck used to love seeing him and Lenny play live! So it feels full circle. Especially when Craig played the Yardburst at Paris La Défense Arena – 45,000 people hearing that epic solo on Bring It On. Unreal.”

The Yardburst's tenure with Ross may be over, but that doesn't mean the guitar will be locked away, never to be seen again. On the contrary, Lucas' real plan is to “make sure this guitar keeps living. Breathing. Being played.

“It’s not meant to sit in a case – that’s not the Jeff Beck way,” he concludes. “So yes, it will be played again. On stages. In front of people. That’s the only future I see for it.”

Last January, Jeff Beck's guitar collection sold for an astounding $10.7 million at auction, which saw some of the icon’s most noteworthy guitars – including his 1954 ‘Oxblood’ Gibson Les Paul – go under the hammer.

The final hammer has fallen on the Jeff Beck auction at Christie's, which included over 130 guitars, amps, and tools-of-the-trade that the legendary musician used throughout his quasi-six-decades-long career. With all items sold, the sale generated a total of $10,746,430 (£8,727,284) – which is more than eight times the pre-sale estimates.

“We are thrilled with the results of Jeff Beck’s incredible collection, which pay testament to the legacy of a genius – a globally-revered true rock legend,” comments Amelia Walker, Christie’s Specialist Head of Private & Iconic Collections, London. “Passionate bidders competed for every lot in the sale, with each achieving many multiples of their pre-sale estimate.”

Leading the sale was Jeff Beck's iconic 1954 ‘Oxblood’ Gibson Les Paul, which sold for around $1,315,708 (£1,068,500) – double its initial estimate. It broke the world auction record for the most expensive Gibson Les Paul ever sold – a title previously held by Duane Allman's 1957 Gibson Les Paul, which sold for $1.25 million in 2019.

Speaking of Les Pauls, Beck's 1959 ‘Yardburst’ Gibson Les Paul Standard – which harks back to the guitarist’s days with the Yardbirds – fetched $496,484 (£403,200), smashing its $49,000-74,000 pre-sale estimate.

More records were broken with the sale of ‘Tina,’ the hot pink 1983 Jackson Soloist Beck used on Tina Turner’s Private Dancer album. The iconic guitar, which comes with Turner's switchblade-scratched autograph, was sold for over 36 times its pre-sale high estimate – $14,776 (£12,000) – realizing $543,029 (£441,000) and making it the most expensive Jackson ever sold at auction.

His pedalboard, which was used on Beck’s final tour in 2022, also broke records, selling for $155,151 (£126,000) – well over its initial $3,694-6,156 (£3,000-5,000) estimate.

Other noteworthy sales include Beck's 1990/1993 Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster ‘Anoushka’ – named after the sitar virtuoso Anoushka Shankar – which fetched an astounding $1,241,211 (£1,008,000) (pre-sale estimate: $24,627– 36,940).

Walker cites Anoushka's sale as epitomizing “the power of Jeff’s live performances and the emotional connection between him. ‘Anoushka’ sparked a 9-minute bidding battle, achieving £1,008,000 – 50 times the pre-sale low estimate.”

His custom ‘Tele-Gib’ – the ’59 Fender Tele/Les Paul hybrid with Seymour Duncan pickups – continued to exceed expectations, selling for $853,332 (against a pre-sale estimate of $123,000), while his iconic 1960 Olympic White Fender Stratocaster – the guitar that's, perhaps, most closely associated with Beck – went for around $543,000 (£441,000), having had a pre-sale estimate of approximately $62,000.

The last guitar sold was a Jeff Beck signature Strat, covered with autographs signed by the performers who participated in a tribute concert to the musician at the Royal Albert Hall in 2023, including Eric Clapton, Susan Tedeschi, and Kirk Hammett.

This particular sale had a charitable element to it, as its total hammer price, along with that of the last three lots, was donated to Folly Wildlife Rescue, a charity Jeff Beck proudly supported during his lifetime.

Given the scale of the prices achieved in this auction, it’s perhaps not surprising that no less than three of these lots will be shoe-ins on the list of the most expensive guitars ever sold, with the ‘Oxblood’ a surefire addition – though none will break the top 10.

These astounding figures follow the recent trend we’ve seen with other big-name guitar auctions, where many have gone far beyond their estimates.

The star power, the guitar's provenance and its inherent vintage value, as well as the accumulated wealth that comes as successive generations of rock fans reach their ‘golden years’, has proved a potent combination, driving up prices.

Mark Knopfler's guitar collection sold for a total of $11,227,003 last year, which surprised auctioneers at the time, but it seems the trend won’t be tailing-off anytime soon.

To view the full auction results, visit Christie's.

Over 130 of Jeff Beck's guitars, amps, and ‘tools of the trade’ are set to go under the hammer in London on January 22, 2025, as part of Christie’s Jeff Beck: The Guitar Collection. The sale features some of Beck's most-used guitars throughout his six-decade-long career, spanning from his Yardbirds era to his last tour in 2022.

Commenting on the decision to sell his prized possessions, Jeff Beck's wife, Sandra Cash, said, “These guitars were his great love, and almost two years after his passing it's time to part with them, as Jeff wished. After some hard thinking, I decided they needed to be shared, played, and loved again.

“It is a massive wrench to part with them but I know Jeff wanted for me to share this love. He was a maestro of his trade. I hope the future guitarists who acquire these items are able to move closer to the genius who played them.”

As expected from the instruments of such an esteemed guitarist, Beck's guitars are anticipated to fetch hefty prices. The sale is led by one of his most recognizable guitars – his iconic 1954 ‘Oxblood’ Gibson Les Paul.

This heavily modified Les Paul, estimated to sell for between £350,000 and £500,000 ($442,000–$632,000), was purchased in November 1972 in Memphis.

It saw extensive action throughout the 1970s, most notably in the power trio Beck, Bogert & Appice, and during his performance alongside David Bowie and Mick Ronson at London’s Hammersmith Odeon in July 1973.

However, it's best known as the centerpiece of the cover of his 1975 album, Blow by Blow, and for being one of the four guitars he used to record this seminal record.

Another storied Les Paul in the collection is the so-called ‘Yardburst,’ a 1959 Gibson Les Paul best known for its role during Beck’s Yardbirds era. Now estimated to sell for up to £60,000 ($75,791), the guitar was originally purchased for £175 at Selmer’s in Charing Cross, London, in early 1966.

It was used on many key recordings, including Over Under Sideways Down, from The Yardbirds' 1966 album, Roger the Engineer, the epochal Happenings Ten Years Time Ago, his Jimmy Page-co-written solo track Beck’s Bolero, and his debut studio solo album, Truth.

It also saw heavy onstage use in 1968, including the Jeff Beck Group's famous residency at The Scene in New York, where nightly encores saw Jimi Hendrix join Beck and his band on stage.

The Tele-Gib is another Beck staple included in this auction. This hybrid guitar, put together specifically for Beck by Seymour Duncan, comprises a Fender Telecaster body and neck, with a pair of Gibson PAF humbucker pickups extracted from a Flying V. It's expected to fetch between £100,000 and £150,000 ($126,318 and $189,477).

Duncan brought the guitar to Beck while he was rehearsing with Beck, Bogert & Appice in London in late 1973. Eventually, it found its way onto Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers, from Blow by Blow, and was used in the 1981 benefit show The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball alongside Eric Clapton.

Beck’s 1954 Sunburst Fender Stratocaster was a gift from Humble Pie’s Steve Marriott and became one of his most prized possessions. It's now expected to sell for somewhere in the £50,000-£80,000 ($63,159-$101,054) range.

Beck replaced the existing Telecaster neck with a 1958 Stratocaster neck, turning this guitar into his principal performance and recording instrument throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, including the majority of the 1980 album There and Back.

‘Tina,’ a Pink Jackson Soloist – estimated to sell for £8,000-12,000 ($10,105-$15,158) – debuted during the 1983 ARMS benefit concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden. It was used in several important recording sessions, including those with Tina Turner – thus its nickname. Famously, Turner engraved her signature on it with a flick knife and then rubbed in green nail varnish for longevity’s sake.

Another highlight is Beck’s longest-serving Fender White Stratocaster, ‘Anoushka.’ Master-built by J.W. Black of the Fender Custom Shop, it features a neck that Beck favored, paired with a white Stratocaster body.

Named ‘Anoushka’ after sitar virtuoso Anoushka Shankar, who signed it for him, this guitar became his primary recording and performance instrument for 16 years – used to record four solo albums and in hundreds of shows, including Beck’s 2012 performance at the Obama White House alongside B.B. King and Mick Jagger. It's estimated price tag? Somewhere in £20,000-£30,000 ($25,263-$37,895) range.

Highlights from this sprawling collection will be on public view in Los Angeles from December 4 to 6, followed by a showing of the full collection in the pre-sale exhibition at Christie’s headquarters in London from January 15 to 22, 2025.

For more information, head to Christie's.

To say that Caleb Quaye has had just “an illustrious career” would be an understatement. The English guitarist has played with the who’s who of the music industry, sessioning for Elton John, Mick Jagger, Pete Townshend, and Hall & Oates, to name a mere few. However, it was thanks to a certain Jimmy Page dropping out of studio work at the last minute that Quaye's playing became imprinted on some of rock's most iconic tracks.

Quaye recalls how a friend of his, singer-songwriter Billy Nicholls, was signed to Rolling Stones manager Andrew Oldham's Immediate label. As luck would have it, Quaye had helped Nicholls engineer some demos, so when the latter eventually recorded his first album, he enlisted Quaye to play on it.

“Back then, everything was union musicians, and there was a contractor in the studio, David Katz, and his brother, Charlie. Charlie would be the booker for the strings, and David would be the rhythm section,” Quaye says in an upcoming Guitar World interview.

“I was there on a rhythm section date. After we finished, David said to me, the new kid on the block – I was maybe 16 – and he said, ‘Caleb, I like what you're doing. I've got all this work lined up for Jimmy Page, but he doesn't want to do it anymore.’ Jimmy was a top studio guy, but he had a meltdown, got fed up, left, and joined the Yardbirds.”

After this fateful day, Quaye landed a studio contract, and inherited all the work Page had lined up for him. However, he clarifies that he was never pressured to measure up to the future Zeppelin guitarist's sound and style. “I was free to do it as I would do it. Nobody ever said, ‘We need you to play like Jimmy,’” he clarifies.

“Like most sessions, if there was something specific written in the arrangement, they'd ask me to play that. But outside of that, I was free to do it as I wanted.”

Speaking of Jimmy Page, the Zeppelin and Yardbirds guitarist recently opened up about his guitar journey at an event honoring his contribution to music and philanthropy at Washington D.C.’s British Embassy.

Guitar World's full interview with Caleb Quaye will be published later this month.

Gibson has honored Jeff Beck by unveiling a recreation of the late electric guitar hero’s 1959 ‘YardBurst’ Les Paul Standard, launched in time for his birthday, June 24.

Though Beck is seen as one of the most notable Fender Stratocaster players of his generation, the versatile virtuoso was equally fond of the Gibson Les Paul, which helped kickstart his career as an up-and-coming guitar player.

One of Beck’s biggest early career developments occurred in March 1965, when he was tapped to replace Eric Clapton in the Yardbirds. For the role, he purchased a Cherry Sunburst Les Paul Standard that would go on to become the famed YardBurst.

The LP served Beck well during his Yardbird stint, and underwent a drastic cosmetic overhaul when, at some point in 1967 or 1968, the Cherry Sunburst finish was stripped away to uncover the natural, unfinished top.

In late ‘68, the guitar’s neck then required a repair after it suffered damage. Its replacement – which had a larger L-5 headstock – arrived with Beck’s initials inlaid at the 22nd fret. At some point, black uncovered pickups were also swapped in.

This particular Les Paul is widely regarded as one of Beck’s most iconic guitars, and would remain by Beck’s side as he transitioned from the Yardbirds into the Jeff Beck group, constantly seeing action both in the studio and on the stage during this period.

As such, it’s a fitting guitar for Gibson to restore, and the firm has clearly attempted to do so with meticulous precision, recruiting the Murphy Lab’s expertise to revive the ‘59 Les Paul “as it appeared during Jeff’s Yardbird days”.

That means, despite Beck’s aesthetic experimentation, the guitar is unveiled with the original Dark Cherry Sunburst, which has been strapped to a top that, according to the Gibson Gazette, was “meticulously hand-selected to mirror the original instrument as closely as possible”.

The lightweight one-piece mahogany body is otherwise paired with an original-style ‘50s Rounded C-profile neck, a 12” Indian rosewood fingerboard sans the custom inlays, and 22 authentic medium jumbo frets, as well as a nylon nut and long-tenon neck joint.

The original uncovered, unpotted, cream-colored Custom Buckers are in keeping with the visual source material, while a black single-ply pickguard – which was later removed by Beck – also makes the cut.

Gibson’s efforts have been approved by Sandra Beck, who said Jeff was “enormously proud to have owned the original guitar”.

“He was aware and fully supportive of the amazing job and love that Gibson Custom provided to create this instrument,” she continued (via Gibson Gazette), “and would have hoped that this guitar will give hours of pleasure to those who play it.”

“Working on this project has been an absolute honor, and we are thankful for the trust and support shown by Jeff Beck, as well as his friends and family,” adds Lee Bartram, Head of Commercial and Marketing EMEA at Gibson. “The original guitar is very special, full of history and stories from a pivotal era in British music.

Only 130 of these guitars will be made. Each arrives in an aged Lifton hard shell case with special memorabilia celebrating Beck’s career.

As for price, the YardBurst Les Paul weighs in at the $9,999 mark. On the Gibson Custom scale, that sits alongside some of the firm’s other limited-but-not-as-exclusive-as-the-Greeny releases, such as the B.B. King ‘Live at the Regal’ ES-335 and Kirk Hammett’s 1989 Les Paul Custom.

Head over to Gibson to find out more.

This feature on the launch and ascent of Led Zeppelin was originally published in the March 2009 issue of Guitar World.

It's been over 40 years since the U.S. release of the first Led Zeppelin album on January 12, 1969, but the record’s influence continues to be felt profoundly. Titled simply Led Zeppelin, the disc marked a pivotal moment in rock and roll culture, where the pop-oriented rock and roll of the Sixties started to give way to what would become the heavier-sounding, artist-driven orchestrations of early Seventies rock. 

As our present notion of classic rock derives from the Seventies FM rock-radio programming format, the first Led Zeppelin album is also a cornerstone of the classic rock canon. Beyond this, it is one of the seminal heavy metal albums of all time. 

Indeed, it’s safe to say that metal probably never would have come into existence had Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones and John Bonham not walked into London’s Olympic Studios in the autumn of 1968 and laid down the nine hard-hitting tracks that became Led Zeppelin.

Several generations of rock guitarists have assayed Led Zeppelin classics like Good Times Bad Times, Dazed and Confused and Communication Breakdown in bedrooms, garages, and bars around the world. If you’re a rock guitar player, those licks are part of your DNA, whether or not you’ve ever played them.

The first Led Zeppelin album, however, didn’t spring into existence from nothing. It is very much the outcome of musical and production ideas that Jimmy Page had formulated with his previous band, the Yardbirds. Indeed, when Page, Plant, Jones, and Bonham were in the studio recording the disc, they were planning to call themselves the New Yardbirds.

These days, the Yardbirds are perhaps not as well known as Led Zeppelin, but in their time, they were the ultimate guitar band. How could they be otherwise, with Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page passing through their ranks between 1963 and ’68?

“They were a great band,“ Page says. “I was never ashamed of playing in the Yardbirds.“

The story of his alchemy in transforming the Yardbirds into Led Zeppelin is an archetypal rock narrative, filled with backroom deals and sheer brilliance wrested from rock and roll mayhem. It is also very much the story of two adolescent friends, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page.

“Jimmy and I have known one another since we were 14 or so,“ Beck says. “My sister gave me the introduction. She went to the same art college [as Jimmy]. And she came home and said, ‘There’s a guy with a goofy guitar like yours at college.’ And I went, ‘Where is he? Take me to him!’ ’Cause there was nobody else in my block or even in my town who even knew what a Fender Strat was. So meeting Jimmy was great – like meeting your long-lost brother. And we’ve got on well ever since.“

Both friends set out to make their mark in rock and roll. Page succeeded first, becoming one of London’s most sought-after studio guitarists. The British Invasion was in full force, and young Jimmy Page went to work for many of the top producers of the day, including Shel Talmy (who produced the Kinks and the Who, among others) and Mickie Most (who racked up major hits with the Animals, Herman’s Hermits, and others).

“My session work was invaluable,“ Page says. “At one point I was playing at least three sessions a day, six days a week. And I rarely ever knew in advance what I was going to be playing. The studio discipline was great. They’d just count the song off, and you couldn’t make any mistakes. I learned things even on my worst sessions. And believe me, I played on some horrendous things.“

In 1965, Page received an offer from the Yardbirds’ manager, Giorgio Gomelsky, to replace Eric Clapton, who was leaving the group. The Yardbirds had just scored their first chart-topping hit, For Your Love. Page, however, was doing far too well as a session musician and calculated that he could actually make more money that way than he could as a member of a hit-making group. Instead, he recommended his old friend Jeff Beck for the gig.

Beck became the Yardbirds’ lead guitar player during the group’s golden period, from 1965 through ’66, racking up hits like Heart Full of Soul, Evil Hearted You, I’m a Man, and Shapes of Things, recordings that managed to be both innovative and commercially successful. 

With Beck onboard, the guitar solos in Yardbirds songs started to become set pieces in and of themselves, a common practice today, but something that was unheard of until the Yardbirds came along. The group introduced the idea of mid-song tempo shifts, breaking into amphetamine-paced double-time segments or raunchy syncopations for solos, choruses, or bridges. 

The Yardbirds became closely associated with a move called the “rave up,“ which basically involved jettisoning the song’s main chord progression and resolving to the tonic root for a solo or outro, building head-rush crescendos off this simple harmonic base. 

Yardbirds’ bassist Paul Samwell-Smith and drummer Jim McCarty excelled at this kind of quick-witted rhythmic change-up. The idea of using rhythmic shifts to create episodic song structures would be a key Yardbirds legacy that Jimmy Page would invest in the creation of Led Zeppelin.

“Jeff’s time with the Yardbirds was the most groundbreaking era for that band,“ Page says. “It grew by leaps and bounds, really.“

Beck's lead guitar work with the Yardbirds helped create a vogue for minor-key improvisation based loosely on scales used in Indian classical music. (He was actually a few months ahead of the Beatles’ George Harrison getting this kind of sound onto disc.) 

Beck excelled at employing distortion, sustain and feedback to simulate the resonant drone of Indian instruments like the sitar, sarod, and tamboura. At the same time, his playing remained firmly rooted in the blues. This potent combination was another Yardbirds legacy that Page would bring into Led Zeppelin.

Along with Beck, Samwell-Smith and McCarty, the Yardbirds’ lineup included the solid, if unspectacular, rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja and singer Keith Relf, whose vocal range was somewhat limited, but who blew a mean blues harp.

A lack of competent management was another challenge the Yardbirds faced. Their string of hit singles came at the price of punishing “package tours“ into the wilds of America and overly hasty recording sessions. 

Samwell-Smith tried to improve the situation by assuming more control and formed an alliance with the Yardbirds’ second manager, Simon Napier-Bell, who had taken over from Gomelsky. Together, they produced some of the band’s best tracks, and Samwell-Smith discovered a vocation for production that would serve him for years to come.

The idea of record production by an actual band member was still pretty novel in 1965. Nobody produced their own records back then, not even the Beatles, Stones, or Dylan. 

In that respect, Samwell-Smith’s move into coproduction helped smooth the way for Page’s full assumption of production duties on the first Led Zeppelin album a few years later. Even with increased artistic control, however, Samwell-Smith continued to grow discontented with the Yardbirds, and he left the group in mid-1966. Jeff Beck was quick to recommend his old friend Jimmy Page as a replacement.

“Jimmy was not a bass player, as we all know,“ Beck says. “But the only way I could get him involved was by insisting that it would be okay for him to take over on bass, in order for the band to continue. And gradually – within a week, I think – we were talking about doing dueling guitar leads. And then we switched Chris Dreja onto bass in order to get Jimmy on guitar.“

By this point, Page was more eager to join the Yardbirds than he had been in 1965. While session guitar playing was certainly profitable, the hackwork element that went with the job had begun to take its toll. 

“I finally called it quits after I started getting calls to do Muzak [easy-listening 'elevator music'],” Page recalls. “I decided I couldn’t live that life anymore, it was getting too silly. I guess it was destiny that, a few weeks after quitting doing sessions, Paul Samwell-Smith left the Yardbirds, and I was able to take his place.”

His first recording with the Yardbirds was Happenings Ten Years Time Ago, made in September 1966. This tour de force track ranks among the greatest in the rock canon, a moody slice of psychedelia with nightmarish overtones. John Paul Jones, at the time a top London studio musician, was drafted to play bass on the track, which makes Happenings a key Led Zeppelin precursor. 

The Beck/Page Yardbirds lineup lasted for only a handful of live dates. There is no recorded document of these performances, but those who were there report amazing feats of harmonized and unison guitar leads, not to mention tandem soloing. “It could be brilliant with Jeff and Jimmy,” Jim McCarty recalls, “but it got a bit messy sometimes. A bit too much going on.”

“Obviously the two-guitar thing with Jimmy was a great idea,” Beck says. “But it was also fraught with disaster, because sooner or later one of us would have been cramped, stylewise.”

As it turned out, things never reached that point. Two dates into a particularly grueling package tour of America in October 1966, Beck became Page’s vehicle for formulating much of the sound and approach that he would employ in the creation of Led Zeppelin, not to mention the swaggering onstage persona that would set a new style for rock guitar performance. But back in England, there was plenty of business to transact. 

With the Yardbirds rapidly unraveling, Simon Napier-Bell also jumped ship, selling his managerial interest in the group to Peter Grant in January 1967. An imposing figure of a man, Grant was partnered with the aforementioned producer Mickie Most in an organization called RAK Management and Production.

Back in those days, management and production were very closely allied. Early recordings by the Rolling Stones and Who had actually been produced by their managers at the time. But having no flair for production, Grant needed Most’s studio expertise. And so it was arranged that Grant and Most would take on the Yardbirds and also launch a career for Jeff Beck as a solo artist. 

Having worked with Most in his session days, Page was perhaps more aware than anyone else that Most was hardly the ideal producer for the Yardbirds. An old school 'hit factory' guy and master of the three-minute pop single idiom, Most was great at making something of nonentities like Herman’s Hermits, but he was hardly the ideal man for an evolving, experimental guitar rock group. At the time, however, the Yardbirds didn’t have much choice.

Their career had starting going off the rails right at a time when a dramatic shift was taking place in the way rock music was perceived, consumed, conceptualized and created. Around 1965, youth culture split into two factions of music fans: those who were content to hear hit songs on the radio and purchase hit singles, and those who wanted to dig deeper and buy albums by their favorite groups. 

Rock musicians, meanwhile, began to view album tracks not as mere “filler” but rather an opportunity for musical exploration outside the bounds of commercial radio accessibility. And so a culture of fans began to form around tracks like the 11-minute Going Home from the Rolling Stones’ 1966 Aftermath album, Bob Dylan’s 11-minute opus Desolation Row from 1965’s Highway 61 Revisited and the Byrds’ Eight Miles High from their 1966 Third Dimension disc. The Yardbirds’ mid-Sixties guitar rave-ups also slotted very nicely into this growing rock culture.

As 1967 dawned, this underground culture was poised to go global as the hippie movement. The first freeform FM music stations began to appear in America’s coastal major cities, playing not only ambitious rock album cuts but also free jazz, avant-garde electronic music, Indian ragas, poetry readings… you name it. Touring America with the Yardbirds, Page was able to witness this phenomenon first hand.

“The Yardbirds were probably more popular in the U.S. than in Britain,” he says of this time period. 

“We had toured there extensively, and that experience allowed me to get in touch with the evolving tastes of the American market. There was a whole other underground scene happening that didn’t care about hit singles. In the late Sixties, American FM radio was very free form and would play entire sides of albums, including the more experimental music of bands like the Yardbirds, Cream, and Traffic.”

But this was a trick that old-school guys like Mickie Most had completely missed. His ideas on how to revive the Yardbirds’ flagging career were very much at odds with Page’s vision for the group, a vision much more attuned to where electric guitar-driven rock was heading in the late Sixties.

Page and his fellow Yardbirds entered De Lane Lea studios with Most in February 1967 to record the band’s next single, Little Games, a lightweight pop tune with vaguely psychedelic overtones. In keeping with Most’s production style, the tune was penned by an outside writing team, probably selected by the producer himself. Most also replaced Dreja and McCarty with John Paul Jones (once again) on bass and Dougie Wright on drums.

Little Games became the lead track and title of the album the Yardbirds made shortly thereafter. The album’s sessions were hurried – some accounts say the disc was made in as little as three days – and Little Games is a mixed bag, to say the least. Probably the most successful tracks are the album’s two blues-based numbers. Smile on Me, the first of them, was written by Page, Relf, McCarty, and Dreja, and boasts some of the most scorching blues licks Page has ever committed to record.

The album’s other outstanding blues track, Drinking Muddy Water, is basically the Muddy Waters song Rollin’ and Tumblin’ outfitted with a different lyric and attributed to the four Yardbirds as songwriters. Appropriation of older blues songs would serve Page again later on, most notably on Led Zeppelin II’s Whole Lotta Love, which drew from Willie Dixon’s You Need Love.

But several other songs on Little Games serve as noteworthy precursors to the direction Led Zeppelin would take. The instrumental track Glimpses has a moody, atmospheric vibe that makes it a significant antecedent to Led Zeppelin’s Dazed and Confused.

It’s one of two tracks on the album (the other is Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor) where Page uses a violin bow to play his guitar, enhancing the sound through a wah-wah pedal in this instance. It is, of course, a technique he’d employ more extensively in Led Zeppelin.

Another standout track, and an important Led Zep forerunner, on Little Games is the acoustic guitar instrumental White Summer. This is the song that would basically be reworked as Black Mountain Side on the first Led Zeppelin album. 

Like Glimpses, White Summer reflects Page’s interest in Indian classical music, but what’s also remarkable about the track is how it combines those Indian influences with the strains of Anglo-Celtic folk music. 

Page’s acoustic guitar on the track is in the popular folk tuning DADGAD. In his choice of this tuning he was influenced by two leading British folk guitarists, Davey Graham and Bert Jansch. Indeed, the main melody in White Summer was devised from the English folk tune She Moved Through the Fair, which had been recorded by Graham in 1963.

While Mickie Most strove to recast the Yardbirds as a light psychedelic pop act in the studio, Page took a completely different tack on the road, continuing to push the band in a more hard-hitting direction. Several of the many milestone rock albums released in 1967 confirmed that Page’s way was more in tune with what was to come. 

Cream’s debut album Fresh Cream appeared early that year, followed by Disraeli Gears by year’s end. Jimi Hendrix’s debut disc, Are You Experienced, came out in May 1967. These three albums cemented the arrival of the instrumental power trio and a new riff-driven mode of rock expression. Also in 1967, a new group out of Los Angeles named Iron Butterfly released a debut album that would give a name to this new style of rock music. It was called Heavy.

Indeed, heavy was the direction in which Jimmy Page pushed the Yardbirds as they toured across America and the world in ’67 and early ’68, lapping up the miles as their Little Games album quickly slid down off the bottom of the charts and into oblivion. 

Page seemed bound and determined to make the Yardbirds work, against all odds. This was the band that he’d abandoned his session career to join, and he stuck by them loyally. The group lived through three more dismal single releases following the commercial failure of Little Games. Although these discs are attributed to the Yardbirds, they were played entirely by Most’s session guys and bear no resemblance whatsoever to the Yardbirds’ style and sound.

Weighed down by such abysmal recordings, the Page/Relf/McCarty/Dreja Yardbirds finally called it quits, playing their last gig at the College of Technology in the small British town of Luton on July 7, 1968. McCarty and Reif went off to start a new band, Together, leaving the managerial custody of Peter Grant. This also left them free of Mickie Most. McCarty and Reif’s new group went to work on a debut album at Abbey Road, reuniting with Paul Samwell-Smith as their producer.

Page and Dreja stuck together initially, with the plan of drafting some new players and keeping the Yardbirds going. Page also formed a close alliance with Peter Grant at this time. 

During a famous conversation in Grant’s car, while stuck in a London traffic jam, Page told the manager that he had some ideas for a new band and that he would like to produce the music himself this time. Grant jumped on the idea. It’s probable that he was eager to get rid of Most at this juncture, and if Page really could handle the production end of things, Most would then become less necessary.

A deal was struck: Most would work with Beck on his solo recordings, while Page would produce the new band he would assemble, which at this point was slated to be named the New Yardbirds. Grant would manage both acts. Beck fared better with Most than the Yardbirds ever had. With Rod Stewart on vocals, Beck released his admirable solo debut, Truth, in 1968, a classic album generally acknowledged as another key heavy metal precursor.

Meanwhile, Page and Dreja set off in search of a new drummer and lead singer. For the latter, Page had in mind a wailing, R&B belter like Steve Marriott of the Small Faces – and later Humble Pie – or Paul Rodgers, who was just getting started with Free at the time. 

Page set his sights on an up-and-coming singer named Terry Reid, but Reid had just signed up to make a solo album (produced by none other than Mickie Most). However, Reid was able to recommend another singer to Page, a total unknown at the time by the name of Robert Plant.

Plant came from the English Midlands region near the industrial city of Birmingham, far from London both geographically and culturally. Though he had a solid grounding in R&B and blues, Plant was also deeply obsessed with the San Francisco psychedelic bands of the day, particularly Moby Grape and the Jefferson Airplane.

The young singer had been in a local group called Band of Joy that hadn’t gone very far. At the time when Page first contacted Plant, he was performing with another Midlands group called Hobbstweedle, a name very redolent of the elfin/Druid strain of British hippiedom born of a counterculture fascination at that time with J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary fantasy trilogy Lord of the Rings.

Plant was quick to recommend his friend John Bonham as a potential drummer for the group. Another Midlands man, Bonham had also passed through the Band of Joy’s ranks and had also had some success as a road drummer for Joe Cocker, Chris Farlowe, and Tim Rose. His relentlessly solid drumming would become the granite foundation of the band soon to become Led Zeppelin.

Right around this time, Chris Dreja dropped out of the picture. According to some accounts, he was less than thrilled with Plant’s voice, but he’d also decided to pursue a career in photography and quickly began to meet with success in that endeavor. (He would take the back cover photo for the first Led Zeppelin album.) 

The bass slot left vacant by Dreja didn’t remain open for long. Page had already been contacted by his old session pal John Paul Jones, who was very interested in joining the new group he’d heard Page was forming.

Jones would prove to be a great asset to Page’s new band. Not only a superb bass player but also a classically trained organist, Jones was Page’s equal when it came to studio experience. He’d played bass and keyboards on countless sessions and done quite a bit of arranging – everything from Donovan’s hit Sunshine Superman to orchestral charts for crooners like Tom Jones and Englebert Humperdinck. All of Jones’ considerable skills would be put to use in Led Zeppelin. 

The bassist was quickly admitted to the ranks and, by August 1968, the quartet that would shake the very foundations of rock music was firmly in place.

Using his deep studio connections, Page got them all a session gig backing Texan singer P.J. Proby on an album project. (Plant played tambourine.) This gave Page’s new group an opportunity to gain some experience working in a studio together. Following this, the fledgling band were off on a Scandinavian tour, fulfilling a Yardbirds commitment that was still on the books. 

Page, Plant, Bonham and Jones played their first live show together on September 7, 1968, in Copenhagen. For this tour they were billed as “The Yardbirds, Featuring Jimmy Page.” On the road in Scandinavia, Page worked to mold his new quartet, much as he’d molded the Yardbirds on tour.

On September 28, 1968, Page, Plant, Jones and Bonham settled into Olympic Studios in London to begin work on their debut album.

The project was financed entirely by Page with funds he’d saved from his session work. He paid £1,782 (roughly $4,300 at the time) for 30 hours of studio time. Page knew he could nail the album in that tight time frame. He was fully in charge this time. There was no more Mickie Most to trip over.

“I wanted artistic control in a vise grip,” Page recalls, “because I knew exactly what I wanted to do with these fellows. It wasn’t all that difficult, because we were well rehearsed, having just finished a tour of Scandinavia and I knew exactly what I wanted to do in every respect. I knew where all the guitars were going to go and how it was going to sound – everything.”

The studio chemistry was conducive to success. The combination of two seasoned studio pros (Page and Jones) with two fresh newcomers (Plant and Bonham) made for an ideal blend of hard-won expertise and first-timers’ exuberance. 

It also didn’t hurt that the engineer’s seat was occupied by Glyn Johns, one of the greatest rock engineer/producers of all time and whose work with the Stones, Who and other titans is the stuff of legend. By the time the sessions wound up in early October, the band had 12 tunes in the can. Nine of these made the final cut. 

The album kicks off effectively with soon-to-be-classic Good Times Bad Times. The arrangement builds anticipation by starting off with a simple E power chord figure spaced at two-bar intervals. The drums mark time simply with an opening and closing hi-hat and then a cowbell, but when the main guitar riff finally enters, Bonham breaks loose with one of those lurching fills for which he would soon become famous.

Most people associate Led Zeppelin with big Marshall stacks and hefty Gibson Les Paul guitars, but Page recorded the first Led Zeppelin album mainly with a Fender Telecaster, with its thinner, single-coil pickup sound. In some instances, moreover, the Tele was direct-injected into the console and sent straight to tape from there.

“But for most of the record,” Page reveals, “I used a Supro amp, a wah wah and a distortion unit called the Tonebender, which was one of Roger Mayer’s creations.“

From his long studio experience, Page had learned the essential recording truth that small amps, like the Supro combo he used on the album, can produce very big sounds if you know how to mic them. And when he applied his miking know-how to John Bonham’s drum kit, the results were very thunderous.

“Essentially, it came down to moving the mic away from instruments in order to give the sound a chance to breathe,” Page explains.

“In my session days, I worked with this drummer called Bobby Graham, who was amazing. And you’d see him set up in this little recording booth with a mic shoved right next to his kit, and he’d be whacking the hell out of the drums, yet the recorded sound would be tiny. It didn’t take long to figure out the reason why. 

“Drums are an acoustic instrument, and acoustics need to breathe. So when I recorded Zeppelin, particularly John Bonham, I simply moved the mics away to get some ambient sound. I wasn’t the first person to come across that concept, but I certainly made a big point of making it work for us.”

The vigorously up-tempo Good Times Bad Times is followed by a song that provides plenty of contrast, Babe I’m Gonna Leave You. Page had learned the song from a 1962 album, In Concert, by folksinger Joan Baez, whose work was quite popular in the Sixties, owning in part to her close connection with Bob Dylan. 

Led Zeppelin’s performance doesn’t depart much from the chord structures Baez uses in her recording of the song, but it introduces a heightened sense of drama by means of sharply articulated dynamics, something that Page would frequently refer to as “light and shade” in interviews.

Next up is the Willie Dixon song You Shook Me, a classic slow, 12-bar blues performed by the band with admirable panache. With this track, Led Zeppelin’s original audience would have been on very familiar ground. 

During the late Sixties, interest in the blues on the part of the white rock audience reached a high point. British Invaders like the Stones, Animals and Yardbirds had started the ball rolling, but Eric Clapton’s work with Cream had really focused attention on the blues and on Clapton’s work with his prior band, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.

Page’s reverb-drenched guitar work on You Shook Me eloquently demonstrates that he was no stranger to the blues idiom. He tosses off masterful lead lines and also doubles Plant’s vocal on slide guitar, one of several instances on the album where it seems like Page is employing the singer’s voice as an extension of his guitar. 

Page’s guitar solo is punctuated by dramatic pauses and drum fills. And the song’s ending introduces a ritual that would be repeated over and over again on arena rock stages in the decades to come: the “whee-whee, ahh-ahh” call-and-response riff trade between lead guitarist and lead singer.

The ending of You Shook Me is further enhanced by a backward tape echo effect on the guitar. It was something that Page had discovered during sessions for one of the final Yardbirds singles, Ten Little Indians. Desperate to do something cool with an embarrassingly uncool horn arrangement (albeit one by John Paul Jones), Page hit on an inventive idea. 

“I said, ‘Look, turn the tape over and employ the echo for the brass on a spare track,’” he recounts. “ ‘Then turn it back over and we’ll get the echo preceding the signal.’ The result was very interesting. It made the track sound like it was going backward.

“Later when we recorded You Shook Me, I told Glyn Johns that I wanted to use backward echo on the end. He said, ‘Jimmy, it can’t be done.’ I said, ‘Yes it can. I’ve already done it.’ 

Then he began arguing, so I said, ‘Look, I’m the producer. I’m going to tell you what to do – just do it.’ So he grudgingly did everything I told him, and lo and behold, the effect worked perfectly. The funny thing is Glyn did the next Stones album and what was on it? Backward echo!”

The fourth song on the album, Dazed and Confused, ended the first side of the original vinyl album with a tour de force performance soon to become a cornerstone of the Led Zep canon. 

The basic arrangement is much the same as one that Page had worked out previously with the Yardbirds, but the Led Zeppelin version benefits from the full gamut of Page’s production techniques, not to mention the performances of three other musicians more conducive to the style Page was going for.

John Paul Jones’ bass is heard first, stating the song’s druggy, descending main riff, while Page creates atmosphere via heavily echoed guitar harmonics. Bonham comes crashing in like a bull in a china shop and the song settles into its ponderous groove like a large boat righting itself after a cataclysmic wave. Page fattens the main riff appreciably with double-tracked octaves on guitar.

The song moves through a series of tempo changes, including an up-tempo part that is clearly descended from the Yardbirds legacy of rhythmic change ups. The extended instrumental section includes some passages in which Page plays his electric guitar with a violin bow. 

Now at the production helm, he was able create a much more effective sonic ambience around the bowing effect on the first Led Zeppelin album than he had been on the Yardbirds’ Little Games album. Much of this ambience comes from an EMT plate reverb, an old-school, pre-digital studio reverb device. 

“There was a lot of EMT plate reverb on that album,” Page explains, “put to tape and then machine-delayed.”

The instrumental interlude in Dazed and Confused is also punctuated by much erotic moaning on the part of Robert Plant, which is also quite reverb-drenched. This would soon become one of the singer’s vocal trademarks. 

Commentators often explicate the open sexuality of Plant’s vocal performances as an expression of the late Sixties “free love” aesthetic. But Plant was taking his cue less from hippie heart throbs like Jim Morrison and more from rock and roll’s original blatant sex icon, Elvis Presley. The Fifties rock star is one of Plant’s prime influences.

“Elvis always had these great reverbs on his voice,” Plant says, “especially when he signed to RCA [Records] and did Love Me and Any Way You Want Me. I mean, the vocal sound and compression are absolutely brilliant. And I’ve always wanted to get lost in the reverb, too. The effects become sort of an accompaniment. But it’s an extension of me.”

Side two of the album’s initial vinyl release commences with Your Time Is Gonna Come. The song boasts a classical organ intro courtesy of John Paul Jones, who used to play the organ in his local church when he was just a lad, but the high-class organ intro soon resolves into a tidy little classic rock ballad.

It’s followed by the aforementioned Black Mountain Side, an open-tuned acoustic guitar number with tabla accompaniment. Here, Page is clearly reprising what had been a winning formula on White Summer, his solo guitar turn on Little Games, evoking both Indian ragas and Anglo-Celtic folk motifs. Page even weaves a few melodic quotations from White Summer into Black Mountain Side.

A deft tape edit takes us directly from Black Mountain Side into Communication Breakdown, another all time Led Zep classic. This concise, up-tempo rocker is built on an archetypal E, D, A chordal motif. 

Page’s frenetic guitar solo is particularly bright and Tele-castic in timbre. It builds so much crazy momentum that it spills over into the chorus that follows, as if the guitarist couldn’t stop the runaway train he’d set rolling down the tracks.

I Can’t Quit You Baby is side two’s great slow blues number, a companion piece to You Shook Me on side one. Both songs were written by the same author, the great blues tunesmith Willie Dixon. 

The guitar soloing stands among Page’s finest work in the blues idiom. His tone is enhanced by slap-back echo, a tape-based delay effect frequently used on early rockabilly recordings of the Fifties, particularly those emanating form Sam Phillips’ Sun Studios. Sun’s early recordings by Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and other rockabilly icons had a profound influence on Page when he was a youngster.

“I remember analyzing the records of the Fifties, especially the Sam Phillips stuff,” he says, “and listening to the echoes. I’d listen to [Elvis Presley and Ricky Nelson guitarist] James Burton, ’cause I was learning off those records and listening to where they’d slide up the reverb on certain notes. And that’s exactly the same sort of techniques I used later with Zeppelin.”

The album closes with another epic recording, How Many More Times. The main verse structure of the tune is based around a bluesy walking bass line, but the track soon wanders off in myriad directions. 

The episodic journey includes breakdowns, drum fills and double-tracked guitar leads. At one point, the band goes into a bolero, creating the precedent for another enduring stock arena-rock move. And in two spots, John Paul Jones busts out classic Yardbirds/Paul Samwell-Smith “rave up” bass crescendos.

“That has [everything but] the kitchen sink on it, doesn’t it?” Page acknowledges. “It was made up of little pieces I developed when I was with the Yardbirds, as were other numbers, such as Dazed and Confused.”

It has often been observed that the first Led Zeppelin album is very much a document of the band’s live set at the time. It’s a testament to their musicianship that they were able to assemble such a tight set of material in the short time they’d been together before making the album. But the time frame also helps explain the relative scarcity of original material. 

Of the album’s nine songs, three are covers, one is a liberal adaptation of someone else’s song, and one is a collage of familiar blues motifs.

Out of all the tracks that went down to tape during those 30 hours, Page selected the best, favoring original material as much as possible and building a cohesive, well-paced album. The two sides of the original vinyl LP mirror one another in many ways. Each side contains a slow blues, an acoustic-driven folk-based number and an episodic epic fashioned from blues-based themes.

Peter Grant had little problem getting the project signed to Atlantic Records in the United States, but even as the contract was being signed, the plan was still to call the band the New Yardbirds. This was changed on the eve of the band’s first gig following the album sessions when they received a cease-and-desist order from Chris Dreja’s attorney.

And so a hasty search began for a new name. Page recalled a joke Keith Moon had made in 1967. At the time there was some consideration given to forming a supergroup consisting of Page, Beck, Moon and his fellow Who member, bassist John Entwistle. 

Moon had quipped, “That’ll go down like a lead zeppelin!” – a turn of phrase based on the show-biz saying “That’ll go down like a lead balloon.” Page simply changed “lead” to “led,” thus avoiding any confusion over pronunciation, and his new band had a name that would prove to be among the most enduring in rock’s history.

There have been few players as important to the shaping of the sound of blues-rock guitar as Eric Clapton. 

A true popular music superstar, the multi-Grammy winning Clapton has achieved iconic status, not only as a blues-rock guitar legend, but also as a mainstream artist who has enjoyed worldwide fame for decades, with songs such like the anthemic Layla, Wonderful Tonight, Rule the World, and My Father’s Eyes, as well as with his cover versions of songs including Bob Marley’s I Shot The Sheriff, or JJ Cale’s iconic Cocaine. 

Clapton’s effect on the development of blues-rock guitar is a matter of modern musical folklore. At a time when young blues disciples such as he, Jimmy Page, John Mayall and Keith Richards were discovering and devouring the music of original American blues artists, his subsequent success in bands such as Cream helped bring the sound of British blues to the USA, generating a resurgence of interest in the source music to new generations, as well as introducing his fluid, improvisation-based lead guitar style. 

Clapton was already a notable player in the UK, from stints in The Yardbirds and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, but as part of the so called ‘British Invasion’, he was exporting his loud, energy infused sound to eager new audiences, and by extension, to a legion of new guitar players.

After the breakup of Cream, Clapton embarked on other projects, such as Blind Faith, Delaney And Bonnie, and Derek and the Dominos. His first eponymously titled solo album in 1970 established him as a solo artist, and was the first of many over the ensuing decades to produce classics like Lay Down Sally, Bad Love, and Tears in Heaven, which cemented his status as a legend.

In this feature, I have written five Clapton-style pieces that represent his approaches through various seminal albums. Although his music has differing stylistic influences, he generally favours minor and major pentatonic-scale, blues-based lines, combining melodic phrases with bending, hammer-ons and pull-offs, with faster, flashier flurries when necessary. He also sometimes borrows notes such as the 2nd and b6th from the natural minor scale.

Piece 1: ‘Beano’ period. This piece focuses on EC’s time with John Mayall, and the album John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton (1966). The ‘Beano’ album showcases Clapton’s playing through various blues covers and Mayall originals, such as Otis Rush’s All Your Love, and Mayall bluesers Have You Heard, and Double Crossing Time. Eric played his Gibson Les Paul into a loud Marshall combo, instantly defining the sound of blues-rock guitar.

Piece 2: Regarded as the first ‘supergroup’, Cream blended blues-rock with the psychedelic sound of the times. You can hear his legendary ‘woman tone’ here, too, where Eric turned the guitar full up and the tone controls down, to create a thick, warm tone from his Gibsons and Marshalls.

Piece 3: Derek and the Dominos. Although only producing one album, here Clapton teamed up with Jim Gordon, Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle and Duane Allman. With blues covers like Have You Ever Loved A Woman and Key to the Highway, the album is of course best known for the anthemic Layla, where Allman plays the famous slide parts. Also here EC started playing Fender Strats (notably ‘Brownie’) into a Fender Champ for the recordings. 

Piece 4: Journeyman has a much more pop-rock slant with its ’80s drum and synth sounds combined with Clapton’s creamy distorted guitar. By this time he was using the Fender Eric Clapton signature Strat with Lace Sensors and mid-boost circuit, which enabled him to achieve the thicker tones of humbucking guitars.

Piece 5: MTV’s 1992 Unplugged concert featured EC and band performing acoustic versions of classic songs like Layla, but also blues standards such as Nobody Wants You When You’re Down And Out and Before You Accuse Me. It also featured Eric’s perhaps underrated acoustic technique. The album and TV show achieved staggering success, becoming the most successful live album of all time, and also EC’s biggest-selling record.

Get the tone

Amp settings: Gain 7, Bass 6, Middle 6, Treble 8, Reverb 3

Clapton has used various electric guitars and guitar amps, but you can go for either a single-coil or humbucking guitar with an overdriven amp or overdrive pedal. Experiment with Eric’s fabled ‘woman tone’ by rolling down the tone control to almost off on your guitar, and then adding gain to thicken the sound. A splash of reverb will provide smoothness and ambience.

Piece 1. ‘Beano’ period 

This is a 12-bar blues in the key of D minor with a pick-up lick starting the tune. It mostly uses notes from D minor pentatonic (D-F-G-A-C). I played this on the bridge pickup of my Gibson Les Paul. For the pick-up lick, make sure you come in on the 1& of the second bar of the count-in with the D minor arpeggio (D-F-A). Aim to ‘wobble’ the whole chord without stifling any of the notes.

[Bar 6, beat 2] Re-pick the bent second-string, 13th-fret D note, but follow the vibrato with a quarter-tone blues curl while the string is still bent, pushing the note up in pitch slightly, so it becomes close to, but not quite making, a D#.

[Bar 7, beat 1] Hold the 10th-fret, third string F note (b3rd) and bend it accurately up by a semitone to the major 3rd F# note on beat 2.

[Bars 9-10] Make sure you pitch the minor 3rd interval accurately on the second string from the 15th-fret D note to the 18th-fret F note.

[Bar 12] When you add vibrato to the very last note, have a go at emulating Clapton’s vibrato technique. When vibrato-ing static notes on upper strings, he tends to keep his palm parallel to the neck, take his thumb off the back of the neck and move his hand up and down.

Piece 2. Cream period

This 27 bar-long piece has a key centre of C minor, although the tonal centre is F minor. It pretty much only uses notes from F minor pentatonic scale (F-Ab-Bb-C-Eb). I also played this on my Les Paul, but used the neck pickup, rolling the tone back for the warbling ‘woman tone’  that Eric developed around this time.

[Bars 1-8] The eight-bar chord intro needs to have a cleaner sound than the lead part, so roll the guitar volume back here to clean up the sound.

[Bars 19-20] Beat 4 of bar 19 contains a fast sextuplet across the first and second strings. It repeats through bar 20, and is pretty fast. Try an inside picking approach; downstroke pick on the first string and un upstroke on the second.

Piece 3. Derek And The Dominos period

The first section is 16 bars long and in the key of  G minor, while the second is 10 bars long and in Eb major. There are melodic phrases using notes from G minor pentatonic (G-Bb-C-D-F) and G natural minor (G-A-Bb-C-D-Eb-F) in section 1, and mainly Eb major pentatonic (Eb-F-G-Bb-C) in section 2. I played my Fender Strat.

Piece 4. Journeyman period

This piece has a key centre of D Major, but a tonal centre of E Minor. It is 17 bars long and demonstrates Clapton-esque approaches with the higher-gain sound of his later period. Again, I used my Fender Stratocaster here. The tune mainly uses notes from the E minor pentatonic scale (E-G-A-B-D), but also from E Dorian mode (E-F#-G-A-B-C#-D), and E natural minor (E-F#-G-A-B-C-D) in places.

[Bar 2] On beat 2&, note the sustained F# note (19th fret, second string). This is the major 2nd interval from the E Dorian mode and gives a melodic, non-pentatonic flavour to the phrase. This note appears again in bar 8.

[Bar 6] The second-string bend at the end of this bar is a major 3rd going from the G note at the 20th fret up to a B note on what would be the 24th. This is a hard interval to bend, so go easy if you’re not used to big bends.

[Bars 11-12] The rapid 16th-note phrase in these two bars are quite tricky to fret cleanly, so go slowly. Note again the use of that major 2nd, F# note in bar 12.

[Bars 15-16] The E Dorian (or natural Minor) scale based phrase in bar 15 shows Clapton’s non-pentatonic approach, and the pinched harmonic in bar 16 is reminiscent of his solo in Bad Love. Aim to hit the octave pitch accurately.

Piece 5. Unplugged period 

This acoustic fingerstyle piece is a straightforward 12-bar blues in E. It goes round twice, with a brief alteration in structure in the first four bars the second time round. 

We are in 12/8 time and rely heavily on the monotonic bass technique common in acoustic blues, which involves a consistent palm-muted pulsing bass (usually the root note) on each beat of the bar, played with the side of the picking-hand thumb, while the fingers pluck the rhythm or lead line. 

This technique involves considerable coordination, but is immensely satisfying as the guitar can sound like a mini orchestra, whether solo or with other instruments. 

When looking at the music, use your thumb for the notes with the stems pointing downwards and your fingers for the notes with the stems pointing upwards. As a general rule, use the first finger of your picking hand on the third string, your second finger on the second string and your third finger on the first string. Clapton, and acoustic blues players in general, often dig in hard, but I’d suggest learning the piece accurately before playing it with too much intensity.

In January 2016, Jeff Beck asked me to write historical and basic technical info about 10 of his favorite guitars for his book Beck01: Hot Rods and Rock & Roll published by Genesis Publications. 

The publisher recommended me for the project based on the work I did on Eric Clapton’s Six String Stories, and since I had previously interviewed Jeff about half a dozen times, he was very comfortable with my input and involvement.

It was one of the highest honors in my career to be hand-picked for the project. Jeff was one of my biggest guitar influences since day one, as well as a dear friend.

The following guitars represent a great overview of Beck’s career from his groundbreaking stint in the Yardbirds through his very last shows in November 2022 with Johnny Depp. Yes, a few key instruments are missing (like the white mid-Seventies Strat he played on Blow by Blow and Wired), but the inclusion of a few personal favorites that he only played at home and never previously revealed to the public make up for it. 

Beck01 features large, detailed photos of each instrument, but unfortunately for readers who would like a closer look, the limited-edition book is long sold out and plans for a general release have not been announced.

1. 1954 Fender Esquire

While Jeff Beck’s iconic Fender Esquire which he played with the Yardbirds started life as a 1954 model, it is actually constructed of various parts from the ’50s thanks to modifications that he made to the instrument. 

When Beck bought the Esquire from John Walker (née Maus) of the Walker Brothers, the guitar still had its original white pickguard, but Jeff quickly replaced it with a black Esquire pickguard because he preferred the look of Fender’s earlier Esquire/Telecaster models. 

Because the original steel saddles were rusted, Jeff replaced them with brass saddles from a 1952 Telecaster. The original neck was also broken at one point and replaced with the 1955 Esquire neck it has now.

However, the guitar’s most visible and recognizable modification was performed before Jeff acquired the Esquire. John Walker carved the contours on the front of the body’s lower bass bout and rear of the body’s waist in an attempt to replicate a Stratocaster’s comfortable feel.

2. 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard

Beck bought his first Les Paul – a 1959 Standard – in early 1966 just before the Yardbirds began recording sessions for the Roger the Engineer album. The guitar originally had a cherry sunburst finish, but sometime around late 1967 or early 1968 he stripped off the finish and left the top in its natural, unfinished state. He also removed the black pickguard that was on the guitar prior to stripping its finish.

Beck played this guitar in the studio and frequently on stage with the Jeff Beck Group during the late ’60s, but after the neck suffered damage in late 1968 he acquired another late-’50s sunburst Les Paul with exquisite curly maple figuring as a replacement while this guitar was repaired (that sunburst Les Paul was later stolen). 

The neck currently seen on this guitar, which features an L-5-style headstock with flowerpot inlay, non-original trapezoid fingerboard inlays and Jeff’s initials inlaid at the 22nd fret, was a custom-made replacement installed during the mid ’70s by Strings & Things in Memphis. The original cream-color humbuckers were also replaced by black pickups during an earlier repair.

3. 1954 Gibson Les Paul

In November 1972 while Jeff was passing through Memphis on tour with Beck, Bogert & Appice (still called the Jeff Beck Group at the time), he bought this guitar from a fan named Buddy Davis. Originally it was a 1954 Les Paul Goldtop, but apparently the owner, Robert “Butch” Johnson, took it to Strings & Things in Memphis and asked them to refinish it chocolate brown and install two humbucking pickups. 

The owner wasn’t satisfied with the work so he traded it in and Buddy bought it. When Buddy was driving Jeff to various stores around Memphis to help him find a guitar to replace his flame-maple sunburst Les Paul that was stolen in upstate New York earlier that year, Beck immediately fell in love with Buddy’s guitar with its distinctive dark brown “oxblood” finish and offered to buy it from him.

The oxblood Les Paul immediately became Beck’s main instrument on stage with Beck, Bogert & Appice, but it is best known as the guitar that appears in his hands on the cover of his first solo album, Blow by Blow. It’s also one of four guitars, along with two Stratocasters and a 1958 Telecaster featuring a pair of humbucking pickups installed by Seymour Duncan, that Beck used to record Blow by Blow. 

The guitar’s combination of ’54 Les Paul features such as its single-piece wraparound tailpiece/bridge with later Les Paul features like humbucking pickups and a shaved neck profile gives it a very distinctive tone.

4. Early ’80s Jackson Soloist

It’s fitting that the concept of the hot-rodded guitar originated in Southern California as that locale was also the birthplace of the hot rod car phenomenon. During the late ’70s and early ’80s, Jackson/Charvel was one of several companies in Southern California that specialized in making Strat-style custom guitars with flashy finishes, high-output pickups, state-of-the-art double-locking tremolos, and slender necks that were built for speed. This design eventually became known as the “super Strat”. 

Jeff acquired this pink Jackson Soloist in 1983 and played it throughout the mid-’80s, including at a few ARMS benefit concerts and on the hits Private Dancer with Tina Turner and People Get Ready, his reunion with Rod Stewart. 

Notable features of this guitar include its neck-through-body construction, 24-fret neck and Kahler double-locking tremolo. However, the ne plus ultra feature of this guitar is Tina Turner’s signature on the treble bout, which she scratched into the guitar’s face with a knife.

5. 1956 Gretsch 6128 Duo Jet

About 10 years before Beck recorded the Crazy Legs album – his tribute to Cliff Gallup, guitarist with Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps – he searched for a Gretsch 6128 Duo Jet like the one played by Gallup to duplicate Gallup’s signature sound. 

First he acquired a 1963 model, which he said was “totally wrong,” but eventually he found a 1956 model that was in pieces. He rebuilt the guitar and installed a swivel-arm Bigsby on the ’56 Duo Jet, which he later used to record 1993’s Crazy Legs.

While the sound of this Duo Jet was close to Gallup’s, shortly after completing the album in 1992 Jeff found another ’56 Duo Jet (pictured above) with the missing link – a factory-installed fixed-arm Bigsby identical to the one on Gallup’s guitar. 

“It’s got a depth, clarity and quality that the other one doesn’t have,” he said. “It’s incredible. Everything is as close to Cliff’s guitar as one can see. I wish I could have used it on the record.” Jeff played this Duo Jet frequently on stage, and it plays a starring role in the Rock ’n’ Roll Party (Honoring Les Paul) video release of his tribute concert for Les.

6. c. early ’90s-2003 Gretsch 6022 Rancher

Another Gretsch guitar played an important role in Gene Vincent’s music, although its powerful effect was more visual than aural. A photo taken at Hollywood’s Capitol Studios in 1957 shows Vincent strumming a Gretsch 6022 Rancher flattop acoustic, his legs spread in a classic rock ’n’ roll pose with the Blue Caps huddled in a triangular formation behind him.

Blue Caps rhythm guitarist Paul Peek also aggressively strummed a Gretsch Rancher when performing with Vincent in the film The Girl Can’t Help It, which introduced many young impressionable minds to the irresistible energy of rock ’n’ roll.

Jeff’s Rancher is a more recent model made in Japan sometime between the early ’90s and 2003 when Fender bought Gretsch. With its traditional saddle and pin bridge, it sounds better than original ’50s Gretsch Ranchers, which have an unorthodox triangular “harp” bridge. This example also has a Western-inspired “G” brand and engraved block inlays similar to the original 1954-56 Ranchers.

7. 2003 Fender Jeff Beck Custom Shop Signature Stratocaster

Fender Custom Shop master builder Todd Krause built this Stratocaster for Jeff in 2003. According to Krause, it is one of two guitars he made that were custom painted by Roy Brizio, the acclaimed street rod designer and builder who made several cars for Jeff. 

The metallic bronze finish with distinctive black and white pinstriping details matches the paint job of a street rod that Brizio was building for Jeff at the time. Krause says that other than the finish, the guitar is a standard Jeff Beck Custom Shop Signature Stratocaster with hot noiseless pickups, a Wilkinson roller nut, Sperzel locking tuners and a contoured neck heel.

Fender officially introduced its custom color option in 1957. The concept was born shortly before then when Leo Fender’s associate George Fullerton visited an automotive paint shop and purchased some Fiesta Red DuPont Duco paint to finish a guitar. 

Fender’s original DuPont Duco custom color guitars match the colors of various Cadillacs, Corvettes and other Chevrolet models built during this era. This Stratocaster with its Roy Brizio street rod-style paint job is a natural evolution of Fender’s custom color concept and a fitting crowning touch for a custom-made guitar.

8. 2006 Fender Custom Shop Jeff Beck Relic Esquire

In 2006, the Fender Custom Shop produced 150 exact replicas of the 1954 Fender Esquire that Beck played with the Yardbirds. Pickup manufacturer Seymour Duncan, who acquired the Esquire from Beck in the ’70s and kept it in its original, untouched condition, loaned the guitar to Fender so they could examine, measure and duplicate every exact detail. 

Fender master builder Chris Fleming painstakingly replicated the V-shaped profile of the neck, the contours that John Walker carved in the body and every scrape, scratch and ding on the body, neck and pickguard. Fender veteran Abby Ybarra, who worked for the company since 1956, even wound the pickup for each replica guitar by hand.

9. c. 1965-71 Guild Stuart X-500 B

Guild’s hollowbody electric models were never quite as popular as those made by Gibson and Gretsch, even though the quality was generally comparable. The “Stuart” X-500 was Guild’s flagship archtop electric model upon its introduction in 1953, and thanks to its popularity it remained in continuous production up until 1993.

Although Beck never played this Guild on stage or in the studio, it was one of his favorite guitars as it reminded him of the hollowbody archtops played by rockabilly guitarists like Scotty Moore that he admired as a young child. Jeff’s Guild X-500 B (with “B” designating the blonde finish) dates from between 1965 through 1971. 

Distinguishing characteristics for this brief period include the center-raised headstock shape, large triangular abalone fretboard inlay inserts, Grover Rotomatic tuners, four controls and a Guild-branded Bigsby vibrato.

However, just like many street rod enthusiasts will put a Ford motor in a Chevy body, this X-500 had its original humbucking pickups swapped out for Gibson-style Seymour Duncan Antiquity P90 Dog Ear pickups, and a Gibson Tuneomatic replaced the original rosewood bridge.

The gold Guild knobs date from the ’50s. The custom pinstriping on the gorgeously figured curly maple back adds an appropriate decorative touch for a hot-rodded guitar like this.

10. c. mid-2010s White Jeff Beck Signature Strat

The Fender Jeff Beck Signature Stratocaster has remained a perennial best seller since its introduction in 1990, but it has undergone only two changes over the years – an upgraded version introduced in 2001 and a Custom Shop model officially introduced in 2004. 

However, Jeff’s main Stratocasters have changed frequently over that same time period. The guitar shown here was Jeff’s main Stratocaster from the mid-2010s through his final shows with Johnny Depp in late 2022.

The most notable feature of this guitar is a neck built for a left-handed Strat, which places the arrangement of the tuners in reverse order. This also reverses the tension of the strings, making the high E and B strings much easier to bend and the low E and A strings more percussive and brilliant.

Some consider this an essential element of Jimi Hendrix’s distinctive Strat tones, as Hendrix played left-handed and strung a right-handed Strat in reverse order and flipped the guitar over. Jeff’s personal custom Strats also feature Wilkinson roller nuts, whereas current Fender Jeff Beck Signature models are equipped with LSR roller nuts. 

Sanderson Rasjid, best known as founding Yardbirds guitarist Antony “Top” Topham, has died aged 75.

A statement shared by his publicist reads: “Sanderson Rasjid, born Antony “Top” Topham, passed away peacefully on Monday, January 23, surrounded by his family.” The statement adds that the guitarist had been fighting dementia in his final years.

It continues, “A founder member of The Yardbirds when they formed in May 1963, Top was their original guitarist and preceded Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page in the role.

“He went on to play guitar with artists including Christine McVie, Duster Bennett and Peter Green among others, and was considered by many as one of the UK’s most original blues guitarists. He was also a talented mural and fine artist and interior designer.”

Born in London on July 3, 1947, Rasjid formed The Yardbirds 15 years later alongside singer Keith Relf, bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, drummer Jim McCarty and guitarist Chris Dreja, after becoming inspired by watching an early Rolling Stones concert at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond.

However, the guitarist left the band within a year so as not to abandon the art degree he was studying at college, and was subsequently replaced by Eric Clapton.

After finishing his degree, Rasjid got a gig as a session musician for UK blues label Blue Horizon, with notable credits including Christine McVie’s Christine Perfect and a number of singles by Duster Bennett.

Rasjid also released a selection of solo music during his career, including a Christmas single, Christmas Cracker, in 1968, and a solo album Ascension Heights, released under the name Top Topham, in 1970.

Years later, the guitarist, then named Antony Topham, joined the Subud spiritual movement and changed his name to Sanderson Rasjid. Decades later, in 2013, Rasjid rejoined The Yardbirds, replacing his old friend Chris Dreja.

He’d been my best friend at school, and had introduced me to the music I fell in love with,” Dreja recalled of Topham and The Yardbirds’ early days in a 2007 interview with Classic Rock. “Pretty soon we were playing four or five nights a week which made it a paying proposition.”

Sanderson Rasjid is the second former Yardbirds member to have passed away in the past month. Legendary guitarist Jeff Beck died two weeks ago at the age of 78 after contracting bacterial meningitis.

The Yardbirds are a legendary group not only due to their groundbreaking run of albums in the mid- to late-1960s, but also for the fact that three of the greatest guitarists of all time – who between them played a huge role in shaping rock guitar in the late '60s, early '70s, and beyond – came from their ranks.

Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and then Jimmy Page all, in succession, served as the band's lead electric guitar player, each leaving their own distinct mark on the group, and rock as a whole.

Though a two-guitar band for much of their history, there was no overlap – aside from a brief period in late 1966 where Page moved from bass guitar to six-string duties, alongside the soon-to-depart Jeff Beck – between the three legends.

In 1983 though, the trio would finally come together in remarkable fashion for the ARMS (Action into Research for Multiple Sclerosis) Charity concerts. Initially envisaged as a single show at London's Royal Albert Hall, the ARMS initiative soon expanded into a brief American tour, which ran from late November through early December of that year.

Each of the ARMS shows featured a remarkable assemblage of talent, with – to name just a few participants – Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones, and Kenney Jones of the Faces and the Who, and (at select dates) Steve Winwood, Joe Cocker, and Ronnie Wood coming together at the behest of Small Faces/Faces bassist Ronnie Lane, who had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis a few years before.

The star attractions, though, were Clapton, Beck and Page, who – at every show – would each perform a brief solo set before joining forces for a set-closing jam. 

Below, you can watch the trio – backed by the aforementioned all-star band – tackle Clapton's iconic Layla at New York City's Madison Square Garden in December 1983.

The video is a pleasing display of each guitarist's signature style, with Clapton – who, appropriately, takes the first solo – expressing the song's close-to-home emotional anguish through a series of biting bends and phrases, and Beck putting on a fleet-fingered and freewheelin' plectrum-free showcase. 

Page – who's a little hard to hear at times, thanks to the sub-par mix – takes the wildest turn of the three, putting his whole body into some crazy bends, while taking up slide duties in the song's second half. 

Though Page was a loose player even in his prime, it's hard not to hear his playing's sharper edges in the video, and others from the same tour. The ARMS shows, though, were a crucial step back into the limelight for Page after the most difficult period of his life. 

Aside from a brief onstage cameo at a March 1981 Beck show at London's Hammersmith Odeon, he hadn't performed live since Led Zeppelin's final show with John Bonham in July 1980. Devastated by Bonham's death later that year, Page, by his own account, barely played guitar in the two years that followed.

Speaking to Guitar World in 1986, Page – who up to that point had only released the soundtrack to the film Death Wish II under his own name – revealed his uneasiness about returning to the stage for the ARMS shows.

When asked in the interview if he was nervous about the concerts, the Led Zeppelin icon said, "That’s an understatement. Of course I was. I was terrified but I wanted to do the whole thing."

"It was funny," Page went on, "because I said, 'Yeah, I’ll do it, I’ll do it, yeah, great!' but at the last moment I thought, 'Oh, God, what am I gonna do!' 

"It’s the truth. It’s funny but it’s true because everyone else had notable solo careers. Like Steve Winwood, fuck, he’s had enough solo albums, and Eric, and Jeff [laughs]. But the fact was everyone was working so tightly together. Not for themselves but for the cause of it which was great. 

"I’ll tell you," Page added, "I don’t think any promoter could get those three guitarists doing that. Do you know what I mean? But for the right reason they’re there." 

In a 1985 Guitar World interview of his own, Beck also spoke highly of the experience, saying, "The whole thing was so un-starlike, nobody played the big star, and we just loved being on the road because A) it was a good cause and B) it was a short tour, a one-time special thing, so we just got in and enjoyed the hell out of it. 

"I think it should have gone on for another month, but see, initially we didn't know how well it would be received. Because it was Jimmy, Eric and myself for Ronnie Lane, the whole thing seemed to really mean something. It was an amazing experience all over." 

As we process the news of Jeff Beck's untimely passing on January 11, 2023, we've been digging through the archives to remember some of his best and most thought-provoking conversations with Guitar World. This interview was originally published in the June 2009 issue.

Since starting out with the Yardbirds nearly 60 years ago, Jeff Beck defined guitar virtuosity. On the eve of his 2009 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he talked about his storied past, then-recent shows with Eric Clapton and his plans for what would become his 10th album, Emotion & Commotion.

“Largely, I disapprove of overblown ceremony,” Jeff Beck pronounced, referring to his induction into the Rock Hall, “but it’s difficult to say no to something like this.”

It’s an honor more than deserved by the man that many regard as the greatest rock guitarist of all time, bar none. He said, “After 40 odd years, it’s nice to be recognized. It’s nice to know there’s someone ringing the bell for me.”

Back in 1992, Beck had been inducted to the hall as a member of the Yardbirds, the groundbreaking '60s rock band that first brought him to fame and also launched the careers of Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. But the Yardbirds were just the first chapter in a legend that is as large and bold as rock itself. 

Beck was a towering figure in every rock era, deftly moving with the times, yet never pandering to trends. He embraced '70s fusion as gamely as he delved into '90s techno, making each new genre an ideal setting for his dazzling six-string artistry.

“If you look at the albums, I think they pretty much show us the high points,” Beck said of his career. “It’s all the waiting around in between albums that’s never so great!”

Jeff Beck is entirely in a class by himself as a guitarist. His phrasing is utterly unique – restless, puckish, unpredictable and always a few leaps ahead of even the most adroit listener. Yet he can also touch your heart with some of the most lyrical, graceful and stunningly beautiful passages ever wrested from an electric guitar and amplifier. 

Part of Beck’s magic originates in his masterful and mystifying technique. He’s one one of the few rock guitarists that didn't use a pick. All the fingers of his right hand come into play, not only to pluck the strings but also to manipulate the vibrato arm and volume control of his preferred axe, the Fender Stratocaster.

Beck’s uncanny combination of vibrato-arm technique and left-hand string bends have made him a master of legato phrasing and microtonality, the pitches “between the notes” of a tempered Western scale. This renders him better able to evoke the sounds of Indian, Bulgarian and other world music than most other rock guitarists, and adds a mysteriously unique quality to this straight-up rock playing. 

Beck’s sense of pitch is more complex and subtle than the average person’s. By not using a pick, the fingers of his right hand are free to roam up the fretboard to execute tapping maneuvers that have all the grace of ballet steps.

It’s a delight to watch how Beck put all these expressive techniques together, and his 2008 DVD/Blu-ray disc Jeff Beck Performing This Week... Live at Ronnie Scott’s provides an ample opportunity to do just that. 

Filmed during his week-long residency at London’s legendary jazz club, the disc offers a ringside view of Beck and his band (drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, bassist Tal Wilkenfeld and keyboardist Jason Rebello) performing a set that spans Beck’s solo career. The camera lingers long and lovingly on Beck’s hands as he tears through classics like Beck’s Bolero, Led Boots, Goodbye Pork Pie Hat and Blast from the East. This is guitar porn of the highest order.

“It was nerve wracking, I have to tell you,” Beck says, “because of the low ceilings and smallness of the club. It’s not what we’re used to. We’re used to playing bigger venues. But it was nice to bring some special guests into the performance. We had Imogen Heap, Joss Stone and Eric Clapton, to most people’s delight. It’s nice to have a guest suddenly appear that nobody is expecting to see.”

Live at Ronnie Scott’s might never have happened had Beck and his wife not paused for a coffee at a cafe opposite the club one sunny afternoon. They were approached by the club’s artistic director at the time, Leo Green, who said, “Hey, why don’t you play Ronnie’s?” To which Beck promptly replied, “Hey, why don’t you fuck off?” But he eventually relented, cajoled into performing at the club by his wife and also a BBC film crew that was putting together a documentary on Beck and needed some recent footage. He explains, “So we tried to get both things going at once – a bit of intimacy and a bit of footage.”

Shortly after sharing Ronnie Scott’s small stage with Clapton, Beck took off for Japan, where he and Clapton performed two history-making live shows together at Japan’s massive Saitama Super Arena on February 21 and 22. 

Says Beck, “The Ronnie Scott’s thing was just two songs together with Eric, five or six minutes. But this was a fairly polished 40-minute set, and in front of 16,000 to 18,000 people per night. 

“That was an experience – a much bigger place than I’m used to. My usual capacity is 6,000 to 7,000 tops. But those big places, they’re no different to any of the other places once you get stuck into the playing. Except your cash register’s a lot louder.”

The two guitar titans put considerable thought into the setlist. “We had to work pretty hard to get seven or eight tunes that were neutral to both of us,” Beck explains. 

“Not too much leaning to one side or the other. Eric suggested a couple of [jazz tenor saxophonist] Eddie Harris songs, which I thought sounded really great. Compared to What was one of them. We also did a couple of Muddy Waters songs. And we ended up with Sly Stone’s I Wanna Take You Higher, which I thought was really great. That was my idea. Eric was most accommodating and very nice to work with.”

So nice, in fact, that Beck says that there are “whispers” of the two guitar heroes reconvening for one or more shows at Madison Square Garden at some point down the road [the pair would go on two play two shows at the New York City venue in 2010].

Meanwhile, Beck has also started work on a new studio album. The guitarist is notorious for changing his mind, but right now what he’splanning is a power trio disc with Colaiuta and Wilkenfeld as his rhythm section.

“I’d like to get back to that Jimi Hendrix Experience type of approach,” he says. “The way that Jimi played, you didn’t miss the keyboards. It was all heavy and powerful. It just suggested power through the drummer, which I like. I love the sound of a big three-piece.”

At this point, Beck’s done it all, as this fascinating career retrospective interview below makes clear. But at age 64, he continues to be a restless musical seeker, never satisfied to rest on his laurels, always eagerly pursuing his next musical incarnation.

No historical account of the guitarist’s highly eventful career can fully sum up the Beck mystique, nor can any technical analysis completely explain his brilliant playing; the magic he works with a guitar transcends both these things. Somewhere beneath that laddish, car-loving, Brit exterior lurks the soul of a poet.

1965-'66: With the Yardbirds

Beck became Eric Clapton's replacement in the Yardbirds just as the group’s career was starting to take off. They were under the enthusiastic, if somewhat journeyman, management of voluble Euro-beatnik Giorgio Gomelsky, who had managed the Rolling Stones early on and also given the Yardbirds the Stones’ old residency at London’s Crawdaddy Club. 

Yardbirds’ singer Keith Relf, bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja and drummer Jim McCarty were riding high on the success of their first hit single, the harpsichord-driven For Your Love. But the record had prompted the resignation of Clapton, who was reportedly appalled by the disc’s pop appeal and wished to stick to his blues roots.

Jeff Beck was more open to experimentation. Seasoned by gigs with the Deltones, Tridents and Screaming Lord Sutch, he brought new guitar tones and new musical influences to the rapidly evolving Yardbirds. 

His 18-month tenure with them is generally acknowledged to be the band’s most fertile period. Beck’s fiercely innovative playing found the mystical link between blue notes and the plaintive drone of Indian sitar music just coming into vogue in the mid '60s. 

What Beck did with sustain and vibrato seemed like voodoo in 1965. Brilliant Yardbirds singles like Heart Full of Soul, Evil Hearted You, Shapes of Things and Over Under Sideways Down drew up the blueprint for psychedelic guitar rock. The authoritative bite of Beck’s Fender Esquire on bluesier Yardbirds numbers like I’m a Man, and Train Kept a Rollin’ left an indelible mark on American garage rock.

Suffice it to say that the Yardbirds were the first rock band where the guitar playing mattered more than the singing. The nervous energy of Beck’s guitar lines – terse phrasing and vertiginous leaps from the top of the fretboard down to the low strings and back again – make his Yardbirds-era guitar work distinct from that of Clapton and Jimmy Page. 

It was Beck who brought Page into the Yardbirds. (Ironically Page had been offered the gig after Clapton left, but declined, recommending Beck instead.) The two guitar titans played side by side for a handful of Yardbirds gigs and three recordings (Happenings Ten Years Time Ago, Psycho Daisies and Stroll On). But then Beck left the group that had brought him worldwide acclaim, his mental and physical health undermined by the Dickensian rigors of mid-'60s touring.

You’re one of the few rock guitarists who picks with his fingers instead of a flat plectrum. Is that something you got from your early interest in country-influenced rockabilly players?

“Absolutely. From Cliff Gallup [guitarist in Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps] and Chet Atkins. I was fascinated with how Chet Atkins played a bass part and the melody simultaneously. I had to learn that. It helps the brain with coordination to keep a rhythm going with claw-hammer style [picking]. It all comes from folk banjo and God knows what else.”

Is it fair to say that your rockabilly influences set you apart from many of your blues-purist contemporaries, like Clapton and the Stones?

“Yeah. I remember having an insulting criticism from Eric Clapton saying, ‘You gotta get rid of that folk style of country picking.’ Probably because he couldn’t do it. I know it used to annoy him. I’d be out in the middle of some simple groove and then out would come this claw-hammer picking. I felt like doing it, so I did.”

So who was doing feedback first? You? Clapton?

“No, I did it way before Clapton, probably in 1960 [with the Tridents], because I had a terrible amp that fed back anyway. And when we started playing big ballrooms you’d turn up the volume, and [the amp would] wheeeee. And everybody would start looking at me, thinking I wanted to be dead ’cause I’d made this mistake. 

“So I had to turn a horrible sound into a tune to make them think I meant it. That’s where it all came from: the inability of sound systems to cope with the needed volume. We had no real PA. The singer would use the house PA, with a terrible microphone. One of those little square things that was all bass and nothing else. 

“And then, of course, the Yardbirds enabled me to continue experimentation. That’s why I really enjoyed that time. Keith Relf and Paul Samwell-Smith used to write these very skeletal kind of melodies that enabled me to do tricks that I otherwise probably wouldn’t do. All I needed was three good melodies, and away I went.”

Speaking of great guitar melodies, did the Heart Full of Soul demo arrive with that intro riff in place?

“No. I don’t think so. It was written by Graham Gouldman [later of 10cc], who also wrote For Your Love. And [The Yardbirds] got this Indian man in to play sitar. But the sitar player we got couldn’t play in 4/4 time. What he was doing was totally magical, but it just didn’t have any groove to it. 

“And I showed him on guitar what I thought would be a good idea, which was that minor riff with the D string droning an octave below. And everyone said, ‘That sounds great. Let’s just leave that.’ And we sent the Indian man on his way. But the riff wasn’t there before. It wasn’t written like that. I could be wrong, but I just don’t remember that that had already been written.”

You played a Fender Esquire in the Yardbirds?

“Yeah. Except for some of the later recordings, where I used a Les Paul.”

What about amps during this era?

“Two Vox AC30s, linked in series and placed on two chairs that were commissioned from whatever sources. So they were at waist level, where I could get to the controls easier and hear the sound better.”

Were things like the incredible guitar solo in Shapes of Things rehearsed or pretty much done off the cuff?

“Off the cuff. I remember there was mass hysteria in the studio when I did it. They weren’t expecting it. It was just some weird mist coming from the East out of an amp. Giorgio Gomelsky was freaking out and dancing about like some tribal witch doctor.

Was there a groupie scene back then?

“Yeah. And some of them were pretty memorably horrible. I think they were going in for a huge arse contest or something. Badly camouflaged.”

You had actually asked Jimmy Page to join the Yardbirds before Paul Samwell-Smith left, hadn’t you?

“Yeah. And then when Paul did leave it was quite a blow, because we didn’t have that huge bass sound – ’cause he pioneered those four-note bass chords. Jim [Page] was not a bass player, as we all know, but the only way I could get him involved was by insisting that it would be okay for him to take over on bass in order for us to continue. And gradually, within a week, I think, we were talking about doing dual leads. Then we switched Chris onto bass to get Jim onto guitar.”

How long have you known Jimmy Page?

“We must have been 12 or 14. My sister gave me the introduction. She went to the same art college, or tech college, whatever it was. She came home and said, ‘There’s a guy with a goofy-looking guitar like yours at college.’ And I went, ‘Where is he? Take me to him!’ And we’ve got on well ever since.”

It’s said that Page first played guitar in the Yardbirds because you collapsed in San Francisco and he had to cover on guitar while Chris Dreja switched to bass.

“Oh, I can’t remember. I collapsed everywhere, didn’t I? Yeah, it was terrible. I also collapsed in Marseilles once with food poisoning. Obviously, the idea of having Jim and me on guitar was a great one, but it was fraught with disaster because, sooner or later, one of us would have been cramped, style-wise. 

“I don’t know – maybe we would have worked something out. But I said, “Wait a minute. I just got my best mate in on guitar. He’s gonna see me off up the road if I’m not careful.”

Was that part of the tension that led you to quit the Yardbirds in 1966?

“No, it was really just those package tours that got me down. When we were alone it was alright, but banged up with 15 other acts it was really dreadful: onstage for 15 minutes, then you’d drive 600 miles and do another 15 minutes – I couldn’t stand it. I just got off the bus and literally went home. 

“I loved being in that band, but I could see the end in sight anyway. So it was that, coupled with the rigorous touring. Being misrepresented. Being put on Dick Clark roadshows and stuff was not where I wanted to go. [The tour Beck abandoned was with teen-oriented pop acts Brian Hyland, Gary Lewis & the Playboys and Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs, hosted by American DJ and TV presenter Dick Clark.]

“But it was still traumatic leaving the Yardbirds. Because I just walked out on the one thing that gave me life, gave me recognition. It was pretty tough. I didn’t feel proud about dumping them in the shit. I got home and faced a bleak winter in England with nothing to do. So I must have been desperately unhappy to do what I did. 

“I guess I thought they were going to call me up when they came back and say, ‘Sorry we upset you. Please come back.’ Instead, it was more like, ‘Sorry we upset you. Fuck off.’ 

“Then I got seriously ill several months afterward. That food poisoning in Marseilles took care of me big time. I couldn’t get my strength back. I think it was a lot more serious than it was diagnosed. It was more like a meningitis type of headache. Terrible. So silly was the pain, I just felt somebody must be able to hear it. It was that bad. I don’t think I was given the right medication.”

1967-'69: The Jeff Beck Group (Mark I)

Regaining his health, Beck entered the era of the power trio in grand style. The Jeff Beck Group took its place alongside Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Led Zeppelin at the vanguard of bands that were defining the late-'60s guitar rock aesthetic: a heavy sound, with plenty of room for extended, freeform improvisation. 

Vocals were provided by Rod Stewart, soon to be lead singer for the Faces and, later, a superstar on his own. Ron Wood (later of the Faces and Rolling Stones) was on bass, having switched over from guitar at Beck’s prompting. 

The drum throne was occupied, at various points, by Mick Waller, Tony Newman and, for the one fabulous studio cameo, the Who’s Keith Moon. Also lending a hand – two, actually – was session pianist extraordinaire Nicky Hopkins, whose nimble playing was integral to many of the best tracks by the Stones, Who and others.

This was Beck’s Les Paul–through-a-Marshall phase, and signature tracks like Beck’s Bolero found the master experimenting with chunky, guitar harmonies. An unlikely alliance with producer Mickie Most, best known for his work with British Invaders like the Animals and Herman’s Hermits, yielded two all-time classic albums: Truth and Beck-Ola. 

A solid fave with late-'60s groupies, the Jeff Beck Group had superstar potential. But alas, tensions between Beck and Stewart brought the band to an early demise.

How did Mickie Most end up being your producer after you left the Yardbirds?

“That was as absurdly ill-advised a career move as it was quirky – as traumatic as it was useful. Mickie was a complete bubblegum, middle-of-the-road producer, but he still loved Motown and rockabilly – he just wouldn’t have anything to do with them at the time. 

“He was a forward-looking pop producer, and he had good-quality acts like Donovan, Lulu and all those, who were annoyingly good at selling records. [Beck played on Donovan’s 1968 single, Barabajagal.] 

“But where Rod was concerned, Mickie told me, ‘You don’t want that poof on your record.’ And that’s where I started to hate him. I said, ‘You, in your infinite pop wisdom, can’t see that this guy’s gonna rule big-time?’ 

“He also couldn’t see a market in America for underground, sort of hooliganistic rock. In ’67 and ’68, when I was in big trouble with my musical career and wondering what direction to take, he explicitly said to me, ‘Oh, that Jimi Hendrix and all that twang-twanging and feedback nonsense – it’s finished.’ I said, ‘Excuse me, it’s just starting.’

But Mickie’s sidekick was Peter Grant [who went on to manage Led Zeppelin]. And finally Mickie said, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll introduce you to my partner next time you come up. I don’t want to know from you anymore. You finish the contract, you do what I say, and we’ll all be happy. If you want to be on TV, you do the songs I want. And you sing.’ 

“He couldn’t see that the guitar was what I should be doing. But Peter Grant did. And it was just that thread of lifeline that got us to America with Rod. Peter Grant believed in the act.

“I damned and confounded New York when I came back with that band. All the bad reviews about me being a bad boy leaving the Yardbirds in the shit were all just washed away when we played the Fillmore East. Don’t get me wrong – we were shitting our pants. Rod wouldn’t come and sing to the audience direct; he was hiding behind some curtains. I finally had to say, halfway through the set, ‘There is a human actually making those noises in this building.’”

Why did you decide to recut the Yardbirds’ Shapes of Things with the Jeff Beck Group?

“Because Rod loved that song. He thought it would be a great idea to do another angle on it, and I just wrote that complete other riff for it. And it became the precursor to a lot of power rock and roll. That plodding sort of rhythm that we nailed. I suppose whenever I get named as a heavy metal innovator, that’s probably one of the best examples of heavy metal in embryo.”

Mick Waller’s drum work on that was incredible.

“He was great. For a long time he was flatmates with a Motown drummer, Benny Benjamin, which must have rubbed off, because he had great dexterity and fantastic Motown chops. Unfortunately, having seen Keith Moon, I just couldn’t be happy unless I had a drummer with that amount of charisma and power. Mickey was a great drummer, but he didn’t have the charisma.”

You were close to Keith Moon?

“Yeah. I couldn’t get enough of him. A day would go by in half an hour when you were with Moonie. Just complete lunacy and genuine organic humor. Your jaw would ache from laughing. How [The Who] put up with him for as long as they did, I’ll never know.”

And he’s on Beck’s Bolero.

“Yeah. We couldn’t mention him on the album for contractual reasons.”

Did Jimmy Page write that song as a vehicle for you?

“No. It was my melody over his rhythm. He came up with the bolero rhythm on the 12-string. But it’s my riff in the middle. I’d decided that the Yardbirds’ trademark was to stop in the middle of the song and come into a completely different rhythmic thing, like they did on For Your Love. 

“A pop single that suddenly stopped and changed groove halfway through just broke all the rules. So with Beck’s Bolero, we used that as a kind of signature, to continue that kind of raw break.”

This is also the period when you got to know Jimi Hendrix.

“You say, ‘know Hendrix.’ It was all too brief. It was just one year – ’69 it would have been – when the Jeff Beck Group was playing [Manhattan rock club] Steve Paul’s Scene. We were there for weeks, and Jimi would come in just about encore time and everyone would freak out. 

“He’d come onstage and completely overshadow and undermine what we’d done. But nobody cared; it was so great. And to have Rod singing as well, two guitars blazing away… forget it. It was just crammed to capacity every night.”

Did playing with him goad you to whip out some of your most amazing stuff?

“Yeah. I thought, if he’s not afraid to stand onstage with me, I’m not ashamed to go anywhere. There was such a contrast between the way he was onstage and the way he was offstage. He spoke in whispers. He would never raise his voice above a whisper. It was all in his expressions, in the hands. Unbelievable comedy and profound statements just by the raising of an eyebrow. 

“He did burn the candle, though. I couldn’t keep up. We went out one night, from the Scene. We’d already played two hours of raving rock and roll with him coming on for the encore. Then we went to the New York Brasserie to have something to eat, and somewhere after that. At four o’clock he said, ‘Let’s go back to the hotel.’ I thought, Thank God. He’ll fall asleep and I’ll go off home. But instead he’d start playing stuff, and we’d go out somewhere else at five o’clock. 

“This was just an everyday occurrence. I’d be history for two days afterward, and he’d be still at it. The guy was on a big-time roll. It was as if he’d been commissioned to be Chief Motherfucker in charge of everything. 

“Suddenly this guy comes along and upturns the whole applecart – playing with his teeth, behind his head… He made the rest of us look like a bunch of librarians standing up there.”

But he was definitely building on what you, Clapton, Jimmy Page and Pete Townshend were doing.

“That’s right. We just didn’t realize that someone was going to come along and whip the carpet out from under us in quite such a radical way. And there wasn’t any turning back after that. You can’t unpull the carpet; you just do something else. 

“That was the most ponderous time in my life: what to do now that that guy’s done what he’s done? And when I found out that people still wanted to hear what I had to say, I carried on.

“But it was pretty rough, I must say. A pretty grim time, with no one to talk to about it, except Jimi himself. It was almost the end of my career. I probably would have packed up if he hadn’t spoken. 

“I used to say ‘Jim, what the fuck?’ And he said. ‘Man, you know when you play blues, it’s as boring as a monkey. Your next step should be to take the electro stuff further. Experiment. That’s what I respect about you. That’s your thing. Don’t try to play the blues.’ And that’s with Eric as well. He said ‘Don’t mess with my music.’ So I forgot about the blues…with a few notable exceptions.”

So why did the first Jeff Beck Group break up?

“Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough material to keep that band going. Rod was writing ghastly lyrics, just thrown together. It’s a shame, because I thought he was singing really great on Beck-Ola. We should have had a writer or producer come in and take over. Rod’s attitude was, ‘I don’t like being a sidekick to a guitar hero.’ Quite right. Tough shit, mate. See ya.”

I was going to ask what your original concept was in naming the band the Jeff Beck Group.

“Well, I was the name, you know? Because of the Yardbirds. I couldn’t really hide behind Rod and expect anyone to book us. I didn’t like the word ‘group.’ I suppose it was supposed to be like The Spencer Davis Group, where Steve Winwood was the main vocalist. That worked for them, so what about the Jeff Beck Group with Rod as the main vocalist? He didn’t like that at all. There was sour hatred and resentment for having my name on the tickets and yet he was singing.”

1970-'74: The Jeff Beck Group (Mark II), and Beck, Bogert & Appice

In 1970, recovering from a severe automobile accident, Beck put together a new version of the Jeff Beck Group with drummer Cozy Powell, bassist Clive Chaman, keyboardist Max Middleton and vocalist Bobby Tench. Together, they cut the Rough and Ready album. 

“I feel like I wasn’t there for that one really,” Beck says in retrospect. “It’s a post–car crash album. Rod wasn’t there. It was like, ‘What do we do?’”

A second album, titled Jeff Beck Group but widely known as “The Orange Album,” was produced by guitar great Steve Cropper and included the jam-night perennial Going Down. 

Beck’s next project was a band with American bassist/vocalist Tim Bogert and drummer Carmine Appice, formerly of Long Island, New York’s Vanilla Fudge and Cactus. The Beck, Bogert & Appice album included a heavy rock version of Stevie Wonder’s song Superstition, a tune that Wonder originally wrote for Beck. It was the first of several Stevie Wonder songs that Beck would cover.

One of your more surprising career moves was playing with Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice.

“You think that was surprising?”

Yeah. Here were these American guys, from a different world, musically.

“It was like I said about Moonie. I was trying to get a drummer that seriously kicked ass. I was looking for that kind of over-the-top awesomeness that Keith had – the stick twirling and everything. And Carmine did it. He was really devastatingly good. Carmine was probably the last of the Forties-style, bigband, fuck-off drummers. 

“Yet he still had that forward-thinking Billy Cobham–type feel. But once again, we had more power than we needed but not enough of a story line, so to speak. Not enough good songs; great actors but no storyline. Although that seems to sell millions of dollars worth of films nowadays.”

Stevie Wonder’s music became a big inspiration for you around this time.

“Absolutely. Hearing Music of My Mind just really moved my spirit. I was at someone’s house; I picked it up and played it. I couldn’t hear what they were saying for an hour. I was just completely mesmerized by the sounds coming off that record. 

“And I thought, There he goes – there’s a genius reinventing himself. And the thought that I’d be standing next to him in the studio one day was way beyond my dreams. But right out of the blue, after having raved about that record, it must have reached somebody at Epic. And they said, ‘Stevie would be interested in having you go over.’ 

“And I sort of went…gulp. It was the most memorable time. Frustrating at first, because you know he can’t see you – there’s this immediate barrier right there. But within a couple of days that was gone. It was really uplifting just to be around and watch him put a song together so quickly and so perfectly that nothing could be improved. 

“He’d do a rough tryout of something that was better than anything I could ever come up with. He was someone with songwriting skills unknown to me before. I thought, I just better stick around here for a couple of hours. 

“And he put me on one of his songs on the Talking Book album [Lookin’ for Another Pure Love]. I couldn’t care less if the solo stank. Just the way he said ‘Do it, Jeff!’ on the record, that meant a million quid to me.”

But you never had the opportunity to record with him again?

“There was another one he wanted me to go on, but I was too out of it to play. A bunch of us dropped by [New York City recording studio] the Hit Factory one night when Stevie was there. 

“But we’d really been out on the, uh, cold drinks, so I declined his offer to play. I couldn’t bear to disgrace myself in that state. I was pretty bad. We really could put it away. I said I never did take drugs, but we did lube up occasionally.”

1975-'77: The Fusion Years

In 1975, Beck announced that he was tired of working with vocalists. Energized with the jazz fusion movement, which had taken a foreground role in the mid-'70s music scene, Beck began work on an all-instrumental album with Beatles producer George Martin at the controls. 

The result was the brilliant Blow by Blow, one of the best-selling instrumental records of all time and probably Beck’s best-known album. 

Beck delved even deeper into the fusion scene the following year on Wired. He augmented the Blow by Blow lineup (keyboardist Max Middleton, bassist Wilbur Bascomb and drummer Richard Bailey) with two key members of John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra: synth-wiz Jan Hammer and drummer/producer Narada Michael Walden. 

Hammer’s innovative Moog lead lines provided an excellent foil for Beck and coaxed new shades of timbre and phrasing from the guitarist’s manic sensibility. The two virtuosi went on to release Jeff Beck with the Jan Hammer Group Live in 1977.

You’ve always moved with the times and worked in whatever the current musical idiom was at any give time, whether it was heavy rock, fusion…

“Can we say that word now and get away with it? Can we say ‘fusion’ without getting arrested? [laughs] When I first heard the Mahavishnu Orchestra, playing in Central Park, I just began to develop wings because of that. They were hugely popular at that time, and it seemed to me that everyone was getting so involved in, and so in love with, playing music. It was a vital thing for me to have that. 

“A lot of people liked Blow by Blow because it simplified McLaughlin and it complicated rock and roll. That album was just one of those things that was so easy. There were great players, willing to play, and decent material. And in four days we’d tracked all the songs. 

“Of course, the overdubs then took four years, but the tracking was really quick. For one, we didn’t have a huge backlog of dough. And George Martin certainly didn’t know what he was getting involved in. I put some tapes on his desk one day. He saw through the mist and said there might be something there. He showed interest at a point where I was really wondering whether I should continue in the business.”

How would you assess George Martin’s contribution to Blow by Blow and Wired?

“I was looking to George sort of as a parental figure: someone to help me present some of my more outrageous visions in a way that would be acceptable to the general public. And he did it quite well. 

“Some of my favorite solos got trashed because he thought they were hideous – not musical. He’d say, ‘That’s really the most dreadful noise I’ve ever heard.’ And I’d say, ‘That’s what I want!’ But I’d usually come ’round to his way of thinking. 

“George is almost like a dad: relaxed, very focused on the sound. George Martin was probably the best producer I’ve had – the guy who could framework what I do without interfering.”

Tonally and melodically, your playing entered a new phase with Blow by Blow.

“Well, Blow by Blow is when I started messing with the Strat. I thought, I can’t be dicking around with a lot of different guitars, ’cause it was a totally different feel from one to the other. I wanted to be absolutely comfortable. And the Strat is what I started on. I became interested in going back to that again.”

Freeway Jam became one of your signature tunes, one that almost every guitarist learns at some point. Yet it was written by your keyboard player, Max Middleton.

“Actually, I hate that tune! It’s pretty awful. I could care less if people still like it. It felt like a slowed-done Irish reel to me.”

Was it your idea to record the Beatles’ She’s a Woman?

“No. Max Middleton was playing in a band for Linda Lewis. She was the wife of Jim Cregan, who is Rod Stewart’s guitar player. And she started making waves, playing Ronnie Scott’s jazz club. And Max said, ‘She does this song, She’s a Woman and people go crazy.’ They loved her version. And I turned it into a reggae, and that really seemed to make it take off.”

That’s one of the best-known tunes where you employ the mouth bag. How did you get into using that?

“There was a guy called Mike Pinera [guitarist for Iron Butterfly, among other acts] who had one, and he used to do just bass-riff noise and guitar lines with it. It took me about three or four days to get some of the vowel sounds out. 

“Amplified through a mic, it gives you even more flexibility, because the mic reads certain frequencies more accurately. It would just floor people. They’d go, ‘What the hell’s that?’ Then they’d see this sort of colostomy bag stuck to me. In fact, there was a [concert] review where the [writer] thought it was a bladder.”

Did the mouth bag become a burden in the same way that Freeway Jam did?

“Yeah. Years ago, I checked into a hotel and the radio had been left on in the room. And I heard the bag being used, and it was Frampton Comes Alive! they were playing. [Frampton reportedly used a Heil Talk Box on the recording]. 

“I thought, Wait a minute, someone’s bootlegged my album, ’cause no one else was using that thing at that time. But it was Peter Frampton. And that was the abrupt end to my use of the bag. From that night on, I never used it.”

Beck boycotts the '80s

Released in 1980, There and Back provided a neat transition into a new decade for Beck – a bridge between his past and future. Jan Hammer was involved in three of the tracks, but the remaining four were done with keyboardist Tony Hymas, who would become a frequent Beck collaborator.

The '80s, however, were not one of Beck’s favorite decades.

“For most of the '80s, the business just went to a place where I didn’t want to go,” he said. “The clothes were more important than the music at one point, I think. The video prerequisite is something I wasn’t interested in, and the domination of synthesizers in the '80s made me very depressed – to think that they could possibly overshadow real playing. They did for a while, but lo and behold, real playing came back.”

Beck’s reputation was so solidly cemented by the '80s that he could afford to retreat to his English country acreage. The legend said that he’d rather work on his cars anyway. But it’s not like he became a hermit. In the company of fellow British rock royalty like Clapton, Page and the Stones, Beck surfaced for high-visibility charity events like the Prince’s Trust and ARMS. 

He also laid down his wrenches long to play guitar on Mick Jagger’s solo albums, She’s the Boss and Primitive Cool, and to tour with Stevie Ray Vaughan and Carlos Santana.

Beck also received long-overdue recognition in the '80s. He won a Grammy for Emotions, a single off his 1985 Flash album, a synth-driven R&B effort produced by Chic guitarist Nile Rodgers. Grammy honors were also bestowed for 1989’s Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop with Terry Bozo and Tony Hymas. 

“And in 1993, perhaps as a way of regrouping after the '80s had safely passed, Beck went back to his earliest roots. Working with London rockabilly purists the Big Town Playboys, Beck recorded Crazy Legs, an album that paid tribute to Beck’s boyhood rock heroes Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps.”

On the Crazy Legs album, was it hard to stop being Jeff Beck and become Cliff Gallup?

“Are you kidding? First of all, I was heartbroken to learn that Cliff Gallup, Chet Atkins and all those guys in the '50s used fingerpicks. That’s the only way to get that crispness and clarity of tone. So I had to learn to play with those fingerpicks, and it was ghastly. They kept falling off and springing across the room. 

“I thought at one stage I was getting quite close to it, but when I listen to the originals, tonally I’m nowhere near it. 

“The stuff we did does have the spirit and sometimes the notation is perfect, but you put that old Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps album on and it’s just one of the major miracles of our time. As much as I still dearly love rockabilly, I don’t think that there’s much to be gained by pursuing that any further. 

“One can’t progress by going back too far. I still use some of the gimmickry. Slap echo is always going to be one of the best inventions ever, but there the similarity ends, really.”

1999–2003: Beck goes techno

Beck celebrated the dawn of the 21st century in grand style, releasing Who Else! in 1999. The album was the first in a techno trilogy from Beck that also included 2000’s You Had It Coming and 2003’s Jeff. All three discs found the guitar master diving headfirst into the programmed beats and digital cut-and-paste disruption of contemporary electronica. 

The albums teamed Beck with cutting-edge producers like Andy Wright, Apollo 440, David Torn (Splattercell) and Dean Garcia (Curve), but he also kept more traditional players like Tony Hymas and drummer Steve Barney in the fold. 

Who Else! also marked the beginning of Beck’s collaboration with guitar virtuoso Jennifer Batten. The presence of talented women musicians in Beck’s bands continues today with youthful bassist Tal Wilkenfeld.

As the new century got underway, it was clear that Beck had no intention of joining the dinosaur fraternity of '60s and '70s rock stars whose best work is long behind them. 

In a 2002 series of career retrospective concerts at London’s Festival Hall, Beck performed with everyone from veterans like Roger Waters and John McLaughlin to feisty then-newcomers like the White Stripes. Beck’s openness to new sounds and new ideas continues to keep him at the forefront.

Your playing achieved a new level of abstraction in the beginning of Trouble Man from Jeff.

“Oh dear!”

It’s like a Jackson Pollock canvas.

“The white coats were waiting to take me away.”

Was that just improvised off the cuff?

“Yeah. I think we wanted to have fun with no boundaries, with a drum loop and a real drummer. So there was a percussive [electronic] pulse going on, but real drums were there too, and we just let it rip for about 10 minutes. 

“Then we found out it was too long to be hogging that much space on an album. So we edited it, and it lost a lot of the frightening immediacy that the original jam had. Maybe some day I’ll release the unedited version. It’s really crazy. A bit wild. Like Mothers of Invention wild.”

When you’re in the studio playing all this amazing stuff on guitar, are you totally blasé about it? Or do you surprise yourself as much as you surprise the rest of us?

“The thing is, I don’t surprise myself enough. Which is why on the song My Thing, for example, half of the solo was done live in the studio with about 30 people in the control room, falling over drunk. I like to go berserk, but with other people around. Because they actually do make me play slightly more energetically and frantically.”

Was there a main amp you used for Jeff?

“In the early stages I was using a [Line 6] Pod in a writing studio. There’s quite a lot of demo guitar left in there on the song Plan B. But most of the rest of the album was done with a [Marshall] JCM2000, and a Line 6 as well. It has quite a lot of variations that you couldn’t get out of the Marshall. The Marshall is great. But it has just that one characteristic.”

Which of your Strats are you playing on the album?

“‘Anoushka,’ she’s called. Because Anoushka Shankar [sitar virtuoso and daughter of Indian music patriarch Ravi Shankar] signed it for me. She’s divine. I said to her, ‘Just please sign this.’ And she did. She couldn’t believe I asked her. So now that guitar is Anoushka.

On the song Pork-U-Pine it’s amazing how you use the Strat’s vibrato arm to emulate the vibrato trills in Middle Eastern vocals.

“Well, yeah, one more element that helps me play is the way they sing, especially the Eastern Indian girls, when they do that amazing scale. It’s almost unwritable. You can’t even tell what’s going on unless you slow it down. 

“And it’s great – a bit of oxygen for my playing style. I don’t like to rip off complete phrases, but some of the quick vibratos I do help me to form my own style, so I adapt it to the blues. Indian blues is really the way I describe it.”

Regarding the very high pitched melody sections in the song Bulgarian, are you playing those with harmonics and using a wang bar to shape the melody?

“Yep. That’s how I do it. It’s not easy. Especially when the harmonic isn’t in the right notes. You know, when it’s a semitone sharp [i.e., from a natural, open string harmonic]. So rather than tune the guitar down, I’ll just bend the string down before I hit the harmonic and just guess at it. Or I’ll hit it and bend it up. Whatever it takes. There are no rules in that.”

But the techno phase of your career is now over?

“Yeah, it is. When you got Vinnie [Colaiuta] on drums, you don’t need that.”

But it was a great period. Really enjoyable.

“Yeah, but the thing that was missing was there should have been a great song, which there wasn’t. But those were fun tracks to do. They were just little sketches. I thought maybe they would be used in dance clubs or something. 

“With no bass player, drummer or keyboard player, it was just a natural progression, a natural thing you’d want to do – to go to a programmer and mess around with that.”

Looking forward

In April 2008, Beck went into a California recording studio with Colaiuta and Wilkenfeld to record tracks for what became Jeff Beck's 10th album, Emotion & Commotion. “We jammed for about 10 days,” he said, “It’ll be a brave person who sifts through all that material, but I think we’ve got some interesting stuff there.”

So what is it that’s leading you back to the power-trio format?

“It was really just those particular sessions. I wanted to get away, go to California, get a bit of sunshine and work as well. And my keyboard player, Jason, was working somewhere else. 

“So I decided to go in and see what I could come up with without any chordal support, without any of that direction, because keyboards tend to determine a direction almost immediately. You hear a chord and you’ve got one foot in a certain direction. 

“But Jimi Hendrix didn’t have a keyboard player, for the most part. And with Vinnie on drums, you don’t really need much else going on. And with Tal as well, it was just a joy to blast away. 

“We’ve got 17 hours of material on a hard drive, all sounding really good. I’m going to go through it all as soon as I get my head back together. I’m pretty spaced after touring all across Australia and then to New Zealand and Japan. So I’m coming down quite slowly.”

“I was a huge fan of The Yardbirds when I was a kid. They were my second favourite band behind The Beatles, and it is a great honour to be part of that legacy,” Johnny A. tells us. Having filled some of the biggest shoes in rock ’n’ roll history, however, he’s now treading his own path with a standalone solo show.

“It was great to fulfil the experience of playing music under the moniker of a band that influenced me so much as a kid,” he says. “I had a great time doing it, but I’ve been out of The Yardbirds since 2018. That’s when I started doing the solo shows. The completely solo shows. It was a huge undertaking to get that going. And it was a strange time for me.”

How did The Yardbirds gig come about?

“I had met them previously, because we were both on Steve Vai’s label [Favored Nations] and had albums coming out at the same time. When they played Boston at the original House Of Blues, I went along and introduced myself and they asked me to sit in, which I did. 

“I had a great time. We crossed paths over the years since then and the opportunity eventually came when Jim [McCarty] was reforming the band. He was looking for guys in the States and Steve Vai recommended me for the gig. 

“Initially, I couldn’t do it as I was already committed to a tour, but when their tour got cancelled, they rescheduled and called me again. It worked out well, and I ended up working with them for close to four years.”

How soon did things fall into place with The Yardbirds’ new line-up?

“We got a song list, rehearsed for a day and a half, and just went out and did about 25 shows in a month! It was a lot of fun. It was a really good line-up. 

“It was very authentic-sounding and feeling, because the three guys that came into the band at the same time – myself, [harmonica player] Myke Scavone, who plays in a New Jersey garage band called The Doughboys, and Kenny Aaronson on bass – were all very much steeped in that early Yardbirds stuff. 

“We really had an understanding of where that music came from. I think there’s a certain feeling of the era that helps in understanding how to make that band click.”

Presumably, being a fan of The Yardbirds stood you in good stead…

“I was such a huge fan. The ’65/’66 version of the band with Jeff Beck was really, really influential to me as far as approaching the way I played rock blues guitar goes. There are different influences for me with the different things that I do, but as far as rock blues guitar goes, I would say The Yardbirds are extremely inspirational and influential.”

When did you begin playing music?

“I started playing music when I was six. I was a drummer. I was into jazz guys like Sandy Nelson and Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. But when I saw The Beatles on 9 February [1964] on The Ed Sullivan Show, it completely changed the whole trajectory of who I wanted to be. 

“I just heard all that melody and suddenly I wasn’t interested in playing drums any more. I begged my mother for a guitar, and she bought me a $49 electric guitar with a tiny little amp. I didn’t even know how to tune the thing. It was a Lafayette [Radio] Electronics, which was like a RadioShack type of place.”

Why did your time with The Yardbirds come to an end in 2018?

“I had been doing a solo thing for many years prior to The Yardbirds. I think it’s important to be creatively progressive and try to go forwards. I have a career as a songwriter, and I want to be progressive and current. 

“So my band thing and The Yardbirds ended up dovetailing me into the solo project that I’m doing now – the completely solo shows. This project is about playing music that influenced me growing up. I’m not doing any of my own songs – there are none of my own compositions in the show.”

How do you find performing alone?

“It’s emotionally challenging and it’s physically challenging, because it’s solo guitar with looping, which takes a shitload of concentration. But when it works and it’s smooth and I’m relaxed, it’s fun. Then there’s nothing like it. It feels really intimate with the audience. It’s a very communal feeling, like we’re all in this together. There are a lot of stories about the songs that influenced me as a child and moulded me.”

When did you begin playing music?

“I started playing music when I was six. I was a drummer. I was into jazz guys like Sandy Nelson and Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. But when I saw The Beatles on 9 February [1964] on The Ed Sullivan Show, it completely changed the whole trajectory of who I wanted to be. 

“I just heard all that melody and suddenly I wasn’t interested in playing drums any more. I begged my mother for a guitar, and she bought me a $49 electric guitar with a tiny little amp. I didn’t even know how to tune the thing. It was a Lafayette [Radio] Electronics, which was like a RadioShack type of place.”

Did you ever see The Beatles in concert?

“I got to see The Beatles live in 1966 in Boston. Their music inspires me every day, still. When I’m working on music or recording and arrangements, I always look to them as the benchmark of production, parts and hooks. And tone. To me, they’re like the encyclopaedia of it all. I love it.”

What was the Boston music scene like back in the day?

“I formed my first band, The Streets, in Boston in 1975 – and that kind of broke up in ’79. There was a great music scene in Boston in the 70s. It was very diverse. There was a heavy jazz scene because of the Berklee College of Music. 

“You had a heavy blues scene. There was a really good folk scene, because you had people like Bonnie Raitt in town, and James Taylor and Livingston Taylor. And then there was a great rock scene, too; you had bands coming up like

“The J Geils Band and Peter Wolf, who I played with for years, and Aerosmith. It was just a great scene with a lot of venues to play. There was also a radio station called WBCN, which was very progressive and also very supportive to local bands. They would play local bands’ music, even if they didn’t have a record deal.”

Your 1999 solo debut, Sometime Tuesday Morning, got plenty of radio play before being re-released in 2001 on Steve Vai’s Favoured Nations label…

“Right. I recorded it and put it out independently. I was actually selling it pretty good on my own. It was getting a lot of radio airplay in the New England area, and because it was making so much noise, labels were approaching me. 

“I got approached by a lot of labels back then, but I ended up going with Steve Vai’s Favored Nations and we did really well. The first single off that record [Oh Yeah] ended up being No 1 on the AAA [Adult Album Alternative radio format] charts across the country. The album went on to sell over 100,000 copies.”

Was Sometime Tuesday Morning a turning point for you?

“I think there was an element of surprise when people heard it, because people didn’t know me for that type of guitar playing back then and I’d been working really hard to define a different-sounding record. I had never really intended to make that album. I had just left Peter Wolf’s band after about eight or nine years, and I had a family to support. 

“It was about putting together a little trio so that I could go and work and make money, but I couldn’t sing because I’d lost my singing voice due to a really bad bronchial infection and a severe case of laryngitis. So I just decided to focus on being an instrumental guitarist. I was never an instrumentalist before that, I just developed it.”

How did the Gibson Johnny A. signature models come about?

“Gibson was basically my voice. My guitar was my voice, in the tradition of guitarists from the 50s and 60s like Johnny Smith, or any other guitarists playing vocal songs instrumentally. So when the Sometime Tuesday Morning album started to get all that success, one thing led to another and we collaborated. 

“The idea came out of the need for one guitar to cover a lot of bases. Most of that first record was recorded with an ES-295, but I also used Les Pauls, Firebirds, 335s and an L-5. Playing live, I was switching between a 295, a 335 and a Les Paul, but I really don’t like playing different guitars live – I’d rather just play one guitar.

“Gibson originally approached me at the Summer NAMM in 2002. They asked me how my Les Pauls were working out and I said, ‘I really can’t fault the design, but I’m missing the hollow tone I got from using a hollowbody. 

“I wish there was something we could do to kind of get me everything that the Les Paul’s getting me but with a hollow tone.’ So they said they’d be interested in working with me and developing something that would fit that niche.”

Evidently, you’ll go to great lengths to find the right tone. How did you nail The Yardbirds sound?

“I was looking for a MKI Tone Bender, because that’s what those early Yardbirds records were. Jeff Beck used them pre-Jimmy Page. Jimmy used the later one [the MKII Tone Bender]. So I called up Ant at Macari’s and he said, ‘We are going to do a series of MKIs, but we don’t have any ready yet.’ I said, ‘Well, we have rehearsals in three weeks and then I go on the road. Is there any way you can get me a prototype?’ 

“So he had David Main [of D*A*M Stompboxes] do a series of MKIs and they made me the prototype. I have the very first one. Which was interesting because Ant [Macari] told me the very first MKI made went to Jeff Beck for The Yardbirds. And 50 years later, the very first prototype that David Main made of the MKI went to me for The Yardbirds!”

What amp did you use for The Yardbirds gig?

“For The Yardbirds, you’ve really got to use an AC30. I tried using Marshalls in that band and it really doesn’t work. There’s a certain aggressiveness and in-your-face thing that happens with an AC30, and it works for that band. 

“But my preference for amplifiers has always been Marshalls, particularly JTM45s – I have four of the hand-wired JTM45s. I’m partial to a Marshall! I think their clean sounds are very much under-discovered. Every track on all of my records was recorded with a 30th Anniversary Marshall 6100. I have nine blue ones from 1992.”

Your current rig is another thing altogether...

“I really love vintage tones, but on this solo gig I’m doing now, I’m using a Fractal Axe-Fx III. It works perfect for that. I’ve also just picked up a Kemper and I’ve been messing around with that. The Fractal doesn’t feel like an amp, but it’s the perfect choice for what I’m doing with the solo looping gig, because it doesn’t really sag and it keeps all the loops articulate. 

“The Kemper gives you more of an amp feel, no doubt about it. These days, I think it would be very hard for anybody to tell the difference between a mic’d amp and a Kemper by listening to a recording. But if I’m standing in front of a regular amp, or playing a Kemper through powered cabinets, I think I could probably tell the difference.

“At the end of the day, I still try to get an analogue feel and tone even if I’m using digital gear. I still hear with analogue ears and feel with an analogue soul. Those are the sounds I love. I’m not a vintage snob.

“I love vintage guitars and amps, but I love new guitars and new amps, too, if they’re good. The bottom line is: does it sound good? And who really cares what the tool is to get you the end result? In the end: do I like it or not? Does it work or not?”

Whether you take your Billy Sheehan as a member of Mr Big, as a solo artist or as a session gun for hire, he needs little introduction. A master of his instrument to almost otherworldly levels, Sheehan has earned a reputation as one of the world’s most accomplished bassists – so we can all learn from the five albums that influenced him.

1. Yardbirds - Having A Rave-Up (1965)

"Paul Samwell-Smith was one of my first influences as a bass player. The US version of the LP had the whole band on the cover, and Paul was holding an Epiphone Rivoli bass with black nylon tapewound strings - a duplicate of which I have at my home right now. It sounds just like the bass on the album: the strings have a really cool, unique tone to them. 

"I love it when bass players step out of the herd and try different things. His playing was all great and spectacular, but on side two were some live versions of Here It Is, I’m A Man and She’s So Respectable. On all of them, he just blazes, and the bass has this deep low end because of the neck pickup that washes out the compression from the master mix. It takes over the whole band."

2. Vanilla Fudge - Vanilla Fudge (1967)

"Tim Bogert was a huge influence on me and a lot of other players. Vanilla Fudge were an amazing band. Their first album was all covers, and Tim was all over the place on the bass - but everything he did worked. It was such an inspiration to me, because it was an integral part of the arrangement of the song. 

"Years later I was lucky enough to befriend Tim and I asked him about it, and he said that basically it was a psychedelic version of James Jamerson, which made a lot of sense to me. They had a very heavy Motown influence: go and listen to Jamerson after you’ve heard Vanilla Fudge, and you’ll see what I mean. He was a huge influence, and I like to play those albums to people as much as I can."

3. Jethro Tull - Stand Up (1969)

"Glenn Cornick was another great player who had a Rivoli bass, with that amazing neck pickup. He played great, great bass solos in Bourée, the Bach piece that Ian Anderson played flute on. He had a similar tone to Paul Samwell-Smith and, while it wasn’t a tone that I went for personally, I liked it because it had a real cool, woody body to it. He did some great playing on that record. 

"After this album, which I just loved, I went back and got This Was (1968), which was just great. Aqualung (1971) was okay, but then they lost me, which wasn’t uncommon for me - a lot of bands had amazing first records but they’d lost me by the fourth. I don’t know if it was because of me or because of them!"

4. Jaco Pastorius - Jaco Pastorius (1976)

"I think Jaco really defined what a bass player should be about, in that he played songs on the record and solo pieces that were actual pieces of music. His tone and approach were legendary, of course. I daresay that to this day it’s difficult for fretless players to play without people instantly thinking of Jaco. As soon as you hear that note, you go ‘Jaco!’ 

"I play a bit of fretless: I’ve recorded fretless on two songs in my life. We did the Cat Stevens song Wild World and a very famous fretless player called me up and congratulated me on my playing on the song, because it was a hit on the radio - and I said, ‘Well, there’s only one problem: it’s my regular bass, not a fretless!’ I do a lot of bending: we covered Birdland, and when it goes D-C-D, I bend the C up to the D, just to mimic that fretless tonality. Sometimes the bass just lands like that."

5. The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

"When I do clinics, I always tell people ‘Go and learn the whole of Sgt. Pepper – you’ll come out of it a better bass player.' McCartney was a singing bass player - I think all of these might be, although I don’t know much Jaco and Paul Samwell-Smith sang. McCartney’s bass playing was unorthodox and wild, he was all over the place. It was fantastically perfect, musically. 

"I have some bootlegs of the sessions and again, he had that neck pickup with that super-deep low tone: you can only hear the fundamental of the notes. It’s like he’s running a single oscillator, real down low. He was just a great player with a real sense of how to use the bass in a really musical way. It was brilliant."  

In early 2009, rock fans got to see a particularly extraordinary assemblage of iconic musicians on one stage.

I'm talking about that special night in April when Metallica, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Joe Perry, Ronnie Wood, Flea and former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted performed "Train Kept A-Rollin'" at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

Metallica and Beck were among the evening's honorees. (Is it just me, or is it slightly jarring to see James Hetfield and Jeff Beck together on the same stage?)

Regardless, the song, which was written by Tiny Bradshaw and Lois Mann, plays a bit part in the history of three of the guitarists:

• Jeff Beck recorded it with the Yardbirds in 1965.

• Jimmy Page inherited it when he joined the Yardbirds in 1966.

• Page and Beck can be seen performing the song (retitled "Stroll On") with the Yardbirds in the 1966 film Blowup (bottom video). Beck even smashes his guitar (and beats up his Vox amp) in the film!

• Joe Perry's band, Aerosmith, covered it in 1974. Even though the guitar solos on the studio version were played by Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner, Perry has performed it live with Aerosmith countless times.

By the way, if you're not familiar with the kick-ass 1956 version of the tune by Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio, you might want to check it out. They added a three-note, minor-key repeating guitar line to the song, a line that features some early distorted guitar. Lots o' people, myself included, insist that Grady Martin played the distorted guitar on the Burnette version (and not Paul Burlison). Whatever.

Anyway, enjoy this trip down memory lane to 2009!

P.S.: Keep watching the top video for a heavily edited performance of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" by Page and Beck, followed by some far-less-interesting stuff.

Before he wielded the hammer of the gods—and a Les Paul—as a member of mighty Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page was a Telecaster-wielding Yardbird.

Today we turn our attention to Page's best guitar work with his former band. Fortunately, we don't have very far to look, since Page recorded only one album with the band—1967's Little Games—plus a few non-album singles and B-sides, all of which have wound up on deluxe versions of Little Games over the decades.

While the band's Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck eras enjoyed decent chart success—from "For Your Love" to "Heart Full of Soul" to "Shapes of Things"—its Page-fronted version managed to fly under the radar until imploding in 1968. (Even "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago," which featured Beck and Page, only reached Number 30.)

Check out our five choices for Page's best guitar work as a Yardbird. This list was compiled with the input of Brad Tolinski, author of Light & Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page. If you're interested in Page's Yardbirds days—not to mention his Led Zeppelin days—you might want to check out the book, which is available now at the Guitar World Online Store.

P.S.: I'd like to award an "honorable mention" to a lesser-known Yardbirds track from 1968 called "Avron Knows," which features Page playing a Telecaster with a simply beautiful fuzz tone. The recording, which is incomplete (And I don't think Page and the boys will be gathering to finish it anytime soon), wasn't released until a few years ago on the Cumular Limit album. On that note, enjoy!

"Think About It," B-side of "Goodnight Sweet Josephine"

If the guitar solo on "Think About It" sounds familiar, that's because Page borrowed and re-purposed it a year later when recording "Dazed and Confused" with Led Zeppelin. The guitar solo makes this the Yardbirds' most Zeppelin-like track, and it's easily the most shred-centric solo in the band's catalog. Be sure to check out Aerosmith's cover of this tune, which can be found on their Night in the Ruts album.

"Happenings Ten Years Time Ago," A-side of a 1966 single

"Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" was the first Yardbirds single to feature Page, who—this time around—shares the guitar spotlight with Beck. There are only three Beck/Page-era Yardbirds recordings—"Happenings," "Psycho Daisies" and "Stroll On." "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" is a mini-masterpiece, what Tolinski calls "a tour de force of guitar invention and orchestration ... a moody slice of psychedelia with nightmarish overtones." That's John Paul Jones on bass, by the way. You can hear Beck's voice during the mid-song ranty interlude.

"White Summer," from Little Games

This acoustic instrumental track is the precursor to Led Zeppelin's "Black Mountain Side," and Page often performed the two songs as a medley during early Led Zeppelin tours. It's interesting to note that during the Yardbirds' final days as a touring band, Page performed this song with an electric guitar, as heard on Live Yardbirds: Featuring Jimmy Page. Said Page: "I used a special tuning for [the song]; the low string down to D, then A, D, G, A and D. It’s like a modal tuning, a sitar tuning, in fact."

"Smile On Me," from Little Games

"Smile On Me" is the closest the Page-era Yardbirds got to straight-ahead (and spaced-out) blues.

"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor," from Little Games

From Light & Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page:

BRAD TOLINSKI: Those ringing guitar parts and suspended chords on "Tinker, Tailor" are almost like a precursor to "The Song Remains the Same."

JIMMY PAGE: Well, it could be, except I've got two or three different demo versions, each with different guitar approaches. What is somewhat funny is I presented [producer] Mickie [Most] with the poppiest version. Here I am talking about shooting ourselves in the foot by doing pop stuff, but I really sort of enabled the situation by coming up with parts that were intentionally quite catchy. I guess I still had that instinct from doing sessions for all those years!" Note that Page is playing guitar with a violin bow during the solo, a sound that would turn up on the first Led Zeppelin album.

"Avron Knows," from Cumular Limit

As mentioned above, here's the incomplete "Avron Knows." Check out Page's fuzzed-out Tele tone!

Musicians can still be a little fuzzy when it comes to describing the sound of fuzz. Some guitarists will tell you it sounds like a 2,000-pound bee trapped in a sturdy metal box—perhaps with a potentiometer installed somewhere behind the wings.

And while many fuzz guitar tunes and tones did (and do) make the most of the original fuzz "buzz" sound, fuzz actually has many facets, many sides, many fuzz faces, if you will.

Here are 10 songs—compiled by several members of the Guitar World staff—that we feel represent a wide spectrum of fuzz sounds and cover a lot of stomping ground. These songs are presented in no particular order. I repeat: These songs are presented in no particular order!

If you want to track down any of these tracks, you'll find all 10 original album covers in the photo gallery below.

For more fuzz box info, check out Chris Gill's Guitar World feature on "How to Buy a Fuzz Box: A Guide for the First-Time Buyer." And if you've still got stompbox fever, check out our guide to "The Top 50 Stomp Boxes, Devices and Processors of All Time." Enjoy!

P.S.: Don't get all jerked up about these 10 choices. We're not saying they're the only essential fuzz-guitar tracks in the world. Calm down. This is escapism, people.

THE 2000 POUND BEE
The Ventures (1962)

Let's start with "The 2000 Pound Bee," a 1962 track by the Ventures, the best-selling instrumental band of all time. While no one (including us) wants to make the claim that this is the first song to feature intentional fuzz guitar (as in, fuzz as the result of an effect pedal, as opposed to a busted speaker cone), it is commonly accepted to be exactly that (Although we must mention that it's not necessarily true). The Ventures were always ahead of the curve when it came to weird effects, as best demonstrated by their very "out there" 1964 album, The Ventures In Space. That's Nokie Edwards playing the fun, fuzzy riff, by the way.

HEART FULL OF SOUL
The Yardbirds (1965)

And to think these guys originally tried to play this classic guitar riff on a sitar! Seriously, why bother? Jeff Beck's tone on this mid-1965 hit single pretty much exemplifies the still-much-sought-after mid-'60s "fuzz" and/or "buzz" tone. Oddly enough, Beck used a fuzz box to recreate the tone of a sitar, the very instrument that didn't cut it in the first place. Beck is playing an MKI Tone Bender pedal on this track.

WHEN THE MUSIC'S OVER
The Doors (1967)

Back to California we go, with the Doors' 11-minute-long "When the Music's Over," a standout track from 1967's Stange Days. "Fuzz distortion was all we had," Doors guitarist Robby Krieger has said in past interviews. "We didn't have overdrive on our amps." In a Guitar Player magazine interview, he added that the fuzz was created by recording direct and cranking the gain/overdriving tube input on the mixing board. Regardless of how he achieved the fuzz tone on this track, it is beautiful, bizarre and creepy all at once!

Iron Butterfly, "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"

Let's stay in the Sixties a bit longer with an extended visit to the garden of life, aka "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" from Iron Butterfly's super-psycho 1968 album of the same bizarre name. Yes, that sentence was a mouthful—and this 17-minute-long track is an earful of pretty much every late-Sixties psychedelic-rock cliche. You have the lengthy drum solo, the spooky church-organ-style keyboards, the arguably meaningless lyrics and, of course, the fuzz guitar. This time, the fuzz is courtesy of an original Mosrite Fuzzrite—and teenage guitarist Erik Braunn. For more about the Fuzzrite, check out this site.

The Guess Who, "American Woman"

Don't worry—we'll return to Sixties (We have to; we haven't mentioned Jimi Hendrix and his Fuzz Face yet). However, let's take a brief detour to early 1970, and up north to lovely Canada, home of the Guess Who, a band that scored a major hit with this tune about women from "south of the border." The song is noteworthy for Randy Bachman's unique, creamy, sustaining, neck-pickup tone (or "cow tone," as Ozzy Osbourne might say). For more about Bachman's adjective-laden "American Woman" tone (and how it came to be that way), check out this website.

Jimi Hendrix, "Foxy Lady"

You knew this was coming! "Foxy Lady"—or pretty much any track from Jimi Hendrix's debut album, Are You Experienced?—is a prime example of Hendrix playing his Fender Strat through a germanium Fuzz Face pedal (a Fuzz Face using germanium transistors.) Most germanium pedals simply reflect the qualities of a vintage tube amp, but in super-cranked mode, providing a warm sound when the speaker breaks up. It's a "rounder" distortion, as heard on "Foxy Lady." It's not at all what you hear on the Yardbirds' "Heart Full of Soul" or "Over Under Sideways Down." These days, Jim Dunlop makes a faithful reproduction of a slightly-later Hendrix pedal—his 1969/'70 Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face, which was built around a BC108 silicon transistor. For more about the new Hendrix Fuzz Face, head here.

BECK'S BOLERO
Jeff Beck (1967)

Yes, it's Jeff Beck again, this time as a solo act, still fuzzing away. "Beck's Bolero"—released in March 1967—was the B-side of Beck's first single, "Hi Ho Silver Lining" (which features the mop-topped guitarist on vocals—a true rarity). The brief but powerful instrumental features Beck and Jimmy Page on guitar (Beck on lead, of course), John Paul Jones on bass, Nicky Hopkins on piano and Keith Moon on drums. It was recorded in mid-1966, before there was a Led Zeppelin—and before Beck had even left the Yardbirds. Although we'll try to verify this the next time we speak to Beck, it is widely believed he used a Mk.II/Supa Fuzz pedal on this song.

CHERUB ROCK
Smashing Pumpkins (1993)

We haven't mentioned the Big Muff yet! Enter "Cherub Rock" by Smashing Pumpkins, a killer song in general and a perfect example of the sound of an early Big Muff. The rest of the Billy Corgan's recording chain is most likely a Strat and a Marshall amp; but the Big Muff is doing the talking here.

SABOTAGE
Beastie Boys (1994)

Here's a curve ball for you, direct from New York City! It's "Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys, which makes this list on the merits of its fuzz bass sound, which is absolutely killer—and nearly as cool as the song's mustache-heavy music video. As heard in other fuzz-bass-centric tunes, including the Beatles' "Think for Yourself," the bottom end gets a bit lost, but the gains (no pun intended) are many. The bass was played through a Black Cat Superfuzz unit, which was based (again, no pun ...) on a 1970s Univox Superfuzz. Like its inspiration, the Black Cat truly pounces and shrieks! Insert your own cat-related puns here.

(I CAN'T GET NO) SATISFACTION
The Rolling Stones (1965)

We'll wrap things up with a classic from 1965: "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones. The famous fuzz riff with the almost-trombone-like tone is played by the maestro, Keith Richards, who happens to be playing through a Maestro Fuzztone FZ-1, a pedal made by Gibson/Norlin. The Maestro, which had a tone and fuzz potentiometer, plus a push on/off footswitch, was probably the best-known early commercial distortion circuit. The massive success of "Satisfaction" led to increased interest in fuzz pedals and sound research — not to mention stories like the one you're just finishing reading now.

DON'T WORRY
Marty Robbins (1961)

Be sure to check out Grady Martin's six-string bass solo from this 1961 Marty Robbins hit; it starts at 1:24. Music historians claim the fuzz effect was an accident; Martin—a legendary session player—was using a faulty channel in the mixing desk, which resulted in a distorted sound. Although Martin wasn't in love with the effect, Robbins' producer decided to leave it in. For more about the late, great Grady Martin, who plays guitar on Robbins' "El Paso," Johnny Burnette's "Train Kept A-Rollin'" and Roy Orbison's "Oh, Pretty Woman" (and countless others), head here.

Damian Fanelli is the online managing editor at Guitar World. Here he is playing a Fender Nashville Tele through a Tone Bender clone on the Blue Meanies' version of "Heart Full of Soul."

During the production of the 1966 film Blow-Up, director Michelangelo Antonioni envisioned a scene similar to that of Pete Townshend's famous live ritual of smashing his guitar on stage. Antonioni had even asked the Who to appear in the film. However, when they refused, in stepped the Yardbirds during that brief period when both Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page were in the band.

The Yardbirds’ short scene (which can be seen in the video below) was filmed at Elstree Studios, U.K., over a four-day period in September 1966.

When speaking about the band's involvement with the project in a 1992 interview, Beck said ...

“Antonioni wanted the most exciting thing we could do, so we played ‘Smokestack Lightning.’ But he didn’t like that, even though we had this incredible buildup in the middle which was just pow!”

Due to issues over publishing, the Yardbirds classic “Train Kept A-Rollin',” was reworked as “Stroll On” for the performance, and as the scene involved the destruction of an instrument, Beck’s usual choice of his iconic Esquire or Les Paul was swapped for a cheap, hollow-body stand-in that he was directed to smash at the song’s conclusion.

Jonathan Graham is an ACM UK graduate based in London studying under the likes of Guthrie Govan and Pete Friesen. He is the creator of ForgottenGuitar.com, a classic-guitar media website, and is completing his debut album, Protagonist, due for release in 2016. Updates also can be found at Graham's YouTube channel.

Julien's Auctions has announced that George Harrison's first electric guitar—a Hofner Club 40 which has been privately held for over 50 years—will be heading to the auction block on May 19. It will be joined by Eric Clapton's Yardbirds-era Epiphone Granada and the 1965 Fender Telecaster that Bob Dylan played during his infamous "electric" tour.

Harrison played the small blonde with black body binding single–cutaway hollow body instrument in the early days of The Beatles when they performed around Liverpool, England as The Quarrymen. The group had been transitioning from skiffle—played primarily with acoustic instruments—to rock and roll—played primarily with electric instruments—during that time.

John Lennon and George Harrison were the first to acquire electric guitars, which were nearly identical Hofner Club 40 models. Harrison traded his big Hofner President model acoustic archtop jazz guitar for the Hofner Club 40. He played the guitar with Lennon, Paul McCartney, Pete Best and Ken Brown, who were band members at the time, at The Casbah Coffee Club, a teenager’s social club in Hayman’s Green, West Derby.

In 1965, Harrison was asked to donate his guitar to a band competition that would help promote The Beatles’ 1966 German tour. The guitar was autographed with the Beatles’ names by their road manager, Neil Aspinall, and was won by the German band Faces. Frank Dostal, the band's singer and guitarist, owned the guitar until he passed away in 2017. His widow, Mary Dostal—who was a member of the Liverpool girl group The Liverbirds—offered the guitar at Julien’s Auctions. The guitar is estimated to sell between $200,000–$300,000.

"Most of the actual instruments that The Beatles used they still own but there are a few instruments still out there," said Andy Babiuk, author of Beatles Gear: The Ultimate Edition, in a press release. "One of them is George Harrison’s very first electric guitar, the Hofner Club 40."

"George Harrison considered the Hofner as one of his favorite guitars [as it] was the third guitar he ever owned," Babiuk continued. "It is one of the most historically important guitars as it marks the chapter in music history when The Beatles transitioned to a rock and roll band playing electric guitars."

Also hitting the auction block on May 19 is Eric Clapton's 1963 Epiphone Granada model E444T guitar. The guitar—which Clapton played toward the end of his tenure with The Yardbirds—is expected to fetch between $80,000–$100,000.

You can find out more about the auction over at juliensauctions.com. A portion of the proceeds will go to the American Indian College Fund.

For this week's flashback video, we head to Honolulu, Hawaii.

That's where, in 1984, Jeff Beck joined Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble on stage to play an impressive mini-set that included "Jeff's Boogie," an instrumental track from the Yardbirds' 1966 Roger the Engineer album (the original name of which was Yardbirds).

In the surprisingly great-sounding video below, Beck and Vaughan take turns playing the solos in the Chuck Berry-inspired tune (It's merely Beck's version of Berry's "Guitar Boogie" with a healthy dose of Cliff Gallup-inspired licks thrown in).

Stevie Ray's big brother Jimmie also was one of the featured performers that night (I know this because I have an old VHS of this show).

If you're not familiar with the original Yardbirds version of "Jeff's Boogie," be sure to check it out below (middle video); it's pure vintage Beck. Note that this action took place five years before Beck and Vaughan's successful 1989 tour.

Before he wielded the hammer of the gods—and a Gibson Les Paul or two—as a member of Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page was a Telecaster-wielding Yardbird. In fact, his tenure with the trendsetting U.K. band lasted from 1966 to 1968.

On March 30, 1968, near the end of the band's existence, the Yardbirds—which featured Page, vocalist Keith Relf, bassist Chris Dreja and drummer Jim McCarty—performed at New York City's Anderson Theatre on Second Avenue.

That show was recorded and released in 1971 by Epic Records as Live Yardbirds: Featuring Jimmy Page.

The band was never happy with the recording; it eventually slipped into obscurity and, in these zany modern times, is hopelessly out of print, rare and all that good stuff (I actually have it on 8-track, which I guess makes me a weirdo).

It also happens to be the centerpiece of a new Page-produced Yardbirds album that's scheduled to be released November 5 via JimmyPage.com. The new album, titled Yardbirds '68, features the Anderson Theatre show plus several late studio tracks, many of which have been previously released.

Yardbirds ’68, a double-disc set, contains live versions of "I'm Confused" (better known as "Dazed and Confused") and "White Summer," both of which Page revisited with Led Zeppelin. It also includes a studio version of "Knowing That I’m Losing You," which later appeared on Led Zeppelin III as "Tangerine."

The collection will be available in a deluxe box set signed by Page, McCarty and Dreja (Relf died in 1976), plus CD and vinyl editions. Page, McCarty and Dreja also issued the following statement about the album:

“We thought this might be lost forever, but we’ve rediscovered it, re-mixed it. It’s of great historical importance. We’re delighted to see the release.”

Yardbirds ’68 is available for pre-order. You can check out the full tracklist and album art below (you also can hear "I'm Confused").

For more information, head here. For more about the Yardbirds (who are still active and helmed by McCarty), head here.

LIVE AT ANDERSON THEATRE
Train Kept A-Rollin’
Mr. You’re a Better Man Than I
Heart Full of Soul
Dazed and Confused
My Baby
Over Under Sideways Down
Drinking Muddy Water
Shapes of Things
White Summer
I’m a Man (contains "Moanin’ and Sobbin’")STUDIO SKETCHES
Avron Knows
Spanish Blood
Knowing That I’m Losing You ("Tangerine")
Taking a Hold on Me
Drinking Muddy Water (Version Two)
My Baby
Avron’s Eyes
Spanish Blood (Instrumental)

DETAILS
2 x Heavyweight 180g vinyl
1 x Art book with liner notes by the Yardbirds
1 x Double gatefold sleeve
1 x Slipcase

Fifty years ago today, guitarist Eric Clapton quit the Yardbirds. It's one of the best things that ever happened, period.

Clapton, a self-declared blues purist, thought the band—which included singer Keith Relf, guitarist Chris Dreja, bassist Paul Samwell-Smith and drummer Jim McCarty—was getting too commercial (Um, didn't he later record a duet with Tina Turner and release the ridiculously commercial August,Pligrim and Reptile albums?).

And so, after playing on their most commercial song to date (and their first hit), "For Your Love," Clapton was gone.

This move was great for:

• The Yardbirds: Without Clapton, they were able to evolve, freely, into a successful, slightly harder-edged British Invasion band. The Clapton-free version of the band enjoyed a string of hits, including "Heart Full of Soul," "I'm a Man" and "Over Under Sideways Down." They also got a lot more creative and experimental, eventually evolving into the band that would eventually evolve into Led Zeppelin. So this move also worked out pretty well for Jimmy Page (who turned down the Yardbirds job when Clapton left; he suggested another young guitarist, Jeff Beck).

• Jeff Beck: Although he was getting noticed with his blues band, the Tridents, Beck's upward trajectory didn't start until he replaced Clapton in the Yardbirds in 1965. His brief solos were fuzz-drenched mini-masterpieces, making him a bona fide guitar god and giving him the nerve and justification to quit the band and go solo, eventually becoming the "guitarist's guitarist" he is today.

• Eric Clapton: After quitting the Yardbirds, Clapton joined—on two occasions in 1965—John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, a serious blues band that had no aspirations of pop stardom. He also traded in his Telecaster/Vox tone for a magical sound created by playing a 1960 Les Paul through an incredibly loud, overdriven Marshall combo. Clapton, his Les Paul, his Marshall—and the other three members of the Bluesbreakers—recorded one of the most important guitar albums of all time, 1966's Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton. Clapton's god-like status grew in England, and he soon left the band to form Cream and—well, the rest is history, isn't it?

Below, watch the three guitarists named above as they perform Clapton's "Layla" in 1983. Besides Clapton, Page and Beck, we see Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, Kenney Jones, Ray Cooper, Andy Fairweather-Low ... am I leaving out anyone?

Damian Fanelli is the online managing editor at Guitar WorldFollow him on Twitter. Or not.

After postponing a brief North American tour earlier this year, the Yardbirds are pleased to announce their 2015 fall tour.

The tour will kick off October 30 in Norfolk, Connecticut, and end in late November in Northampton, Massachusetts.

The current lineup of the band features founding member Jim McCarty (drums), guitarist Johnny A (Peter Wolf, Bobby Whitlock), bassist Kenny Aaronson (Bob Dylan, Billy Idol), singer/harpist/percussionist Myke Scavone (Ram Jam & Doughboys) and guitarist/singer John Idan on bass.

Due to scheduling conflicts, guitarist Earl Slick will not be a part of this tour, as previously announced.

The Yardbirds boasted three of the most influential guitarists of all time—Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. Co-founded by McCarty with singer Keith Relf, rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja, bassist Paul Samwell-Smith and lead guitarist Top Topham, the band unleashed a string of hits, including “For Your Love,” “Over Under Sideways Down” and “Heart Full of Soul.”

2015 Tour Dates:

• Friday, October 30 Norfolk, CT Infinity Hall
• Saturday, October 31 Bethlehem, PA Musicfest Café
• Sunday, November 1 Newton, NJ Newton Theatre
• Monday, November 2 New York, NY B.B. King’s
• Friday, November 6 Phoenix, AZ Harrah’s AK Chin
• Saturday, November 7 Lake Tahoe, NV Harrah’s
• Tuesday, November 10 Laughlin, NV Harrah’s
• Thursday, November 12 San Juan Capistrano, CA Coachhouse
• Friday, November 13 Hermosa Beach, CA Saint Rock
• Sunday, November 15 Agoura Hills, CA Canyon Club
• Wednesday, November 18 N. Bestheda, MD AMP
• Thursday, November 19 Hopewell, VA Beacon Theatre
• Friday, November 20 Beverly, MA Larcom Theatre
• Saturday, November 21 Plymouth, NH Flying Monkey
• Sunday, November 22 Northampton, MA Iron Horse

Photo: Trevor Heath

Guitar World celebrates the 50 greatest guitar moments of Eric Clapton's five-decade career—from the Yardbirds to Cream to Derek and the Dominos and beyond. There was a time when the name Eric Clapton meant one thing and one thing only: guitar god. His incendiary six-string exploits with the Yardbirds, followed by a pair of mind-blowing 1966 albums—Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton and Fresh Cream—briefly put the passionate young Clapton atop the U.K.’s, if not the world’s, guitar hierarchy. By the late Sixties, he was sharing the spotlight with such rock deities as Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. Significantly perhaps, it was around this time that Clapton began incrementally distancing himself from the flashy, lengthy solos of his wild youth, as he segued from Cream to Blind Faith, and then from Derek and the Dominos to a successful solo career. He eventually fell under the mellow spell of J.J. Cale and the Band, put more emphasis on singing and songwriting, and dabbled in country rock, reggae, acoustic music and ultra-slick pop tunes. Today, Clapton, who turns 70 on March 30, enjoys an enviable spot as one of the most respected elder statesmen in rock and blues. And although he happily handed over the guitar-god mantle decades ago, he’s not averse to melting a few faces when the opportunity arises. Guitar World looks back at Clapton’s 50-plus-year career and pinpoints what we consider to be the 50 greatest guitar moments—thus far. Our list digs deep into his six-string artistry, putting the emphasis on the playing and not necessarily the hits. We hope you enjoy this guide to Clapton’s cream of the crop. Honorable Mention: "Go Back Home"Stephen Stills—Stephen Stills (1970) Let's start things off with an honorable mention—a suggestion from several readers (and we happen to approve of their choice). It's a track from Stephen Stills' self-titled debut album from 1970. It features Clapton in all his 1970 pointy-Strat-sound glory!

50. "Cocaine"Eric Clapton—Slowhand (1977) While Clapton was certainly no stranger to the song’s titular substance, “Cocaine” was actually written by American singer/songwriter and frequent Clapton collaborator J.J. Cale. The infectious main riff, in E, is a bit reminiscent of that other Clapton classic “Sunshine of Your Love” and provides an equally amiable vehicle for some tasty soloing on Clapton’s part. His approach is understated and funky but with occasional flashes of fire. A second overdubbed solo improvisation joins the main line midway through, and Clapton adorns the outro with some more Strat leads. Despite the enduring appeal of “Cocaine” as a party song, Clapton has claimed it is actually an anti-drug number.

49. "A Certain Girl"The Yardbirds—For Your Love (1965) This track has a great New Orleans R&B pedigree, having been written by the legendary Allen Toussaint and originally recorded by Ernie K-Doe, best known for his 1961 hit “Mother in Law.” The Yardbirds’ somewhat whimsical British Invasion treatment of “A Certain Girl” is probably a prime example of the group’s pop direction that made Clapton so uncomfortable at the time, but he nevertheless claims the track as his own with a bluesy lead guitar intro and a ripping little solo midway through. His Tele tone here is nothing less than searing.

48. "Got to Hurry"The Yardbirds—Crossroads (1964) This track is an early—if not the earliest—example of the magic Eric Clapton could work with a 12-bar blues, even at the tender age of 19. It originally appeared as the B-side to the Yardbirds’ third single, and first big hit, “For Your Love.” Instrumentals were typical B-side fodder at the time, but this one, in all its reverby over-compressed glory, has enduring value. While the song is clearly a group improvisation, it was credited to the Yardbirds’ producer Giorgio Gomelsky (originally using his nom de plume O. Rasputin), who claimed to have hummed the main riff to Clapton.

47. "After Midnight" Eric Clapton—Eric Clapton (1970) At the dawn of the Seventies, following stints in several legendary British bands, Clapton launched his solo career with a new American sound and a switch from Gibson guitars to the Fender Stratocaster, the guitar with which he would shape the sonic signature of his latter-day career. “After Midnight” is the first song he recorded by American singer/songwriter J.J. Cale, whose work Clapton had been introduced to by Delaney Bramlett, one of his musical collaborators at the time. With its frenetic tempo and gospel-inflected backing vocals, the recording was a major success for the newly reinvented Clapton. His guitar solo for the track is simple, yet effective.

46. "Cat’s Squirrel"Cream—Fresh Cream (1966) A free adaptation of a song originally recorded in 1961 by bluesman Doctor Ross, “Cat’s Squirrel” was a largely instrumental highlight of Cream’s 1966 debut album. Repeated restatements of the main motif, lifted from the Dr. Ross record, alternate with bouts of riffing on guitar and harmonica and, in one break, a few lines of scat singing. The guitar tone is a bit thin, compared to Clapton’s earlier work with Mayall and what would come later, but it’s nonetheless compelling. A frequent Sixties jam vehicle, the song was later covered by Jethro Tull on their 1968 debut album, This Was.

45. "Double Trouble"Eric Clapton—Just One Night (1980) Recorded in Japan in December 1979, Just One Night isn’t exactly a firecracker of a live album. Although the band is tight and gritty, the material is spotty, since the tour was supporting Clapton’s low-spark 1978 album, Backless. Meanwhile, Clapton’s tone can best be described as “Strat into amp. The end.” However, all of the above can’t keep a good song down, and Clapton shines on his extended cover of Otis Rush’s “Double Trouble.” This minimalist masterpiece in C minor spotlights Clapton’s dynamic monolog of a solo, one punctuated by pinch harmonics and a nearly flawless choice of notes.

44. "Those Were the Days"Cream—Wheels of Fire (1968) This up-tempo track features Clapton performing some “Crossroads”-like high-register wailing (in the key of A, as on that song) over Ginger Baker’s and Jack Bruce’s bombastic double-time groove. His solo is noteworthy for the way he keeps his phrasing coherent and his bends and vibratos smooth at such a brisk tempo and with such a busy accompaniment. Distractions like those could easily cause a less seasoned guitarist to get ahead of himself rhythmically and lose his composure, in terms of touch and feel.

43. "SWLABR"Cream—Disraeli Gears (1967) A solid track from Cream’s game-changing 1967 Disraeli Gears album, “SWLABR” is one of several compositions on the album by bassist Jack Bruce and Pete Brown. The title is an acronym for either “She Walks Like a Bearded Rainbow” or “She Was Like a Bearded Rainbow” (accounts vary). Clapton’s lead work on the track exemplifies his Gibson SG-driven “woman tone,” rich in sustain and low-frequency detail. His solo employs the Mixolydian mode (major third, minor seventh), which was very popular in psychedelic music at the time, owing in part to its similarity to the tonalities used in a number of Indian ragas.

42. "Lay Down Sally"Eric Clapton—Slowhand (1977) With its laidback “white-guy funk” groove and infectious chorus, this track was tailor-made for late-Seventies radio and became a major hit for Clapton in 1977. The interlocking, dual rhythm guitars—performed by Clapton and the song’s co-author, George Terry—establish a shuffling, gently propulsive groove that tugs against the minimal bass and drum patterns. Country overtones abound, and the tasteful, clean-tone Strat solo is perhaps the closest Clapton’s ever come to anything like chicken pickin’.

41. "Stone Free"Various—Stone Free: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix (1993) Clapton’s interpretation of this Jimi Hendrix’s composition was the title track of a 1993 Hendrix tribute album that included contributions from guitar heroes like Jeff Beck, Buddy Guy and Slash. Clapton plays it close to Hendrix’s original, cowbell groove and all, but he takes the guitar solo in his own direction and even sneaks in a quotation from “Third Stone from the Sun.”

40. "Motherless Children"Eric Clapton—461 Ocean Boulevard (1974) By 1974, Clapton’s guitar playing started to take a back seat to his singing and songwriting, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t still have fun. “Motherless Children,” one of the strongest opening tracks on a Clapton album since Cream’s Wheels of Fire, features Clapton on slide guitar, and it burns from the get-go. The song, which finds the guitarist delivering a playful variation of the melody during the twin guitar solos, was arranged by Clapton and his Derek and the Dominos band mate bassist Carl Radle. The song also features fine playing by second guitarist George Terry and drummer Jamie Oldaker.

39. "Deserted Cities of the Heart" Cream—Wheels of Fire (1968) Clapton tunes his acoustic and electric guitars down a whole step (low to high, D G C F A D) and plays this song as if it were in E, although it sounds in the key of D. Using full barre-chord voicings and vigorous, Pete Townshend–style strumming, he creates a deep, powerful accompaniment to Jack Bruce’s vocals. Clapton’s solo, beginning at 1:51, is fiery and aggressive, and the string slack from the detuning makes for some unusually fast finger vibratos, creating a shimmering sound that might otherwise be attained by speeding up the recording. As always, Clapton’s phrasing is tight and in the pocket, and his interplay with the bass and drums creates a powerful musical statement.

38. "She’s Gone"Eric Clapton—One More Car, One More Rider (2001) This spirited live rendition of a track that originally appeared on Clapton’s 1998 studio album, Pilgrim, outstrips the original on several fronts. What had been a fairly lackluster electronic-tinged pop track in the studio becomes a full-blown lead guitar free-for-all in concert. Clapton bursts out of the gate like a steroid-crazed racehorse, strafing the audience with a rubato flurry of bluesy leads before the main riff and funk groove kicks in. The track’s two extended solo sections contain some of the most urgent playing in his catalog, and his overdriven Strat tone is harmonically rich with full-bodied sustain.

37."Just Like a Prisoner"Eric Clapton—Behind the Sun (1985) The last minute and a half of “Just Like a Prisoner” might represent Clapton’s mid-Eighties high-water mark, at least from a shred perspective. The song features what could easily be considered one of his “angriest” solos. He even keeps playing long after the intended fade-out point, until the band stops abruptly. Maybe he was upset about the overpowering Eighties production, ridiculous synthesizers and obtrusive, way-too-loud drums that threaten to hijack the song at any moment.

36. "Old Love"Eric Clapton—24 Nights (1991) This quintessential live performance of the soulful R&B-style ballad from Clapton’s 1989 album, Journeyman, finds the guitarist in top form, as he seems to effortlessly improvise phrase after phrase of perfectly timed licks and runs. Clapton varies his touch from delicate to ferocious and coaxes a wide dynamic range out of his Strat while judiciously using holes of silence between long, fast runs, allowing the groove to breathe. This track is also a great and rare example of Clapton using the Aeolian mode—specifically A Aeolian (A B C D E F G)—in this case over the repeating chord sequence Am-Dm7-Gsus4-G.

35. "5:01 AM (The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking, Part 10)"Roger Waters—The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking (1984) Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters’ first solo album abounded with something that Clapton’s early Eighties albums sorely lacked: screaming guitar solos. The title track features a mini masterpiece of a solo, a composition within a composition, much like his work on “Badge,” another blues-driven pop gem. For the album’s most generous serving of Clapton, check out “4:41 AM (Sexual Revolution),” which finds the guitarist dishing out a nonstop array of blues riffs in E minor using a compressed, crystal-clear Strat tone. Clapton’s contributions to Pros and Cons and George Harrison’s Cloud Nine stand out as highlights of his bountiful Eighties session work.

34. "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"The Beatles—The Beatles (1968) On September 6, 1968, Clapton entered Abbey Road Studios to overdub a solo on a new Beatles song, George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Clapton played Lucy, Harrison’s red 1957 Gibson Les Paul, which was a gift from Clapton. In a sense, his presence in the studio was another gift to Harrison, since it forced John Lennon and Paul McCartney to take his song seriously. Clapton originally wasn’t all that into the idea, saying, “Nobody ever plays on the Beatles’ records.” “So what?” Harrison replied. “It’s my song.” As it turns out, the Fabs were on their best behavior that day.

33. "That’s the Way God Planned It (Parts 1 and 2)"Billy Preston—That’s the Way God Planned It (1969) In early 1969, when Cream were history and the Beatles were quickly heading in that direction, George Harrison invited Clapton to sit in on sessions for Billy Preston’s fourth studio album, which Harrison was co-producing. Clapton’s brilliance is best represented on the album’s powerful title track. While the verses and chorus feature Clapton’s sympathetic fills, things take off during the song’s final two and a half minutes. It’s as if Preston and Harrison pulled Clapton aside and said, “Okay, go nuts, man!” Maybe he was inspired by the presence of Cream/Blind Faith drummer Ginger Baker, who also plays on the track.

32. "All Your Love"John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers—Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (1966) John Mayall’s cover of this 1958 Otis Rush song showcases Clapton’s tasteful, competent handling of a minor blues progression set to a medium-tempo, quasi-cha-cha groove. Using his 1960 Les Paul Standard, with the bridge pickup on, plugged into his cranked-up Marshall JTM45 2x12 combo, Clapton kicks things off in the arrangement’s opening 12-bar chorus by authoritatively digging into and bending notes within the A minor pentatonic scale, demonstrating a refined touch and excellent pitch control over his bends and vibratos. When the tempo, feel and backing progression abruptly change to a faster shuffle and dominant-seven chords at 1:50, Clapton leads the way with stinging, B.B. King–style A major- and minor-pentatonic licks, pausing in just the right places so as to let his phrases sink in and the groove breathe.

31. "Five Long Years"Eric Clapton—From the Cradle (1994) Clapton’s reading of this slow 12/8 blues standard showcases the guitarist tearing it up on his signature-model Strat, using a thick yet biting high-gain tone, and doing some impassioned “crammed” phrasing à la Buddy Guy. Playing in the key of A, Clapton relies predominantly on two scales—A minor pentatonic (A C D E G) and A blues (A C D Ef E G)—and occasionally touches upon the major third, A, so as to acknowledge the one chord, A7. This is some of Slowhand’s fastest blues shredding, yet it is characteristically polished, devoid of bad notes and embellished with finger vibratos that are fierce but never manic.

30. "Tribute to Elmore"Eric Clapton & Jimmy Page—Immediate All Stars (1965) Often credited to either the Immediate All-Stars (named for the Immediate label, on which the tracks first appeared), Cyril Davis’ All-Stars or the All-Stars, “Tribute to Elmore” is one of seven tracks recorded by Clapton and Jimmy Page alone at Page’s home studio. The “Elmore” in the title refers to blues legend Elmore James, and the track serves as a tribute to his essential blues-shuffle recordings, such as “Dust My Broom,” “I Believe,” “Sweet Home Chicago” and “Anna Lee.” Backed simply by Page’s rhythm guitar, Clapton adds deft soloing representative of his work during this period.

29. "I'm So Glad"Cream—Fresh Cream (1966) Cream’s reworking of this old blues tune features Clapton performing some deft hybrid picking (pick-and-fingers technique) as he starts off the song with a turbocharged turnaround lick in E. He picks chromatically ascending and descending sixth intervals on the G and A strings in conjunction with the open B and high E strings to create a shimmering, banjo-esque waterfall of notes. His solo, beginning at 1:26, is noteworthy for the way Clapton harnesses the elusive power of controlled harmonic feedback from his cranked, reverberant Les Paul/100-watt Marshall rig and takes the time to allow notes to swell and sing, making his instrument work for him as opposed to just slavishly playing lick after lick without pause.

28. "Bernard Jenkins"John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers—Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (1966) The B-side of the second single ever issued by John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers featuring Eric Clapton, this swinging instrumental in G offers a perfect glimpse into Clapton’s playing in 1965, with his 1960 Les Paul Standard plugged into his JTM 45 Marshall combo, creating the sound that would change the face of blues and rock guitar. His smooth and effortless phrases depict the influence of B.B. King, Freddie King, Buddy Guy and T-Bone Walker, but even at 20 years of age, Clapton has already found a truly distinct and uniquely signature voice as a soloist.

27. "Can’t Find My Way Home"Blind Faith—Blind Faith (1969) Steve Winwood’s gorgeously wistful composition was a highlight of Blind Faith’s one-and-only album. He and Clapton both play acoustic guitars on this elegiac track, which can be read as a swansong for the Sixties—the comedown after the party. Clapton was hitherto known for his explosive electric playing, and his sensitive, supportive acoustic guitar work on this track was a revelation and a harbinger of Clapton ballads to come.

26. "Tales of Brave Ulysses"Cream—Live Cream Volume II (1972) This live version of a key song from Cream’s 1967 breakthrough album, Disraeli Gears, was recorded in 1968 and released in 1972, long after Cream split up. It exemplifies the group’s intensely creative way of using its studio recordings as vehicles for extended bouts of fierce freeform improvisation in concert. When Clapton’s wicked wah-pedal leads aren’t taking the spotlight, they’re providing support for Jack Bruce’s equally wild bass riffing, which edges perilously close to avant-garde atonality.

25. "Ramblin’ on My Mind"Eric Clapton—E.C. Was Here (1975) Clapton first assayed this song by his seminal influence, bluesman Robert Johnson, on the 1966 Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton album, delivering it in a bare-bones piano/guitar duet that marked the guitarist’s vocal debut on record. Nine years later, he revisited the song on his live album E.C. Was Here, this time with a full band backing him. The tempo is slower than the earlier track, and Clapton’s vocal sounds more relaxed. The solo section modulates through a series of key changes (E, Fs, A, D, then back to E), as Clapton fluidly alternates eloquent legato passages with the terse bursts of notes that by this point had become a Slowhand trademark.

24. "N.S.U."Cream-Live Cream (1968) Though it lasts only 2:48 on the studio album Fresh Cream, this Jack Bruce composition would usually be stretched to 10 minutes and beyond in concert, centered around a long jam in A (based on an A7 tonality). Clapton's ingenious opening guitar figure here is executed with hybrid picking (a combination of flatpicking and fingerpicking). While fretting a C root note (fourth string/10th fret) and G a fifth above (second string/eighth fret), he sounds the open G and open high E strings within an alternating-picking pattern. Additional mystery is added to this deceptive riff via the occasional pull-off on the B string from A (10th fret) to G (eighth fret).

23. "Had to Cry Today"Blind Faith—Blind Faith (1969) Though Blind Faith lasted barely long enough to record a single studio album, this disc captures Clapton at an essential stage in his development as a musician. A photo inside the album shows Clapton playing his 1963 ES-335 through a blonde Fender Showman “piggyback” combo, which was likely used for the recordings. He plugged straight into the amp and used no effects, achieving his full-bodied tone and rich sustain by cranking the amp. His rhythm parts are double-tracked, offering exquisite chordal counterpoint as well as harmonized single-note figures, while his initial solo is as perfectly constructed and melodic as the very best of his recorded solos.

22. "I Shot the Sheriff"Eric Clapton—461 Ocean Boulevard (1974) In 1974, Clapton had a Number One hit with his reggae-influenced cover of Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff,” a recording that doesn’t even feature a guitar solo. Wasn’t this guy playing 17-minute versions of “Spoonful” just six years earlier? That’s the point: the song represents Clapton’s evolution as an artist and guitarist, kicking off a stretch of seven studio albums where he morphed from guitar god to hit maker who just happened to play guitar. Ironically, the song evolved into a vehicle for extended soloing. Check out his explosive version of it from the 2004 Crossroads Guitar Festival DVD.

21. "Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right"Various Artists—Bob Dylan: The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration (1993) Although Johnny Winter and Neil Young contributed their share of electric guitar fireworks to Bob Dylan’s 30th anniversary tribute concert in October 1992, the undisputed guitar highlight of the show was Clapton’s scorching rendition of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” Clapton—who transformed Dylan’s bouncy, fingerstyle acoustic masterpiece into a breezy electric country blues—left no doubt that he could still deliver intense, emotional solos that sent listeners’ hearts skyrocketing. The performance—and Clapton’s crunchy, overdriven Strat tone—foreshadowed his long-awaited, if temporary, return to the blues, 1994’s From the Cradle.

20. "Sleepy Time Time (alternate)"Cream—Royal Albert Hall London May 2-3-5-6, 2005 (2005) Why would Cream’s live reunion album include an extra, “alternate” version of “Sleepy Time Time”? The answer might lie in Clapton’s exhilarating guitar solo. In the Sixties, this Fresh Cream track was a live highlight and vehicle for inspired soloing (See Live Cream). In 2005, Clapton didn’t disappoint. The second half of the solo in particular is full of fireworks—emotion-fueled bends that land in just the right spot, notes that subtly blend major and minor, even an off-the-rails moment when he unintentionally strikes several open strings. From 3:57 to 4:25, close your eyes and it’s 1968 all over again.

19. "Steppin’ Out"Cream—Live Cream Volume II (1968) One of the many standout tracks from 1966’s Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton, “Steppin’ Out” was a staple of Cream’s live shows, as evidenced by this 13:39 version recorded March 10, 1968, at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom. Clapton kicks off his solo by quoting the saxophone solo heard on the 1959 original by Memphis Slim featuring Chicago blues guitarist Matt Murphy, and he incorporates elements of Murphy’s guitar solo phrasing as well. At the four-minute point, bassist Jack Bruce drops out as the song breaks down to a guitar/drum duet, one that will provide endless fascination to those interested in a deep study of Clapton’s soloing style.

18. "Groaning the Blues"Eric Clapton—From the Cradle (1994) In a 2011 GuitarWorld.com poll, From the Cradle was voted Clapton’s fourth-best guitar album, sandwiched between Cream’s Wheels of Fire (5) and Disraeli Gears (3). One of From the Cradle’s many guitar highlights is the dramatic and greasy “Groaning the Blues,” a Willie Dixon song recorded by Otis Rush in 1957. Sometime in the Eighties, Clapton began infusing his solos with wild “in the moment” bends. It’s an approach that’s put to effective use on “Groaning the Blues.” His solo, which is peppered with Gatling gun flurries of notes, also features repetitive staccato bends, including one particularly “out there” bend at 3:38. And it all works.

17. "Stormy Monday"John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers—Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (Deluxe Edition) (2009) T-Bone Walker’s signature blues composition, with its jazzily modulated ascent from the I to the IV chord of the standard blues progression, provides a vehicle for some of Clapton’s most explosive soloing ever. This version, recorded live at a Mayall club gig in 1966, fades in on the guitar solo, and it’s clear that Clapton is on fire. The track pairs the guitarist with bassist Jack Bruce, a classic match-up that laid the groundwork for the formation of Cream. This historic audio document reveals what all the excitement was about.

16. "The Core"Eric Clapton—Slowhand (1977) At the core of “The Core,” an often-overlooked track from Clapton’s popular Slowhand album, is a crunchy killer of a riff in A. One can’t help but wonder if the song, an almost-nine-minute-long duet with Marcy Levy, would have been a hit had it been edited down and released as a single. It has a lot going for it: a catchy bridge, lyrical depth, a kick-ass sax solo by Mel Collins and one of Clapton’s most exciting guitar solos from his “laid-back” mid-Seventies period. At the 4:13 mark, he unleashes a furious barrage of notes that recalls the Slowhand of 10 years earlier.

15. "Sitting on Top of the World"Cream—Goodbye (1969) Cream first tackled this venerable blues classic in a studio recording on their Wheels of Fire album, in 1968. But this live version from Goodbye, released shortly after the group split up in 1969, offers a great opportunity for more extended soloing on Clapton’s part. By approaching the time-honored 12-bar structure with a degree of rhythmic freedom bordering on reckless abandon, bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker coax inventive phrases of remarkable fire and fluidity from Clapton and his ax.

14. "Sunshine of Your Love"Cream—Disraeli Gears (1967) Perhaps the most artistic and certainly the most famous example of Clapton’s “woman tone,” this song features the guitarist wailing on his 1964 Gibson SG with its volume cranked and tone control rolled all the way off to produce a thick, dark, sustaining tone. Clapton milks the tone for all it’s worth in his solo by spending just as much time bending and smoothly shaking notes as he does burning though D major and minor pentatonic licks. He begins what would become one of his most memorable solos by quoting the melody to the old standard “Blue Moon,” cleverly juxtaposing it over this song’s sinister D blues-scale bass riff. His finger vibratos in the intro/verse riff and solo are laudable for their consistently even amplitude and width, and they serve as a great example of what it means to be a seasoned rock lead guitarist.

13. "Hideaway"John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers—Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (1966) This tour de force reading of the classic Freddie King instrumental established Clapton as Britain’s foremost blues guitarist. It’s also one of the tracks that made guitarists everywhere covet a sunburst Les Paul Standard and Marshall Model 1962 “Bluesbreaker” combo amp, the setup responsible for Clapton’s blistering guitar tone on the record. Clapton is often at his best in the 12-bar idiom, and this is one of his strongest performances ever. The band breaks out of the composition’s main shuffle groove for a number of rhythmic change-ups, including a quotation of Elmore James’ signature “Dust My Broom” riff.

12. "Have You Ever Loved a Woman"Derek and the Dominos-Layla (1970) This 1961 Freddie King song is a Clapton staple, one that he has performed at nearly every concert since 1970, the year that he cut this version of it with Derek and the Dominos. Within the first five seconds of his intro solo, we hear blazing virtuosity combined with deep feeling and pure originality. Through both his intro and two-chorus solo, Clapton floats over the beat with beautifully free phrases, with his “Brownie” Stratocaster plugged straight into a tiny Fender tweed Deluxe cranked to 10. It is simply one of the greatest and most inspired electric blues solos ever recorded.

11. "Presence of the Lord"Blind Faith—Blind Faith (1969) Backed by a powerhouse, dream-team rhythm section of drummer Ginger Baker and bassist Ric Grech, Clapton kicks this soulful, gospel-flavored ballad into high gear during the double-time solo/interlude section that he initiates midway through the arrangement with a Hendrix-style, wah-inflected A minor pentatonic riff. This ushers in a rhythmically charged, psychedelic jam at 2:42, for which Clapton ran his Gibson Firebird’s signal through a Leslie rotary-speaker cabinet, set on slow to produce a swirly, phasing sound that ebbs and flows around his scorching melodic phrases. Clapton masterfully uses the wah and rotary speaker effects to accentuate the peaks and valleys in his licks and plays with a flowing, articulate touch, balancing quick bursts of 16th notes with held bends and vibratos, displaying his trademark spot-on control over both his timing and pitch.

10. "Sleepy Time Time"Cream—Live Cream (1968) Cream’s initial inspiration grew from their dedication to a trailblazing, group-improvisational reinvention of blues forms, including Willie Dixon’s “Spoonful” and Skip James’ “I’m So Glad.” This track, which they originally cut in the studio for their late-1966 debut, Fresh Cream, offers bassist Jack Bruce’s singularly twisted view of a swinging 12/8 “modern” blues in a more condensed but no less cutting-edge form, as compared to the 15-plus-minute jams that highlighted Cream’s performances. Live Cream combines four tracks recorded March 7–10, 1968, in San Francisco at the Fillmore West and Winterland Ballroom, plus one studio outtake, “Lawdy Mama.” Cream played a staggering 200 shows in 1967 and, after just two weeks off, resumed an equally grueling schedule from the very start of 1968. This LP captures them during their 223rd to 226th performances in just 14 months, so it’s no wonder they achieve the purely magical in-sync group improvisation displayed on this track and in evidence throughout this album. Playing through a pair of 100-watt Marshall stacks (using the 1960A and 1960B “tall” 4x12 bottom cabinets), Clapton produced a massive sound. There is debate over which guitar he used on specific live recordings, as he alternately played his 1964 “The Fool” Gibson SG, 1964 Firebird I and 1963 ES-335 during this period, though some photos from the 1968 tour show him with a Les Paul. Clapton’s soloing here evokes the influence of B.B. King as he moves deftly between phrases based on C minor pentatonic (C Ef F G Bf) and C major pentatonic (C D E G A). His lightning-fast hammer-pulls and heavenly “floating” vibrato illustrate why the 23-year-old Clapton was called God during this period.

09. "Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?"Derek and the Dominos—Live at the Fillmore (1994) In 1969, following the implosion of Cream and the short-lived Blind Faith, Clapton found himself at a career crossroads. Disillusioned and directionless, he joined the powerhouse husband/wife-led Delaney & Bonnie and Friends as a sideman, and by that summer he appropriated Delaney Bramlett (with his entire band in tow) to produce his first solo release, Eric Clapton. Three musicians from this lineup—bassist Carl Radle, keyboardist and singer Bobby Whitlock and drummer Jim Gordon—formed the nucleus of Clapton’s next band, Derek and the Dominos, who recorded the seminal Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs in the summer of 1970 and toured as a four-piece through August. The Dominos’ live shows were filled with long jams, and at nearly 15 minutes, “Why Does Love Got to Be So Sad?” was one of the longest, opening with an extended wah-infused funk workout. With stellar high-harmony vocals added by Whitlock, this four-piece emits a huge sound. Clapton’s first solo has all the fire, fury and melodicism of his greatest playing, his 1956 “Brownie” Stratocaster screaming pure virtuosity and conviction. The second half of the song is a seven-plus-minute D major jam during which the 25-year-old guitarist displays inspired chordal and single-line inventiveness.

08. "Badge"Cream—Goodbye (1969) Much like “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (see entry 34), Cream’s “Badge” is the result of a strong and ultimately long-lasting friendship between Clapton and the Beatles’ George Harrison. When Cream decided to call it quits in late 1968, each member of the band, including Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, was required to come up with a new song for the group’s final album, Goodbye, the remainder of which would be filled with live cuts. Clapton called on Harrison for assistance. “I was writing the words down, and when we came to the middle bit, I wrote ‘Bridge,’ ” Harrison said. “And from where [Eric] was sitting, opposite me, he looked and said, ‘What’s that—Badge?’ ” Clapton wound up calling the song “Badge” because it made him laugh. For the session, which took place only a month after “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” Harrison played rhythm guitar. Clapton, playing a shimmering, Beatles-inspired arpeggio riff through a Leslie rotary-speaker cabinet, enters the song at 1:06 and plays the rest of the way through. His guitar solo was overdubbed later. The brilliant solo, which lasts a cozy 33 seconds, is a prime example of a “composition within a composition.” It finds Clapton sending his considerable blues chops through a pop-rock funnel, something he’d do on and off for the next 45-plus years.

07. "Spoonful"Cream—Fresh Cream (1966) Just as “Crossroads” introduced a new generation of music fans to the mystique of Robert Johnson, Cream’s “Spoonful” brought extra exposure to Willie Dixon, who wrote the song, and Howlin’ Wolf, who originally recorded it in 1960. And while Howlin’ Wolf’s stark-and-dark version is haunting in its own right, Cream’s take on the song—driven by Clapton’s guitar and Jack Bruce’s heavy bass—moves it several steps further along. Clapton’s solo, which starts at 2:23, seems almost playful at first, as if he’s toying with the listener, but at 2:46, things take a sudden and profound turn toward the dramatic. He plays a series of notes—virtual howls and moans—high on the neck, punctuating them with several perfectly timed cracks at his low E string. At 3:31, he launches into a completely new melody, taking Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker along for the ride. Clapton’s tone on the track, a unique dense, reverb-drenched sound that only a Gibson humbucker could produce, stands alone in Cream’s canon and in Clapton’s entire discography. At Cream’s live shows, “Spoonful,” like several other songs, gave the band members plenty of room to stretch out, as can be heard on the sensational, nearly 17-minute-long version on Cream’s Wheels of Fire.

06. "Layla"Derek and the Dominos—Layla (1970) Having played with several of the most influential bands of the Sixties, Clapton launched the Seventies with a new group of his own devising, Derek and the Dominos. He wrote this tune—the title track of their debut album—to express his unrequited love for Pattie Boyd, who was George Harrison’s wife at the time but would leave Harrison for Clapton later in the Seventies. The song’s killer main riff was something Clapton cooked up with legendary guitarist Duane Allman, who guested on the Derek and the Dominos sessions at the suggestion of producer Tom Dowd. The unusual half-step downward modulation from the D minor main riff/chorus key signature to the verses, which are in D flat minor, enhances the despairing mood of Clapton’s lovelorn lyric. There’s a deep sense of musical telepathy in the way his bluesy Strat lines interweave with Allman’s eerily spectral slide guitar improvisations during the song’s extended solo over the main riff structure. This gives way to the track’s stately piano-driven coda, penned by Dominos drummer Jim Gordon and affording Allman and Clapton even more real estate over which to stretch out.

05. "Let It Rain"Eric Clapton—Eric Clapton (1970) This tastefully arranged song from Clapton’s debut solo album begins with the guitarist overdubbing a sweet-sounding mini choir of three harmony-lead guitars with perfectly synchronized finger slides and vibratos. Together they create the effect of one instrument playing a melody harmonized in triads, but with the brightness and clarity that can only be achieved by three separate single-note lines, or “voices.” Clapton recorded this song on Brownie, his Fender Stratocaster, using its bright single-coil bridge pickup for his lead parts to achieve a brilliant tone and crystal-clear note definition. Clapton’s solo over the song’s outro features his signature polished finger vibrato and use of parallel major and minor pentatonic scales (both in the key of A in this case). He begins by riding out on the high A root note on the high E string’s 17th fret with alternate-picked 16th notes. Clapton then proceeds to travel down the string through the A Mixolydian mode (A B C# D E F# G)—a distinctly different approach to position playing—before gravitating toward A major pentatonic box shapes, using multiple hammer-ons and pull-offs to create a succession of repetition licks with syncopated “threes on fours” rhythmic phrasing that creates an almost banjo-like country feel. While Clapton’s lead tone here is markedly brighter than what he used earlier in his career, his unique style, as determined by his phrasing, string bending and vibrato, remains his signature.

04. "Steppin’ Out"John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers—Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton “Steppin’ Out” is one of Clapton’s best-known Bluesbreakers tracks, and with good reason. Along with “Hideaway” (see entry 13), it delivers the heftiest dose of Clapton’s solid, mind-blowing tone and ferocious playing. This upbeat, straightforward blues instrumental in G finds him borrowing bits and pieces from Memphis Slim’s original 1959 version. Clapton (along with John Mayall on keyboards) plays the figure from Slim’s piano intro and then references the track’s tenor sax solo. At the 54-second mark, he incorporates an ingenious “scraping” technique from the original guitar solo, which was played by Matt “Guitar” Murphy, who would go on to join the Blues Brothers Band in the late Seventies. But there’s a lot more going on here. Clapton incorporates some serious finger vibrato on the 12th fret of the G string—which only adds to the sustain produced by his overdriven Marshall amp—and he uses finger slides as he shifts between several positions of the G minor pentatonic scale. The well-paced solo ends with Clapton, much like his idols B.B. King and Buddy Guy, bending high on the neck before returning to the intro figure. It’s worth noting that he recorded other versions of “Steppin’ Out” with his short-lived 1966 supergroup the Powerhouse and with Cream, including the knockout 14-minute version on Live Cream Volume II.

03. "White Room"Cream—Wheels of Fire (1968) Penned by Cream bassist Jack Bruce and Swinging London poet Pete Brown, “White Room” provided a suitably glorious opening track for Cream’s third album, 1968’s Wheels of Fire. From the first notes of the song’s 5/4 bolero intro, it’s clear that this is a landmark recording. Clapton’s mysteriously evocative layered guitar textures set a mood of high drama before the main 4/4 groove kicks in with an irresistible invitation to some serious hippie-era proto-head banging. The descending D minor verse progression is reminiscent of Cream’s earlier epic track “Tales of Brave Ulysses,” which is said to have been based on the chord pattern in the Lovin’ Spoonful’s 1966 hit “Summer in the City.” “White Room” contains some of Clapton’s finest wah-pedal artistry. He employs the device to create fluttery, aquatic magic in the choruses and to answer Bruce’s verse vocal lines with incandescent leads that match the fevered intensity of Brown’s lyrical imagery. Breaking with the time-honored tradition of putting a guitar solo in the middle of a song, “White Room” waits for the outro fade to unleash the full fury of Clapton’s slashing, psychedelic blues-wah frenzy. Clearly, they saved the best for last.

02. "Have You Heard"John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers—Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (1966) Quite frankly, if Clapton’s “Have You Heard” guitar solo doesn’t cause heart palpitations, shortness of breath or at least a mild case of goose bumps, you might want to seek medical help. The dramatic, 73-second pentatonic masterpiece is hands down the most frenetic, passionate solo of the guitarist’s 51-year career. The solo, which bursts out of the starting gate at the 3:25 mark, strings together a series of spectacularly intense, incendiary bends, hammer-ons, strategically timed position shifts, and slides. Clapton caps it off with a bevy of climactic high notes, an earmark of his solos on Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton. All of it is delivered via his groundbreaking new sound, a solid, sustained, overdriven tone that he forged by plugging a 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard into a 42-watt Marshall 2x12 combo and cranking it up to ear-splitting levels. On the album, Clapton burns and bedazzles like a futuristic amalgam of his many influences, including Freddie King, Otis Rush, Hubert Sumlin and Buddy Guy. Amazingly, Clapton was only 21 (about to turn 22) when Blues Breakers was recorded in March 1966. Even if he had simply vanished or faded away after the release of the album that summer (much like his stolen and still-missing 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard), he still would have earned a respected place in the annals of electric blues guitar.

01. "Crossroads"Cream—Wheels of Fire (1968) “Crossroads” has long been regarded as Eric Clapton’s most inspired and well-crafted lead guitar performance, and with good reason. This live, highly reworked cover of Robert Johnson’s “Cross Road Blues” features him and band mates Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker performing some intense—and extended—interactive jamming on a 12-bar blues in A, set to an uptempo, double-time groove with a driving even-, or “straight-,” eighths feel. The high point comes during the arrangement’s second, prolonged guitar solo, when the group engages in a rhythmically dense improvisation that represents the exhilarating apex of blues-rock freeform jamming. Conjuring a killer creamy tone with his 1964 Gibson SG Standard and stacks of 100-watt Marshall amps, Clapton exploits the rig’s available sustain, using his signature vocal-like finger vibrato technique to make his guitar sing. Particularly noteworthy is Clapton’s consistently wide and impeccably intonated bend vibratos (bent notes that are then shaken), especially during his upper-register second solo, which he plays mainly in the 17th-position A minor pentatonic (A C D E G) “box” pattern. He combines notes from this scale with those from the parallel A major pentatonic (A B C# E F#) to create varying hues of melodic “light and shade,” more so during his first solo, and seamlessly shifts/drifts from one position to the next by using legato finger slides. The result is a performance that ably supports the then-popular declaration that Clapton is God. “Crossroads” may be a song about striking a deal with the Devil, but this recording shows Clapton in supreme command of his divine powers.

Though he's mostly revered for his huge-sounding, eternally cool riffs, inventive altered tunings, acoustic fingerpicking masterpieces and otherworldly, ambient soundscapes, Jimmy Page also is one of the most influential lead guitarists in rock.

That his solos in such Led Zeppelin classics as "Good Times, Bad Times," "Heartbreaker," "Rock And Roll" and "Stairway To Heaven" are so firmly etched in two generations of guitarists' memories is testimony to his compositional and improvisational genius.

In this lesson, we'll examine the main technical elements and improvisational approaches that characterize Page's soloing style, and we'll look at some of his signature licks.

The Smear Box

Jimmy relies heavily on the minor pentatonic "box" pattern illustrated in FIGURE 1 for many of his licks, using mostly the top three or four strings. When he does go down to the bottom string, he'll shift positions with his middle or ring finger on the 5th string, as indicated here.

FIGURE 2 shows this fretboard pattern in the key of E with the root note E falling on the top and bottom strings at the 12th fret. Using this visual pattern as a template, Jimmy will often begin a phrase by playing the Chuck Berry-influenced "smear" motif shown in FIGURE 3 in the key of E.

This lick begins with a whole-step bend on the G string from the fourth up to the fifth (A to B). The bend is executed with either the ring or middle finger while the index-finger barres the root-fifth doublestop on the top two strings.

Page utilizes this smear motif as a springboard to dive into blazing E minor pentatonic speed licks like those shown in FIGURES 4-6. As you play through these figures, notice the use of pull-offs on the top three strings, as well as whole-step bends, such as from the minor third up to the fourth (G to A) on the 1st string at the 15th fret. You can hear Jimmy playing licks along these lines in his solos in "Good Times, Bad Times" (1:30), "Dazed and Confused" (3:52), "The Lemon Song" (1:51) and "Communication Breakdown."

Jimmy also uses these same types of repeating smear/pull-off licks in different keys. For example, in his outro solo to "Black Dog" (4:12), he plays a lick similar to the one shown in FIGURE 6, but in the key of A using the 5th-position A minor pentatonic (A C D E G) box pattern illustrated in FIGURE 7. In his first two lead phrases in "Moby Dick" (:36 and :41), he uses this same fretboard shape in the 10th position (see Figure 8) to play scorching blues licks in D minor pentatonic.

Page utilizes this same fretboard shape to play major pentatonic licks as well. He does this by simply moving the minor pentatonic box pattern shown in FIGURE 1 down three frets, transforming it into a major pentatonic box pattern in the same key, as illustrated in FIGURE 9.

If you compare the E minor and E major pentatonic box patterns depicted in FIGURES 2 and 10, you'll notice that the fingering patterns are identical, but that the notes assume different harmonic functions. This simple three-fret transposition enables Jimmy to transform minor pentatonic licks into major pentatonic licks (and vice versa) in the same key using the same fretboard shapes and fingering patterns.

Jimmy applies this transposition principle brilliantly in his "Communication Breakdown" solo. After playing several measures of rather dark sounding E minor pentatonic blues licks in the 12th position, he suddenly creates a lighter shade of blue by playing E major pentatonic licks using the exact same fretboard pattern in the 9th position.

Page uses this same major pentatonic box pattern illustrated in FIGURE 9 to play bright-sounding country-style licks, most notably in "The Song Remains the Same" (in D, 7th position, at :58, and in A, 2nd position, at 4:19), "Celebration Day" (in C, 17th position, at 1:46, and 5th position at 1:53) and "Houses of the Holy" (in A, 2nd position, at 1:11).

FIGURE 11 is a signature Jimmy Page "wall of notes" triplet run played in the 12th-position E minor pentatonic box pattern illustrated in FIGURE 2. You can hear him playing similarly blistering runs, both ascending and descending, in "Good Times, Bad Times" (at 1:30, 2:02 and 2:33) using this same fretboard pattern. In "I Can't Quit You Baby" (2:29), he plays almost the same lick in A minor pentatonic using the box pattern depicted in FIGURE 7.

Though he's mostly revered for his huge-sounding, eternally cool riffs, inventive altered tunings, acoustic fingerpicking masterpieces and otherworldly, ambient soundscapes, Jimmy Page is also one of the most influential lead guitarists in rock. That his solos in such Led Zeppelin classics as "Good Times, Bad Times," "Heartbreaker," "Rock And Roll" and "Stairway To Heaven" are so firmly etched in two generations of guitarists' memories is testimony to his compositional and improvisational genius. In this lesson we'll examine the main technical elements and improvisational approaches that characterize Page's soloing style and look at some of his signature licks.

Sweet Bends

One of the things that makes Page such a great lead player is his tasteful, lyrical use of string bending (he prefers extra light gauge strings because they're easy to bend and shake). FIGURE 12 illustrates a minor pentatonic box pattern Jimmy uses to play soaring Albert King-style bends like those shown in the key of E in FIGURE 13. (Notice the inclusion of the major third in this shape. Jimmy will often teeter between the major third and fourth when playing in a major or dominant seventh tonality.)

As this example demonstrates, this compact little box shape lendsitself to performing a variety of soulful half-step and whole-step bends, such as from the fourth to the lowered fifth (A to Bb), from the minor third to the major third (G to G#), from the fourth to the fifth (A to B) and from the root to the second/ninth (E to F#). It's also great for playing screaming one-and-a-half-step and two-step "overbends," such as from the root to the minor third (E to G), from the root to the major third (E to G#) and from the fourth to the major sixth (A to C#). Jimmy uses this box pattern in the 15th position to play these types of bends in E in "Good Times, Bad Times" (1:43), and in A (8th position) in "I Can't Quit You Baby" (2:48).

Vibrato

One the most distinctive features of Jimmy's lead "voice" is his polished vibrato, especially his bend vibrato (vibrato applied to a bent note). His vibrato is fast, even and shimmering. A classic example of Page's impeccable bending and vibrato technique, as well as his phrasing genius, is his lead break beginning at 3:05 in "Whole Lotta Love." This excerpt is comprised of six succinct, punctuated phrases and each one reveals at least one signature Jimmy Page move. This solo is also a great example of how he uses notes from the E minor pentatonic scale (E G A B D), the E blues scale (E G A Bb B D) and the E major pentatonic scale (E F# G# B C#) in combination to create soulful, bittersweet melodies.

Jimmy plays phrases 1 and 3 in the trusty 12th-position E minor pentatonic box, which, as we've already seen, facilitates the rapid execution of pull-offs, hammer-ons and bends on the top three strings. He begins the first phrase with the whole-step smear bend on the G string, then plays a slick descending lick using the E blues scale. Notice the smooth double pull-off from Bb to A to G. He finishes the phrase with the same bend from A to B, which he then adorns with a haunting, wide vibrato. This bend vibrato is produced by partially releasing the whole-step bend and pushing it back up to the "target" pitch (B) in a quick, steady rhythm, as illustrated in FIGURE 14.

Phrase 2 demonstrates Page's judicious use of the "open-position" E minor pentatonic scale pattern. Notice how he takes full advantage of the open-string notes by playing a slick double pull-off (B to A to G) to the open G string, followed by a descending succession of fast single pull-offs to the open G and D strings.

Jimmy returns to the 12th-position E minor pentatonic box in phrase 3 and plays a smear lick on the top three strings, which he follows with a bend on the 2nd string at the 15th fret from the minor seventh (D) up to the root (E). Notice how he then plays the minor third (G) on the 1st string at the 15th fret, then quickly bends the D note up to E again and sweetens the bend with a robust vibrato, using the same partial-release-and-rebend technique detailed for the bend vibrato in phrase 1.

B.B.'s Box

Phrases 4-6 demonstrate Jimmy's tasteful use of a fretboard pattern many guitarists endearingly refer to as "B.B.'s box" (in honor of the legendary blues guitarist B.B. King, who relies on it for most of his signature licks). This pattern is based around the index finger on the root note on the 2nd string and facilitates the playing of major pentatonic, minor pentatonic and blues scale licks, all in the same position and key, with the index finger functioning as an "anchor" on the root note. FIGURE 15 illustrates this box pattern in E, with the root note located on the B string at the 17th fret. Jimmy begins phrase 4 on this note, then performs a gut-wrenching two-and-half-step overbend at the 20th fret on the same string, bending the G note all the way up to C (the lowered sixth) using both his ring and middle fingers to push the string (this technique is known as reinforced fingering). After releasing the bend he picks the E note again then plays the natural sixth (C#) below the root on the 3rd string at the 21st fret.

Jimmy begins phrase 5 on the root, E, at the 17th fret, then plays a screaming one-and-a-half-step overbend on the 1st string at the 20th fret, bending the fifth, B, up to the lowered seventh, D. Again he employs both his ring and middle fingers to push the string for added strength and control. After releasing this bend, he plays a descending lick using notes from the E blues scale. You can hear Jimmy playing a similarly wailing lick using this same box pattern (and an Echoplex) in his "You Shook Me" solo (4:18).

At the end of this solo, 3, Page contrasts the harmonically darker sound of the blues scale by playing a brighter sounding E major pentatonic lick in the same position. Notice how he bends the second/ninth, F#, up a whole step to the major third, G#, then overbends it an additional half step to the fourth, A, again using two fingers to push the string.

Unison Bends

Another signature move in Page's lead lexicon is the unison bend. This technique involves strumming two fretted notes that are a whole step apart on two adjacent strings (either the G and B, or B and E), thenquickly bending the lower note up a whole step to match the pitch of the higher note. This maneuver works best on the B and G strings, as the notes are comfortably fingered two frets apart with the index finger on the B string and the ring finger on the G string (the middle finger can help the ring finger bend the lower note up to pitch). Properly executed, this technique produces a natural chorusing effect and makes the doubled note cut through the roar of the rhythm section like a laser beam through fog. Page uses unison bends to emphasize notes during key melodic phrases and licks. You can hear him utilizing this technique on the G and B strings in "Dazed and Confused" (3:39), "Stairway to Heaven" (7:29) and "Communication Breakdown."

Open-string Licks

Some of Page's fattest sounding and most memorable licks are performed in the lower fretboard positions and involve the use of open strings. FIGURES 16 and 17 are twangy 1st- and 2nd-position licks that use single and double pull-offs to the open strings. You can hear Jimmy playing similar types of open-string licks in his solos in "The Song Remains the Same" (4:30) and "Moby Dick" (:46).

Behind-The-Nut

Another cool move Jimmy does is bend a string behind the nut by pressing down on it with his fingers. A classic example of this is the slinky, psychedelic lick he plays in his a capella solo in "Heartbreaker" (2:06). This lick is performed using double pull-offs to the open G string with the left hand as the right hand repeatedly bends the string behind the nut to raise the pitch of the C note (5th fret) a whopping two whole-steps. Jimmy uses a similar technique in his "Dazed and Confused" solo (4:04). In this case, he bends and shakes the open string behind the nut using his first two left-hand fingers as he repeatedly picks the stringwith his right hand. He uses the same technique during the song's intro (:14), where he sounds a G natural harmonic (N.H.) on the 3rd string at the 12th fret, then, as the harmonic is still ringing, bends its pitch up a whole-step to A by pressing the string downward behind the nut with his left hand.

Lateral Mobility

Jimmy will often shift from one position to another in the middle of a phrase to play long, smooth ascending runs like those shown in FIGURES 18 and 19, using finger slides to seamlessly connect the notes and transport his left hand up and down the fretboard. You can hear him playing similar types of ascending runs in "Moby Dick" (:52), "Black Dog" (3:36) and "Heartbreaker" (2:35 and 3:08).

"Since I've Been Loving You" is a fine example of the expressive use of "crammed" phrasing in a slow blues context (the "wall of notes" approach). Notice also how he effectively exploits the minor pentatonic box pattern introduced back in FIGURE 1, this time in the key of C minor, and uses the ninth (D) as a "color" tone.

This primer is but a glimpse into one aspect of Jimmy Pages' unique, multifaceted guitar style. The best way to truly understand and appreciate his diverse, inventive approach to melody is to study complete transcriptions of classic Led Zeppelin songs, many of which have appeared in these pages over the years. (Complete album folios are available from Warner Bros. Publications, Miami, Florida.) If you really want to emulate Jimmy, then do what he did early on and open your mind and ears to a healthy variety of guitar styles and musical genres.

Gypie Mayo, best known as the guitarist for Dr. Feelgood in the late '70s, died this morning. He was 62.

Mayo replaced Wilko Johnson in Dr. Feelgood in 1977 and remained with the band until 1981. His guitar work — and several of his compositions — can be heard on six Dr. Feelgood albums, including Be Seeing You (1977) and Private Practice (1978).

Mayo co-wrote the band's only UK Top 10 single, "Milk and Alcohol," with Nick Lowe and was the sole composer of "Hi-Rise," the B-side of "She's a Windup," a single that saw moderate success in the UK in late 1977.

Mayo joined the restructured Yardbirds in 1996, ably filling the shoes of three legendary former Yardbirds guitarists, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. He appeared on the band's latest studio album, 2003's Birdland, and remained with the band until 2004.

Mayo was born John Phillip Cawthra on July 24, 1951, in London. He originally used the stage name John Mayo until, after having suffered several ailments, Dr. Feelgood's Lee Brilleaux said, "You've always got the gyp" — and the new name stuck. Starting in the late '60s, he played with White Mule and several local acts until connecting with Dr. Feelgood.

No cause of death has been given.

Photo: Cindy Moorhead

The Yardbirds have announced the release of a limited-edition two-disc live/documentary DVD, Making Tracks.

The DVD, which was shot at multiple U.S. shows from 2010 to 2012, chronicles the ultimate Yardbirds touring experience. It was shot in high definition with six cameras.

Disc one, Making Tracks, features 17 songs, including previously unreleased new material. Disc two, Glimpses, features an in-depth Yardbirds tour documentary, the result of camera crews being given unprecedented access to behind-the-scenes activity.

The second disc also includes additional Yardbirds songs, interviews with band members, a Boston-area music-shop tour with Yardbirds guitarist Ben King and two songs by The Jim McCarty Band.

After breaking up in the late '60s — and almost immediately morphing into Led Zeppelin — The Yardbirds, who spawned the careers of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, re-united in 1995, just a few years after their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The band features original members Jim McCarty (drums) and Chris Dreja (rhythm guitar). Lead guitarist Ben King joined in 2005; singer Andy Mitchell and bassist Dave Smale joined in 2009.

The DVD release is timed to celebrate The Yardbirds' 50th anniversary in 2013. It is produced and directed by Bruce Macomber for Reel Time Productions and released by Howlin’ Wolf Pictures in association with The Yardbirds.

For more about the band, visit their official website and Facebook page.

The Yardbirds have announced a North American tour that kicks off August 26 in Ontario, Canada, and winds up September 15 in Virginia.

The current version of the band features guitarist Ben King, original drummer Jim McCarty, bassist David Smale and vocalist Andy Mitchell. Check out the new tour dates below.

For more about The Yardbirds, visit them on Facebook.

• Sun, August 26 Gravenhurst, ON Peter Players
• Wed, August 29 Portland, OR Crystal Ballroom
• Sat, September 1 Spokane, WA Pig Out In The Park
• Sun, September 2 Petaluma, CA Sausalito Art Festival
• Mon, September 3 Santa Cruz, CA Moe’s Alley
• Wed, September 5 Chicago, IL City Winery
• Thurs, September 6 New York, NY City Winery
• Fri, September 7 Foxboro, MA Showcase Live
• Sat, September 8 Norfolk, CT Infinity
• Sun, September 9 Londonderry, NH Tupelo
• Wed, September 12 Annapolis, MD Rams Head
• Fri, September 14 New Hope, PA Havanna
• Sat, September 15 Chester, VA Hops Harvest Beer Wine & Camp Fest – Pocahontas State Park

Yardbirds 2012 tour teaser from Bruce Macomber on Vimeo.

Guitar Legends: Eric Clapton is a must-have item for fans of any stage of Clapton's long, storied career.

The special issue, which is available now at the Guitar World Online Store for $9.99, tells Clapton's story and transcribes five songs, including "Layla," "White Room," "Cocaine" and "Sunshine of Your Love." It features several interviews, details his solo career and his brief but important time with John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers and The Yardbirds.

It also contains the following special features and more:

Strange Brew: Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker gave birth to the power trio, redefined rock and improvisation and sold millions of albums. For all their success, nothing could stop the Cream from curdling.

Time Piece: Blues purist. Guitar god. Pop star. Eric Clapton has been all these and more. In this exhaustive, wide-ranging interview, rock's great survivor reflects on his tumultuous journey.

Guitar Legends: Eric Clapton is available now at the Guitar World Online Store.

Can you believe it’s been a year since the Guitar Girl’d column was born?

To celebrate, I thought it only fitting to resurrect my favorite column of the last 52 weeks: my list of the top 10 hot male guitar players.

Yep, last year when I broke this concept, I admit I was a bit perturbed by all those lists of hot female guitarists … with the word “hot” not defining their scathing performance skills. Oh no!

Little did I know I’d be back for another installment of my version of this little game -- and this time with 12 instead of 10 guys (It is 2012, after all).

“Tell us the criteria,” you cry. “What are the rules? How does one appear on such a prestigious, yet beefcakey list?” Alas, the rules are mine and mine alone. Completely arbitrary. Subject to female vagaries. You got it: It’s whatever turns me on at the time. Strikes my fancy. Catches my eye.

So in the photo gallery below, dear reader, is my completely self-indulgent list of 12 hot guys who, oh yeah, also play guitar!! Did I miss your fave? Don’t whine! Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Laura B. Whitmore is a singer/songwriter based in the San Francisco bay area. A veteran music industry marketer, she has spent over two decades doing marketing, PR and artist relations for several guitar-related brands including Marshall and VOX. Her company, Mad Sun Marketing, represents 65amps, Dean Markley, Agile Partners, Guitar World and many more. Laura was instrumental in the launch of the Guitar World Lick of the Day app. She is the co-producer of the Women's Music Summit and the lead singer for the rock band, Summer Music Project. More at mad-sun.com.

UK-based Omnibus Press will publish a new Jeff Beck biography -- Hot Wired Guitar: The Life of Jeff Beck -- on May 1.

The 496-page book is already available in digital form via iBooks, barnesandnoble.com and other online outlets.

The author, British journalist Martin Power, has published biographies on Aerosmith, Queen, Shane McGowan, Manic Street Preachers and Pearl Jam.

Hot Wired Guitar explores Beck's life from his childhood in 1940s South London through 2010's Emotion & Commotion and beyond. It features new interviews with Yardbirds members Chris Dreja and Jim McCarty and manager Simon Napier-Bell, and other Beck collaborators including Max Middleton, Stanley Clarke, Simon Phillips, Jimmy Hall, Mo Foster, Doug Wimbish and others.

For more about the book, visit the publisher's website. You also can download free digital samples from iBooks, barnesandnoble.com and amazon.com.

Hot Wired Guitar: The Life of Jeff Beck, hardcover, 496 pages, Omnibus Press, $34.95

In the mid-1960s, the Yardbirds revolutionized modern rock by turning super guitar players into superstars.

The British band -- which made a seamless shift from traditional blues to psychedelic rave-ups -- was the launching pad for Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. Several Yardbirds songs, including "Shapes of Things," "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" and "Over Under Sideways Down" are considered mini-masterpieces of mid-'60s rock guitar -- prime examples of the power of perfectly placed notes.

When the band broke up in 1968, Page picked up the pieces and formed Led Zeppelin.

In the early '90s, original Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty and rhythm guitarist/bassist Chris Dreja reformed the band, treating the coveted lead guitar spot as a showcase for a string of serious players, including Gypie Mayo and Jerry Donahue. In 2005, that role was filled by the then-22-year-old Ben King, who has since garnered a reputation as one of Britain's most tasteful young guitarists.

The current version of the Yardbirds -- McCarty (drums), King (guitar), Andy Mitchell (lead vocals/harmonica) and David Smale (bass) -- is embarking on a brief East Coast US tour that kicks off tonight, February 1, in Buffalo, New York (The complete tour schedule is listed below).

For the first time since the late '60s, the band will tour as a four-piece unit. Dreja, who is still in the band, is recuperating at home in England after a recent illness.

Guitar World spoke to King on January 30.

GUITAR WORLD: How do you find that balance between showing off your own style as a guitarist and making the sounds you're "supposed to make" as a member of the Yardbirds? Playing what people want to hear, but giving them a bit of yourself, so to speak.

I suppose that's what a lot of people think about as far as the role I'm doing in this band, and to be honest, it came very naturally. I think that was one of the reasons I landed the gig -- because there were so many great guitar players that wanted to do it. I think one of the things Chris noticed in me when I auditioned was the fact that I seemed to have sort of an instinctive nature and feel for the music because, to be honest, most people thought I was completely obsessive over this band and worshiped these guitar players -- and that's why I got the gig. But to be honest, I didn't. For me, it was a case of listening to some of that stuff and getting the flavor of it.

What is it like stepping into the shoes of greats like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page?

What made those guitar players great was the fact they were all quite individual. Jeff Beck didn't try to copy Eric Clapton. He took what had been done and kind of went with that feeling, and his natural thing came out. You're talking about a bunch of players who are self-taught and using their ears to go through with all that stuff. And that's the way I learned how to play. That's kind of what Chris really gravitates toward -- the fact that Jim would start playing something on the drums and I'd be able to pick it up straight away. That was the balance they wanted, I think. I heard guys auditioning who were playing everything perfectly -- you could have sworn Clapton or Beck had been in that room behind the closed door, but they weren't looking for somebody to imitate exactly what it was. They were looking for somebody with a unique flare, and I've always tried to balance that.

The band decided not to replace Chris Dreja on this tour, and you'll be going out as a four-piece. How do you feel about that?

There was all sorts of talk about maybe needing somebody else to replace Chris. And I thought that it seems like a lot of what we've been doing in this band is reuniting the history to the group's past anyway. Why not just go out there and do it as a four-piece? Next year is the 50th anniversary of the group, and I know we all have our hopes for a reunion of some sort; so I thought it would be kind of cool to go out there as a four-piece instead of replacing Chris with somebody who has no relevance to the group. I thought, "You know, I feel like I can do this." I think the four-piece is lending itself that way anyway, because we now have a dedicated frontman with Andy and an amazing bass player with Dave; you've got Jim on the drums -- let's do the four-piece thing because it gives us the freedom to open up and expand on the creativity.

Much like the Jimmy Page-era Yardbirds.

Yes. I was listening to the Anderson Theater show [the 1968 New York City show heard on Live Yardbirds! Featuring Jimmy Page], and some of those jams are as exciting, if not more exciting, than a lot of early Zeppelin. The melting pot of what was going on was very lively and frenetic. My plan for this tour is to get as much of that out as possible, whether it's improvising or jamming or just really knocking in and recreating some of those classic tracks. It's a great challenge, certainly for me, having to fill all that space with a guitar, but Jim really has to open up in the rhythm section. I really think it's going to be exciting. I know Jim is very much looking forward to it. I think it's exciting for him because it's the first time this has happened since the late '60s.

Of the three classic Yardbirds guitarists, whose era is most fun to revisit?

That's a good question. I suppose I don't have a favorite era. Possibly Jeff Beck, just because his stuff is always fun to recreate because it stays essential to the tracks he played on. I feel Jeff Beck's parts were so clever and so well written that I couldn't do anything else to expand on that. The other Yardbirds stuff was more blues-oriented, and you can feel the need to improvise naturally. But with Beck, I really like the way he constructed all the parts.

What gear are you using on this tour?

I normally use a Telecaster. I did venture into Strats and kind of went into Gibsons, but not live. I've been experimenting with using a Gibson, especially now with the four-piece, but never really got around to it. It's always been kind of easier with a Tele, and I think that is the guitar of the band, if you look back. I love Telecasters. I'd only acquired my first Telecaster about six months prior to joining the band. I'd use many things before that were definitely easy to play, but I found a blank canvas with the Telecaster, and that can be really quite inspiring. And it's great for that kind of combination of rhythm and lead. I find the Strat never really got on really well with rhythm.

So I use a Telecaster, which is custom built, and one of the new hand-wired Vox AC-30s. And I'm kind of excited about using Divided By 13 amps from California (model FTR 37). I was lucky enough to plug into some of their stuff in a shop in England, and they really just did everything I wanted it to do. It delivered.

I also was looking for a Tone Bender pedal, naturally, because that was the pedal of the Yardbirds. Getting this combination of what we've used in those days and stuff I gravitate toward with my own ears, trying to get a combination of both of those things. Williams Audio is a very small boutique builder in England. The guy is really passionate about it. He doesn't make a living from doing what he does; he does it because he loves it. He's got one based on the MK-2 Tone Bender. I'll probably feel them out in sound check for awhile for these shows, just to figure out what I'm gonna stick with for the four-piece. [EDITOR'S NOTE: According to the Williams Audio website, King is touring with an OC81D Williams Vintage Tone MK11 Professional.]

What is your favorite Yardbirds song to play?

Probably "Shapes of Things." It still feels really fun and energetic and lyrically relevant. Timeless, I think. That would be one song, I suppose. God, it's really difficult. I love to do "Dazed and Confused" and all that stuff too, just because it's a chance to open up. I love playing blues as well. It's kind of a great gig to have, in that respect.

Is the band working on a studio album?

As the Yardbirds, we're not working on a studio album. We are, however, all actively writing music and sharing ideas, particularly the new members. So we're working on stuff we can present to Jim and Chris, the original Yardbirds, to potentially do something with. My idea is to go more on the kind of download, digital single idea -- doing individual tracks rather than trying to make some sort of epic record that has to stand up against the band's back catalog.

That's one of the reasons this band hasn't, in my mind, really created all that much. Just because, when you have a back catalog that strong, it's difficult to feel the right sort of inspiration to go and create, because this is a band that stopped working at the end of the '60s, pretty much. They've done a few bits and pieces since then. So it's quite a daunting prospect, you know.

We are, however, working hard on a live Yardbirds DVD that hopefully will be out sometime within the next six months. Jim and I are actually staying behind after the tour to edit it.

THE YARDBIRDS' FEBRUARY 2012 US TOUR:
The Yardbirds will co-bill with Vanilla Fudge at the venues marked with *.

• 2/1/12 - Buffalo, NY - The Tralf *
• 2/2/12 - Nichols, NY - Tioga Downs Racetrack
• 2/3/12 - New York, NY - Irving Plaza *
• 2/4/12 - Glenside, PA - Keswick Theatre *
• 2/6/12 - Alexandria, VA - The Birchmere
• 2/8/12 - Tarrytown, NY - Tarrytown Music Hall *
• 2/9/12 - New Brunswick, NJ - State Theatre *

For more about The Yardbirds, visit their official website. For more about Ben King, visit his official website.

Although Jimmy Page hasn't exactly been prolific since Led Zeppelin disbanded in 1980, his carefully chosen projects have been varied and interesting, from Coverdale/Page to the Death Wish II soundtrack.

And so, in honor of the legendary guitarist's 68th birthday, we ask you to cast your vote for what you feel is his best post-Led Zeppelin album -- regardless of live or studio.

Note that we've left off albums and EPs on which Page wasn't one of the main artists or contributors, such as Strange Land by Box of Frogs or the Scream For Help soundtrack by John Paul Jones.

With that in mind, thanks for voting!

The Yardbirds, the band that spearheaded the British Blues Boom of the 1960s and brought the world Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, will tour the Northeast starting February 1 in Buffalo, New York.

The lineup includes original member Jim McCarty (drums) plus guitarist Ben King, bassist David Smale and vocalist Andy Mitchell, whose sound is straight out of the mid-'50s Chicago school of blues.

Chris Dreja, rhythm guitarist and co-founder, is recuperating at home after a recent illness and will not be part of this short tour.

The Yardbirds will co-bill with Vanilla Fudge at the following venues: *

• 2/1/12 - Buffalo, NY - The Tralf *
• 2/2/12 - Nichols, NY - Tioga Downs Racetrack
• 2/3/12 - New York, NY - Irving Plaza *
• 2/4/12 - Glenside, PA - Keswick Theatre *
• 2/6/12 - Alexandria, VA - The Birchmere
• 2/8/12 - Tarrytown, NY - Tarrytown Music Hall *
• 2/9/12 - New Brunswick, NJ - State Theatre *

•Co-Headline with Vanilla Fudge

Eric Clapton has earned a place on a short list of guitar-playing legends.

Some people even went around calling him "God" back in '66.

But what is THE Eric Clapton guitar album? Which one simply says it all or captures the best bits of his style in a nutshell? Or -- another way of putting it -- which one would you take with you if you were going to live on a deserted island for 12.45 years, armed only with a Gibson Les Paul R-0 1960 Reissue ... and an amp ... and maybe some sandwiches?

Did he hit his peak early with the Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton album in '66? Did he really hit his Strat stride in '70 with Layla? Or did he make a comeback with the live Cream album from 2005? (Check out his solo in "Sleepy Time Time.")

Take the poll below and let us know! The results will be posted soon.

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I bet you didn’t know The Yardbirds were still around. Up until a month or two ago, I didn’t know either. Well, they are, and they’re fantastic.

Back in the Sixties, The Yardbirds revolutionized rock music by elevating the guitar soloist to superstar status. Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page are just three of the guys that passed through their ranks, and classic albums like Roger the Engineer, Little Games and Having a Rave Up sound better and hipper with each passing year.

Earlier this summer, I received a press release saying that the band, with original members guitarist Chris Dreja and drummer Jim McCarty, was playing in the UK and I was intrigued.

I bought their 2006 album Live at B.B. King Blues Club not expecting much, and I was shocked. It was terrific, especially their young lead guitarist Ben King.

Featuring songs new and old, King was not only tasteful and true to the essence of the original band, but he also added enough of his own spin to keep them sounding smart and contemporary.

I flew to London in July to see the band in the flesh and dragged my good friend, photographer Ross Halfin, along with me. Ross, who has seen thousands of shows in his lifetime and is good friends with both Page and Beck, thought I was out of my mind. In fact, he called me the politically incorrect term for “mentally handicapped.”

But the band did not disappoint. As they tore through songs like “Smokestack Lightning,” a rollicking “Little Games” and a killer “I’m Confused,” Halfin also became a convert.

The band is on a short tour of the U.S., and I saw them last night at B.B. King’s in New York City. Once again they played a sophisticated set, filled with the kind of sensitivity to dynamics and detail that is all but lost these days.

If they are coming to your town, go and see them. I hear they might be back at the beginning of next year. If they return, I’m gonna see 'em again.

Brad Tolinksi is the editor-in-chief of Guitar World.

Here's part one of our interview with Jeff Beck from the January 1985 issue of Guitar World. The original story by Gene Santoro ran with the headline "Jeff Beck, The Interview: Twenty Years of Rock and Roll Power," and the story started on page 34.

Click here to see the cover of the Jeff Beck issue -- and all the Guitar World covers from 1985.

It’s been a long time since anybody’s heard from Jeff Beck. With the exception of the ten-date ARMS tour of 1984, his last time on the road was in 1981, in support of his album There and Back; and it was on that album and tour that the preeminent guitar-explorer bade farewell to his latest incarnation as a fusionmaster.

Nearly three years of silence followed, and as his old Yardbirds mate and longtime friend Jim McCarty put it, “We thought he needed a bit of shaking up.” The immediate result was Beck’s stunning reappearance as a badass rocker on four tracks of Box of Frogs, the album McCarty and the other surviving Yardbirds put out earlier this year.

Longer term, McCarty’s phone call to Beck was only the opening shot from a fusillade of guest-spot offers that had Beck appearing on cuts with the Vanilla Fudge, Tina Turner, Mick Jagger and, of course, Rod Stewart.

As you probably recall, Beck even toured with briefly with Stewart but bowed out after only a few dates. Then there’s Get Workin’, Beck’s own upcoming LP that, at the time of this writing, stands about seventy percent completed. It’s currently scheduled for an early 1985 release date.

Given all this activity by one of the acknowledged guitar heroes of an entire generation -- Beck's been recording, after all, for twenty years now, and managed to invent psychedelia, heavy metal and shriekback guitar along the way -- it seemed to us at GW that the fitting and obvious thing to do was to have a shot at putting Beck's career, achievements and musicianship into some kind of perspective.

Hence this two-part article. Part I is an exclusive interview with Beck speaking candidly and humorously -- so much for his reputation as the press' bad boy -- about a wide variety of topics: his re-entry into the music scene, the background for his various guest appearances, the new musical direction he's taking with Get Workin', his current equipment and new techniques, his own guitar heroes, his reactions to the crop of new electronic toys for guitarists and his thoughts on the current music scene.

Part II continues the discussion with Beck as he talks about his career as a superstar guitarist and its problems, how he thinks about his own playing, his perfectionism and his possible future musical directions. In addition, GW has talked with a number of musicians that have worked closely with Beck over the course of his career, people like Jim McCarty and Chris Dreja, Max Middleton, Jan Hammer, Stanley Clarke, Seymour Duncan. Their reminiscences and comments about Beck the musician and Beck the man -- how he works, what it's like working with him, the unique elements of his sound as a musician -- will make next issue's Jeff Beck Scrapbook an appropriate marker for this twentieth year of Beck's career.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, Jeff Beck.

GUITAR WORLD: You've resurfaced with a vengeance this last year or so.

That wasn't intentional, it just happened that way. The first thing was the Box of Frogs; they asked me last Christmas if I'd go down there and have a drink with them. So I went down there and had a drink with them and wound up playing on the record. Of course, they'd kinda said, "If you feel like it you can put a solo on here or there." I'd heard the demo beforehand and I quite liked it, and I couldn't see the harm of getting involved with old friends again.

What was it like getting back together with those guys after fifteen years?

Well, I was a bit afraid of what they'd sound like at first, because I don't think they had been near the music business, apart from the bass player, Samwell-Smith. But he kept his ear right to the ground the whole time: he's been producing a lot. So when I heard those tracks, I thought, "Wow, they're not bad at all; I've heard a lot worse." So I just went ahead and did my best for an afternoon. I say an afternoon, but I set up at three [p.m.] and we were working until about eleven at night. And [laughs] half an hour off for a drink!

How did you and Stewart hook up again?

I bumped into Rod the summer of '82, a: and I kept bumping into him in different places in Los Angeles. He was always friendly and saying, Well, when are we going to do something together? So I said, "Put your money where your mouth is." So then he organized the studio and we went in and did a thing called "People Get Ready." That turned out really well, and Warner Bros. and everybody just went crazy -- they loved it and all that.

Then they said, "All right, never mind your album, get something with Beck." So there was some talk about reforming [a group] with him, but that only happened on the three tracks with him on Camouflage. And it went from there: Rod rang up and said he loved what I had done on it, would I think about touring with him? What was spoken about was a very attractive offer financially, and also I wouldn't have to bear the brunt of headlining a tour, which after not touring for three years -- well, it's quite dicey out there, isn't it?

So I thought, "People are going to love this; if it turns out anything like what we're discussing it's going to be great." But, needless to say, it didn't, and I just got out of it as soon as possible, which was a shame, really. But he wasn't very forthcoming with any ideas which involved me, and I was just slotted in to about fifteen minutes. I just couldn't see the sense of touring the US, widespread, y'know, in that context. When my fans turned up they'd be thinking I'd gone mad or [pauses emphatically] moody.

Your own music has been evolving pretty constantly over the last twenty years. What kind of feel does have?

Well, what I've had to do is back off from the Blow by Blow and Wired kind of thing, get completely away from a "guitar hero" kind of record, which I was a bit shaky about doing at first. I don't mind, though, because that's not what's going on any more, and so it would be rather like challenging the world: trying to put out another all-guitar instrumental album is the kiss of death, in my opinion. Even though it might be a great album, I think it would miss by a mile what's going on in the world today.

I used Nile [Rodgers, producer of Get Workin') to get him to frame me in another way. He wrote four songs to start me off, and we just carried on from there. So far we've got seven tracks, with three outstanding-those will take care of the guitar-freak side of it. They'll be completely original instrumentals, and plus the solos I've played on Nile's songs, they should keep everybody happy.

Are you using drum machines or a drummer?

We used this guy called Jimmy Braylower, who's one of the top session drummers in New York, and he finds he's mostly in demand as a programmer rather than as a drummer. So he has the knack of actually playing more like a drummer on a machine than most people. Young kids would tend to just let the machine do all the work; they'd set up a simple figure and let it play over and over again. But it's a whole lot of work programming drum fills, so it would take unlimited time in the studio, which we didn't want to do.

We wanted to think of a drum fill or a drum lick and put it down in memory in seconds, instead of going over the track again, trying to get the bass and drums all together at the same time. So he used a very modern approach, and it worked pretty well. What we've turned up with is a challenge to a drummer; my next drummer will be hard-pressed to play what's on there. [Laughs) They're very feasible drum licks if your name is Simon Phillips, for example, so I guess I'll have to use him.

Who are some of the other players you used?

Jamaaladeen Tacuma is on there -- we did two tracks with him. And [keyboardist] Rob Sabino played some bass lines. See, it's a little like custom-built music, really, a bit of this and a bit of that. It helped me get off that thing I was on before, which is that high-speed jazz-rock.

Do you do any vocals?

I sang a couple of things: they're kind of tongue-in-cheek, to start me off a bit. But they taught me how it works. Nile's incredible about encouraging non-vocalists to become vocalists. He's very sympathetic, and without that I wouldn't have even attempted it. They're not bad, y'know; they'll get panned in the papers, but it's a start. If the song makes it and people like it, then I guess that's all that matters, really. [Ed. Note: Aside from a couple of early Yardbirds tunes, the only other Beck vocals on record can be found on the recent Media Home Entertainment video cassette of the ARMS Concerts, 2 vols.] [Ed. Note from 2011: He also sings on his first solo single, "Hi-Ho Silver Lining."]

Yeah. Do you enjoy one more than the other, for instance?

It's equal. When you get guys coming up to you in clubs or restaurants or somewhere, and they say how much they've enjoyed your playing on records, then that pays off dividends every day; every time they say it, you think, I'm glad I did that. But the parallel for that is that the live stuff is the best in the world, once you've really satisfied an audience in person. There really can't be any comparison. There's the event, the human event, the rising to the occasion every night -- there's no way you can beat that. It's like a sport, almost, where it's no good talking about football, you've got to play it.

What was it like playing in the ARMS tour with Clapton and Page?

The whole thing was so un-starlike, nobody played the big star, and we just loved being on the road because A) it was a good cause and B) it was a short tour, a one-time special thing, so we just got in and enjoyed the hell out of it. I think it should have gone on for another month, but see, initially we didn't know how well it would be received. Because it was Jimmy, Eric and myself for Ronnie Lane, the whole thing seemed to really mean something. It was an amazing experience all over.

What do you think of the whole Van Halen school of guitar?

I love it, I think it's the greatest. I've been there, y'know, but he lives and dies for that whereas I don't -- I'm not really a heavy metal boy, through and through. I'd love to go and see him but I probably wouldn't stay for the whole concert: I'd just get a flash of brilliance and then I'd go, saying to myself, "That guy is really great." I wouldn't want to get bored with it, which I could easily do with that style of music. I like rock concerts, concerts in general, to go through different moods, but there aren't too many concerts like that now. I mean, those guys like Van Halen are so great, but they seem to be stuck in that kind of stuff. Still, he's got the most amazing technique, you've got to take your hat off to him for that -- the speed and the frantic element. I could do well to learn from him some of those tricks he pulls.

Speaking of incredible technique, when did you first become aware of Hendrix?

I was in a guitar shop in London. It was probably the last time I've been in a guitar shop, actually [laughs). I'd just dropped in to see one of the guys who worked there, and he said, "Have you seen Jimi Hendrix?" And I said "No." So he said, "I just happened to be at a club last night where he was, and you have to see this guy." Well, coming from him, who liked nobody except these dusty old jazz guys, I figured I'd better go down and see this guy. So I went, and he'd understated it a lot -- Hendrix was a lot better than he made out. I was embarrassed because I thought, "God, that should be me up there" [Iaughs] -- I just hadn't had the guts to come out and do it so flamboyantly, really. He just looked like an animal, played like an animal, and everybody went crazy.

I'm just too withdrawn a character to do that. I mean, his upbringing was totally different from mine: He had so much impetus to get out there and do it, coming from where he did. I remember reading once about him eating a candy bar with little cockroach bites out of it. Still, I bitterly regret not having exploited my style a bit more, because there was a lot of stuff he did actually get from me, which he admitted -- the Yardbirds stuff, with the freaking out and feedback and all. Then there was that sensual element, the power of the sound he got from those heavy, heavy strings he used: I think his first string was like a normal third. You had to have his hands to play them.

Did you ever have the chance to jam with him?

Oh yeah. Talk to anybody who was around New York in '68. He was hot then, one of the biggest things ever, like Prince is now. We used to play in this place called the Scene. We jammed several nights, and it was the best time I can ever remember, for that kind of impromptu jamming.

What kind of stuff were you doing?

It was really a jam, we wouldn't have anything at all worked out. He'd start playing "Beck's Bolero," so I'd play rhythm guitar for that, and then I'd play "Purple Haze" and he'd play rhythm. We'd just mess around and give people a good laugh, and of course the mandatory twelve-bar blues would come into it somewhere.

Was there anything that he did that made you say, "God, I wish I'd thought of that?"

Oh, sure. I don't mean to be blowing my own trumpet, it's just that some of the little licks he did came from the Yardbirds records. That was a compliment; I could never thank him enough for doing that. But what really amazed me about him was that he lived for playing, and I didn't: he was a playaholic [laughs). I have to have a daily shot of it, but I wouldn't do it all day like he did.

Were there any tunes of his that stick in your mind?

His version of "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Stone Free." "Stone Free" is the main thing -- it's amazing, simply amazing. But there was also some bad stuff that he did. That "Star-Spangled Banner" on the Isle of Wight album, that business where I think his mind was gone a bit because of the intense pressure on him. That shook me. I said to myself, Jimi, c'mon, go back into the studio and start some new stuff, because playing live to people expecting miracles every night was just too much for him, really. I could see him going down as a result of it, his playing suffering, and then unfortunately the worst happened.

It's a bloody shame there was nobody around to make sure it didn't. He just never went to sleep -- like the early Rolling Stones, I don't think they ever went to sleep either. But he was just riding on a high, constantly, and that can't go on forever. You have to back off and take it easy. Bloody hell, it's one of the saddest losses in rock and roll guitar history, really, because who knows what he'd be doing now?

Who were some of the people you listened to that when they played you'd say, God, that guy just took the top of my head off?

Well, for that you'd have to go back to when I first started, when I started getting interested in blues. The same people that Eric, Eric Clapton, got inspired by, basically Otis Rush and people that just took your face off, like Buddy Guy and all the Chicago blues guys. I wouldn't say I got off on the bottleneck-scratching kind of stuff -- I don't really have any ear for that Jimmy Reed-kind of stuff, because it wasn't really [pauses] useful enough. It was kind of old downtrodden blues, which I don't really care for. I like the wildness of Buddy Guy.

Cliff Gallup is one of my heroes; I'd dearly love to meet him. And of course Les Paul I've met, and that's just a triumph in every sense of the word, just to see him playing again. But I like listening to anybody who's saying something, that's alI. I haven't been listening to that much new stuff: most of the time my radio is off, anyway, because I can't stand that barrage of Top Forty all the time. In fact, I’ve been listening to the classical station. But sometimes I’ll play the radio and if I’m in an extra good mood or there’s good company, a record that I would normally think stinks will come over as pretty good. Y’know what I mean?

If they’re enjoying it you might see something in it you wouldn’t otherwise. But I look at the records going around now and think, Would I be able to play on it? How would I treat this if I were playing it? And lots of times there’ll be a great drum sound with a terrific groove going, and no guitar. And I think, "God, why the hell can’t I put something out like that with my style on it?" But that brings us back to Nile, because I hope that he’s enabled me to do just that: put my guitar all over something with a little bit of savagery to it.

Talking about scratchy slide, how did you pick up on slide? You use it in some of the oddest places.

Yes, well, I turn to the slide when I'm flummoxed. Sometimes I'll just use it in short bursts, and kids don't really know if I'm playing slide or with my fingers, because it keeps coming in and out. Most slide players I've heard start out with a set tuning and that song will have that all the way through it, so if you're a guitarist you know exactly what he's doing. But I don't like that; I like to playa rapid finger-style solo and then zoom off with some slide.

So you just leave the guitar in standard tuning.

Oh yeah. I've tried horsing around with different major and minor tunings, but I'm not used to that, because I never started that way. In the Yardbirds I used to just grab a piece of steel, stick it on my finger, and make a load of noise with it. And then I began to pick out triads and so on, and it went from there.

Do you practice at all?

About two hours a day. I just sit there and mess with it. Sometimes I'll set up my Linn drum and work with that. I use the Linn more as a metronome, and do some scales and such; and then if something comes out good that day I'll remember it and use it somewhere. That is, I'll put it on tape, put the tape in a box, and put the box somewhere and lose it [laughs]. But that happens all the time. But the thing about working with the Linn drum is that it makes you play, and you tend to overshoot the paint. You might write something that is so self-indulgent that you're back to. the jazz-rock thing again. But I prefer not to get too hooked on my own stuff; I intend to form a band, and just be the lead guitarist in the band, but without actually hogging center stage all the time. So I'll use a vocalist this time.

Do you have a tentative lineup for the tour band?

I've got half a dozen names I'm playing about with.

What guitars are you favoring these days?

I've got a nice guitar that somebody found for me in Memphis, a '55 [Gretsch] Duo-Jet, which I've been falling in lave with. It's the same guitar that Cliff Gallup used to use; that stuff still sends me up the wall every time I hear it. I'm still using Strats, and I've also got a Grover Jackson which is pretty nice -- it's a bit heavy metal looking but it's bloody good. It goes up to high C, which you can scream and it sounds almost like a whistle. That's on Tina's record, the thing called "Steel Claw" -- it's almost beyond human hearing.

Have you chucked the Les Pauls?

They're thick with dust at the moment, and I think that's the way they're going to stay. They're too heavy, and I don’t seem to play that well on them any more -- just been around the Strats too long, I suppose. The Strat is part of me, really, when I put it on. It doesn’t feel like an instrument, it feels like another arm.

And it's got that wang bar that you take such advantage of.

Well, that's it, that's what it's there for [laughs].

Do you have it customized?

No, it's standard.

Do you find it going in and out of tune?

Yeah, you’ll hear that going out of tune, all right [laughs]. It's a constant source of annoyance, actually, but I love the Strat and what more can you do? I've lived with it for long enough, it can stay.

Where did you develop your fingerpicking technique from? I hear you almost never use a pick any more.

I used to listen to Chet Atkins and copy him, but it was a dead-end street, really, because after all that labor and heartbreak trying to learn what he did, everybody would go, "Yeah, great, great copy of Chet Atkins." I just definitely put the foot on that straightaway. I can play country-style within reason, Merle Travis kind of stuff, but that isn't really the way I play now without the pick. It's more like bluegrass style with rock and roll in mind. If I break a fingernail, then I have to use a pick, but otherwise I never touch one.

What are the advantages to using your fingers? Speed?

If you use a pick, you’ve got several fingers which are just redundant, they're not doing anything. But with five fingers you can do all kinds of stuff you can't properly get at with a pick. You can do railing figures like bluegrass, you can pick out notes of a chord and twang them, push them, bend them, anything you want. I think the more people drop out the pick the better because [pauses) you’ve got all these fingers hanging out in the breeze. You want to use them. But people don’t; they pick up the guitar when they're kids and they've got thumb and first finger and a pick and that's it, and they stay with that… I mean, if you start playing guitar when you’re ten years old with all your fingers, you’re going to be incredible by the time you’re forty. Obviously, there are some very fast guitarists like McLaughlin who use a pick, and I can't even get anywhere near the speed he gets. But that's not what I'm looking far: I'm looking to use as many notes, chordal things, bends, whatever, that you can't really do that easily, with the same articulation, that you get with all separate fingers.

How about effects?

I'm trying to stay away from them as much as possible. You can't keep up with them-you can spend all your money on effects that you wind up chucking in the dustbin. And especially for live playing, you have to play as loud and as clear as you can, without being too loud; and if you put an effect on that sounds amazing to the player but not to the people out front you’re wasting your time. The effects are best left to the guy on the deck [mixing board). Obviously you can use distortion and sustain, but these things have been around for years. I don't use anything much more than that, really.

Like a Colorsound Tonebender?

Yeah, that kind of thing. And I've got a couple of Roland Choruses in stereo, which sound great. But there again, when you walk twenty paces into the audience you wouldn’t know it's in stereo. You'd have to talk to the sound guy out front to know what it sounds like, because I never know: I'm up there playing [laughs]. Y'know, if the tune is fairly soft, you can use your boxes with more effect; but if you’re playing wild flat-out stuff you’re better off dry, really. Just turn up the wick and go.

How about your amps?

I've got a Seymour Duncan which is amazing. That will probably be the one that we mike up, a pair of these, each with one twelve [-inch speaker]. Then the rest will be my standard two Marshalls, that's all. They never go wrong, really. If you use the monitor system properly you shouldn’t have to overdrive them to the paint where they're going to blow up.

You've lived and toured through several generations of electronic advances. Do you find that today’s more sophisticated PAs make life easier than when everybody just plugged in and bashed away?

Well, there was same fun in that. I still prefer to do all I can do on one guitar, for instance. I hate to see those bands with rows and rows of guitars on stands that never seem to get played [laughs]. I like kids to see you get different sounds out of one guitar -- it gives them something to get excited about. If they've got a Strat and you've just made same sounds come out of it that they can't get, then that's one of the best parts, isn't it - the beauty of going home and learning what some guy's just shown you.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this interview, which ran in the following issue (March 1985) of Guitar World.

Although famously referred to as God by at least one British graffiti artist, Eric Clapton's more often used nickname is Slowhand. Clapton earned the moniker in the early Sixties while playing with the Yardbirds.

Bandmate and rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja noted when Clapton would break a string he would remain on stage while he changed it. The tedious process would prompt the audience to begin a slow handclap, a popular response from English spectators during inactive sporting moments. Clapton has claimed Yardbird's manager Giorgio Gomelsky christened him with the name as a humorous pun.

It is erroneously believed that Clapton was given the name Slowhand because of his long, intricate blues leads. Gomelsky actually considered Clapton a fast guitar player, and felt that in relation to the guitarist’s garnered slow handclaps from the audience, the name was a facetious play on words.

In 1977 Eric Clapton released his fifth solo studio album, titled Slowhand. The album contains three of Clapton's most popular hits, "Cocaine," "Wonderful Tonight," and "Lay Down Sally." Slowhand was viewed as a marked return to form for Clapton after his previous album, No Reason to Cry, failed to produce a Top 20 hit.

Led Zeppelin founder and guitarist Jimmy Page launched JimmyPage.com, his first official website, at 8:05 a.m. EST today. The site, which is curated by Page himself, is live now.

“I’ve had the domain name for a number of years," Page said in a press release. "I’ve just been sitting on it, and a number of people had made approaches about setting something up and it got to a point that it felt it was the right time to put the website together. I think this is the ideal vehicle to present my past, present and future work."

A highlight of the site is "On This Day," a daily diary featuring events spanning Page's career from the 1960s to the present, including The Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin and beyond. It includes videos, images and audio clips as well as unseen photos and previously unreleased tracks, demos and home recordings.

Each entry is accompanied by a personal anecdote by Page and will be available for 24 hours. There will be no archiving; if you miss it, it’s gone. You can see several screenshots in the photo gallery below.

Upcoming features of the site include an overview of Page’s back catalogue, including personal critiques by Page, and an online shop offering limited-edition items including fine art prints signed by Page and the photographer, plus exclusive music releases.

JimmyPage.com was built using the Drupal open-source platform. It was produced and designed by Page and ie:music, developed by Deeson Group and hosted by Acquia.