“A big influence”: How Ronnie Wood ended up on stage with The Yardbirds
London during the 1960s was an incredibly fertile breeding ground for inventive young rock and roll bands. Not concerned with ideas of nostalgia and tradition, Britain’s post-war youth were tearing up the rule book and looking exclusively forward. Among them, a young group called The Yardbirds laid the foundations for countless future artists, pioneering an entirely new sound influenced largely by blues and R&B music and launching the careers of some of Britain’s all-time greats.
First formed in 1963, the line-up of The Yardbirds was often evocative of a revolving door of musicians, with the band’s guitarist, in particular, changing with the weather. In the five short years that the band were together, they managed to cycle through four different lead guitarists: Top Topham, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and, finally, Jimmy Page. Those individuals alone should give you a strong idea of the musical talent that was always at the heart of The Yardbirds, with each of those guitarists going on to become iconic rock and roll names renowned all over the globe.
The Yardbirds are often praised for launching the careers of Clapton, Beck, and Page, particularly given the legendary status each guitarist would eventually achieve. However, one aspect of the band’s existence that is rarely discussed is their role in inspiring the future Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood. As a teenager in 1960s London, Wood found an early adoration for the blues and beat rock groups that were dominating the city’s airwaves.
Among those groups, The Yardbirds were a particular favourite of Wood’s. “I used to gauge my music a lot from seeing The Yardbirds at The Crawdaddy,” the guitarist shared in a 2015 interview. A vitally important venue in the history of rock and roll, The Crawdaddy was among the earliest haunts of The Rolling Stones, with The Yardbirds replacing them as the house band. “They were really a big influence on me,” Wood said of the band, “And one night, Keith Relf, the singer and harmonica player, was ill.”
Relf was one of few constants within The Yardbirds’ initial period, fronting the band from its formation in 1963 until its break-up in 1968. He would likely have been included in their 1998 reunion, too, were it not for the fact that he tragically died in 1976 at the age of only 33. For a singer, and a pretty good one, Relf’s vocal talents often went underappreciated, with the focus placed largely on his harmonica playing.
Recalling the band’s line-up at the time, Wood remembered, “Chirs Dreja, Jim McCarty, Paul Samwell-Smith, and Eric Clapton, they said, ‘Does anyone in the audience play harmonica?’ And all my friends pushed me up, and they said, ‘He does!’” While Relf’s contributions to the band were much more than simple harmonica stylings, his illness meant that Wood got some of his earliest on-stage experience in front of a crowd.
“I’m suddenly on stage with The Yardbirds,” he said, still in disbelief. “They sent for me afterwards. I did ‘I’m a Man’ and a few songs, and then they said ‘Get that guy backstage who looks like Cleopatra.’ Me and Eric [Clapton] and stayed close from that year”. Clapton himself left The Yardbirds not soon after in order to form psychedelic pioneers Cream, and he was replaced by fellow guitar master Jeff Beck.
In something of a full-circle moment, the mainstream rock world was first exposed to Ronnie Wood years later when he joined the Jeff Beck Group in 1967 as a bassist. Those years performing with the former Yardbirds guitarist were essential in developing Wood’s craft and gaining him wider exposure. Eventually, this would lead the multi-instrumentalist to join The Faces and, later, The Rolling Stones, where he has remained for nearly 50 years.
