The album Jimmy Page thought defined The Yardbirds: “What they were all about”
As the 1960s spread out, bands were just beginning to stretch beyond the traditional pop single. The Beatles had already started opening doors for what could be done on the charts, but The Rolling Stones also unveiled the untapped market of blues fans looking for something a little bit grittier than the typical love song format. Jimmy Page may have seen what the pop market was like from the inside out as a session musician, but before he had a band to call his own, he thought Five Live Yardbirds told the story of the namesake group better than anything.
For as many blues licks that he played, though, Page was never meant to be put in one stylistic box. Throughout his time both in The Yardbirds and with Led Zeppelin, he was more inclined to follow his muse and just see where it took him half the time, including the massive tone on ‘Heart Full of Soul’ or the incredible ferocity of ‘Dazed and Confused’.
Before Led Zeppelin was even an idea, Eric Clapton was already laying down the blueprint for what hard rock was supposed to sound like. While he wasn’t thinking along the lines of rock every time he got into the studio, he considered himself an aficionado of the blues rockers of the day, usually taking those same licks from Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon and making them a bit more ferocious.
Clapton would never match the same mojo and raw emotion as his heroes, but he made up for what he lacked in that kind of soul with raw intensity. Every time the band played live, Clapton’s habit of playing until his strings gave out was what caught the eye of every hard rock fan, including a young George Harrison, who began to study what he was doing during the late 1960s.
There are many albums that capture what ‘Slowhand’ did every day, but Five Live Yardbirds is a bit of a different beast. All great blues musicians thrive off of that audience interaction, and when listening to him on this record, Clapton feels completely uninhibited, usually going for as many wild moments as he can while he feeds off the crowd’s energy.
Page hadn’t officially joined the group yet, but he could see what everyone else saw in the blues troubadours when Clapton started, saying, “The Yardbirds were a superb band. Eric had done a substantial amount of work there with that live album. You can really hear what they were all about in Five Live Yardbirds.”
Even though Clapton quickly outgrew The Yardbirds following pop hits like ‘For Your Love’, you can practically hear Page taking a few lessons for what Clapton did on that live record. Looking at Zeppelin’s live performances, hearing Page slowly build in intensity going through a track like ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’ is a perfect example of him flying off the rails based on the energy that the audience is giving him at the time.
But it’s not like Page was ever trying to compete with what Clapton was doing. Everyone was still aware that Clapton seemed like a god among men, and nothing would stop him from ascending into rock and roll heaven once he started hitting the club circuit with Cream.
