{"id":142204,"date":"2025-09-14T08:57:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T08:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/142204\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T08:57:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T08:57:11","slug":"the-musician-jeff-beck-said-held-the-yardbirds-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/142204\/","title":{"rendered":"The musician Jeff Beck said held The Yardbirds together"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jeff<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still)<\/p>\n

Sun 14 September 2025 3:00, UK <\/p>\n

It takes a lot to bring a band together, but it takes more to keep it all as a moving operation. For Jeff Beck<\/a>, there was only one person who proved to be the ultimate \u201cbackbone\u201d of The Yardbirds.<\/p>\n

That might be a strong statement considering it was made up of three of the most important players in the history of music \u2013 Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Beck himself. Plus the fact that it became a breeding ground for the kind of innovation and excellence most only dream of. Clapton, for one, found his sound in The Yardbirds. And Page grew into the legendary player he eventually became, learning the ropes from scratch after replacing Paul Samwell-Smith.<\/p>\n

And everything Page learned also eventually became many major staples within Led Zeppelin. Something he\u2019s never been shy about. \u201cI had a lot of ideas from my days with The Yardbirds,\u201d he once said, explaining how The Yardbirds taught him about the power of improvisation and combining different genres in ways that \u201chad never been done before\u201d. <\/p>\n

Mainly, it taught him about intuition and pouring \u201clight and shade into music\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Funnily enough, however, Page almost wasn\u2019t in the band at all. He was already close with Beck, and Beck enjoyed the idea of having one of his best friends alongside him on stage. But it took a lot of coaxing for Page to get on board, and even then, it took a lot of playing around for him to find his place. Because, according to Beck, \u201che couldn\u2019t play bass for toffee\u201d. <\/p>\n

An explosive moment with Samwell-Smith is actually what did it in the end<\/a>. \u201cThere was an explosion one night and [Samwell Smith] decided to leave the band,\u201d Page said. He added that there was this \u201cbig row\u201d between him and Keith Relf, and then they were stuck. They needed someone to step in, and it seemed Page was the only one for the job.<\/p>\n

The moment was more hard-hitting than it perhaps seemed, though. Because, to Beck, Samwell-Smith wasn\u2019t an irreplaceable cog in the machine. He was the \u201cbackbone\u201d who brought it all together, the foundation that made it all make sense. Page was a turning point for them, a good one at that, but Samwell-Smith had so much going for him that it felt difficult to imagine The Yardbirds without him.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was the backbone of the band,\u201d Beck said. \u201cHe was one of these guys that gave such depth by playing four-string chords, letting it ring on, you know, sound like an earthquake going on. They said, \u2018What are we going to do?\u2019 I said, \u2018Well, Jimmy Page?\u2019 I was always trying to push to get my best mate in the band. It was an absolute disaster \u2018cause he can\u2019t play bass for toffee.\u201d<\/p>\n

After some reshuffling, they eventually fell into place. But it was Samwell-Smith\u2019s brilliance that knocked them over the edge, priming them for greatness even if he wasn\u2019t there to see it to the end. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ YouTube Still) Sun 14 September 2025 3:00, UK It takes a lot to bring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,96811,40532,136,96812],"class_list":{"0":"post-142204","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-jeff-beck","12":"tag-jimmy-page","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-the-yardbirds"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}