The history of contemporary music, of today’s music, begins in October of 1962 with the Beach Boys’ first album, Surfin’ Safari. It was quickly followed by the Beatles’ first UK album, Please Please Me, released in the UK in March of 1963. While the Beatles’ first US release wasn’t until 1964, they had been releasing singles in the US since 1962. When they released “I Want to Hold Your Hand” in January of 1964 followed by an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show watched by 45% of US households, Beatlemania was born in the US and the British Invasion began — a flood of British rock acts inspired by Black American musical forms such as rock, blues, and rhythm and blues that came to dominate American radio. The Rolling Stones, the Who, the Kinks, the Small Faces, the Spencer Davis Group and others formed between 1961–1964 and have had an impact on American music that has lasted to this day.
The Yardbirds were one of those bands. Keith Relf, Jim McCartey, Top Topham, Chris Dreja, and Paul Samwell-Smith formed the Yardbirds in 1963. Topham was young, maybe 15 at the time, and his parents didn’t want him out playing music five or six days a week, so he left. If you grew up in the 70s, though, you may recognize his name as a widely sought after session guitarist. Topham was replaced on lead guitar by Eric Clapton in October of 1963, who stayed on long enough to record one album, Five Live Yardbirds, and score one charting single, “For Your Love.” Clapton left in May of 1965 after recommending Jimmy Page as his replacement: Page passed on the offer but introduced Jeff Beck to the band.
The Yardbirds’ second album, For Your Love (1965), is a mix of songs featuring either Clapton or Beck on lead guitar and was followed up by an eponymous album popularly known as Roger the Engineer (1966), a great 60s’ British Invasion rock album and the best that the Yardbirds produced. Jeff Beck was sole lead guitarist for that album. Paul Samwell-Smith, the band’s bass player, left the band soon after, and Jimmy Page took over on bass until the rhythm guitarist, Chris Dreja, could learn the instrument. Once Dreja took over on bass, Beck and Page shared guitar duties briefly. Later in 1966 Beck left the group, leaving a four-man lineup with Page on lead guitar. Page recorded one album with the band as lead guitarist, Little Games (1967), but eventually the band fell apart. Page reconstructed the band with different musicians, renaming it The New Yardbirds. This band soon became Led Zeppelin: Led Zeppelin 1 was originally conceived as Page’s continuation of the Yardbirds’ project and sound. The Yardbirds wouldn’t release another album of new material until Birdland in 2003 with only two original members remaining. Lead singer Keith Relf died of electric shock in the mid 1970s.
Looking at album sales alone, the Yardbirds seem insignificant. They had one top 40 UK album and one top 40 US album, a greatest hits collection released in 1967. They had six top 40 singles each in the US and the UK; 5 top ten singles in the UK and 2 top tens in the US. No singles or albums sold enough to be certified silver or gold in either the US or the UK. They were musically significant as a British Invasion band, however. Beck’s fuzztone introduced a new sound on electric guitar, and some of their work with Page verged on punk or hard rock. The Yardbirds from ‘63–’65 could go head to head with the Kinks, the Who, and the Rolling Stones of that era. But they never turned the British Invasion corner that the Beatles, the Stones, or the Who did. Pop music was reinvented in 1967 — mostly by the Beatles — in ways from which popular music would never recover. Our pop music today has much more in common with the music of 1967 than it does with the music of 1965. Except for Page’s contributions, the Yardbirds were recording exactly the type of pop psychedelia that didn’t make it past 1970. Even if the band had stayed together, they wouldn’t have survived Led Zeppelin’s first release in 1969.
We’re still talking about the Yardbirds now because during a mere five year recording history they released albums featuring three of rock and roll’s most iconic guitarists: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. A few weeks ago I’d heard an Eric Clapton song and decided to make a playlist focused on Clapton’s 70s’ music. Before I was finished with the playlist I committed to making Clapton playlists for the 80s and 90s and then one for his work after 2000. When I went back to make a Clapton playlist for the 60s, I decided on a Yardbirds’ guitarist project. This project involved playlists for Clapton’s, Beck’s, and Page’s work from the 60s to the present. That project is now complete, and I’ve posted links to these Apple Music playlists below.
A few notes on my playlists. I listened to all available music by each artist on Apple Music to make the playlists, including guest appearances, but my knowledge of Zeppelin recording history is supplemented by a nice little stash of bootleg albums that I own and is reflected in what I write here. Each list attempts to present songs recorded by each guitarist in approximate chronological order. I include guest appearances in the order of their recording (not necessarily release date) when I could find them on Apple Music and confirm the guitarist actually performed on that track.
Jimmy Page’s playlists get a bit complex and need extra explanation. Because I’m inclined to include all of Led Zeppelin on his playlists, I deliberately limited myself to five songs per vinyl disc. But, I cheat a couple of times. You’ll see very late releases from the Coda box set in Page’s 1960s’ and 70s’ playlists because that’s when those songs were recorded. Three songs on Physical Graffiti (1975) were recorded during the Houses of the Holy (1973) sessions, so they were grouped with that album, while some material on Physical Graffiti was recorded as early as 1971.
And since Page released four significant double live albums over the course of his career — Zep’s The Song Remains the Same (1976), Live at the Greek (2000, with the Black Crowes), The BBC Sessions (Zeppelin live recordings from 1969 and 1971 released in 1997), and Zeppelin’s Celebration Day (recorded 2007, released 2012, with Jason Bonham on drums) — I leveraged that recording history to do a couple of things. First, I decided to use “Dazed and Confused” as a benchmark song illustrating the evolution of Page’s guitar techniques from the Yardbirds’ Little Games (1967), to Led Zeppelin I (1969), to the first live version on The BBC Sessions (later in 1969), to the live performance on The Song Remains the Same (1976), and finally the live performance on Celebration Day (2007). More importantly, the 1976 live version of “Dazed and Confused” is perhaps Page’s most important performance on guitar: he rolls out all his effects and attains bursts of speed I haven’t heard elsewhere. After that, I tried to distribute as many live versions of Zeppelin songs as I could across all three albums, repeating songs as little as possible but finding myself unable to resist including multiple performances of “No Quarter” and “Whole Lotta Love.” And if you’re looking for Page and Plant releases from the 90s or Coverdale/Page from earlier in the 90s you’re out of luck: those sadly aren’t available on Apple Music.
Before I post my playlists, you’re probably wondering… now that I’ve listened to all available Clapton, Beck, and Page from the 1960s to 2023, which one is the best guitarist? It’s an obvious question, but a misguided one. Here’s what I’ve come to think. . .
Finish this post and get to my playlists on Medium.com.
James Rovira 
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