Beck fan here from way back. Wore the grooves out of Rough & Ready in high school. Beck stayed true to his roots, never once giving in to mainstream demands. Dude can flat out play.
Amazing to think Beck, Page and Clapton all played for the Yardbirds, though not at the same time.
From Wiki
The Yardbirds - Wikipedia
Original lead guitarist Topham left and was replaced by Eric Clapton in October 1963. Crawdaddy Club impresario
Giorgio Gomelsky became the Yardbirds manager and first record producer. Under Gomelsky's guidance the Yardbirds toured Britain as the back-up band for blues legend
Sonny Boy Williamson II in December 1963 and early 1964,
[11] recording live tracks on 8 December and other dates. The recordings would be released two years later during the height of the Yardbirds popularity on the album
Sonny Boy Williamson and the Yardbirds.
[12]
After the tours with Williamson, the Yardbirds signed to
EMI's
Columbia label in February 1964, and recorded more live tracks 20 March at the legendary
Marquee Club in London. The resulting album of mostly American blues and R&B covers,
Five Live Yardbirds, was released by Columbia nine months later, and it failed to enter the UK albums charts.
[13] Over time
Five Live gained stature as one of the few quality live recordings of the era, and as a historical document of both the British "rock and roll boom" in the 1960s and Clapton's time in the band.
[14]
The Clapton line-up recorded two singles, the blues "
I Wish You Would" and "
Good Morning, School Girl", before the band scored its first major hit with "
For Your Love", a
Graham Gouldman composition with a prominent harpsichord part by
Brian Auger. "For Your Love" hit the top of the charts in the UK and Canada and reached number six in the United States, but it displeased Clapton, a blues purist whose vision extended beyond three-minute singles. Frustrated by the commercial approach, he abruptly left the band on 25 March 1965, the day the single was released.
[15] Soon Clapton joined John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, but not before he recommended Jimmy Page, a prominent young session guitarist, to replace him. Content with his lucrative sessions work, and worried about both his health and the politics of Clapton's departure, Page in turn recommended his friend Jeff Beck.[16]Beck played his first gig with the Yardbirds only two days after Clapton's departure.
Roger the Engineer was released in June 1966. Soon afterwards, Samwell-Smith quit the band at a drunken gig at Queen's College in Oxford
[26] and embarked on a career as a record producer.
Jimmy Page, who was at the show, agreed that night to play bass until rhythm guitarist Dreja could rehearse on the instrument.[26] The band toured with Page on bass, and Beck and Dreja on guitars, playing dates in Paris, the UK, the Midwestern US and the California coast.[27] Beck fell ill late in the latter tour, and was hospitalised in San Francisco. Page took over as lead guitarist at the Carousel Ballroom (San Francisco) on 25 August and Dreja switched to bass. Beck stayed in San Francisco to recuperate[28] with his girlfriend Mary Hughes,[29]while the rest of the band completed the tour. After the Yardbirds reunited in London, Dreja remained on bass and the group's dual lead guitar attack was born.[28]
The Beck–Page lead guitar tandem created the avant garde psychedelic rock single "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" (with future Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones on bass instead of Dreja), which the band recorded in July and September 1966. The single's UK B-side was "Psycho Daisies", two minutes of embryonic garage punk sludge[30] featuring Beck on vocals and lead guitar, and Page on bass. The single's B-side in the US, "The Nazz Are Blue", also features a rare lead vocal by Beck.