THE YARDBIRDS: HAPPENINGS 40 YEARS TIME AGO

Founding member Chris Dreja recalls the heady days of the band which spawned Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. Interview by Elliot Stephen Cohen

"We were on a rollercoaster,” acknowledges Yardbirds’ founding member Chris Dreja, recalling the legendary band’s brief, but thrilling run. “When we came off the road in ’68, we thought we’d be forgotten in a couple of weeks… but history is a strange thing. I’m very pleased that the music seems to have made an undying impression on a lot of people’s lives.”

Brian Eno once hypothesised that only about a thousand people ever purchased a Velvet Underground album but that all of them went on to form a band. The Yardbirds were another seminal group whose influence far outstretched its popularity. Despite charting only a handful of hit singles – For Your Love, Heart Full Of Soul, Evil Hearted You, Shapes Of Things and Over Under Sideways Down – and leaving behind less than 70 studio recordings, The Yardbirds were not only the birthplace of that holy trinity of guitar virtuosos, Clapton, Beck and Page, but also begat Cream, the first Jeff Beck Group (with Rod Stewart and Ron Wood) and Led Zeppelin (who originally toured as The New Yardbirds).

Rhythm guitarist and songwriter Dreja, born 11 November 1946 in Kingston, Surrey, was an integral part of every one of the multi-faceted group’s phases. Joined in 1963 by fellow art students Paul Samwell-Smith (bass), Jim …

by Elliot Stephen Cohen
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