The Yardbirds

:For the American chain of home improvement stores see: Yardbirds Home Center

Dissolution and the Evolution into Led Zeppelin

But Jimmy Page, left with both the rights to the band's name and a touring commitment yet unfulfilled in Scandinavia, was compelled to put a new lineup together. Terry Reid was asked to replace Relf, but he turned down the offer because of his new recording contract, instead recommending a then-unknown Midlands singer by the name of Robert Plant. Plant, in turn, recommended John Bonham on drums. Dreja bowed out to pursue a career as a rock photographer; enter bassist/keyboardist/arranger Jones. They made the tour, found themselves clicking, and repaired home to England to produce, in a very short time, a landmark debut album. Interestingly, what was to become Led Zeppelin was still being billed as "The Yardbirds" or "The Yardbirds Featuring Jimmy Page" as late as October 1968; indeed, some early studio tapes from the Led Zeppelin album were marked as being performed by "The Yardbirds." One report recently indicated that it was a legal threat from Dreja (who claimed he also shared rights to the Yardbirds name) that hastened the name change, finally closing the books on the Yardbirds for the rest of the century. The term "Led Zeppelin" had originally been coined by Entwistle in 1966 as a tongue-in-cheek name for a proposed "supergroup" that would've comprised himself, Moon, Beck and Page. By spring 1969, it was synonymous with a band that would revolutionize rock over the next decade.

Related Topics:
Jimmy Page - Scandinavia - Led Zeppelin

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The remaining Yardbirds didn't exactly go gently into that good grey night. Samwell-Smith, who had gone on to fame as Cat Stevens' producer in 1970, helped vocalist Relf and drummer McCarty organise a new folk group called Together and later, Renaissance.

Related Topics:
Cat Stevens - Renaissance

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Keith Relf resurfaced in the late 1970s with a new quartet, Armageddon, a hybrid of hard, thrusting rock and folk that included former Renaissance mate Louis Cenammo. They recorded one promising album before Relf was killed in an electrocution accident while playing an ungrounded guitar in his home studio. Meanwhile, Jim McCarty, Paul Samwell-Smith (who had remained Cat Stevens' producer to the day Stevens converted to Islam and withdrew from pop music entirely), and Chris Dreja offered a nucleus in the 1980s for a short-enough lived but fun-enough kind of Yardbirds semi-reunion called Box of Frogs, which occasionally included Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page plus various friends with whom they'd all recorded over the years.

Related Topics:
1970s - 1980s - Jeff Beck - Jimmy Page

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The Yardbirds were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. All six living musicians who had been part of the group's heyday—including Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page, who had never (contrary to numerous misidentifications over the years) played in the group together (the confusion may have stemmed from a 1971 Epic Records anthology, Yardbirds Featuring Performances By: Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, a set which fell out of print and became a very expensive collectors' item for many years)—appeared at the ceremony. "I suppose," Jeff Beck cracked at the ceremony, "I should say thank you, but they fired me—so fuck 'em!"

Related Topics:
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - 1992 - Eric Clapton - Jeff Beck - Jimmy Page - 1971

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In 2003, a new album, Birdland, was released under the Yardbirds name on the Favored Nations label by a lineup including Chris Dreja, Jim McCarty, and new members Gypie Mayo (lead guitar, backing vocals), John Idan (bass, lead vocals) and Alan Glen (harmonica, backing vocals), which consisted mostly of re-recordings of some of their greatest hits, with guest appearances by Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Slash, Brian May, Steve Lukather, Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, John Rzeznik, Martin Ditchum and Simon McCarty. Jeff Beck reunites with his former bandmates on "My Blind Life".

Related Topics:
2003 - Favored Nations - Joe Satriani - Steve Vai - Slash - Brian May - Steve Lukather - Jeff "Skunk" Baxter - John Rzeznik - Martin Ditchum - Simon McCarty - Jeff Beck

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