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JEFF BECK’S LES PAUL “YARDBURST”, USED AS HIS PRIMARY GUITAR FROM 1966 TO 1969 WITH BOTH THE YARDBIRDS AND THE JEFF BECK GROUP, ADDITIONALLY PLAYED BY BOTH JIMMY PAGE AND JIMI HENDRIX
Jeff Beck acquired this guitar, his first Les Paul – a circa 1959 Standard with a cherry sunburst finish and black pickguard – from Selmer’s music store in London in early 1966, shortly before the Yardbirds began recording sessions for their eponymous album known as Roger the Engineer. On the recommendation of longtime friend Jimmy Page, who had turned down the job himself in favour of profitable session work, Beck had joined the Yardbirds as lead guitarist in March 1965 after blues purist Eric Clapton left citing disenchantment with the band’s musical direction following the release of hit single ‘For Your Love’. Invigorated by Beck’s broader musical influences and inventive approach, the band began to experiment with different musical styles. ‘At first, some fans were grumbling [over the replacement of Clapton], but I got a standing ovation after an instrumental that I played at The Marquee,’ Beck told Uncut in 2010. ‘From then on I had no problem with any audience. By the time I joined, Eric was long gone. I never even met him for about a year.’ Although he had become known for playing a Fender Esquire with the Yardbirds, Jeff had since been impressed by seeing Eric Clapton play a Les Paul with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers: ‘I remember going to see The Bluesbreakers in Brixton, Eric already playing this thing [sunburst Les Paul], and it sounded great. I already knew Les Pauls sounded good because Jimmy Page had a Custom. So I went sorting around. There was a guy at Selmer’s shop in Charing Cross Road, I think it might have been Mick Keen, he worked there but he said he’d got a good one at home. It was him or one of the others who worked there – that was the shop to go to. So this guy said yeah, meet me at so-and-so and I’ll bring along the guitar. Certainly, Jeff was in possession of the Les Paul by 4 March 1966, when the Yardbirds appeared on the BBC’s Ready, Steady, Go! to perform their recently released hit single ‘Shapes of Things’. Although he retained the Esquire for occasional use, the Les Paul quickly supplanted the Fender as Jeff’s primary performance and recording guitar from this point. ‘I had two guitars, basically but it was a question of wanting to get used to a guitar and wanting to use nothing else,’ Jeff told New Musical Express in 1974. ‘There was only a short period of time when I used to trade one for the other to get certain sounds. I used to like to get all the different sounds out of one guitar.’ Reflecting on the switch from Esquire to Les Paul for Beat Instrumental magazine in 1976, Jeff summed up the appeal of the Gibson over the Fender for him at that time: ‘The difference was the amazing quality of the instrument. You know… you pick up a Les Paul and it's heavy and it really means something; it means business. And then I found that I was doing things I never dreamed I could… The Fender was nice because you could grip it like a weapon and really chunk out the chords. But when you came to the more subtle stuff it wasn't there; there was just no sustain. You kind of fluffed up a few runs. But on the Les Paul you couldn't. You'd fluff because you'd attempt something really hard, but you knew damn well that with a little bit of practice you'd get it.’
Notably, Eric Clapton would reunite with the Yardbirds a couple of weeks later, when he joined the band for a jam at the end of their show at London’s Marquee Club on 15 March 1966 – photographs show both Clapton and Beck on stage wielding their sunburst Les Pauls. ‘To be absolutely honest, I wanted to be as critical of him as I could,’ Clapton would later reflect to Rolling Stone in 2010. ‘It hurt me bad because I could see [the Yardbirds] were getting, with Jeff, at something beyond what I was capable of. His thing was so unique and advanced.’ Several publicity photos were taken of the band on the steps in front of the Royal Albert Hall in London on 17 March 1966 – featuring Jeff in fur coat with his new Les Paul – as they filmed a segment for Dick Clark’s US television show Where The Action Is for broadcast on 11 May. After a handful of UK dates and television appearances, a planned European Tour was cut short for Jeff when he collapsed on stage in Marseilles on 3 April 1966 with severe food poisoning and tonsillitis, kicking off a period of poor health that would plague him until he would eventually leave the band in October. For now, he was sufficiently recovered by mid-April to begin work on the band’s new LP, using the Les Paul to record both sides of their new single at Advision Studios in London on 19-20 April. Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty recalled the recording of the Indian-tinged ‘Over Under Sideways Down’ in his 2018 biography: ‘We needed an intro, and Jeff peeled one out, an instantly recognisable peel that completely took us by surprise... Over and over we listened back to that line, going back and forth over whether it belonged in the song. And then like a flash of lightning, we realised that it did. More than that, it made the song. A nod to Les Paul based on Chuck Berry’s ‘Guitar Boogie’, the B-side instrumental ‘Jeff’s Boogie’ was notable for Jeff’s use of harmonics in the breaks. 'I had heard Merle Travis and Chet Atkins using harmonics, they would sneak in an extra octave harmonic which would sound great,’ Jeff explained to Douglas Noble in 1993. Released on 27 May 1966, ‘Over Under Sideways Down’ became the Yardbirds fifth single to hit the UK top ten and was later ranked at number 23 on Rolling Stone’s 2003 list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time. Along with many of their contemporaries including the Who, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds took part in the New Musical Express Annual Poll Winner’s Concert at the Empire Pool in Wembley on 1 May 1966. Their performance of ‘The Train Kept A-Rollin’ and ‘Shapes of Things’, the latter featuring Jeff’s famous distorted fuzz solo on the Les Paul, was filmed for ABC TV and broadcast on 15 May.
Jeff was booked into IBC Studios in London on 16-17 May 1966 to work on a significant side project that would bring together Jimmy Page, Keith Moon, John Paul Jones and Nicky Hopkins in an embryonic Led Zeppelin. ‘It was decided that it would be a good idea for me to record some of my own stuff like “The Nazz are Blue” [his vocal debut on The Yardbirds album] with a view towards making a solo album - this was partly to stop me moaning about the Yardbirds,’ Jeff told Douglas Noble in 1993. ‘I went over to Jim's house and he had this 12-string Fender and he loved the idea of using a bolero-type rhythm for a rock record. He was playing the bolero rhythm and I played the melody on top of it, but then I said, "Jim, you've got to break away from the bolero beat - you can't go on like that for ever!". So we stopped it dead in the middle of the song - like the Yardbirds would do on “For Your Love” - then we stuck that riff into the middle. I always try to do things wholeheartedly or not at all, so I tried to imagine what my ideal band would be. We had the right producer, Keith Moon on drums, Jimmy on guitar and John Paul Jones on bass. You could feel the excitement in the studio even though we didn't know what we were going to play. I thought, "This is it! What a line- up!" …That band was the original Led Zeppelin - not called "Led Zeppelin" but that was still the earliest embryo of the band. I was using a Les Paul for the lead guitar and for the backwards slide guitar through a Vox AC30.’ With its pulsating rhythm Inspired by Ravel's ‘Boléro’, the influential instrumental ‘Beck’s Bolero’ has been described by music writer Alan di Perna as ‘one of the great rock instrumentals, epic in scope, harmonically and rhythmically ambitious yet infused with primal energy.’ As reported by the June 1966 edition of Melody Maker, the track was intended for release as Beck’s solo debut at the end of July but would ultimately remain in the can for ten months until it was released as the B-side to Beck’s first single ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ in March 1967 and on debut album Truth a year later. ‘Beck’s Bolero’ remained such a favourite throughout Jeff’s career that, despite some dispute between Beck and Page over the years regarding the composer credit for the track, the duo performed the instrumental together at the ceremony for Beck’s induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009.
With ‘Over Under Sideways Down’ and ‘Jeff’s Boogie’ already in the bag, the remainder of the album tracks for the Yardbirds LP were recorded over five days from 31 May to 4 June at Advision Studios in London. As his primary guitar at the time, Jeff’s Les Paul is heard throughout the album, masterfully manipulated to produce a myriad different sounds and distorted tones. ‘It has a deep, powerful sound,’ Beck later said of the Les Paul, ‘and you can use it to imitate just about anything – violin, sax, cello, even a sitar.’ Album opener ‘Lost Woman’ showcased Jeff’s pioneering use of controlled feedback, the guitar swelling and surging in a frenzied jam with Keith Relf’s harmonica. Originally intended as an instrumental side project, Beck made his lead vocal debut on energetic blues shuffle ‘The Nazz Are Blue’, adding an unusual one-note guitar solo. Yardbirds’ manager and album co-producer Simon Napier-Bell recalled the album recording in his 1998 memoir: ‘We struggled through it and it wasn’t much fun. On top of that they all argued with Jeff Beck. He was the stand-out talent in the group, a truly brilliant guitarist. But they didn’t give him enough freedom to show off his talent … In one number, Jeff was given a solo to play. The others talked about it like it was a gift on their part, a generous offer … It was a blues number [The Nazz Are Blue] and Jeff’s petulant reaction was to stand there and play one long note right through the solo.’ Speaking to Stuart Grundy and John Tobler for their 1983 book The Guitar Greats, Jeff similarly reflected, 'In the end I became alienated from them because of the way the records were produced. I'd just sit around and be moody and play the most godawful row over what they'd done, and somehow it worked.’ Released on 15 July 1966 to positive reviews, the album reached number 20 on the UK album chart, while a truncated version omitting ‘The Nazz Are Blue’ was released in the US as Over Under Sideways Down. Record Mirror declared that the ‘album shows how important Jeff Beck is to the group.’ Not on the original album but included on all subsequent reissues were the single ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’ and its B‑side, ‘Psycho Daisies’, which were recorded some months later after Jimmy Page had joined the band to replace departing bassist Paul Samwell-Smith when he quit during a gig at Queen’s College Oxford only two weeks after the group had wrapped recording on the album.
From the start, the intention was that Page would take over on bass temporarily while rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja learned the bass parts, before switching to join Beck as one of the first dual-lead guitar teams in popular rock. Rare footage of the new lineup was filmed during one of their first appearances at the Provins Rock Festival outside Paris on 27 June 1966 for broadcast on French television show Music Hall de France. Jeff had evidently removed the original switch ring from the Les Paul by this date. On 22 July, the new lineup performed on BBC’s Ready Steady Go! to promote the album release, marking the only occasion that both Beck and Page would appear on the show together. On 5 August 1966, the Yardbirds kicked off their third US tour in Minneapolis, with Jimmy Page on bass. Yet by 25 August, Page would switch to lead guitar earlier than planned when illness unexpectedly forced Jeff to drop out of the tour and fly to Los Angeles for a tonsillectomy. As Page had brought only his bass guitar on tour, he would play Jeff’s Les Paul to cover lead guitar duties for the remainder of the tour – from 25 August at the Carousel Ballroom in San Francisco through to the final show of the tour at Baltimore Civic Center on 10 September – while Dreja took over on bass. A scattering of rare photographs have surfaced from these shows, including a handful of shots taken by Eric Hayes at Earl Warren Showgrounds in Santa Barbara, California, on 27 August 1966, showing the group on stage as a four piece with Page on the Yardburst. Concert booker Bud Becker, who captured Page playing lead on the Les Paul at the Alexandria Roller Rink in Alexandria, Virginia, on 9 September, recalls that midway through the set Jimmy had difficulty generating any distortion from the Gibson amps provided by local music store Giant Music and proceeded to smash the Les Paul neck-first through the speaker cabinet in frustration.
With the whole band back in England by mid-September, Jeff was sufficiently recovered to overdub his lead guitar parts and solos for the Yardbirds next single ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’ at London’s De Lane Lea Studios, after Page and the rest of the band, with John Paul Jones on bass, had laid down the main track back in July. Released in October 1966, it was the band's first recording to feature the dual-lead guitar interplay of Beck and Page in what music journalist Alan di Perna has described as ‘a full-on six-string apocalypse with atomic bomb blasts and shards of scarified riffing’. The sound of an ominous police siren, which di Perna attributes to Jeff’s guitar, opens the instrumental section of the song and leads on to multiple duelling guitar solos by both Beck and Page, atop a muffled spoken word recitation by Beck, reportedly impersonating a cockney sexual health clinic attendant the band had encountered at some point. Widely regarded as the Yardbirds most progressive record and a masterpiece of mainstream psychedelic pop, ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’ has been credited with influencing the heavy metal sounds to come in the seventies. Beck biographer Martin Power attests that ‘If the Yardbirds had invented or at least contributed heavily to the birth of psychedelic music in their past, they had come to define it with “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago”.’ Recorded during the same sessions at De Lane Lea, the bluesy B-side ‘Psycho Daisies’ was the band’s tribute to touring the US, with Beck on lead guitar and vocals, while Page reverted to bass. 'I think those tracks have become important to me,’ Jeff reflected to Grundy and Tobler. ‘They were pretty wild for those days, but at the time, I suppose you just think you've made a weird kind of record during the complete whirlwind of excitement that was happening, but when you look back, “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” is a pretty good record which reflects quite accurately the confusion of the sixties… And there was an accident in it – we simulated a car crash or something in the middle of it for no reason at all, and it was just a chaotic record… “Psycho Daisies” was one of the few tracks I've ever sung on, and Mary Hughes, who's mentioned in the song, was a girl I used to go out with, and who I was strong on for a while.’
Formalising the new lineup with Beck and Page as co-lead guitarists and Dreja on bass, the Yardbirds commenced a two-week tour opening for the Rolling Stones from 23 September to 9 October 1966, playing third on the bill below the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. The two guitarists would play riffs in unison, harmonise and create stereo effects with their dual lead guitars. ‘We rehearsed hard on all sorts of riffs to things like "Over Under Sideways Down" which we were doing in harmonies and we worked out where we'd play rehearsed phrases together,’ Page told di Perna. ‘It was the sort of thing that people like Wishbone Ash and Quiver [later] perfected, that dual-lead-guitar idea.’ Around this time, the Yardbirds were enlisted for a role in Michelangelo Antonioni’s seminal sixties film Blow Up, the filming taking place over three days in mid-October 1966 at Elstree Film Studios in North London during a break in their touring schedule. Ahead of filming, the band recorded ‘Stroll On’ - an adaptation of their live set staple ‘The Train Kept A-Rollin’ with new lyrics – as a soundtrack for their Blow Up performance. ‘Stroll On’ and ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’ would remain the only two studio recordings to showcase the dual-lead lineup of Beck and Page. The scene required Jeff to smash his guitar to pieces during the band’s performance of ‘Stroll On’ on a set that replicated the Ricky-Tick club in Windsor. When Jeff naturally refused to destroy his Gibson Les Paul, ‘they got Hofner to bring down these shitty guitars. I had this tea chest full of these twenty-five-pound joke guitars,’ Jeff later recalled for Q magazine, ‘and I went right through ‘em three or four at a time with this Hofner rep watching at the side. He thought it was all great fun.’ Surviving to play another day, the Les Paul made only a fleeting appearance in the scene, glimpsed at the moment Jeff turns round to grab his guitar after smashing the Hofner.
The Yardbirds kicked off their fourth US tour with a press conference in New York on 20 October 1966, during which Jeff took a moment to tell the readers of Hit Parader about his guitar: ‘I play a Les Paul model Gibson guitar. They stopped making that particular model about five or six years ago, so I had a job trying to find one myself… The guitar has a fabulous feel. It was hand made. Nowadays most guitars are made by machine. It's a rare guitar because it's made so well. I can play almost anything on it. It has a good sound. Very powerful.’ The tour commenced on 21 October in Worcester, Massachusetts, with the first of only three independent bookings before the band were due to join the Dick Clark Caravan tour, a cross-country package tour that would reduce them to cranking out their hits in 20-minute spots. Sandwiched after the Stones UK package tour, these would turn out to be the only three shows where the dual-lead guitarists would have the opportunity to let loose and realise the full potential of the concept. A young Steven Tyler opened for the Yardbirds as a member of the Chain Reaction on 22 October at Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut, and later recalled for Steven Davies’ Aerosmith biography: ‘They did “The Train Kept A-Rollin” and it was just so heavy. They were just an un-fuckin’-believable band.’ Linda Eastman (McCartney) was also present to photograph the show, capturing Jeff and Jimmy as they tuned up their guitars backstage. By all accounts, the band delivered an impressive and influential performance at the Fillmore in San Francisco on 23 October, leaving those present with a glimpse of what the dual-lead Yardbirds could have become. Jumping across to LA, the band recorded a mimed performance of ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’ for broadcast on The Milton Berle Show on 2 December. Perched atop a plinth as he simulated strumming the Les Paul, it would be Jeff’s last television appearance with the Yardbirds.
After linking up with the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars, the entire group travelled 1000 miles by Greyhound bus for the first show in Dallas, Texas, on 29 October, followed by another 500-mile slog through the night for next day’s matinee show in Harlingen. By the evening show in Corpus Christi on 30 October, only two days into the tour, Jeff had reached his limit – he would reveal to the readers of his column in Beat Instrumental, published some two months later, that the pressures of US package touring had led him to smash his guitar: ‘I've smashed my Gibson Les Paul, and what is more, it wasn't an accident. I picked it up, swung it by the neck above my head, and smashed it on the floor. The neck came away and the pick-ups flew in two directions. Jimmy Page was horrified, but so was I when I realised what I'd done a bit later. I had a reason at the time though… I’m afraid it wasn’t a good tour… the conditions were terrible… When we got to Dallas we did two spots… and we had to hang around in between them… At the end of the second spot we were all pretty depressed; then someone said something to me which made me blow up. Hence the smashed guitar.’ Reportedly, a disagreement between Jeff and singer Keith Relf had escalated to such a pitch that Jeff had and almost smashed the guitar on Relf’s head before thinking better of it and simply throwing the Les Paul to the floor. Leaving the band to carry on with Jimmy Page, Jeff abandoned the tour and jumped on the first plane out of Texas. By early December, manager Simon Napier-Bell announced to the press that Jeff Beck was leaving the Yardbirds. The Yardbirds was my first experience with the big time,’ Jeff told Hit Parader in 1969. ‘It was quite glamorous and I enjoyed the early part. We fought towards the end over the music and if we did a bad show, we'd all be blaming each other. Jimmy Page and myself were getting into some interesting double lead things with the Yardbirds but, I left and it never materialised. I wanted credit for what I was doing in the Yardbirds so it would encourage me to do more. But I was sweating for nothing and I left in a fury.’ Speaking to Sounds in 1971, Jeff acknowledged that the Yardbirds had been ‘a progressive group at a time when everyone else had stopped, everyone else was just playing stock things but that group was the only one of its kind,’ and expressed regret that the dual-lead adventure had been cut short – ‘it never had a chance to get off the ground. It was a very short space of time when [Page and I] played together. I repaid a favour, he got me a job with the Yardbirds originally and then he came into the same group and I left him the job of lead guitarist,’ admitting ‘I got sacked really... I made it impossible for them to keep me on, I kept blowing dates.’ Chris Dreja would later reflect that the period Jeff spent with the band was their most creative. ‘Bear in mind that we played with three guitar players, none of them slouches; but if you asked me who I still liked to listen to, I'd definitely say Jeff,’ he told Guitar World in 1985. ‘His scope of inventiveness was probably the widest of the three, and coupled with his emotional quality it made him my favourite to play with.’
Although Yardbirds’ manager Simon Napier-Bell had set him up with a solo recording contract with record producer Mickie Most by the end of the year, Beck remembered the post-Yardbirds period as a difficult time. Speaking to Malcolm Gerrie in 2013 for the Sky Arts music interview series …Talks Music, Jeff recalled ‘Waking up the next morning and you’re not a Yardbird anymore, you’re just nobody. I thought, I don’t know if there’s any scraps left for me in the business. That was the lowest point in my life I suppose.’ Jeff has credited first seeing Jimi Hendrix perform in London in December 1966 for inspiring him to get back on the music scene. 'I had to start thinking about forming my own band,’ Jeff told Grundy and Tobler, ‘because I couldn't stand being in other bands and doing… what they wanted to do, which is where Rod Stewart came in, because I knew I'd have to find a singer. I thought about who I liked and straight away… I thought of Rod.’ As luck would have it, Jeff bumped into Rod at 60s hot spot The Cromwellian Club, and suggested they form a band. While Jeff has variously claimed that he didn’t touch a guitar for months after leaving the Yardbirds, the splintered Les Paul must have been repaired by the time he returned to the studio in mid-January 1967. Certainly, the guitar was back in one piece by sometime in February when journalist Valerie Wilmer snapped Jeff showing off the instrument at his new penthouse apartment for the July 1967 issue of Hit Parader. Wilmer reported that Jeff ‘walked across the room and picked up his Gibson Les Paul. He indicated the places where out of bitter, soul-consuming frustration he had smashed his favourite guitar into four or five pieces. "This is where the Yardbirds career ended for me,” he said,’ and hinted that he was putting together his own group. Like Clapton, Jeff had by this time removed the Les Paul’s pickup covers, exposing the rare double white bobbins of the guitar’s original PAF humbucking pickups to get a brighter, grittier tone. Probably pulled from the same February conversation at Jeff’s apartment, the May 1967 issue of Hit Parader quoted Jeff philosophising on the Les Paul: ‘I’ve tried loads of other guitars, but as your fingers get bigger you have a wider reach and so I find this one is great. Guitar is a personal thing: it's like having a car. You start out with the first thing that comes along and you develop tastes throughout your life.’
On 19 January at London’s De Lane Lea studios, Jeff recorded his first solo single - and his biggest hit – ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’, a Scott English and Larry Weiss composition selected by record producer and pop svengali Mickie Most as the perfect lightweight pop to launch Jeff’s solo career. Despite having recently enlisted a talented but yet largely unknown singer in Rod Stewart, Jeff grudgingly recorded the lead vocals at the insistence of Most, with Rod providing backing vocals and John Paul Jones on bass. The brassy tones of Jeff’s Les Paul are unmistakable on one of rock’s first double-tracked solos. 'One guitar wasn't quite powerful enough and I had heard accurate double-tracking on some early Les Paul records,’ Jeff explained to Douglas Noble in 1993. ‘I grooved away and got it tight but at the end I did this little flick and it just doesn't match. In the mix it sounded OK - a bit nutty! - so we just left it.' Released in March 1967, with ‘Beck’s Bolero’ finally unleashed on the B-side, the single peaked at number 14 in the UK charts and has become a staple for British wedding bands and football supporters. ‘I still think “Hi Ho Silver Lining” is trash really,’ Jeff admitted to Grundy and Tobler in 1983, ‘but if people like it as much as they seem to, then let them go ahead and like it. The people I'm associated with don't even know about it, or wouldn't want to know about it, or poke fun at me about it, and other people swear it's the best pop record ever made. “Tallyman” was the next one [Jeff’s second hit single, released July 1967], and that was contractual recording again, the "do it or I'll sue you" sort of thing that was Most's policy then, and then “Love Is Blue” [released February 1968] was just going from bad to worse.’ By the time ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ hit the charts, Ronnie Wood had joined the new group lineup as bassist, with Mickey Waller on drums. Although the lineup would continue to fluctuate, with Aynsley Dunbar taking over on drums from April until the return of Waller in August, the key four-piece reportedly made their debut appearance at the Pavilion, Worthing, on 23 March, billed for the first time as the Jeff Beck Group. The group spent most of 1967 and early 1968 honing their set on the UK club and ballroom circuit, of which very few photographs have surfaced. Beck appeared on BBC Top of the Pops to promote ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ on both 27 April and 18 May 1967, however the footage is believed lost. On 14 September, Jeff shot a segment for the AVRO music television show Moef Ga Ga in Hilversum, Holland, to promote his new single ‘Tallyman’. Several fantastic photographs survive from the set, showing Jeff perched atop a beam with two Beatgirls, his Les Paul hanging by its strap below. Notably, Jeff had evidently removed the pickguard from the guitar by this date. Sometime in early 1968, Jeff was inspired by a pale guitar he saw in a book to strip the sunburst back to a natural finish. ‘I went to a carpentry shop and bought some paint stripper,’ Jeff told guitar historian Tony Bacon in 1993. ‘I was a painter in the car business, so I knew what I was doing. I didn’t want it to look shiny.’ Shots of Jeff with the stripped Les Paul in Uppsala, Sweden, on 25 April 1968 indicate that the guitar was certainly stripped before the band’s three-week European tour from 15 April – 5 May 1968.
Jeff Beck acquired this guitar, his first Les Paul – a circa 1959 Standard with a cherry sunburst finish and black pickguard – from Selmer’s music store in London in early 1966, shortly before the Yardbirds began recording sessions for their eponymous album known as Roger the Engineer. On the recommendation of longtime friend Jimmy Page, who had turned down the job himself in favour of profitable session work, Beck had joined the Yardbirds as lead guitarist in March 1965 after blues purist Eric Clapton left citing disenchantment with the band’s musical direction following the release of hit single ‘For Your Love’. Invigorated by Beck’s broader musical influences and inventive approach, the band began to experiment with different musical styles. ‘At first, some fans were grumbling [over the replacement of Clapton], but I got a standing ovation after an instrumental that I played at The Marquee,’ Beck told Uncut in 2010. ‘From then on I had no problem with any audience. By the time I joined, Eric was long gone. I never even met him for about a year.’ Although he had become known for playing a Fender Esquire with the Yardbirds, Jeff had since been impressed by seeing Eric Clapton play a Les Paul with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers: ‘I remember going to see The Bluesbreakers in Brixton, Eric already playing this thing [sunburst Les Paul], and it sounded great. I already knew Les Pauls sounded good because Jimmy Page had a Custom. So I went sorting around. There was a guy at Selmer’s shop in Charing Cross Road, I think it might have been Mick Keen, he worked there but he said he’d got a good one at home. It was him or one of the others who worked there – that was the shop to go to. So this guy said yeah, meet me at so-and-so and I’ll bring along the guitar. Certainly, Jeff was in possession of the Les Paul by 4 March 1966, when the Yardbirds appeared on the BBC’s Ready, Steady, Go! to perform their recently released hit single ‘Shapes of Things’. Although he retained the Esquire for occasional use, the Les Paul quickly supplanted the Fender as Jeff’s primary performance and recording guitar from this point. ‘I had two guitars, basically but it was a question of wanting to get used to a guitar and wanting to use nothing else,’ Jeff told New Musical Express in 1974. ‘There was only a short period of time when I used to trade one for the other to get certain sounds. I used to like to get all the different sounds out of one guitar.’ Reflecting on the switch from Esquire to Les Paul for Beat Instrumental magazine in 1976, Jeff summed up the appeal of the Gibson over the Fender for him at that time: ‘The difference was the amazing quality of the instrument. You know… you pick up a Les Paul and it's heavy and it really means something; it means business. And then I found that I was doing things I never dreamed I could… The Fender was nice because you could grip it like a weapon and really chunk out the chords. But when you came to the more subtle stuff it wasn't there; there was just no sustain. You kind of fluffed up a few runs. But on the Les Paul you couldn't. You'd fluff because you'd attempt something really hard, but you knew damn well that with a little bit of practice you'd get it.’
Notably, Eric Clapton would reunite with the Yardbirds a couple of weeks later, when he joined the band for a jam at the end of their show at London’s Marquee Club on 15 March 1966 – photographs show both Clapton and Beck on stage wielding their sunburst Les Pauls. ‘To be absolutely honest, I wanted to be as critical of him as I could,’ Clapton would later reflect to Rolling Stone in 2010. ‘It hurt me bad because I could see [the Yardbirds] were getting, with Jeff, at something beyond what I was capable of. His thing was so unique and advanced.’ Several publicity photos were taken of the band on the steps in front of the Royal Albert Hall in London on 17 March 1966 – featuring Jeff in fur coat with his new Les Paul – as they filmed a segment for Dick Clark’s US television show Where The Action Is for broadcast on 11 May. After a handful of UK dates and television appearances, a planned European Tour was cut short for Jeff when he collapsed on stage in Marseilles on 3 April 1966 with severe food poisoning and tonsillitis, kicking off a period of poor health that would plague him until he would eventually leave the band in October. For now, he was sufficiently recovered by mid-April to begin work on the band’s new LP, using the Les Paul to record both sides of their new single at Advision Studios in London on 19-20 April. Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty recalled the recording of the Indian-tinged ‘Over Under Sideways Down’ in his 2018 biography: ‘We needed an intro, and Jeff peeled one out, an instantly recognisable peel that completely took us by surprise... Over and over we listened back to that line, going back and forth over whether it belonged in the song. And then like a flash of lightning, we realised that it did. More than that, it made the song. A nod to Les Paul based on Chuck Berry’s ‘Guitar Boogie’, the B-side instrumental ‘Jeff’s Boogie’ was notable for Jeff’s use of harmonics in the breaks. 'I had heard Merle Travis and Chet Atkins using harmonics, they would sneak in an extra octave harmonic which would sound great,’ Jeff explained to Douglas Noble in 1993. Released on 27 May 1966, ‘Over Under Sideways Down’ became the Yardbirds fifth single to hit the UK top ten and was later ranked at number 23 on Rolling Stone’s 2003 list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time. Along with many of their contemporaries including the Who, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, the Yardbirds took part in the New Musical Express Annual Poll Winner’s Concert at the Empire Pool in Wembley on 1 May 1966. Their performance of ‘The Train Kept A-Rollin’ and ‘Shapes of Things’, the latter featuring Jeff’s famous distorted fuzz solo on the Les Paul, was filmed for ABC TV and broadcast on 15 May.
Jeff was booked into IBC Studios in London on 16-17 May 1966 to work on a significant side project that would bring together Jimmy Page, Keith Moon, John Paul Jones and Nicky Hopkins in an embryonic Led Zeppelin. ‘It was decided that it would be a good idea for me to record some of my own stuff like “The Nazz are Blue” [his vocal debut on The Yardbirds album] with a view towards making a solo album - this was partly to stop me moaning about the Yardbirds,’ Jeff told Douglas Noble in 1993. ‘I went over to Jim's house and he had this 12-string Fender and he loved the idea of using a bolero-type rhythm for a rock record. He was playing the bolero rhythm and I played the melody on top of it, but then I said, "Jim, you've got to break away from the bolero beat - you can't go on like that for ever!". So we stopped it dead in the middle of the song - like the Yardbirds would do on “For Your Love” - then we stuck that riff into the middle. I always try to do things wholeheartedly or not at all, so I tried to imagine what my ideal band would be. We had the right producer, Keith Moon on drums, Jimmy on guitar and John Paul Jones on bass. You could feel the excitement in the studio even though we didn't know what we were going to play. I thought, "This is it! What a line- up!" …That band was the original Led Zeppelin - not called "Led Zeppelin" but that was still the earliest embryo of the band. I was using a Les Paul for the lead guitar and for the backwards slide guitar through a Vox AC30.’ With its pulsating rhythm Inspired by Ravel's ‘Boléro’, the influential instrumental ‘Beck’s Bolero’ has been described by music writer Alan di Perna as ‘one of the great rock instrumentals, epic in scope, harmonically and rhythmically ambitious yet infused with primal energy.’ As reported by the June 1966 edition of Melody Maker, the track was intended for release as Beck’s solo debut at the end of July but would ultimately remain in the can for ten months until it was released as the B-side to Beck’s first single ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ in March 1967 and on debut album Truth a year later. ‘Beck’s Bolero’ remained such a favourite throughout Jeff’s career that, despite some dispute between Beck and Page over the years regarding the composer credit for the track, the duo performed the instrumental together at the ceremony for Beck’s induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009.
With ‘Over Under Sideways Down’ and ‘Jeff’s Boogie’ already in the bag, the remainder of the album tracks for the Yardbirds LP were recorded over five days from 31 May to 4 June at Advision Studios in London. As his primary guitar at the time, Jeff’s Les Paul is heard throughout the album, masterfully manipulated to produce a myriad different sounds and distorted tones. ‘It has a deep, powerful sound,’ Beck later said of the Les Paul, ‘and you can use it to imitate just about anything – violin, sax, cello, even a sitar.’ Album opener ‘Lost Woman’ showcased Jeff’s pioneering use of controlled feedback, the guitar swelling and surging in a frenzied jam with Keith Relf’s harmonica. Originally intended as an instrumental side project, Beck made his lead vocal debut on energetic blues shuffle ‘The Nazz Are Blue’, adding an unusual one-note guitar solo. Yardbirds’ manager and album co-producer Simon Napier-Bell recalled the album recording in his 1998 memoir: ‘We struggled through it and it wasn’t much fun. On top of that they all argued with Jeff Beck. He was the stand-out talent in the group, a truly brilliant guitarist. But they didn’t give him enough freedom to show off his talent … In one number, Jeff was given a solo to play. The others talked about it like it was a gift on their part, a generous offer … It was a blues number [The Nazz Are Blue] and Jeff’s petulant reaction was to stand there and play one long note right through the solo.’ Speaking to Stuart Grundy and John Tobler for their 1983 book The Guitar Greats, Jeff similarly reflected, 'In the end I became alienated from them because of the way the records were produced. I'd just sit around and be moody and play the most godawful row over what they'd done, and somehow it worked.’ Released on 15 July 1966 to positive reviews, the album reached number 20 on the UK album chart, while a truncated version omitting ‘The Nazz Are Blue’ was released in the US as Over Under Sideways Down. Record Mirror declared that the ‘album shows how important Jeff Beck is to the group.’ Not on the original album but included on all subsequent reissues were the single ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’ and its B‑side, ‘Psycho Daisies’, which were recorded some months later after Jimmy Page had joined the band to replace departing bassist Paul Samwell-Smith when he quit during a gig at Queen’s College Oxford only two weeks after the group had wrapped recording on the album.
From the start, the intention was that Page would take over on bass temporarily while rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja learned the bass parts, before switching to join Beck as one of the first dual-lead guitar teams in popular rock. Rare footage of the new lineup was filmed during one of their first appearances at the Provins Rock Festival outside Paris on 27 June 1966 for broadcast on French television show Music Hall de France. Jeff had evidently removed the original switch ring from the Les Paul by this date. On 22 July, the new lineup performed on BBC’s Ready Steady Go! to promote the album release, marking the only occasion that both Beck and Page would appear on the show together. On 5 August 1966, the Yardbirds kicked off their third US tour in Minneapolis, with Jimmy Page on bass. Yet by 25 August, Page would switch to lead guitar earlier than planned when illness unexpectedly forced Jeff to drop out of the tour and fly to Los Angeles for a tonsillectomy. As Page had brought only his bass guitar on tour, he would play Jeff’s Les Paul to cover lead guitar duties for the remainder of the tour – from 25 August at the Carousel Ballroom in San Francisco through to the final show of the tour at Baltimore Civic Center on 10 September – while Dreja took over on bass. A scattering of rare photographs have surfaced from these shows, including a handful of shots taken by Eric Hayes at Earl Warren Showgrounds in Santa Barbara, California, on 27 August 1966, showing the group on stage as a four piece with Page on the Yardburst. Concert booker Bud Becker, who captured Page playing lead on the Les Paul at the Alexandria Roller Rink in Alexandria, Virginia, on 9 September, recalls that midway through the set Jimmy had difficulty generating any distortion from the Gibson amps provided by local music store Giant Music and proceeded to smash the Les Paul neck-first through the speaker cabinet in frustration.
With the whole band back in England by mid-September, Jeff was sufficiently recovered to overdub his lead guitar parts and solos for the Yardbirds next single ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’ at London’s De Lane Lea Studios, after Page and the rest of the band, with John Paul Jones on bass, had laid down the main track back in July. Released in October 1966, it was the band's first recording to feature the dual-lead guitar interplay of Beck and Page in what music journalist Alan di Perna has described as ‘a full-on six-string apocalypse with atomic bomb blasts and shards of scarified riffing’. The sound of an ominous police siren, which di Perna attributes to Jeff’s guitar, opens the instrumental section of the song and leads on to multiple duelling guitar solos by both Beck and Page, atop a muffled spoken word recitation by Beck, reportedly impersonating a cockney sexual health clinic attendant the band had encountered at some point. Widely regarded as the Yardbirds most progressive record and a masterpiece of mainstream psychedelic pop, ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’ has been credited with influencing the heavy metal sounds to come in the seventies. Beck biographer Martin Power attests that ‘If the Yardbirds had invented or at least contributed heavily to the birth of psychedelic music in their past, they had come to define it with “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago”.’ Recorded during the same sessions at De Lane Lea, the bluesy B-side ‘Psycho Daisies’ was the band’s tribute to touring the US, with Beck on lead guitar and vocals, while Page reverted to bass. 'I think those tracks have become important to me,’ Jeff reflected to Grundy and Tobler. ‘They were pretty wild for those days, but at the time, I suppose you just think you've made a weird kind of record during the complete whirlwind of excitement that was happening, but when you look back, “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” is a pretty good record which reflects quite accurately the confusion of the sixties… And there was an accident in it – we simulated a car crash or something in the middle of it for no reason at all, and it was just a chaotic record… “Psycho Daisies” was one of the few tracks I've ever sung on, and Mary Hughes, who's mentioned in the song, was a girl I used to go out with, and who I was strong on for a while.’
Formalising the new lineup with Beck and Page as co-lead guitarists and Dreja on bass, the Yardbirds commenced a two-week tour opening for the Rolling Stones from 23 September to 9 October 1966, playing third on the bill below the Ike and Tina Turner Revue. The two guitarists would play riffs in unison, harmonise and create stereo effects with their dual lead guitars. ‘We rehearsed hard on all sorts of riffs to things like "Over Under Sideways Down" which we were doing in harmonies and we worked out where we'd play rehearsed phrases together,’ Page told di Perna. ‘It was the sort of thing that people like Wishbone Ash and Quiver [later] perfected, that dual-lead-guitar idea.’ Around this time, the Yardbirds were enlisted for a role in Michelangelo Antonioni’s seminal sixties film Blow Up, the filming taking place over three days in mid-October 1966 at Elstree Film Studios in North London during a break in their touring schedule. Ahead of filming, the band recorded ‘Stroll On’ - an adaptation of their live set staple ‘The Train Kept A-Rollin’ with new lyrics – as a soundtrack for their Blow Up performance. ‘Stroll On’ and ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’ would remain the only two studio recordings to showcase the dual-lead lineup of Beck and Page. The scene required Jeff to smash his guitar to pieces during the band’s performance of ‘Stroll On’ on a set that replicated the Ricky-Tick club in Windsor. When Jeff naturally refused to destroy his Gibson Les Paul, ‘they got Hofner to bring down these shitty guitars. I had this tea chest full of these twenty-five-pound joke guitars,’ Jeff later recalled for Q magazine, ‘and I went right through ‘em three or four at a time with this Hofner rep watching at the side. He thought it was all great fun.’ Surviving to play another day, the Les Paul made only a fleeting appearance in the scene, glimpsed at the moment Jeff turns round to grab his guitar after smashing the Hofner.
The Yardbirds kicked off their fourth US tour with a press conference in New York on 20 October 1966, during which Jeff took a moment to tell the readers of Hit Parader about his guitar: ‘I play a Les Paul model Gibson guitar. They stopped making that particular model about five or six years ago, so I had a job trying to find one myself… The guitar has a fabulous feel. It was hand made. Nowadays most guitars are made by machine. It's a rare guitar because it's made so well. I can play almost anything on it. It has a good sound. Very powerful.’ The tour commenced on 21 October in Worcester, Massachusetts, with the first of only three independent bookings before the band were due to join the Dick Clark Caravan tour, a cross-country package tour that would reduce them to cranking out their hits in 20-minute spots. Sandwiched after the Stones UK package tour, these would turn out to be the only three shows where the dual-lead guitarists would have the opportunity to let loose and realise the full potential of the concept. A young Steven Tyler opened for the Yardbirds as a member of the Chain Reaction on 22 October at Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut, and later recalled for Steven Davies’ Aerosmith biography: ‘They did “The Train Kept A-Rollin” and it was just so heavy. They were just an un-fuckin’-believable band.’ Linda Eastman (McCartney) was also present to photograph the show, capturing Jeff and Jimmy as they tuned up their guitars backstage. By all accounts, the band delivered an impressive and influential performance at the Fillmore in San Francisco on 23 October, leaving those present with a glimpse of what the dual-lead Yardbirds could have become. Jumping across to LA, the band recorded a mimed performance of ‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’ for broadcast on The Milton Berle Show on 2 December. Perched atop a plinth as he simulated strumming the Les Paul, it would be Jeff’s last television appearance with the Yardbirds.
After linking up with the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars, the entire group travelled 1000 miles by Greyhound bus for the first show in Dallas, Texas, on 29 October, followed by another 500-mile slog through the night for next day’s matinee show in Harlingen. By the evening show in Corpus Christi on 30 October, only two days into the tour, Jeff had reached his limit – he would reveal to the readers of his column in Beat Instrumental, published some two months later, that the pressures of US package touring had led him to smash his guitar: ‘I've smashed my Gibson Les Paul, and what is more, it wasn't an accident. I picked it up, swung it by the neck above my head, and smashed it on the floor. The neck came away and the pick-ups flew in two directions. Jimmy Page was horrified, but so was I when I realised what I'd done a bit later. I had a reason at the time though… I’m afraid it wasn’t a good tour… the conditions were terrible… When we got to Dallas we did two spots… and we had to hang around in between them… At the end of the second spot we were all pretty depressed; then someone said something to me which made me blow up. Hence the smashed guitar.’ Reportedly, a disagreement between Jeff and singer Keith Relf had escalated to such a pitch that Jeff had and almost smashed the guitar on Relf’s head before thinking better of it and simply throwing the Les Paul to the floor. Leaving the band to carry on with Jimmy Page, Jeff abandoned the tour and jumped on the first plane out of Texas. By early December, manager Simon Napier-Bell announced to the press that Jeff Beck was leaving the Yardbirds. The Yardbirds was my first experience with the big time,’ Jeff told Hit Parader in 1969. ‘It was quite glamorous and I enjoyed the early part. We fought towards the end over the music and if we did a bad show, we'd all be blaming each other. Jimmy Page and myself were getting into some interesting double lead things with the Yardbirds but, I left and it never materialised. I wanted credit for what I was doing in the Yardbirds so it would encourage me to do more. But I was sweating for nothing and I left in a fury.’ Speaking to Sounds in 1971, Jeff acknowledged that the Yardbirds had been ‘a progressive group at a time when everyone else had stopped, everyone else was just playing stock things but that group was the only one of its kind,’ and expressed regret that the dual-lead adventure had been cut short – ‘it never had a chance to get off the ground. It was a very short space of time when [Page and I] played together. I repaid a favour, he got me a job with the Yardbirds originally and then he came into the same group and I left him the job of lead guitarist,’ admitting ‘I got sacked really... I made it impossible for them to keep me on, I kept blowing dates.’ Chris Dreja would later reflect that the period Jeff spent with the band was their most creative. ‘Bear in mind that we played with three guitar players, none of them slouches; but if you asked me who I still liked to listen to, I'd definitely say Jeff,’ he told Guitar World in 1985. ‘His scope of inventiveness was probably the widest of the three, and coupled with his emotional quality it made him my favourite to play with.’
Although Yardbirds’ manager Simon Napier-Bell had set him up with a solo recording contract with record producer Mickie Most by the end of the year, Beck remembered the post-Yardbirds period as a difficult time. Speaking to Malcolm Gerrie in 2013 for the Sky Arts music interview series …Talks Music, Jeff recalled ‘Waking up the next morning and you’re not a Yardbird anymore, you’re just nobody. I thought, I don’t know if there’s any scraps left for me in the business. That was the lowest point in my life I suppose.’ Jeff has credited first seeing Jimi Hendrix perform in London in December 1966 for inspiring him to get back on the music scene. 'I had to start thinking about forming my own band,’ Jeff told Grundy and Tobler, ‘because I couldn't stand being in other bands and doing… what they wanted to do, which is where Rod Stewart came in, because I knew I'd have to find a singer. I thought about who I liked and straight away… I thought of Rod.’ As luck would have it, Jeff bumped into Rod at 60s hot spot The Cromwellian Club, and suggested they form a band. While Jeff has variously claimed that he didn’t touch a guitar for months after leaving the Yardbirds, the splintered Les Paul must have been repaired by the time he returned to the studio in mid-January 1967. Certainly, the guitar was back in one piece by sometime in February when journalist Valerie Wilmer snapped Jeff showing off the instrument at his new penthouse apartment for the July 1967 issue of Hit Parader. Wilmer reported that Jeff ‘walked across the room and picked up his Gibson Les Paul. He indicated the places where out of bitter, soul-consuming frustration he had smashed his favourite guitar into four or five pieces. "This is where the Yardbirds career ended for me,” he said,’ and hinted that he was putting together his own group. Like Clapton, Jeff had by this time removed the Les Paul’s pickup covers, exposing the rare double white bobbins of the guitar’s original PAF humbucking pickups to get a brighter, grittier tone. Probably pulled from the same February conversation at Jeff’s apartment, the May 1967 issue of Hit Parader quoted Jeff philosophising on the Les Paul: ‘I’ve tried loads of other guitars, but as your fingers get bigger you have a wider reach and so I find this one is great. Guitar is a personal thing: it's like having a car. You start out with the first thing that comes along and you develop tastes throughout your life.’
On 19 January at London’s De Lane Lea studios, Jeff recorded his first solo single - and his biggest hit – ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’, a Scott English and Larry Weiss composition selected by record producer and pop svengali Mickie Most as the perfect lightweight pop to launch Jeff’s solo career. Despite having recently enlisted a talented but yet largely unknown singer in Rod Stewart, Jeff grudgingly recorded the lead vocals at the insistence of Most, with Rod providing backing vocals and John Paul Jones on bass. The brassy tones of Jeff’s Les Paul are unmistakable on one of rock’s first double-tracked solos. 'One guitar wasn't quite powerful enough and I had heard accurate double-tracking on some early Les Paul records,’ Jeff explained to Douglas Noble in 1993. ‘I grooved away and got it tight but at the end I did this little flick and it just doesn't match. In the mix it sounded OK - a bit nutty! - so we just left it.' Released in March 1967, with ‘Beck’s Bolero’ finally unleashed on the B-side, the single peaked at number 14 in the UK charts and has become a staple for British wedding bands and football supporters. ‘I still think “Hi Ho Silver Lining” is trash really,’ Jeff admitted to Grundy and Tobler in 1983, ‘but if people like it as much as they seem to, then let them go ahead and like it. The people I'm associated with don't even know about it, or wouldn't want to know about it, or poke fun at me about it, and other people swear it's the best pop record ever made. “Tallyman” was the next one [Jeff’s second hit single, released July 1967], and that was contractual recording again, the "do it or I'll sue you" sort of thing that was Most's policy then, and then “Love Is Blue” [released February 1968] was just going from bad to worse.’ By the time ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ hit the charts, Ronnie Wood had joined the new group lineup as bassist, with Mickey Waller on drums. Although the lineup would continue to fluctuate, with Aynsley Dunbar taking over on drums from April until the return of Waller in August, the key four-piece reportedly made their debut appearance at the Pavilion, Worthing, on 23 March, billed for the first time as the Jeff Beck Group. The group spent most of 1967 and early 1968 honing their set on the UK club and ballroom circuit, of which very few photographs have surfaced. Beck appeared on BBC Top of the Pops to promote ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ on both 27 April and 18 May 1967, however the footage is believed lost. On 14 September, Jeff shot a segment for the AVRO music television show Moef Ga Ga in Hilversum, Holland, to promote his new single ‘Tallyman’. Several fantastic photographs survive from the set, showing Jeff perched atop a beam with two Beatgirls, his Les Paul hanging by its strap below. Notably, Jeff had evidently removed the pickguard from the guitar by this date. Sometime in early 1968, Jeff was inspired by a pale guitar he saw in a book to strip the sunburst back to a natural finish. ‘I went to a carpentry shop and bought some paint stripper,’ Jeff told guitar historian Tony Bacon in 1993. ‘I was a painter in the car business, so I knew what I was doing. I didn’t want it to look shiny.’ Shots of Jeff with the stripped Les Paul in Uppsala, Sweden, on 25 April 1968 indicate that the guitar was certainly stripped before the band’s three-week European tour from 15 April – 5 May 1968.