For Jim McCarty, beating heart of the Yardbirds, the eventual departures of both Eric Clapton and then Jeff Beck only made sense. They were headed, McCarty realized even then, for their own greatness.
“When Jeff and Eric were in the band, we had more problems because they were destined to be their own men, really,” he tells the Dallas Observer. “They wanted to be solo artists and they found it very difficult working in a band.”
The Yardbirds did find some continuity, McCarty adds, during Jimmy Page’s pre-Led Zeppelin era from 1966–68. “We went up and down,” he admits. “It was all about the fact that we were on the road the whole time. In the last lineup, the one with Jimmy Page, that was kind of calm. That worked very well. Even though we were traveling around in a Greyhound bus and we didn’t have much time off, it did seem to go quite smoothly.”
Of course, legend says that Clapton departed after his 1963–65 stint because he didn’t approve of the Yardbirds’ No. 6 U.S. pop hit “For Your Love.” In truth, McCarty says there was a general issue with Clapton’s focus retro, or retro-inspired, material. Subsequent lineups with Beck (in the band from 1965–66) and Page would add more contemporary flourishes to the Yardbirds’ bed-rock rootsy sound.
“He left,” McCarty says, “because his idea for the band was to cover blues songs. He would rather do a Motown song than something like ‘For Your Love.’ We all thought it was a good song and it was commercial. We all liked it. That’s where we differed and he left.”
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Yes, I heard that Clapton wanted to be a blues purist, whereas the rest of the band just wanted to sell records–which is kind of the point of forming a band anyhow, to make money from your music.
I would choose to listen to “white boy blues” (beck clapton page) any day over “for your love” my two cents.
I would listen to any Original recording by Muddy Waters, Howllin’ Wolf, Albert King, Freddie King, etc over any cover done by the Yardbyrds, Clapton or Page, Cream or LZ. Beck’s cover’s added a different dimension, so I would make an exception.there. And for Cream’s version of Crossroads. Why anyone would prefer to listen to Clapton singing Hoochie Coochie Man over Muddy is beyond me. As for “For Your Love” I would rather listen to that than lame “white boy blues” — something creative done by the group instead of imitation.
I love the Yardbirds and I like them in all their styles but if I think about it, to do only pure Blues would have been tiring after a while. It’s great they decided to do more than Blues and as “For Your Love” it sounds even better now. I can imagine it was a bit commercial at the time and some people felt it was like betraying the style of the band. Times has told us it can work sometimes. If it wasn’t for their more commercial songs I would had never discovered them. Yes, some were pop songs but they had a special sound and quality. The mazing thing is how lovely they sound now.
Restless young emotions trumped , evolution !
When you have that vision about who you are and where you’re going, there is no being stopped..The real reason Beck and Clapton left was because they outgrew that stepping stone, and had to take it to the next level. Any other explanation is just ambient noise.