The Yardbirds’ rangy Having a Rave Up is often described as psychedelic, a tag that makes stalwart Jim McCarty bristle. For him, the 1965 album simply continued their quest to expand the language of the blues.
“We were playing our version of the old blues songs — the 12 bar stuff — and we decided we wanted to make them a little bit different,” McCarty tells Pete Feenstra. “And we put all our different ideas into the pot and tried to get them to sound original and what came was something quite strange probably in the day.”
Having a Rave Up also signalled a sea change for the group, with one side devoted to work with Eric Clapton and the other, more experimental songs featuring new guitarist Jeff Beck. Clapton, who had disagreed with the Yardbirds’ more overt moves away from the tradition, would be replaced by someone in Beck with a craving for new adventures.
“When he came in, it was the kind of sound we were aiming at,” McCarty adds. “It started because he had all the pedals and fuzz box and all the gadgets to make those weird and wonderful sounds — and he was very good at it. He wasn’t really a straight blues player like Eric was. He liked to play all sorts of different styles.”
As the Yardbirds continued along this road, another misconception grew up around them: “A lot of people assumed we were a psychedelic band and taking drugs and things, but of course we weren’t,” McCarty says. “We were quite surprised about that, but that was the basis of our sound, just making these old group songs into something else.”
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