David Smale remembers his dangerous Yardbirds debut: ‘I had to lift the bloody monitor off of him!’

As he plays through his fifth year as the Yardbirds bassist, David Smale can look back on his initial show with the group — a disaster in technical terms that very nearly saw their stalwart leader crushed under a piece of heavy equipment — and simply laugh. It was, however, anything but an auspicious start.

“I’ll never forget our first gig,” Smale tells Audiofly. “It was terrible. We had a U.S. tour booked, a three-week tour with the Zombies and the Spencer Davis Group. I was really, really excited about it — but also petrified, because we’d only had about two or three rehearsals before that tour of the states. So, our first gig was a warm-up gig in Margate [in East Kent, England], and … it was a disaster, mainly to due with the on-stage sound. The monitor was so terrible, and no matter who much we asked for anything to be changed, nothing did change.”

It got worse, leading to a moment right out of Spinal Tap.

“To cap it all off, Jim McCarty, he had a big monitor up on a stand next to him, and it actually fell on him!” Smale adds. “He had to stop playing the drums, halfway through a song, and hold this monitor up off him. The sound guy was just laughing! I had to lift the bloody monitor off of him! So, that was terrible. But, luckily, we then went to the states and we had an awesome tour — and that made us all feel a bit better.”

Since then, Smale has made important contributions to the Yardbirds’ well-received Making Tracks project, while the band continues a consistent touring schedule that hopefully includes better-secured sound systems. Up next for the Yardbirds is a stop at London’s Bush Hall on November 21, 2014, along with special guests Some Velvet Morning. Jim McCarty and Company will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of Five Live Yardbirds.

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