Roger The Engineer : The Yardbirds : Review : Rolling Stone

Jeff Beck was the Yardbirds' lead guitarist for less than two years, but that was enough time for him to come up with a career's worth of mean, ungodly guitar screams. With Beck on board, the Yardbirds were an eruption of Swinging London noise, ripping all the country out of the blues for pure urban flash, sinister and slinky at the same time. The Yardbirds' previous guitarist, Eric Clapton, had been their blues conscience, quitting in disgust after their 1965 pop hit "For Your Love." Barely out of his teens, Beck replaced him but didn't even bother trying to duplicate Clapton's blues scholarship; Beck had his own sound, and he got it all onto the Yardbirds' 1966 classic Roger the Engineer, unreeling his brilliant pyrodelic riffs.

Most English rockers sank themselves by imitating the sinuous midtempo pulse of Chicago blues until the beat just turned into vanilla fudge. Beck's 'Birds stayed out of that trap by pushing the rhythm to its outer extremes, speeding up the fast ones into manic garage-band rush while slowing down for ominous garage-Gregorian psychodirges. The dynamics were intense: Check out the way "Lost Woman" starts out loud, simmers down and then bursts into a screech-freak feedback crescendo before melting down to primal rock & roll, all in just over three minutes. Behind the guitars -- Beck on lead, Chris Dreja on rhythm -- drummer Jim McCarty and bassist Paul Samwell-Smith raced the engine, and singer Keith Relf's medieval fountain-of-sorrow brooding was one spooky sound.

Only the weaker tracks on Roger the Engineer are straight blues. "Over Under Sideways Down" is a spacey guitar adventure over tough frat-rock bass, the guys yelling "Hey!" on the one while Beck plays his vaguely Arabic lead riff. "He's Always There" is a bizarre love triangle of fuzz guitar and bossa nova, while "Turn Into Earth" and "Farewell" are prescient riddles about the dark side of psychedelia. Beck was gone by the end of 1966, but you can see him rip it up with the Yardbirds in the Antonioni film Blow Up. They're obviously intended as symbols of modern urban decadence and alienation, but they're the only sign of life in the movie -- rock & roll as a passionately human romance with the machine.

ROB SHEFFIELD

(Posted: Nov 11, 1999)

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5of 5 Stars

the only "true" yardbirds studio album i've ever heard is a doozy of a record-not to say i did not like the clapton era, but jeff beck really took the group further than eric would have-sure, the "pop" influences are in full swing here, but the term pop is somewhat dubious-especially in 1966; a watershed year where everything seemed to change suddenly(almost)overnight-this album is simply overlooked-upon first listen one will notice the synergy within the band is staggering-beck's command of the fretboard is par excellence-not to be undone before seatlle ex-pat jimi hendrix burst onto the scene-with the cd reissue you get"happenings ten years time ago" and "psycho daisies"-the former a psychedelic rave-up come true with beck and page on twin lead guitar attacks and the latter a hard driving bluesey travelogue of the states that would point more towards cream than say beck's solo work-for me, it is "what do you want"-this track comprises what the yardbirds were meant to be-all of the pop, blues, and experimental psychedelia rolled up into one tight joint of a song-soon after the band fell apart leaving jimmy page at the helm-after a few short months(and a few personnel changes)history would be made

Nov 28, 2007 17:20:00

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