The Yardbirds and the Cereal Killer

THE YARDBIRDS were a '60s band that never quite found a fit and kept losing their shape as dissatisfied members came and went and the band morphed on. They were designed by manager Giorgio Gomelsky to be his replacement for the Rolling Stones whom he had lost to Andrew Oldham a few months earlier. When I first I saw them in 1963 playing the Crawdaddy club they seemed to be a pale imitation of the early Stones doing blues covers, with Clapton, who shone on some solos, often lurking to one side in a sort of silky musical sulk.