The Yardbirds

The Most Blueswailing Futuristic Way-Out Heavy Beat Sound

Peter Stanfield

$49.99

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Reaktion Books
01 June 2025

Music; Rock & Pop music; Soul & R 'n' B; Individual composers & musicians, bands & groups; History: specific events & topics

The story of an iconic group, the advent of pop, and the birth of rock music in 1960s Britain.

The Yardbirds were trailblazers in the rapid development of pop music in Britain between 1963 and 1968. With members including Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, they helped to set the basic template of what has been known ever since as rock music, and gave rise to one of the most commercially successful bands of all time: Led Zeppelin. Peter Stanfield situates the band in the rise of British R&B and the tumult of the psychedelic era. Obsessively detailed about both the band and 1960s pop culture, this is the book fans of The Yardbirds have always needed.

By: Peter Stanfield
Imprint: Reaktion Books
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781836390770
ISBN 10: 1836390777
Pages: 296
Publication Date: 01 June 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Peter Stanfield is Emeritus Professor of Film at the University of Kent. His publications include A Band with Built-In Hate: The Who from Pop Art to Punk (2021) and Pin-Ups 1972: Third Generation Rock 'n' Roll (2022), both published by Reaktion Books.

Reviews for The Yardbirds: The Most Blueswailing Futuristic Way-Out Heavy Beat Sound

""A much-needed account of one of the most important, least understood bands of the 1960s, brilliantly written and researched by Stanfield.""--Peter Watts, author of ""Denmark Street: London's Street of Sound"" ""By using only contemporaneous media accounts as his foundational material, Stanfield has constructed an authentic, richly evocative account of the Yardbirds' transformative journey from youthful blues merchants to pioneering pop futurists, without the distorting filters of hindsight or revisionism. Exactingly researched, it's the definitive biography of one of the sixties' most innovative and influential rock groups, written with style, energy and luminous clarity.""--Mike Stax, editor of Ugly Things magazine