Roger the Engineer (The Yardbirds, 1966)

If I seemed a little disappointed when I reviewed Little Games earlier this year, this album is to blame. While it's easy to pinpoint the problems of Little Games, I'm not sure why Roger the Engineer is so good. So, here, I will attempt to rationalize my feelings.

The Yardbirds are one of six core bands that constituted the British invasion (the others being the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Who, and the Kinks....sorry Dave Clark!). Each band staked out their own image and sound, some, thanks to better management, better than others. While incredibly influential on a number of bands in the United States, the Yardbirds themselves tended to shoot themselves in their collective foot in the "image" and business departments. At the heart of it was a fundamental inability to write consistently good songs. A number of their hits were actually penned by others. While that sustained the band through the potentially disastrous loss of Eric Clapton, the notion of creating an entire album of original material was utterly daunting. However by 1966 most bands were switching from R&B and blues covers to original material, much of which picked up a distinctly psychedelic flavor and advanced the sound of decade. So, disregarding their paucity of original material to date, the Yardbirds set out to create an album of 12 original songs.

In theory, Roger the Engineer should have a train wreck. Realistically, only the first two songs are capable of standing on their own. "Lost Woman" represents the culmination of everything the band had been doing during their rave-up period, a feedback drenched masterpiece. "Over Under Sideways Down" is one of their most respected songs, brilliantly retro and progressive all at once. Among the other ten, two of the songs are just blues covers with new lyrics (something Led Zeppelin would famously get wrapped up in). A number of the songs are much more concerned with voice arrangements (think "Still I'm Sad") than a full band effort and beginning to show Keith Relf's growing detachment from the old sound. However, put together, the album is a surprisingly coherent listening experience, albeit a bit unexpected from the band that started life more bluesy than most of its peers. And just to make things a little sweeter, the version I have includes two bonus tracks recorded slightly after the rest of the album. When bassist Paul Samwell-Smith quit the band, they moved incredibly fast to replace him...with Jimmy Page. So if you think Page should have been a bass player, check out "Psycho Daisies" (which will probably have you reconsider). He was quickly moved into a more comfortable role as co-lead guitarist (with Jeff Beck) for the next song, "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago", a song so ridiculously over the top it should have been clear to everybody that things just couldn't get any better (plus bass duties were tackled by some random session player named John Paul Jones).

Obviously the Relf-Beck-Page-Dreja-McCarty lineup was totally unsustainable, with Beck storming out of the band (check out "Stroll On" - the only other song recorded by this lineup before he left), and the band converting to a four-piece with Chris Dreja retrained on bass. Also the band management situation, never good to begin with, remained a complete mess. The story continues with Little Games, but the best years of the band were now behind them.