Roger The Engineer/Over Under Sideways Down, 60 Years Later
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Like its two aliases, Roger The Engineer (or Over Under Sideways Down) represents a year split in two.
Keith Relf: vocals, harmonica, acoustic guitar, autoharp, guiro
Jeff Beck: lead guitar, bass on “Over Under Sideways Down,” lead vocals on “The Nazz Are Blue”
Chris Dreja: rhythm guitar, piano, backing vocals
Paul Samwell-Smith: bass; “Lost Woman,” “The Nazz Are Blue,” “Rack My Mind,” “Jeff’s Boogie,” “What Do You Want”
Mick Fitzpatrick: bass on rest
Jim McCarty: drums
Jimmy Page: guitar, “Happenings Ten Years’ Time Ago”
Produced by Paul Samwell-Smith and Simon Napier Bell
Roger The Engineer art by Chris Dreja, Over Under Sideways Down art by Epic Records art department
Author’s note: this review will primarily focus on the Jeff Beck-era lineup of the Yardbirds. But due to my track listing situation (both my copies of Roger the Engineer and Over Under Sideways Down have the “Happenings Ten Years’ Time Ago” single,) I will cover the transition to the Jimmy Page era in full. roger the engineer review
“Well, he’s got the sound of ’75, but Jeff himself is a . . . . . !”
– Chris Dreja on Jeff Beck, Music Echo, March 1965.
Let’s begin with a single. The Yardbirds were always more of a singles band anyway, and they had the UK’s first released psychedelic rock single. Cut while on tour in Chicago, “Shapes Of Things’”s release in February of 1966 kicked off especially active eight months for our five live Yardbirds. It peaked at number 3 in the UK and number 11 in the US.
“Shapes Of Things” signified a new musical approach for the Yardbirds. We’ve come a long way from the British white-boy blues boom of a couple years before. They're referencing jazz now!
Over...
Arts universities opened these kids up to all these new ideas of culture, fashion, art, and music. “When we started our bands, we did what we wanted to – why the fuck not?” Chris Dreja said. “Why can’t you distort? Why can’t you bend strings? Why can’t you stick your guitar in a lavatory pail? Why can’t we sound like a Gregorian chant? Why can’t we play louder and faster?” All fine questions, Chris!
It marked a new turn for Yardbirds listeners, too. The folk music fad and the evolution of the Beatles’ songwriting opened the minds of their young listeners. Kids didn’t want “you-me-love” songs anymore, they were old hat. They sought thoughtful, open-ended songs; reflecting a new, more abstracted, critical worldview. Keith described to Rave,
“Pop music is like abstract painting. It is somehow easier to paint a sunset like a picture, than to paint it in an abstract mass of colour. People have to feel what the artist is getting at. When we record we don’t necessarily sing of mists and sunsets, but put together a sound that puts thoughts of them into the minds of the listeners.”
quoted from: Jon Savage, 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded (2016 ed.)
Like shapes. And things…
Following their tour of the United States, local music press grasped at straws trying to describe what the Yardbirds’ signature move, a “rave-up,” was. Keith described “a rather strange scene in America at the moment for music” in a February 1966 issue of Music Echo. "The white groups seem to be playing rhythm and blues like we used to here two years ago. But in Hollywood there’s a sort of rock and country mixture with blues thrown in, and it’s great to hear.” Vocabulary aside, the Yardbirds had two main issues. They were the butt of the joke for ongoing beef with the Who, and they’d been in the public eye for three years and still didn’t have a studio album out in their home territory; no thanks to manager Giorgio Gomelsky. He was intent on breaking the Yardbirds in Italy, as he saw a potential market there. The band quickly found out why there wasn’t! Paul described an audience of mostly middle-class and wealthy older people at this ridiculous contest Gomelsky booked them for. None of the Yardbirds could speak Italian, let alone sing in it, and traditional Roman Catholics certainly weren’t fond of the guys’ long hair. Stupid gigs like these wasted valuable recording time, and didn’t make the guys nearly enough money to be worth the trouble. The band made pennies on the dollar (pence on the pound?) with a weekly wage of just 27 pounds. Then Gomelsky started talking up a Yardbirds rock-and-roll symphony to the press? Who did he think these guys were, the Moody Blues? This concept had nothing to do with the “electronic sounds and tapes” (meaning tape loops and studio effects) that Paul Samwell-Smith often spoke to the same outlets about.
Gomelsky worked his band to the bone at the expense of their image, their time, their wallets, and their health. After a tour date in Marseilles, Jeff collapsed and had to be flown home; further derailing tour and non-existent recording plans. Reports from the time say he came down with meningitis, and would have to be on bed rest for the next two months. Something surrounding Jeff’s illness must’ve been the final straw, because the April 15th issue of the NME announced the Yardbirds ending their working relationship with Gomelsky. Coincidentally, Jeff was all better! He hoped to play their next gig on Saturday. They never made any official statement to the press, but here’s what Record Mirror got out of their conversation with Keith:
“The Yardbirds would much rather be recording than continually travelling to foreign countries to entertain. Making records, to them, is a far more satisfactory medium – both for establishing a name for themselves and earning money.”
quoted from: Richard Green, “KEITH RELF: He won’t talk about the reasons for the Yardbirds’ change of managers” Record Mirror, 4/30/1966.
Gomelsky was swiftly replaced by Simon Napier Bell, film producer and co-writer of Dusty Springfield’s “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me.” But firing Gomelsky cost the Yardbirds big time. As a result of terminating their contract, they had to sign over the rights to their whole catalog to date, including their hit “Shapes Of Things.” The guys had to start from scratch. Never fear: Keith soon revealed that the band had recorded their next single. It, and its B-side, were the first tracks recorded for what would become Roger The Engineer.
Seeing his band were in a pickle, Simon quickly got down to business; righting a whole host of wrongs Gomelsky’s management and the fallout had caused directly and indirectly. “We hope to make this year our year and our ambition is to become the most popular group, second to the Beatles,” Keith excitedly said to the Record Mirror. “We’re going to wear suits” (the band’s signature matching white suits,) “and promote individual people in our group – we’re all going to be ‘faces’ if the policy works out.”
The latter strategy didn’t go as planned. Keith put out his version of Bob Lind’s “Mr. Zero” as a single in May. Predictably, it flopped. Simon had another idea in his back pocket: negotiating another US tour! To promote the album the Yardbirds were finally fucking recording! He snagged the band a deal with EMI and a tasty publishing deal as well. To follow in the footsteps of Dylan, the Beatles, and the Beach Boys, he guided the Yardbirds toward writing their own songs. I’m surprised that I haven’t seen anyone else identify a secondary benefit: if the album were to be all original compositions, then the Yardbirds would be able to keep more of their money instead of having to pay out royalties to other writers. Then they could try to make back what they’d lost through losing the rights to “For Your Love,” “Heart Full Of Soul,” and “Shapes Of Things.” It seemed like they had a chance with the unnamed single Keith touted in Record Mirror; soon to be revealed as “Over Under Sideways Down.” Backed with “Jeff’s Boogie,” the single was rushed out in June after the failure of “Mr. Zero.” It was a song of the summer in both territories, hovering in or around the top 10 in the UK and US.
The rest of the album was recorded in one week at Advision Studios in June of 1966. Like their fine feathered friends across the pond, the Byrds, the Yardbirds were rocking with Indian influences. They’d done so for a couple years now – there’s a version of “Heart Full Of Soul” with just the sitar playing the opening lick, recorded at behest of Gomelsky. (One of the few good decisions he was behind!) You could pull the Yardbirds’ Eastern thing way back to the bongos on “For Your Love!” This approach shows up in a lot of ways on Roger The Engineer; finger cymbals, wood percussion, one very obvious wobble board, and putting things in unconventional time signatures and keys. The album was to simply be called Yardbirds. However, when asked about the shoddy quality of recording studios in England, Simon said to the Melody Maker, “I must say we are all raving about the sound that Roger (Cameron,) the engineer at Advision, has been getting on the LP.” Chris drew a caricature of Roger for the front cover. Thanks to this shout to their engineer (and the text Chris included in the illustration,) the “Roger The Engineer” name stuck.
Under...
By the time the album was finally out on July 15th, 1966, that lineup of the Yardbirds went kaput! Paul quit, expressing unhappiness with the band and album before it was even out! “We must have made around 600 personal appearances over the last two years. And, really, that’s enough! You aren’t creating, just doing the rounds. And frankly it bores me stiff!” On top of that, he was too old for the pop scene at the ripe old age of...23! He was done with “all those screaming kids leaping about. I don’t really think I’ll be missed in the group...Keith and Jeff are really the only two faces that matter in the Yardbirds.”
Paul’s replacement was the very guy who recommended Jeff Beck join the band in the first place. His addition to the Yardbirds would prove to be one of the most consequential moments in rock-and-roll history.
Enter: Jimmy Page.
There’s an oft-repeated story by both Jimmy and Chris that revolves around a Yardbirds gig at Cambridge University. Keith got so drunk that he broke all the fingers on his right hand and had to be tied to his mic stand, according to Chris. His singing gradually devolved into blowing raspberries at the crowd. Funny, but not a good look. According to this telling of the tale, the uppity Paul was so appalled by Keith’s crass behavior that he quit on the spot. Jeff just so happened to have brought Jimmy to this very gig. He had style, he had flair, he was there. And so he became a Yardbird. There is a grain of truth in this; Keith’s drinking was always an issue, and Paul was just from another upper-crust world. The truth is, he found touring uncivilized. It was back in those days. Dealing with promoters that were swindlers and glorified thugs, playing in shit venues for shit pay and shit food, and having to sleep on the bus was a killer back then, as we’ll see soon.
In the same NME piece where Paul explained his departure, Jimmy mentioned that Chris had picked up the bass, “and it seems likely that I will take over on guitar at a later date.” Take over on guitar, he would. And within months of Roger The Engineer’s release, Jeff would also be out of the band! Simon put the Yardbirds on Dick Clark’s Caravan of Stars tour. Infamous for its poor working conditions, the tour destroyed Jeff’s already-shakey health. The September 2nd issue of the NME reported Jeff undergoing an emergency surgery. He’d be out for the rest of the season. Three months after that – in the same year-end issue where the Beach Boys beat the Beatles for the number-one group spot in their readers’ poll – a much smaller headline announced Jeff leaving the Yardbirds, reportedly due to ill health. In his typical secretive way, Jimmy left it at this: “I championed Jeff being in the band, and that’s all there is to it. The others, however, weren’t having it.”
In the background of the Yardbirds’ interpersonal chaos, a massive cultural shift simmered through the summer of 1966. The music press went from struggling to define a “rave-up” to grappling with the “freakout.” Psychedelia had infiltrated popular culture by way Frank Zappa’s Freak Out LP; where it flopped in the States, it was a shock success in Europe. The Beatles were about to blow the whole thing open with Revolver, and the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” would hit number one in the fall. Even Dylan’s “thin wild mercury” sound on Blonde On Blonde reflected psychedelia to a degree. Keith clarified that Dylan was “lyrically psychedelic,” while their “sound is psychedelic...What we’re trying to do with our music is trying to induce the same thing in the audience, the same feeling, the same sort of experiences that LSD does – it’s very hard to do!”
The Yardbirds’ first and only single of the Beck-Page lineup, “Happenings Ten Years’ Time Ago” backed with “Psycho Daisies,” was released on October 21st. “Not quite so way-out but way-out enough,” the Record Mirrorreview stated. “An unusual song, presented jerkily but with a big beat. Needs close attention to get the full gist.” An admiration for the band’s experimentation was balanced by a fair degree of skepticism about how long this “psychedelic” thing would last. These were defining traits of band’s reception in ’66, as Record Mirror represents. Where some couldn’t “get the gist of “Happenings,” Penny Valentine at Disc had HAD it.
“I have had enough of this sort of excuse for music. It is not clever, it is not entertaining, it is not informative. It is boring and pretentious. I am tired of people like the Yardbirds thinking this sort of thing is clever when people like the Spoonful and the Beach Boys are putting real thought into their music. And if I hear the word psychedelic mentioned I will go nuts.”
quoted from: Jon Savage, 1966: The Year The Decade Exploded (2016 ed.)
(Oh, Penny...you might want to sit the next year-and-a-half out!)
To this camp of listeners, the Yardbirds had sacrificed their pop sensibility for needless faffing about with their equipment. Where “Shapes Of Things” had sat comfortably in top 10 for weeks, “Happenings” only peaked at number 43. In the eight months between these singles, the Yardbirds went from one of the hottest bands on the scene to yesterday’s news. In taking so long to get a studio album out, the Yardbirds fell behind the curve of the genre they helped pioneer.
To the rest of us, holy shit man, it’s “Happenings Ten Years’ Time Ago!” I’d say this song is remembered more fondly than “Shapes Of Things” here in the States, and maybe that was because it was inspired by American jazz music. Jimmy said, “We had talked about playing harmony lines and arranging parts that would be the rock equivalent of a brass or saxophone section from the big-band era. There wasn’t really anything going like that. The closest we came to realizing our vision was on ‘Happenings Ten Years’ Time Ago.’”
Sideways...
For all this hullabaloo about rave-ups and freakouts, what is “psychedelic,” anyway? Since Jimmy Page is involved, let’s turn to him.
“Basically, any sound that’s out of the norm can be considered psychedelic – like backwards guitar; it’s trippy because you can’t relate to what it is and what it’s doing...It was just anything which disturbed the senses somewhat, you know?”
quoted from: Jim DeRogatis, Turn On Your Mind: Four Great Decades of Psychedelic Rock (2003.)
“The goal was synesthesia – creating pictures with sound.” This is precisely what this phase of the Yardbirds specialized in. Shapes, things. Directions: over, under, sideways, down.
Let’s get the single out of the way first, since it’s on both my copies of the album. Melody Maker wrote upon release that some had “tried to label (‘Happenings’) as psychedelic music...but it is not. Ad lib crescendos, weird noises, strange voices, backward running tapes, and anything else you want to chuck in doesn’t make a psychedelic disc.”
Actually yeah, Melody Maker, all of those things make a psychedelic disc! Per Jimmy’s definition, the ear can’t relate to these sounds or place them in any natural scape. Happenings Ten Years’ Time Ago is a defining psych rock single, and one of my favorite singles of 1966. Eastern-influenced lines (get ready to get sick of this terminology. I got sick of reading it, too!) are played loose and with gunslinger attitude. They battle the big, perpetually-descending riff. I agree with Jimmy’s thinking that “Happenings” was the track that lived up to the Beck-Page Yardbirds hype. This song is an interesting contrast of the two players’ styles: Jeff, a soloist just as concerned with the space between notes as the notes themselves; with Jimmy, the human riff and a notoriously flashy and technically “sloppy” player. When these two collide, sparks are sure to fly!
Keith and Jim’s lyric was inspired by their (the whole music scene’s, really) shared explorations in LSD and philosophy. The two might as well have gone hand-in-hand in ’66! They with principle of detachment.
“Walking in the room I see
Things that mean a lot to me.
Why they do, I’ll never know,Memories, they strike me so.”
As well as deja vu:
“It seems to me I’ve been here before,
The sounds I heard and the sights I saw.
Was it real, was it in my dreams?
I need to know what it all means.”
The last line represents the collective attitude of a generation of young people. 1966 was the curious middle of a tumultuous decade, with a strange and challenging, but exciting counterculture rising into the mainstream.
Keith is sometimes poked fun at for his flat, everyman delivery. I think it’s cool that he didn’t try to push any schmaltz where there isn’t. He scrapes the very bottom of his range at end of the chorus. Then it all goes crazy in the middle – the freakout section! An ambulance-siren riff assaults the ears. The rumbling to follow sounds like a jet engine taking off. The one-note sustains and stylish flourishes from both guitarists are exciting. All you can really hear of Jeff’s spoken word bit is his maniacal laughter. I wonder if Pink Floyd had this song on the brain when they did “On The Run” six years later...
Psycho Daisies is based on Eddie Cochran’s “Somethin’ Else.” The lyric is a travelogue a la the Beach Boys’ “California Girls” which name-drops Jeff’s own California girl, movie star Mary Hughes. Only a minute-and-change, the fadeout during guitars trading licks is terribly frustrating.
As for the album itself: it’s also frustrating!
As evidenced by all of my copies and all of your copies, there are simply too many versions of Roger The Engineer. There are as many track listings as there are album covers. No version makes any sense, and the album suffers from it. Every disorganized sequencings jumble whatever vision these guys had going in, as does the shoddy recording quality. Advision was in the dark ages compared to EMI. The Yardbirds were an EMI act, so why the hell weren’t they recording at EMI?? We see this happen a lot with psychedelic albums from 1966 through ’68. Like Jimi Hendrix’s vision for Electric Ladyland far outpaced the technology available to him in New York, virtually all of the Yardbirds’ pre-Mickie Most and Olympic Studios output outpaced their equipment. Even in mono, Roger The Engineer sounds like shit. And don’t even get me started on my mix of the album! This might be part of why the Yardbirds haven’t been able to transcend their “Sixties band” labelling, but we’ll get into that later.
Since the Yardbirds’ guitars were always so dazzling, listeners tend to miss the rhythm section. Paul and Jim’s chemistry acts as the heartbeat of Lost Woman; the true opening track of Roger The Engineer. They feverishlyswing into the intro like bebop players. Paul deals one of his best basslines. It’s catchy and dexterous, and played dizzyingly fast when you consider how far he’s stretching his fingers on his fretboard. The lyric is a classic blues trope: my no-woman made me lose my money, and then I lost my no-good woman! Keith wheezes into his harmonica, ran through the fuzz box. It acts like a second guitar might. Paul switches to playing a wobbly staccato line underneath as Jim plays tight, insistent drums. Before long, Jeff inevitably usurps the instrumentalbreak with some feedback. I’ve heard that he’d come in to record his solos at the very end so he could build off what the other guys had done. Chris plays an almost country chug underneath him, and that’s how you do a “rave-up.” After giving just a taste of the action, “Lost Woman” returns to Paul’s repeating figure and Jim’salmost Krupa-like drums.
I wish Over Under Sideways Down was the opening track instead, for how it sets the scene for the world the Yardbirds live in: fast-paced, exciting, swinging London.
“Cars and girls are easy to come by in this day and age,
Laughing, joking, drinking, smoking til I’ve spent my wage.”
This was the attitude of guys on the scene at the time. They dressed well, drove fast cars, had a constantly-rotating cast of lady friends, and went out to the clubs to indulge in drink, drugs, and groovy tunes; all in defiant opposition to their elders. “All the things they said are wrong are what I wanna be.” Having long hair and wearing ascots certainly attracted the ire of their Silent Generation parents. “I find comments bout my looks…” “irrelativity?” Surely there was a better line there! “Think I’ll go and have some fun ’cause it’s all for free.”Free love and free tokes, baby!
The lyric of “Over Under Sideways Down” might accidentally expose emptiness of this party scene. “I’m not searching for a reason to enjoy myself/Seems it’s better done than argued with somebody else.” When you place this next to the lyric of “Happenings,” it reveals how, from the spring through summer of 1966, the Yardbirds began their foray into introspection. The arrangement is quintessentially Sixties. Jeff’s solo is blisteringly loud and trebley, to the point of being too much to handle. The handclaps and chants of “HEY!” are so much fun. Jeff plays the bass on this one; he goes the bluesy route of walking up and down the fretboard. His simple one-note pulse under the chorus builds momentum and acts acts as a drone.
The Nazz Are Blue (yes, Todd Rundgren’s band named themselves after this song!) is a shameless rewrite of Elmore James’s “Dust My Broom.” Fun as it is, this tune exemplifies the identity crisis the Yardbirds grappled with in ’66. “Nazz” is an original on paper. The lyric was written and sung by Jeff. But we’ve got a split happening: as the band clings onto their blues comfort zone (Jeff’s Boogie is pretty much a note-for-note lift of Chuck Berry’s “Guitar Boogie,”) they reach out on other numbers.
We also hear a split in Jeff’s soloing. Where Jimmy’s presence on “Happenings” pushes Jeff to be a little flashier, Jeff allows himself to be a bit more casual with Chris. On a straight white-boy blues number like “Nazz,” Jeff is more comfortable with letting the space between the notes speak.
I Can’t Make Your Way adapts the Yardbirds into Sixties pop, with the requisite mid-Sixties tambourine. 1965 and ’66 were the years of the tambourine! The song is catchy and economical, and doesn’t overstay its welcome. Jeff goes a very simple route. Jeff’s see-sawing line under the chorus might be more intricate than his solo! Just one pass of the motif and a second down the octave. Keith’s autoharp strum to accent beat two. One of the things the Yardbirds always did well were their unusual vocals. With Keith often choosing to go a deadpan, nonchalant route with his delivery (in part because of his limited vocal range,) they had to have something else going on. “I Can’t Make Your Way”’s nasally harmony vocal holds the same note most of the way through the lines in the verses. It puts a little dissonance to the obscure lyric about living a free life, avoiding paying taxes and rent. Because that always ends well!
If you thought that harmony vocal was nasally, hear the lead on Rack My Mind. Keith had an interesting, mutable voice. His delivery on this song is so different from the indifferent baritone I’m used to, I still wonder if this is actually him singing! “Rack My Mind” is another Yardbirds twelve-bar blues, but when you dig into the lyric it’s really funny. The song is about a woman so baffling, our narrator racks his mind for the vocabulary to describe her. She’s so diabolical and so weird, she’s got him consulting a dictionary! What does he find in this dictionary? “Know what to call you baby/You’re the world’s worst woman!” You went through all that effort to settle on that?
This band had great chemistry. They actually respond to what each other do! The arrangement pulling back to Jim’s percussion and Paul’s playing of the riff on bass as we build to the big reveal is so cool. The core riff is Jeff’s own, and one of the catchiest on the album. It’s an undeniable shoulder-shimmying groove. You could stick this number in a club scene in a Bond movie and it’d make sense.
Farewell is a total snoozefest. It’s quite pastoral and English, but it just doesn’t fit in this body of work. Neither does Hot House of Omagararshid, lighthearted and unserious as it is. It’s little more than an experiment. The guys play – overuse, even – all the percussion they could find at Advision as Paul plays with his studio effects.
After Chuck’s – I mean Jeff’s Boogie (I honestly favor Jim’s drumming on the track) is He’s Always There. This number saw a most unlikely revival in the mid-aughts, thanks to the Pussycat Dolls sampling it on their top 10 hit, “When I Grow Up.” (I know how it looks, but man, I love being a Zoomer.)
On “He’s Always There,” Keith sings about a guy trying to sus a pretty girl out.
“You’re looking my way, that’s good to see.
Well now I’m thinking ‘Is it really me?’
You’ll give me something that lights up my all,
It can’t be just my eyes you call.”
He wonders if she’s too good to be true. And if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. This girl might not be single like she says she is, because there’s this other guy always lurking around! “I’d like to get to know you, sure,” (we love a king who states his intentions from the jump) “And take this thing just one step more/To find out just what it’s all for...but he’s always there.” While the chorus is adamant he won’t sleep with this girl until he figures out what the hell is up with this dude, he eventually succumbs to her killer gaze. Or maybe he’s known about her boyfriend all along and doesn’t care! “Come a little closer, he’s not to see/There’s something going between you and me…” The situation isn’t totally clear from the lyric.
“He’s Always There” has such a suspicious-sounding arrangement. The descending riff sounds a little evil; so simple but so catchy. The guiro sound is used to represent the guy lurking around the corner. The call-and-response of the backing vocals is super fun too. If I were on the Yardbirds’ team in ’66, I’d have insisted this be a single. Or plop this in a spy movie, too!
The arrangement of Turn Into Earth leans way into the Arabic with a marching beat, bells, and finger cymbals. Keith could do wonderful wordless vocals. I feel this number predates the fabulous “aaah”s and stacked harmonies of one of my favorite Yardbirds numbers, “Glimpses.” “Turn Into Earth” is mystifying and eerie; haunting, with an utterly pessimistic lyric, a thing of dark beauty.
What Do You Want is another excellent rocker. It deals the most energy we’ve had on this whole side of the LP. Jimmy had big shoes to fill in replacing Paul. I totally understand why he switched to guitar ASAP! Paul plays another agile, rollicking bassline under Keith’s rap; in which he lowkey predicts the future:
“Sit spellbound by a flickering screen,
Watch the ever changing scenes.
Listen to the rising screams
Of children today.
Lock your doors and stay within,
Upon your faces, the stupid grins.
Penalty for unrealized sins
Committed on your way.”
Keith lays into people for their addictions to their screens! It keeps them ignorant, and ignorance is a cardinal sin in a decade all about opening your eyes and your mind. “What Do You Want” is a fantastic moment for Jeff and Chris as a duo. The steady riff is balanced by tasteful, light feedback.
Ever Since The World Began...ugh. What a drag to end this thing on! I get it, the Yardbirds loved their Gregorian fucking chants. But we did gothic so much better on “Turn Into Earth.”
It’s a shame that the Yardbirds fly under the radar in conversation of great Sixties bands. I find they do, anyway. They’re not in the convo nearly as much as the Stones or the Who, or even the Kinks. The Yardbirds’ legacyattached to introducing the world to that guy, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page, and being the band Jimmy blew up after eighteen months to form one of the biggest bands of all-time! I think it was Mike Stax on his Ugly Things Podcast episode with author Peter Stanfield who said the Yardbirds are so quintessentially Sixties because they weren’t able to escape the era like their peers did. The record at hand reflects this.
Like its multiple aliases, Roger The Engineer/Over Under Sideways Down has a split legacy. It stands as the only studio Yardbirds album released in the UK during their original run. In the US, the Yardbirds are heralded as a Rosetta Stone of the garage rock boom. No rave-up, no Shadows of Knight! No Count Five! (No really, “Psychotic Reaction” is so close to their “I’m A Man!”) Once again at the scene of the crime, Lester Bangs said,
“I began to realize that it was all the same – my teenage dissolution lifestyle and the music of the Troggs, Shadows of Knight, Music Machine, Seeds, ? (and the Mysterians,) Count Five. They were all full of shit and so was I. And none of us cared. We had all heard the Yardbirds’ brilliant innovations, but since almost none of the above listed groups really knew how to play their instruments, all they could do was bang away in rackety imitation. Which was when I first realized that quality and musicianship and taste actually had nothing to do whatsoever with rock ’n’ roll; in fact might be its worst enemies.”
quoted from: Lester Bangs, “The History of Garage Rock, Part 1” New Wave no. 2, 1977.
In his famous “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung” essay, he said the Yardbirds “were incredible. They came stampeding in and just blew everybody clean off the tracks. They were so fucking good, in fact, that people were still imitating ‘’em as much as a decade later…” 1975 in 1965.
I think of 1966 as a year split in two. The first half was ruled by the sensibilities of the middle of the decade; when miniskirts hit just above the knee, so to speak. Your Bob Dylans, Simon and Garfunkels, lingering English beat music, surfing, cars, and girls. Then came Pet Sounds, Blonde On Blonde, and Revolver, and the whole decade tilted. Roger The Engineer was released between the latter two giants; and is an important artifact of such. If any one album represents the shift in sensibilities from the middle of the decade to the last third, it’s this one. Deeply flawed as this package is, this album displays one of the Yardbirds’ strongest assets: their versatility. English R&B, Chicago blues, jazz, and yes, the East, all coexist (however uncomfortably) on this LP. It’s part-mid-Sixties, part late. Roger The Engineer is an album split in two...at least two.
Personal favorites: “Lost Woman,” “Over Under Sideways Down,” “I Can’t Make Your Way,” “He’s Always There,” “Happenings Ten Years’ Time Ago”
– AD ☆
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Altham, Keith. “Yardbirds: Why I Left/Why I Joined.” New Musical Express, 7/8/1966. https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/New-Musical-Express/1966/New-Musical-Express-1966-07-08.pdf
Bangs, Lester. “The History of Garage Rock, Part 1.” New Wave no. 2, 1977. As published in Jim DeRogatis, Turn On Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2003. https://books.google.com/books?id=U7cQmRsLgN8C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=fals
Bangs, Lester. “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: A Tale of These Times.” As published in Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. edited by Greil Marcus. New York: Vintage Books, 1988.
Bromley, Tony, editor. “From You To Us.” New Musical Express, 4/1/1966. https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/New-Musical-Express/1966/NME-1966-04-01-S-OCR.pdf
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Green, Richard. “KEITH RELF: He won’t talk about the reasons for the Yardbirds’ change of managers.” Record Mirror, 4/30/1966. https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/Record-Mirror/60s/66/Record-Mirror-1966-04-30.pdf
Griffiths, David. “The two sides of song rivalry in the shape of MR. ZERO.” Record Mirror, 5/28/1966. https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/Record-Mirror/60s/66/Record-Mirror-1966-05-28.pdf
Jopling, Norman, and Peter Jones. “This Week’s Biggies.” Record Mirror, 10/22/1966. https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/Record-Mirror/60s/66/Record-Mirror-1966-10-22.pdf
Russo, Greg. Yardbirds: The Ultimate Rave-Up. eBook edition: Crossfire Publications, 2026 ed.
Savage, Jon. 1966: The Year The Decade Exploded. London: Faber & Faber, 2016.
Stanfield, Peter. The Yardbirds: The Most Blueswailing Futuristic Way-Out Heavy Beat Sound. London: Reaktion Books, 2025.
Tolinski, Brad. Light & Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page. New York: Broadway Books, 2012.
“After 18 months - new Yardbirds LP.” New Musical Express, 6/17/1966. https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/New-Musical-Express/1966/New-Musical-Express-1966-06-17.pdf
“Great Beck guitar means big, big Yardbirds hit.” Melody Maker, 2/19/1966. https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/Melody-Maker/60s/66/Melody-Maker-1966-02-19.pdf
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