YEAR
1992
INDUCTED BY
The Edge (U2)
CATEGORY
Performers
Short-lived but influential, the Yardbirds blazed a trail for new genres and gave some of rock’s best guitarists their start.
They started as a blues cover band, but their rave ups and innovations in feedback and distortion shaped such diverse genres as psychedelic rock, prog rock and punk.
Chris Dreja
Eric Clapton
Jeff Beck
Jim McCarty
Jimmy Page
Keith Relf
Paul Samwell-Smith
HALL OF FAME
ESSAY
By Michael Hill
They were the progenitors of psychedelic pop.
Their sound inspired young Americans to pick up guitars and head for the garage. They launched the careers of three of rock’s most celebrated guitarists —Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page — and set the stage, halfway through the Sixties, for the album-oriented hard rock of the Seventies.
But in 1964 at London’s Marquee Club, kicking off the live recording of their British debut album, they were introduced as “the most blueswailing Yardbirds.”
