When bass player Paul Samwell-Smith left The Yardbirds in 1966 to concentrate on producing other bands, he was replaced by Jimmy Page as Jeff Beck had already replaced Eric Clapton on guitar. Although Page joined as the bass player with Chris Dreja as the rhythm guitarist, Dreja eventually moved to bass allowing Beck and Page to be the envy of any band with twin guitarists. When Beck left, Page took over the role as sole guitarist. Page was in fact the original choice of guitarist to replace Clapton, Beck joining instead on Page’s recommendation…follow?

The video clip is from the French TV show Baton Rouge in 1968, shorty before they broke up. Page is in full flight as lead guitar player and you see him here looking very Led Zep sartorially and musically too with the same Fender Telecaster from the 1969 Danish show that I posted last night. (And for those of you that don’t usually go to the In Deep Music Archive website I had a response yesterday from Allan in Copenhagen, one of the members of the audience – very cool I thought.)

This clip is a fascinating precursor to the sound of Led Zeppelin and as all of you smart and informed folks will know, soon after this, the band toured Scandinavia as The New Yardbirds with a new line-up that only included Page – that new line-up was what we now affectionately know as Led Zeppelin.