#60s groups

Michelle Phillips💐

📸Guy Webster

Friday, 20 January 1967. An interview with all four members of the band is published in Psychedelic Honi Soit, the University of Sydney Student Representative Council magazine, dated The Ides of March, 1967. This obviously took place before the band had a chance to rehearse at the Sydney Stadium, perhaps on the afternoon of Friday 20 January or the following day.

MUSICAL PSYCHEDELICATESSEN: THE YARDBIRDS

(David Dale Interviews)

D.D.: How do you regard your stage performances? Is it worth trying to do a good stage act when it will probably be drowned by screaming?

Jimmy [Page]: As long as they're enjoying it .....

Keith [Relf]: We still always try to maintain the same quality. We won't sort of not bother to play properly because the kids are screaming and jumping all over the place. We still try to play our best.

D.D.: Would you prefer an audience that sat and listened quietly, to a screaming audience?

Jimmy: No, it's best to have all the different types of audiences. Otherwise you can become bored.

Keith: We'll enjoy a university audience who sits there, and, as you say, listens to every note, and clap at the end, but we'll also, the next day, enjoy an audience that's screaming.

Jimmy: It just depends how much screaming there really is - if the whole act is obliterated it's not too good, but we'd like a variety of audience reactions.

D.D.: Do you think that it is impossible to reproduce the same sound on stage as on record?

Jimmy: No. Come along and see.

Keith: Although with your stadium we don't know. It depends a lot on the acoustics of the hall.

Jimmy: We found in America with the younger kids, the most important thing for them is to hear the group play the songs as the record sounds. And they've come up to us and said, "You're the first group we've heard who sound just like your records. They've listened to things like "Over, Under, Sideways Down" and they sound so different to them from what the normal group attempts that I suppose it pleases them to hear us perform them the same as on record.

Jim [McCarty]: How about the people sitting behind the group at this stadium of yours?

D.D.: There's a revolving stage. The stage is the size of a boxing ring.

Jim: Perhaps we ought to have a fight on stage.

Chris [Dreja]: Good visual effect.

Keith: Perhaps we ought to phone up Jeff for that.

D.D.: On stage do you perform only songs you have recorded?

Jimmy: No - we do a lot of other things. With I'm a Man we make It much longer than any of the recorded versions, and much different.

Keith: It starts off like the single version but then It develops into a load of different styles - a semi-classical part, er ...

Jimmy: Indian part, Arabic part.

Jim: They've asked us to do all our singles here, so I don't think we'll have much time for anything else. We play for about thirty, thirty-five minutes.

Keith: If we're playing a concert at a university where we can do a one-hour spot we go to town with the wilder stuff - some blues. We prefer not to play the hits to college students.

Jim: What was our last hit out here?

D.D.: "Over, Under, Sideways Down."

Jim: Where'd that get to?

D.D.: About number six in the Sydney charts. But I want to ask you about the single you released after that call "Happenings Ten Years' Time Ago."

Keith: It was an experiment that didn't come off.

Jimmy: It was supposed to be released in anywhere but America. It was a mistake - the typical commercial dealings of record companies. As soon as they get a tape they release it everywhere without consulting the group.

Jim: We had very little time to record it. We decided the American market could have it.

D.D.: How did it sell in America?

Jimmy: It sold very well.

D.D.: But not in England?

Keith: Well, we weren't there to promote it, you see. We haven't been in England now - apart from a couple of days here and there just to get home - for about four months.

D.D.: Is that because you think the English pop scene is dying?

Keith: That's right.

D.D.: Can you get work there?

Jim: Oh, yeah. We'll be working when we get back from this tour. Good money, too.

Keith: We would just rather play the world market.

Jimmy: All these groups slogging it to death in England and killing themselves in the long run, because they're making it go over saturation point. They can come to places like this where the pop field is not so over-saturated.

D.D.: What's the situation with record sales?

Keith: In England, to sell a record you must do the TV shows and plug it all the time.

Jimmy: You've got to realise that in England's such a small place with so many groups there's no glory left to anyone except the Beatles. People don't go out and buy a record because of the artist's name - they buy it if they like it. They must hear it before they like it, obviously. If you're not in the country they won't play your records, because you've got to push them all the time. The Stones won't sell on their names any more.

D.D.: Do you intend to write all your own material in the future?

Jim: We'll take offers from other writers if they're good and if we can't do any better ourselves.

D.D.: Don't you think your own material let you down in the case of "Happenings Ten Years' Time Ago"?

Jimmy: Well, it was done in such a rush. It was recorded in virtually a day.

Keith: Written and recorded, I might add.

Jimmy: Yeah, written and recorded in a day - made up in the studio. We weren't really satisfied with it but our manager had it released.

Keith: We're not making any excuses - shouldn't have been released in that state.

Jim: Why don't you think it made it in Australia?

D.D.: No air-play.

Jim: Aaah.

Jimmy: It was a strange sort of number. You had to hear it a few times to realise what we were doing. There's so much going on on that record.

Jim: It was labelled a psychedelic record, which I think people might have associated with drugs and refused to play it.

Keith: It got lots of air-play in Hollywood and was number one over there.

Jimmy: I think when record players review a record, they put it on once and then throw it away. You could hear "Happenings" the first time and not like it.

The group's road manager (?) arrived at this point.

Jim: Ay ay.

Road Manager: Oh, ho, I got drunk last night.

Keith: Last night? I went to bed at four in the afternoon and didn't get up till eight this morning.

R.M.: You're joking.

Keith: No.

R.M.: Right. Well .....

The Mamas and The Papas🍁🌺🍂

Playing Boss radio hits and more of them at http://backwhenradiowasboss.com. Listen live Radio with  playing your favorite classic Boss radio hit. Boss Radio plays all the hits of the 60s, 70s and 80s in a particular format with Live DJs and lots of fun! This is what Boss radio is supposed to sound like.

Playing Boss radio hits and more of them at http://backwhenradiowasboss.com. Listen live Radio with  playing your favorite classic Boss radio hit. Boss Radio plays all the hits of the 60s, 70s and 80s in a particular format with Live DJs and lots of fun! This is what Boss radio is supposed to sound like.

Playing Boss radio hits and more of them at http://backwhenradiowasboss.com. Listen live Radio with  playing your favorite classic Boss radio hit. Boss Radio plays all the hits of the 60s, 70s and 80s in a particular format with Live DJs and lots of fun! This is what Boss radio is supposed to sound like.