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Epic

For Your Love – The Yardbirds

By Music News Jul 26, 2022 | 7:00 PM

Writer: Graham Gouldman

Producer: Giorgio Gomelsky

Recorded: December 1964 at IBC Studios, London

Released: February 1965

    Players: Eric Clapton – guitar
    Keith Relf — vocals
    Chris Dreja — guitar
    Paul Samwell-Smith — bass
    Jim McCarty — drums
    Brian Auger — harpsichord
    Denny Piercey — bongos
    Album: For Your Love (Epic, 1965)

    The Yardbirds formed in 1965, primarily as a blues outfit playing songs made famous by Sonny Boy Williamson and others.

    The group chose its name from a reference in a Jack Kerouac book.

    Eric Clapton was not an original Yardbird. He replaced Tony Topham, who during the fall of 1963 opted to attend college instead of pursue music as a career.

    “For Your Love,” written by future 10cc member Graham Gouldman, was the Yardbirds' third single and its first big hit, rising to Number Six on the Billboard Top 100 and Number 3 on the U.K. chart.

    Clapton, unhappy with the more polished, commercial direction that was signaled with “For Your Love,” left the band in March of 1965 to join John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and was replaced by Jeff Beck.

    The For Your Love album reached Number 96 on the Billboard Top 200.