
The Yardbirds
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Year:
1992
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Inducted by:
The Edge (U2)
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Category:
Performers
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Chris Dreja
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Eric Clapton
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Jeff Beck
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Jim McCarty
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Jimmy Page
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Keith Relf
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Paul Samwell-Smith
Introduction
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.

The Edge inducts The Yardbirds
at the 1992 Induction Ceremony-
The Edge inducts The Yardbirds00:07:12
Hall of Fame Essay
1992
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.”


In a million garages, young men were hunched over Les Paul copies, trying to find any stray semitone that Beck, Clapton, or Page hadn’t used.
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Gallery
Photography: Kevin Mazur, WireImage