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Wednesday Eye Candy

Posted on Wednesday January 21, 2009 at 11:04 AM 7 |

One of the most famous performance clips of The Yardbirds isn’t concert footage or an appearance on one of those ’60s music TV shows. Instead, the group shows up in a movie as an unnamed band playing on a nightclub stage.

The movie was the 1966 British / Italian film “Blow-Up.” Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and starring David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, Jane Birkin and John Castle, the plot centered around a day in the life of a British photographer who suspects he may have accidentally snapped a picture of a murder while shooting random pics of London.

The Yardbirds appear as an unidentified bar band in a nightclub more than halfway through the film, and the footage represents one of the few film clips of the band when Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck were both members. What’s more, Beck does his best Pete Townshend imitation by smashing his guitar.

Also, if you carefully study the nightclub audience, you might even spot a pre-Monty Python Michael Palin.

Wikipedia says The Yardbirds wasn’t the first band director Antonioni chose for the movie. He originally wanted The Velvet Underground, but declined once he realized he’d have to pay for flying the band’s entire entourage to England.

7 Comments leave a comment RSS

  1. 12
    meisterbaboo wrote:

    11:21 AM, Jan 21, 2009

    amazing. now if we could only get a full concert release from this era of the band.

  2. 64
    just G wrote:

    11:29 AM, Jan 21, 2009

    good thing that Jeff bashed the relatively "cheap" guitar

    before switching to a Les Paul,  if he did it the other way

    that would have been bad

  3. 137
    Hannibal_Lecter wrote:

    12:20 PM, Jan 21, 2009

    That's not even Jeff Beck's Guitar.

    According to Wikipedia, the band Steve Howe was in at the time - The In Crowd - was supposed to be the band in the club, but were switched with The Yardbirds at the last minute.  Howe says that's his guitar Beck smashes in the  movie.

  4. 173
    jason_woodson wrote:

    01:59 PM, Jan 21, 2009

    That's pretty damn cool.  Especially seeing Jimmy in that period.  He looks pretty cool there tool

  5. 256
    Heavy Metal Infant wrote:

    02:05 PM, Jan 21, 2009

    yeah JP is pimp ***

  6. 2
    Hailwood wrote:

    04:42 PM, Jan 21, 2009

    Ironically bizzare.  JB has an amp problem while Keith Relf is singing.  Ten Years After, Keith Relf is electrocuted while playing a guitar in rehearsal.

  7. 113
    Jdronk wrote:

    02:00 AM, Jan 22, 2009

    What a wild find... What a bunch of stiffs in the crowd though.

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