Indeed the musical journey The Yardbirds undertook in their short but adventure-filled five years together went through so many twists and turns that their career seemed to nutshell the melting-pot atmosphere of the 60s as clearly as did that of The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. When Page joined it became a bit more experimental but it was still the same sort of vibe – very daring. It was the same feeling I got when I later saw the MC5 – they just attacked you, went for the jugular. “Especially the line-up with Jeff Beck in it. “You couldn’t touch them,” Lemmy would tell me years later.

They weren’t poncey mods but they dressed to the nines, part King’s Road, part Haight-Ashbury. They weren’t dirty rockers, but they were photographed riding Harleys. Their early shows were self-described as ‘rave-ups’ – wild, hair-down, knickers-off parties for the wilfully far out, the fashionably fuck you. The Yardbirds had always been fantastically flash, inscrutably cool, fabulously out of reach. Not just the sonic templates of Train Kept A-Rolling, Dazed And Confused and White Summer – but also in the whole smart-arse, ‘don’t try this at home, we are your overlords’ vibe. Because, it’s all right there in New York in March 1968. In fact, listening to the live ’68 album, ‘the New Yardbirds’ really would have been a more accurate description of the outfit Page pulled together in the months that followed that Anderson Theatre show. Then, even more suddenly, spookily, a whole new other thing – supposedly – called Led Zeppelin.

And no shame in wondering what this band would have achieved had Page not left just three months later to find a new singer and rhythm section to play with – in what was originally announced at the time as being The Yardbirds Featuring Jimmy Page, then just weeks later the New Yardbirds. It’s not overstating the case to describe this as proto-Led Zeppelin. You only have to listen to the live recording of the show – now immortalised for the first time officially on the just-released Yardbirds ’68 album (produced and digitally remastered by Page, and now available on various formats through his official website) – to grasp what might have been had McCarty and Relf not wanted out so badly.

It was a real sliding doors moment that night at the Anderson Theatre. Looking glum, but the future’s bright: (l-r) Keith Relf, Chris Dreja, Eric Clapton, Jim McCarty, Paul Samwell-Smith (Image credit: Rex Images)

Eric clapton yardbirds