In 1965, In A Small English Town, The Yardbirds Changed The Sound Of Hard Rock Forever

On October 8, 1965, the Yardbirds played a gig at Staines Town Hall in the U.K. The lead guitarist in the band at the time was Jeff Beck, a rock 'n' roll visionary who experimented with many different instrumental techniques. But it was his use of feedback that would rate among the biggest milestones in Beck's illustrious career and have an especially profound effect on hard rock. On that night before a moderate crowd in the modest-sized English town of Staines, someone in the general public noticed what Beck was doing and let him know about it.

Beck was a rock star chameleon who played in an absurd number of bands, and he was almost a part of the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. His journey really hit the big time when he replaced fellow guitar giant Eric Clapton in the Yardbirds in 1965. A few months later, Beck made an indelible impression in the band, and in the rock world in general, when he pioneered and popularized electric guitar feedback, permanently making rock music heavier, harder, and hazier.

Jeff Beck claims he started playing around with guitar feedback — fuzzy, buzzy, unpredictable electric noise that comes out of amplifiers and speakers due to certain conditions — as early as 1964, before he was even a member of the Yardbirds. But it's when he joined that major group that the feedback became more prominent, along with the reaction to it. And it was all an inadvertent, if pleasantly surprising, result of trying to fix an audio problem. "We played larger venues, around about '64-'65, and the PA was inadequate," Beck explained on BBC Radio 2 (via the BBC). The solution: The musicians made everything louder. "We cranked up the level and then found out that feedback would happen."

Once Beck realized that feedback could be manipulated, he was into the idea. "I started using it because it was controllable — you could play tunes with it." At a Yardbirds gig at Staines Town Hall in 1965, he really went for it, utilizing the feedback as an intentional guitar effect. After the show, a spectator approached Beck to voice his approval of what he thought was accidental. "This guy says, 'You know that funny noise that wasn't supposed to be there? I'd keep that in if I were you,'" Beck recalled. "So I said, 'It was deliberate, mate. Go away.'" Before long, the Yardbirds incorporated feedback into their recordings, including the hit "Shapes of Things."