Yardbirds – "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" (1966)

Walking in the room, I see

Things that mean a lot to me

Why they do, I never know

In the last 2 or 3 lines, I told you about my recent colonoscopy, and how happy I was that I could go five years before having another one.

It turns out I was wrong about that.  I just heard from my gastroenterologist – which is the second-longest and hard-to-spell medical speciality after “otorhinolaryngologist” – who had this to say about the one “teeny-tiny” polyp she found during my procedure:

The biopsy results show a reparative polyp which is a benign growth that forms in your digestive tract as part of the healing process after inflammation or injury to the lining. . . . These polyps are not cancerous and are not the same as the adenomatous polyps that can turn into cancer. ​ ​

That was certainly welcome news.  But she had even better tidings for me:

Based on your history, we can consider another colonoscopy in ten years for continued colorectal cancer screening. ​ ​​ ​

Learning that I can wait until 2036 to have another colonoscopy instead of having to undergo the procedure again in 2031 made me a very happy camper.  

But it gets even better.

You see, I’m really, really old.  I might manage to live another five years.  But I figure there is almost no chance that I’ll still be above ground ten years from now.  (Given the extreme rock ’n’ roll lifestyle I’ve lived – eat your heart out, Keith Richards! – it’s a miracle I’ve survived as long as I have.)

So the odds are very good that I will never have to undergo the ordeal of a colonoscopy “prep” again.  Hooray! 

*     *     *     *     *

Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck – who hold down the #2, #3, and #5 spots, respectively, on Rolling Stone magazine’s “100 Greatest Guitarists” list – were all members of the Yardbirds at one time or another.

Clapton joined the group in October 1963 but left a year and a half later.  The band wanted Jimmy Page to replace him, but Page turned them down.  He suggested they offer the job to Jeff Beck, who agreed to join the Yardbirds in March 1965.

When the Yardbirds’ bass player quit the band in June 1966, they persuaded Jimmy Page to take his place.  But when Beck fell ill a couple of months later while the group was touring the U.S., Page took over lead guitarist responsibilities.

The Beck-Page Yardbirds

The brilliant “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago,” which was recorded in the summer of that year, features both Beck and Page as co-lead guitarists.  But Beck left the group in November, leaving Page as the group’s sole lead guitarist.

When the Yardbirds broke up in 1968, Page put together Led Zeppelin, which recorded a song titled “Ten Years Gone” about a decade after the release of “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago.”  Led Zeppelin was notorious for stealing songs from other artists without giving proper credit, but “Ten Years Gone” doesn’t really have anything in common with “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” other than the use of “ten years” in the title.

Click here to listen to “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago.”

Click here to buy “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” from Amazon.