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! 

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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.

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

Walking in the room I see

Things that mean a lot to me

Why they do I'll never know

[NOTE:  Today's 2 or 3 lines features the part four of our groundbreaking interview with . . . 2 or 3 lines!  Just click here if you missed part three.]

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Q: The prolific novelist Joyce Carol Oates once wrote, “I am inclined to think that as I grow older I will come to be infatuated with the art of revision, and there may come a time when I will dread giving up a novel at all.”  She has also said, “I probably spend 90% of my time revising what I’ve written.”  How much time do you spend revising 2 or 3 lines posts?

A:  One reason I force myself to post at least twice a week is to force myself to stop revising and move on.  It’s tempting to revise, and revise some more, and keep revising – but sometimes less is more when it comes to revising.  At some point, you have to stop revising and post the damn thing and move on to the next one.

(Not me!)

Q:  How would you describe your writing process?

A:  I throw everything into my first drafts – I just keep writing until I can’t think of anything more to say.  For me, the process of revising is mostly deleting stuff.  The more time I spend on a post, the shorter it gets – and shorter is almost always better.  But there comes a point of diminishing returns when it comes to editing something I’ve written – the writing becomes less spontaneous and more labored.  If I’m finding it hard to stop revising a post, that usually means there’s something seriously wrong with it.  My best posts are those that were easy to write and required relatively little editing.

Q:  Here’s another Joyce Carol Oates quote: “Writing is a solitary occupation, and one of its hazards is loneliness. But an advantage of loneliness is privacy, autonomy and freedom.”  Do you agree?

A:   Yes.  As Oates noted, you have privacy, autonomy, and freedom when you’re alone.  But it’s easy to become bored when you’re alone.  Working on 2 or 3 lines is one of the ways I keep myself from getting bored.  It’s also one of the ways I distract myself from feeling lonely.  I usually don’t mind being alone – which is fortunate, since I think I spend much more time alone than most people.  But sometimes I do mind.

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2 or 3 lines:  Here’s one more Oates quote: “One of the qualities of writing that is not much stressed is its problem-solving aspect, having to do with the presentation of material: how to structure it, what sort of sentences (direct, elliptical, simple or compound, syntactically elaborate), what tone (in art, "tone" is everything), pacing.  Paragraphing is a way of dramatization, as the look of a poem on a page is dramatic; where to break lines, where to end sentences.”  Any thoughts on that?

2 or 3 lines:  She’s absolutely correct when she says that paragraphing is important.  Nothing annoys me more than paragraphs that are too long – I find it almost impossible to read a book with long paragraphs.  The blog format I use has a much narrower space for text than a typical webpage does, so my paragraphs can look very long unless I keep them very short.  But I would keep my paragraphs very short regardless.  Paragraphing is not the only aspect of the look of 2 or 3 lines that I worry about, of course.  I worry about every aspect of the graphic design of my blog – including what font to use, what photos to use and where to put them . . . all that is important.

Q:  You’re not worried that you’re elevating form over substance?

A:  Form is just as important as substance.  The presentation influences how the reader perceives content.  If I’ve learned one thing about great pop music in the ten years I’ve been writing 2 or 3 lines, it’s that the arrangement of a recorded song is just as important as the words and music.  The same is true of 2 or 3 lines – how I present what I write is just as important as the words themselves.

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Q:  I’ve noticed that the posts from the blog’s first year or two do look different than more recent ones. 

A:  I’m truly appalled by how amateurish some of my early posts look – so appalled, in fact, that I often won’t share one of them with a friend or potential interview subject until I’ve gone back and cleaned it up.  In fact, one of my long-term goals is to clean them all up – I want every post on the blog to have a consistent and professional look.

Q:  Give us some examples of the specific changes you’ve made over the years to clean up the appearance of 2 or 3 lines posts.  

A:  When I started writing 2 or 3 lines, I used the 16-point Georgia font.  But I eventually switched to 18-point Georgia for the body of the posts and 20-point Georgia for the two or three lines of song lyrics at the beginning of each post.  Not only does that make the blog easier to read, it also encourages me to shorten my paragraphs further – the larger font makes them look longer.    Also, I’ve stopped embedding Youtube videos of the featured songs a couple of years ago – now I use “click here” links for those songs.  And I used to make a dash by hitting the hyphen key twice.  But then I learned about en dashes, which I prefer to em dashes because you can make an en dash on a Mac by pressing two keys, while an em dash requires you to hit three keys.  I also put a space before and after my en dashes.

(The official font of 2 or 3 lines)

Q:  I’ve noticed your earlier posts use straight quotation marks, while the newer ones use curly quotes.  Do you plan to go one way or the other with all of them?

A:  [Pause.]  You don’t expect me to believe you actually “noticed” that, do you?  Someone told you about that – probably hoping that you would ask me about it and get me all riled up.

Q:  No comment.

A:  There’s a good reason that I have both straight and curly quotation marks in 2 or 3 lines.  I’m not going to go back and change the straight ones to curly ones, or vice versa – which would require me to do a lot of cutting and pasting.  I may be obsessive, but I’m not that obsessive.  But you can be assured that each individual post will contain only straight or curly quotes.  I won’t have both types in a single post.  

Q:  Well, that’s relief! [Laughs.]

A:  There’s one other change I’ve made to 2 or 3 lines in recent years.  I now use five spaced asterisks – centered, not left-aligned – to indicate a change in topic.  Like this:  

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Q:  I’ve noticed these in your recent posts, but haven’t given much thought to them.

A:  I have.

Q:  Obviously.

A:  Those five centered asterisks perform two functions.  First, they break up long posts – make them easier on the eye.  Second, they free me up as a writer.

Q:  How so?

A:  Let’s say I write an uninterrupted 20-paragraph post.  Each paragraph needs to be logically connected to the next, which isn’t easy to do – if you want to change the subject within a post, you have to come up with some kind of transition.  It’s very constraining and limits your choices as a writer.  But those five little asterisks create a clean break between what comes before and what comes after.  I can switch topics without worrying about transitioning from one to the other – the asterisks take care of the transition.  It’s like abrupt cutting in a movie – you can jump from place to place as you like.  I might have a thought or an anecdote that takes only a few paragraphs to communicate – I can just drop it in without worrying about formally connecting it to what comes before and after.

Q:  Who would have thought that five asterisks could make such a difference?

A:  Believe me, that device makes a huge difference for me as a writer.  It’s impossible for me to overstate how significant a discovery that was for me.

Q:  More significant than using en dashes instead of em dashes?

A:  I know you’re being sarcastic, but I couldn’t care less.  In case you’ve forgotten, I’ve been writing a wildly successful little blog for TEN YEARS, so I might know a thing or two.

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2 or 3 lines:  Speaking of ten years, today’s featured song is titled “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago.”  Not to be a nitpicker, but there should be an apostrophe after “years,” which is possessive – “Happenings Ten Years’ Time Ago.”  

2 or 3 lines:  I noticed that as well.  I thought about just adding that apostrophe without telling anyone, but that would have been wrong.

Q:  The Yardbirds had a great run in 1965-66, when they had five singles in a row make it into the Billboard top 20.  But “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” didn’t do as well.

A:  It was a top 40 hit, but I don’t remember hearing it when it was new.

Q:  You’re celebrating the tenth anniversary of 2 or 3 lines, so I’m not surprised that you chose to feature a song with “ten years” in the title.  Did you find it by doing a Google search for songs with that phrase in the lyrics?

A:  There you go assuming too much again.  No, I didn’t do a Google search for “ten years” songs – I was randomly flipping around Sirius/XM channels in my car earlier today and came across this song.  One of the reasons I picked it was that it had “ten years” in the title, but there were other reasons as well.

Q: Such as . . . ?

A:  For one thing, it’s a great song –  I think it’s as good as any Yardbirds song, which is saying something.  For another, serendipity is a recurring theme on 2 or 3 lines – that’s the way I’ve discovered a lot of my favorite songs.  Call it luck, or coincidence, or kismet, or “God’s way of remaining anonymous” (in the words of Albert Einstein), but the fact remains that if I had turned off  my radio two minutes earlier, I would have missed “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago.”  It deserves to be featured today for that reason alone.

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

And click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Yardbirds – "Dazed and Confused" (1968)

Secrets are fun to a certain degree

But this one's no fun, 'cause the secret's on me

Once again, 2 or 3 lines has delivered.  I promised you nine consecutive narcissism-less posts, and that's exactly what I gave you.

Today, we complete the journey we started three weeks ago when we featured the Yardbirds' cover of "I'm Not Talking" by coming full circle to the Yardbirds and their cover of "Dazed and Confused" -- via the Misunderstood, Mose Allison, Sonny Boy Williamson II, the Who, Led Zeppelin, and Jake Holmes.

The Yardbirds never recorded Jake Holmes's song, "Dazed and Confused," in the studio.  But there are several recordings of them performing the song live before they disbanded in 1968.  

The Yardbirds left some of Holmes's lyrics as they were, but changed other lines.

For example, in the original "Dazed and Confused," the second lines of both the first and the last verses begin with this question: "Am I being choosed?"

I think that's a brilliant little touch – the singer is so dazed and confused by the mind games being played on him by the (female) object of his affections that correct grammar goes right out the window.

But the Yardbirds' lead singer, Keith Reif, never sang "Am I being choosed?" when they performed the song.  I'm guessing the group thought that line would be misunderstood by their audiences.

The Jimmy Page-era Yardbirds

After the Yardbirds broke up, lead guitarist Jimmy Page formed Led Zeppelin, which recorded "Dazed and Confused" with entirely new lyrics – except for the words of the song's title.

The arrangement was recognizable as the same basic arrangement as the Yardbirds used.  That's not surprising since Page was largely responsible for the Yardbirds' arrangement.  But I think most people would say that Jake Holmes's "Dazed and Confused" is the same song as Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused."

But Led Zeppelin did not give a songwriting credit to Jake Holmes.  And although Holmes heard Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused" shortly after it was released, he didn't do anything about it for for more than a decade.  

And when Holmes did finally write to Page to ask for a shared songwriting credit and some do-re-mi, he never heard back.

Led Zeppelin has been sued several times for copyright infringement.  In 1985, veteran blues musician Willie Dixon sued the band, alleging that "Whole Lotta Love" infringed two of Dixon's songs.  (The case was settled out of court.)  And only last year, the estate of the late Randy California claimed that "Stairway to Heaven" infringed California's composition, "Taurus," which was recorded by the band Spirit in 1967.

Holmes finally sued Page in 2010.  His complaint was eventually dismissed – probably because the two parties agreed to an out-of-court settlement.  

While the terms of any such settlement have never been released, it appears that Holmes won at least a partial victory.  The Led Zeppelin reunion concert album, Celebration Day – which was released several months after the presumed settlement of the Holmes lawsuit – contains this songwriting credit for "Dazed and Confused":  "Jimmy Page; inspired by Jake Holmes."

To read more about the controversy over the authorship of "Dazed and Confused," click here – or click here -- or click here – or better yet, click on all three.

The Yardbirds on "Bouton Rouge"

Click here to watch a wonderful video of the Yardbirds performing "Dazed and Confused" on a French television show called Bouton Rouge ("Red Button").  

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Sonny Boy Williamson II – "Eyesight to the Blind" (1951)

Every time the little girl starts lovin'

She bring eyesight to the blind

"Eyesight to the Blind" is a classic 12-bar blues song that was written by Sonny Boy Williamson and released as a single in 1951.

The Who included a cover of the song in Tommy.  Until recently, that was the only version of the song I had ever heard.  

By Sonny Boy Williamson, I mean Alex (pronounced "Aleck") Miller, not John Lee Curtis "Sonny Boy" Williamson.

Sonny Boy Williamson I

John Lee, who was born in Tennessee in 1914 and moved to Chicago in 1934, was one of the most recorded blues musicians of the thirties and forties.  He was the first great blues harmonica player.

Alex Miller, who was born in Mississippi in 1912 (or perhaps 1908, or perhaps 1899) was also a blues singer/songwriter who could play a mean harmonica.  The sponsor of a Helena, Arkansas radio show that Miller appeared on began billing him as Sonny Boy Williamson in what appears to have been a blatant attempt to capitalize on the fame of the Chicago Williamson.

Sonny Boy Williamson II

John Lee, who was killed by a robber in 1948 – his last words were "Lord, have mercy!" – is now referred to as "Sonny Boy Williamson I."

Miller, who died of a heart attack in 1965, is known as "Sonny Boy Williamson II."

Williamson II recorded a live album with the Yardbirds at a UK club in 1963, when Eric Clapton was that group's lead guitarist. That album wasn't released until two years later.

While he was in the UK, Williamson II supposedly set his hotel room on fire while trying to cook a rabbit in a coffee percolator.  (I'm guessing drugs and/or alcohol were involved, but that's just a guess.) 

Here's "Eyesight to the Blind":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Yardbirds – "I'm Not Talking" (1965)

The things I say at midnight 

I ain't gonna say in daylight

(Actually, it's not the things I say at midnight that I worry about – it's the things I say at one in the morning, or two in the morning, or sometimes even later.)

The next nine installments of 2 or 3 lines are going to be all about the music.  (That's right – no tales of my misspent youth, no travelogues, no windy philosophizing.)  You think 2 or 3 lines is just a wildly successful pop music blog, and that it is.  But it's also a high-concept piece of performance art.

We'll feature three versions (the original and two covers) of three different songs.  (Three times three is nine, of course.)  One song is going to lead to the next, which will lead to the next . . . until we're back where we're starting – with the Yardbirds.

The original Yardbirds (1963)

The Yardbirds were ahead of their time . . . which wasn't necessarily a good thing for them.

They had five consecutive top-20 singles in the U.S. between April 1965 and June 1966 – all of which still sound great today – but none of their albums cracked the top 50, and they were miles behind the Beatles and Stones in popularity.

A few years later, the rock music landscape looked very different.  Rock groups focused more on albums than singles, and heavier, blues-inspired bands like Cream, the Jeff Beck Group, and especially Led Zeppelin were all the rage.

Cream's lead guitarist, Eric Clapton, got his start as a member of the Yardbirds.  He was succeeded as the band's lead guitarist by Jeff Beck, who was in turn replaced by Jimmy Page – the lead guitarist of Led Zeppelin, which he formed in 1968 when his fellow Yardbirds decided to pack it in.

Beck, Page, and Clapton

Clapton, Page, and Beck are #2, #3, and #5 (respectively) on Rolling Stone's "100 Top Guitarists List."  All three have been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame more than once – Clapton as a member of the Yardbirds, as a member of Cream, and as a solo artist; Beck as a member of the Yardbirds and as a solo artist; and Page as a member of the Yardbirds and as a member of Led Zeppelin.  

"I'm Not Talking" was a cover of of a 1964 song written by jazz pianist/singer Mose Allison.  The Yardbirds' version was the second track on their first studio album, For Your Love. 

Most of the tracks on that album featured Eric Clapton, who had left the band several months before the album was released in June 1965.  But three of the tracks – including "I'm Not Talking" – were from Jeff Beck's first sessions with the Yardbirds.

"I'm Not Talking" has a devilishly irregular rhythmic structure.  I've spent considerable time trying to count it out, but it's been all for naught.  (If you think you've figured out how to notate it, please tell me what you've come up with – I'd love to see it.)

The next 2 or 3 lines will feature an even more complicated cover of "I'm Not Talking," and then we'll look at the Mose Allison original.  That will lead to a post about a Mose Allison cover of a different song, another cover of that song . . . anyway, we'll eventually get back to the Yardbirds.

So sit back and prepare to enjoy three full weeks of 100% narcissism-free 2 or 3 lines posts . . . promise!

Here's "I'm Not Talking" by the Yardbirds:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: