Yardbirds 3: Over Under Sideways Down

Having racked up enough hit singles in the UK, somebody decided the Yardbirds were ready to record a full studio album. By this time impresario Giorgio Gomelsky was no longer in charge, so production was shared by bassist Paul Samwell-Smith and new manager Simon Napier-Bell in a feat of hyphenation. The band even wrote all the songs themselves, or at least they were credited that way.

Over there the album’s title was simply Yardbirds, but because the cover had a drawing captioned Roger The Engineer, that became how it was known among those who bought it. In America, where it was the band’s third album, two songs were off, and the set was called Over Under Sideways Down in honor of the hit single it was pushing, with wacky cover art to match.

It’s a good start with “Lost Women”, which follows a fairly standard riff and takes a cool extended “I’m A Man”-style raveup detour that nicely pairs Keith Relf’s harmonica and Jeff Beck’s guitar. The title song is another classic, pinned by everyone shouting “HEY!” and a raga-styled hook from Beck. “I Can’t Make Your Way” is surprisingly toe-tapping pop, with the harmonica and guitar nicely balanced under the verse (Relf seemingly harmonizing with himself) and another well-constructed Beck solo. The nursery rhyme piano of the brief “Farewell” is odd enough, but then there’s the nutty chanting and wobble board in “Hot House Of Omagararshid”, and yes, the guitar solo should have come in much earlier.

That’s not the complaint with “Jeff’s Boogie”, another derivative piece that’s a showcase for his style. He’s got a good fuzz tone on the mildly menacing “He’s Always There”, one of the better paranoid lyrics of the period. “Turn Into Earth” has a similar Gregorian approach from “Still I’m Sad”, wordless vocals once again dominating over simple piano bass notes and distant guitar. But “What Do You Want” is a Bo Diddley-style rave-up that takes two chords to make its point. “Ever Since The World Began” is more doom-laden philosophizing about the evils of money in another exploration of near-Gregorian style, then switches to a boogie halfway through, and stops.

While it’s a strange little album, it hangs together very well. As time went on, and the band’s stature increased with their legend, fans would have sought out British pressings, if only for the two extra songs on side one that shifted “Hot House” up to the start of side two. “The Nazz Are Blue” featured Jeff Beck singing, kind of, and had already inspired the name of Todd Rundgren’s first band, while “Rack My Mind” was another average boogie.

For some reason, Epic reissued the album in 1983 on LP and cassette as The Yardbirds, using the original British cover and lineup, but with the added bonus of the single “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” at the top of side one and its B-side, “Psycho Daisies”, ending side two. (These tracks are notable for being the only appearance of Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page together on Yardbirds recordings.) It didn’t make it to an American CD until 1997 when Warner Archives of all labels issued it as Roger The Engineer with the same 14 tracks, but sticking “Happenings” at the end after “Psycho Daisies”. Since then smaller labels have taken over, usually pairing the mono and stereo mixes and adding the single, and rotating bonus tracks like Keith Relf solo singles, “Stroll On” from the movie Blow-Up, the occasional alternate take, and their Great Shakes commercials. So it’s out there; Spotify alone currently has three different editions of the album available for streaming.

The Yardbirds Over Under Sideways Down (1966)—3½
1983 The Yardbirds reissue: same as 1966, plus 4 extra tracks