Credit: Alamy
Wed 2 September 2026 18:00, UK
“We were a high-energy live band,” The Yardbirds guitarist Chris Dreja once said, “A lot of power, a lot of audience interaction; but we just couldn’t get that sound on tape, at least not in England”.
Rather than presuming that they’d never be able to translate their sound into the studio, however, The Yardbirds made their maiden voyage to America in 1965 with hopes of following the lead of their fellow British invaders, The Rolling Stones, who’d turned their first US tour into something of a pilgrimage the previous year.
During a stop in Chicago in June 1964, Mick and Keith had found themselves in the comfy confines of the legendary Chess Records studios, where they were invited to record in the same room where their heroes, Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters, had laid down some of their classics. The resulting Five By Five EP went to number one in the UK charts and raised awareness among their fellow English blues-rockers that Chess wasn’t just a faraway, untouchable monolith of blues: it was a place you could go.
In September 1965, The Yardbirds, with new lead guitarist Jeff Beck now officially taking Eric Clapton’s spot, arrived at the Chess studio for the first time, and used the opportunity to announce the new lineup by re-recording a cover of Bo Diddley’s ‘I’m a Man’ they’d previously done back in England with Clapton.
It was the band’s next visit to Chicago, just a few months later, however, where they really took the opportunity to redefine themselves as a band. From these sessions, once again at Chess, came the single that provided their clear creative pivot point and first proper venture into the new realm of psychedelic rock, ‘Shapes of Things’: “Now the trees are almost green / But will they still be seen? / When time and tide have been”.
While this catchy but oddly hypnotic track was technically written by Yardbird members Keith Relf, Paul Samwell-Smith, and Jim McCarty, everyone agreed that Jeff Beck was equally, if not more essential to its unique sound, as the band ironically used the Chess Studios setting to try and break away from their straight blues roots a little bit.
“It was all too good to be true, really,” Beck later recalled, as quoted in Martin Power’s 2014 biography Hot Wired Guitar: The Life of Jeff Beck, “Walking into the same place Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters had cut ‘I’m a Man’. You know, ‘Shapes of Things’ was the pinnacle of The Yardbirds, our best single.”
Further reading: From The Vault
The song’s genesis really came from the jazz world rather than blues or folk, adopting a Dave Brubeck bassline as a starting point, to which McCarty added a steady marching beat. That beat suddenly doubles during Beck’s innovative guitar solo, which was played using only the G-string.
“I wanted the bends to sound like Buddy Guy,” Beck said, “But it was hellish work”.
Beck’s bending of notes was coming from a new influence beyond just Chicago blues, incorporating elements of Middle Eastern and raga music into his playing. This also inspired the controlled feedback and ‘fuzz’ of his sound, which really gave the track its psychedelic vibe, elevating the “back to nature” hippie commentary of the lyrics: “Come tomorrow, will I be older? / Come tomorrow, may be a soldier / Come tomorrow, may I be bolder than today?”
When it was released in 1966, ‘Shapes of Things’ became an immediate hit in both the UK and the US, and while Beck would famously depart The Yardbirds before the year was up, he remained extremely proud of that particular single, so much so that he re-recorded it two years later with his new outfit, The Jeff Beck Group.
