Epic Records was in an odd situation where the Yardbirds were concerned in 1970. The group's demise in mid-1968, after enjoying two minors hit and a non-charting singles over the previous year, had scarcely been noticed on a corporate level at the time -- there was already a greatest-hits album out on them, and in most instances, that would have been the end of the matter. But the powers that were couldn't ignore the fact that the group had morphed by way of guitarist Jimmy Page into the mega-selling Led Zeppelin; or that Epic happened to hold, in the Yardbirds' library, the largest commercial body of early work by Page, as well as Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton, both of whom were still selling lots of records. Thus came the first double-album anthology ever issued on this band, Performance by Clapton, Beck & Page. Indeed, along with self-titled double LP set The Kinks, issued the same year from Pye Records in England on that band, this was the first attempt at something bigger than a hits anthology ever issued on a British Invasion band; and this set was the first time that a major label had acknowledged any of these bands (or any rock & roll group) seriously enough to try and distill the work of their key soloists, almost the way a jazz compilation might be put together -- in that sense, this set anticipates the double-LP History of Eric Clapton (1972). And given that the group's biggest hits were already spoken for on The Yardbirds' Greatest Hits, this set holds up astonishingly well as a fair representation of their more ambitious work, encompassing rock & roll, British blues, raga rock, psychedelia, and psychedelic pop. Oddly enough, this was also the first U.S.-issued Yardbirds album to mention Eric Clapton's name anywhere, as he had no songwriting credits and the two LPs issued containing recordings on which he appeared came from a time when he was more exclusively a U.K. phenomenon.
The producers here didn't even attempt a chronological assembly of the material. The three guitarists' work, and the varying sounds of the band are mixed (some might say jumbled) together across the album. The first side is bookended by the Jimmy Page-era "Drinking Muddy Water" and "Smile on Me," with the Jeff Beck showcases "Train Kept A-Rollin'" and "Hot House of Omagarashid" (the latter missing its lead guitar part, as were all U.S. stereo versions of the song) pushed up against the Clapton-featured "I Wish You Would." Side Two sandwiches the glittering raga-flavored Davy Graham-derived Jimmy Page number "White Summer" between a quartet of Beck and Clapton numbers that range through blues and rock & roll. Side Three goes from the cheerful psychedelic pop of "Little Games," featuring Page, to bluesier and spacier straits on "Lost Woman" (a Jeff Beck-era cut, also missing its lead guitar part, like "Hot House") and "Only the Black Rose" (Page), and the eerie "Farewell," before plunging back to Clapton's high-energy blues-rock on "I Ain't Got You" (which emerged prominently on History of Eric Clapton as the representative Yardbirds number). And Side Four zig-zags from the R&B of "A Certain Girl" (Clapton into Beck-era psychedelia ("Ever Since the World Began," "Turn Into Earth"), Page-era psychedelic pop ("Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor"), and rock & roll ("Here 'Tis"). The sound is very good for its era, except for the flaws on "Hot House," "Lost Woman," etc.) (which were not rectified on the stereo versions of the songs in the U.S. until CD reissues in the late '90s); and the annotation by Michael Gross puts the music in context with the careers of the three guitarists and the broader history of the band. At the time of its release, this set got mixed reviews, but it was the perfect complement at the time to The Yardbirds' Greatest Hits -- ironically, while both of those compilations have since been supplanted by numerous superior CD compilations, this album is also a unique creation, not to be easily repeated or reissued, owing to the shifting ownership of the group's library.