John Cabree’s The World of Rock (Fawcett Gold Medal, 1968) makes a claim to be the first book of rock history [here] which may or may not be true but like all its competitors it would have been out of date even before the author had read the proofs. By the early summer of 1968 the Yardbirds were no more; here though they are still an active force and their Little Games album is given a rare positive spin. Their demise, however, is implicit in their relegation to being a ‘second string’ British act, below even the Bee Gees . . . There really could be no return after that billing

THE SECOND STRING
The new snobbishness among record buyers has had one distressing side effect – the waning interest in the work of the lesser English groups. There are several besides the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, and the Bee Gees who should not be overlooked. The most important of these are the Yardbirds, the Hollies, and the Kinks.
. . . The Yardbirds were the most exciting experimental rock group of the first several years of the British revival. Always a step or two ahead of the Rolling Stones, they pushed rock further structurally and harmonically any other group. They had a few medium-size hits. their main influence came through album sales to other groups and live appearances (they are the group that breaks up the guitar in Antonioni's Blow Up).
Their biggest problem on record has always been lack of discipline. They would engage in interesting harmonic, instrumental, or structural experiments— baroque chants, electric saws, and so on—and they had, in Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck consecutively, two of the best guitarists in Britain. However they often released tracks that needed to be worked out further in the studio.
On their newest release the Yardbirds are with producer Mickie Most (Herman's Hermits, Donovan, early Animals), and the result is an album as exciting as their earlier ones and a good deal more ordered. The range is wide and the writing is improved.
Highlights include a beautifully commercial song about maturation (“Little Games”); a harsh, bluesy “Smile on Me”; a remarkable fusion of folk rock and Eastern music in “White Summer” ; a gay adaptation of the nursery rhyme “Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor”; a thing called “Glimpses”, which sounds as if it might be the theme from a hippie movie; a beautiful folk-rock tune called “Only the Black Rose”; and “Little Soldier Boy”, an anti-war protest, in the background of which there is an ironic trumpet parodying both martial music and Beatles baroque.

Linda Eastman provided many of the book’s choice images

These four volumes of reprocessed stereo cuts from Vee Jay’s catalogue have intrigued me for years as I chanced upon bits of the covers’ Teddy Boy. Finally found the complete set in Ramsgate’s Vinyl Head. Compiled in 1969 by Joe Fields and Richard Robinson (Groovies and Lou Reed’s producer?) with sleeve notes by John Gabtree who wrote The World of Rock, a 1968 paperback history. You have to hope the book had a better copy editor than his sleeve notes which places Sun Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. . . .

The Teddy Boy figure was obviously a substitute design for the UK edition, the American version had been released earlier on the Buddah label in an anonymous jacket. The 1972 British edition was very much of its moment, as was the album’s theme – ‘First Generation: Rock/Blues/Early Soul’ – when the notion of a ‘third generation’ was being cast around by the likes of Alice Cooper and Nick Kent. Things were moving fast . . .

Gabree began his story at a Filmore East gig, headlined by Three Dog Night and Sha Na Na, with a showing of the Chubby Checker movie Twist Around the Clock (1961). In 1969 the Rock ‘n’ Roll Revivial is revving up so some history is needed: Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, etc. are the first generation then come the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, he wrote. But as yet no third generation is nominated, just the first murmurs of the resurrection shuffle.