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(“the yardbirds” are an ‘english rock band’ formed in ‘london’ in ‘1963’ that had a string of hits during the ‘mid-1960s’, including “for your love”, “heart full of soul”, “shapes of things” and “over under sideways down”)
(the group launched the careers of guitarists ‘eric clapton’, ‘jimmy page’, and ‘jeff beck’, all of whom ranked in the ‘top 5’ of rolling stone magazine’s list of ‘100 greatest guitarists’)
(a blues-based band noted for their signature “rave-up” instrumental breaks, ‘the yardbirds’ broadened their range into ‘pop’, ‘pioneering psychedelic rock’, and ‘early hard rock’; and contributed to many electric guitar innovations of the ‘mid-1960s’, such as ‘feedback’, ‘distortion’, and “fuzztone”)
(the bulk of the band’s most successful self-written songs came from vocalist and harmonica player ‘keith relf’, drummer ‘jim mccarty’ and bassist and producer ‘paul samwell-smith’, who, with rhythm guitarist and bassist ‘chris dreja’, constituted the core of the group)
(the band’s influence on both the music of the times and genres to come was great, and they inspired a host of imitators such as the ‘count five’ and ‘the shadows of knight’)
(‘rock critics’ and ‘historians’ credit ‘the yardbirds’ with heavily contributing to (if not ‘inventing’) “the birth of psychedelic music” and sowing the seeds of ‘punk rock’, ‘progressive rock’, and ‘heavy metal’, among other genres)
(after ‘the yardbirds’ broke up in ‘1968’, lead guitarist ‘jimmy page’ founded what became ‘led zeppelin’, while ‘relf’ and ‘mccarty’ formed ‘renaissance’)
(‘the yardbirds’ reformed in the ‘1990s’, featuring ‘mccarty’, ‘dreja’, and new members)
(they were inducted into the ‘rock and roll hall of fame’ in ‘1992’)
(they were included in rolling stone’s list of the “100 greatest artists of all time”, and ranked #37 on VH1’s “100 greatest artists of hard rock”)
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