Little Games
Jimmy Page
I recently came across a notebook in my archives, which clearly relates to ideas around the recording of an album during the Little Games period. Some of these songs did appear eventually and some didn’t. What I find interesting is the textures of instruments that I’m putting together here.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor has got a really good electric 12-string riff with the band in the opening chords. I was really keen on the idea for it. I made a home demo and called up Jim McCarty, who came over to my house and we worked on it, a couple of bits at a time. Jim wrote some of the lyrics on this. I used the bow for the solo, which was an unusual approach back then.
A
- 1Little Games2:25
- 2Smile On Me3:16
- 3White Summer3:56
- 4Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Sailor2:49
- 5Glimpses4:24
B
- 1Drinking Muddy Water2:54
- 2No Excess Baggage2:32
- 3Stealing, Stealing2:25
- 4Only The Black Rose2:53
- 5Little Soldier Boy2:39
Info
Little Games is the Yardbirds’ only studio album with JP, recorded at Olympic Studios and De Lane Lea Studios in June 1967 under producer Mickie Most. The album contains some of the more experimental material JP was developing: Glimpses, using a Vox 12-string and sound-effect tapes; and Drinking Muddy Water with Ian Stewart on piano, alongside the commercially aimed singles.
“The 1967 album by this British guitar-university band was its only studio LP with final graduate Jimmy Page — and he sounds ripe to start Led Zeppelin. His whirlpool-folk instrumental “White Summer” went into that group’s early shows, and Page road-tested his bowed-guitar groan in the slow bridge of the high-speed “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor.” But for a band nearing its end, the Yardbirds summoned strong psychedelic nerve here: the title song’s go-go pop; the wild-raga turmoil of “Glimpses”; singer Keith Relf’s plaintive ballad “Only the Black Rose.” Little Games, back in its rare mono form, is a mixed bag — but, man, what a bag.” – David Fricke, Rolling Stone