The great Chris Dreja died yesterday at the age of 79. Yes, he was a great musician, although a lot of people would dismiss such a definition, attributing the English performer’s claim to fame to his early stint with THE YARDBIRDS, a trend-setting ensemble Dreja helped cofound. Yet while Chris didn’t seem to demonstrate such strong personality as singer Keith Relf or the band’s main songwriters, bassist Paul Samwell-Smith and drummer Jim McCarty, it was his rhythm guitar that cemented their performances and anchored the legendary rave-ups on studio classics like the “Roger The Engineer” album and on stage.
More so, Dreja, who also provided a cover drawing for the aforementioned record, thus showing his talents in visual arts that, later on, led to Chris’s career as a prominent photographer. It’s his shot that adorns the back side of the “Led Zeppelin” sleeve, the debut longplay of a group he had been asked, and declined, to join as a bassist after moving to a four-string instrument when Jimmy Page became a guitarist with their previous collective, where Dreja delivered an occasional lead part too, and supplied a bit of piano as well. Chris would never really leave the mothership until 2013, when he left THE YARDBIRDS due to health issues, and the veteran’s parts were vital element of two BOX OF FROGS platters that he and his old colleagues released in the ’80s. So yes, he was great – and he will be sorely missed by many.
