It’s impossible to overestimate the significance of Paul Samwell-Smith‘s contribution to popular music. A “mere” bassist with THE YARDBIRDS, it was him who came up with the famous rave-up, cowrote such much-covered classics as “Still I’m Sad” with drummer Jim McCarty and co-produced their “Roger The Engineer” album before leaving the ensemble for good. And in this case “for good” meant not only “forever” but also “for something better than ordinary” – because the player turned into a producer most famous for his work with Cat Stevens. So one can imagine, the man has a lot of stories to tell, and now a lot of those tales, captured by the author David French, formed a book.
Titled after another of Samwell-Smith’s songs, “Shapes Of Things” has been published recently and is worth reading. With a review of it to appear soon on these pages, one has to ask: how did the idea of the book come about? That’s what David says.
“THE YARDBIRDS were my favorite band growing up, but I was always disappointed by the existing histories of the band that focused so much on Clapton, Beck and Page. As much as I loved Jeff Beck’s astounding playing in THE YARDBIRDS, I also loved Keith Relf’s vocals and harmonica, and Paul Samwell’-Smith’s driving bass guitar, and the group’s ability to do it all – from frantic improvisations and “rave ups” to melancholy, folk-tinged ballads.
Shapes Of Things
In 2020, I published‘Heart Full of Soul: Keith Relf of The Yardbirds,’ the first biography of the group’s iconic singer, who had died age 33 in 1976. Paul Samwell-Smith contributed a short email interview; however, it was in the process of researching and writing the book that I became fully aware of how important a part of THE YARDBIRDS Paul had been. He and Keith together, the two sensitive introverts in the group, were also largely responsible for the strain of melancholy and poeticism in the band’s recordings that somewhat set them apart from their peers. After the book came out, I sent Paul a copy and he almost immediately got back to me to tell me how much he loved the book, suggesting that I was the first person who got their story right. Not long after, he invited me to write liner notes for the ‘Roger The Engineer’ box set on which he was working. I conducted several interviews with Paul for that project, and we seemed to get along very well and to enjoy each other’s company. I was very aware that, since leaving THE YARDBIRDS in 1966, Paul has done very few interviews about the group, and so I thought it was important to try and get his story down for the historical record.
I was also curious about what he did after he left THE YARDBIRDS, how he became the producer of some of the most iconic records of the Seventies, working with Cat Stevens, Carly Simon and others. So I proposed that we record a series of interviews to capture his memories of the first decade of his career, so that they would be available for fans of the music he’d helped to create. Paul and I collaborated closely on this project. The interviews were conducted via Zoom over a year-and-a-half, edited down and shared back and forth, and framed by an introduction and a ‘playlist’ in which I specifically asked Paul to share any memories or insights into the songs he regarded as the most important in his development and career. It was such a fun and fulfilling project, to hear from Paul about hanging out with THE BEATLES backstage, technical details about how he got his bass sound, what his influences were, why he decided to leave a successful band after recording their only studio album, and how he turned his experiences with THE YARDBIRDS into a new career. I’m really happy with how the book turned out, but most of all so grateful to have gotten to know one of my heroes so well and to be able to share the behind-the-scenes story of this music that has meant so much to me in my life.”
Read the review.
