Jeff Beck’s and Jimmy Page’s tenure together in the Yardbirds lasted barely months, producing just the single “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago,” its B-side “Psycho Daisies”―and this bizarre cameo in Michelangelo Antonioni’s highly regarded 1966 film, Blow-Up.
“Antonioni wanted the most exciting thing we could do,” recalled Beck, “so we played ‘Smokestack Lightning.’ But he didn’t like that, even though we had this incredible build up in the middle which was just pow!”
The Yardbirds’ scene, shot on an Elstree Studios set over four days that September, is notable for its incongruities: the “audience” was staged to appear like sullen zombies; band favorite “Train Kept a Rolling” was quickly rewritten as “Stroll On” because of publishing concerns; Beck’s usual solid body guitar (a Tele or Les Paul) was exchanged for a cheap, hollow-body stand-in that he was directed to smash at the song’s conclusion.
Indeed, the Yardbirds were the director’s third choice―the Who had turned him down, been replaced briefly by Steve Howe’s pre-Yes outfit Tomorrow, and when the Yardbirds in turn replaced the latter, Beck was issued the already completed prop replica of Howe’s guitar for his mimed performance/mondo-destructo finale.