As the rain lashed down on a typically depressing summer night in Luton an era sputtered anticlimactically to its inevitable conclusion. It was July 7, 1968 and the local College of Technology was playing host to the death-rattling demise of a band once revered as the very pinnacle of Transatlantic Britpop cool, but who were now stumbling half-heartedly to the close of their shared career in relatively reduced circumstances.
As lead vocalist Keith Relf mumbled through the motions of yet another anonymous performance (habitually shaking his blond Brian Jones bangs and studiously applying his larynx to the wailing of the occasional two-year-old crowd-pleasing hit), The Yardbirds’ newest recruit and sole heir apparent to their original spirit of brave experimentation, injected a moment of rare, spine-tingling dynamism into the largely lacklustre performance.
