If you wish to launch a humdinger of an argument – and one you might win – sidle up to just about any 1960s rock fan and offer the opinion that it was not the Beatles, the Stones, Pink Floyd, Hendrix, the Velvet Underground or the Byrds who were the key sonic inventors of the decade. Nope: wasn’t any of those collectives of aural innovation who did quite what the Yardbirds did in terms of overhauling sound, never mind that they couldn’t keep a steady lineup and were pretty much unclassifiable, save as the dudes who influenced everybody else and basically birthed blues rock, garage rock and heavy metal.
