When I got the news that Jeff Beck died, I sat down and listened to my favorite album by The Yardbirds, Roger the Engineer—the only album by The Yardbirds to feature Beck on every song.

I was never been a fan of The Yardbirds in my youth. They were a British Invasion band with just two songs on the radio in the U.S., and I didn’t particularly care for either. I think I’d heard an early Yardbirds record previously and it wasn’t for me—just Eric Clapton and some guys rollin’ through a bunch of old blues tunes. It wasn’t until

Although the blues influence is still present, Roger the Engineer is a true psych album.

years later—decades actually– when I’d read somewhere that The Yardbirds had put out a highly-regarded psychedelic record.

Although the blues influence is still present, Roger the Engineer is a true psych album. It kicks off with the trippy “Happenings Ten Years Time Ago” with its mysterious lyrics and odd phrasing. Unfortunately, the band never goes all in on the psychedelia. If they had, I think Roger the Engineer would be right up there on the top shelf of the greatest psych albums. Instead, tracks like “Psycho Daisies”, “The Nazz Are Blue” (the only song on the album sung by Beck), and “Rack My Mind” detract from the overall psychedelia by being too bluesy while “Jeff’s Boogie”, Beck’s rip-off of Chuck Berry’s “Guitar Boogie”, is more of a roots-rock number that underwhelms.