Like Hemmings Over A Cliff – The Yardbirds (and Jeff Beck) in Michaelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up.

In the 1966 Michaelangelo Antonioni film BLOW-UP, you may recall vividly the startling Yardbirds scene that took place at a London club in front of an audience trying to decide whether they didn’t care, or weren’t interested, or whether earlier that day each had learned about Jean-Paul Sartre and couldn’t decide whether ennui was a form of anomie or vice versa. In my case I recall seeing BLOW-UP in 1967 (and as a 16 year-old) at the Continental Theater on Austin Street in Forest Hills, the only art house theater in Queens at the time, and now no longer. But back to BLOW-UP itself. While the film’s club crowd is deciding how and whether to react, Jeff Beck smashes his guitar during a hissy fit over the premature death of his amp. Jimmy Page smiles, and Keith Relf, ever the trouper, continues singing The Train Kept A’Rollin’ (or as it was called in the film, Stroll On). As a Yardbirds fan, I was floored. I thought, “The Yardbirds! In a movie! And a serious movie! This ain’t no Get Yourself a College Girl! Look at me. I’m a serious person … check that … teenager!”

As an oh-by-the-way, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page were only in The Yardbirds together for a brief period of time, and during that time, BLOW-UP was shot. Jeff Beck soon departed the band, leaving Jimmy Page as the band’s guitarist.

To continue, Beck tosses the neck and parts of the guitar to the crowd, who suddenly turn from zombies into opportunists, collectively decide they don’t care about ennui OR anomie, and fight each other for slivers of Beck’s guitar. I took this to mean that 1. society was breaking down, 2. crowds, like bison, are unpredictable, and 3. that David Hemmings, the star of Blow-Up, could now wake up from his own dream-like state to join others in audience savagery to grab a piece of Beck’s guitar, after which he, Hemmings, runs out of the club and into the street, all while clutching the neck of Beck’s guitar.

Unlike members of the audience, Hemmings quickly determines that his bit of Beck’s guitar is worthless, and consequently tosses the guitar neck aside with barely a shrug, and continues running to the next scene, which right now I can’t recall. The lesson here? Individuals can think. Crowds don’t. And who among us hasn’t seen such crowd behavior?

What I came across a few years back is the notion that the Jeff Beck-era Yardbirds were NOT the first band to be selected by Antonioni to play the role of the band in the club scene. According to the guitar manufacturer Gibson, Antonioni wanted The Who, but they refused, and he then was set to go with a pre-Yes Steve Howe band when The Yardbirds became available and took the job. In the Wikipedia entry for Blow-Up, Eric Burdon’s Animals were the first choice, but Wikipedia frequently gets the facts wrong on the backgrounds of pro wrestlers, so who knows? I’ll go with Gibson.

I remember heading back from Forest Hills, Queens to Lindenwood in Howard Beach, Queens, where I lived with my parents and siblings, after seeing Blow-Up and discussing with my more cerebral movie-going friend, Jay, why audience members would go nuts to have a piece of a broken guitar – even a guitar played by Jeff Beck! We had read somewhere that Pete Townsend smashed his guitar at the end of Who performances and thought that perhaps Antonioni saw such smashing as an act of artistic violence. We thought it was just plain stupid. Or worse, transparent

And I also recall seeing The Vagrants (with a then unknown Leslie West as guitarist) at Brooklyn College in May 1968 (The Vagrants opened for Richie Havens, and at the time, The Vagrants version of Otis Redding’s RESPECT was getting some airplay in NYC, but was small change compared to Aretha Franklin’s version, which was a massive hit and became her signature song), where at the end of The Vagrants performance, and during an interminable God-won’t-this-EVER-end cover of The Stones’ Satisfaction, Leslie West smashed HIS guitar, at which point I turned to the same friend with whom I had seen Blow-Up and said something like, “Maybe we should tell the guy that this’s already been done?”

We thought better of it, though. Leslie West was a BIG guy.

And now Jeff Beck is dead. Leslie West is dead. “And I am not feeling so hot myself,” as Brother Theodore would say.

And if you want to hear Beck in his early prime, listen to the mono version of Hot House of Omagarashid from the second American Yardbirds album, Over Under Sideways Down. At 1:40 into the track, Beck explodes, or better yet, blows up.