The Yardbirds’ Chris Dreja: Re-Inventing the “Rave Up”
Feb 28th, 2010 | By admin | Category: Lead Story
By Adam St. James
The band that launched the careers of Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, and Jeff Beck is still out there rockin’… As of 2010, the Yardbirds are on tour again, with dates in the U.S. and worldwide.
This archive interview, in which I spoke with founding member Chris Dreja a few years back, details how the Yardbirds came to find themselves on Steve Vai’s Favored Nations record label, and how they laid down tracks with Vai, Joe Satriani, Steve Lukather, and even Jeff Beck.
Chris Dreja: Hello
Adam St. James: Chris
Dreja: Speaking.
St. James: Adam St. James with GuitarLifeMag.com.
Dreja: Oh hi, Adam. How are you?
St. James: Good, how you doing?
Dreja: Good. I just got back from Iceland (?). I got about 3 hours sleep last night. We were playing in Iceland. So I’m a little bit laid back, but I’m fine, thank you.
St. James: That’s cool. Actually, I just had to call your publicist because I was expecting…. he didn’t tell me I was supposed to call you and he hadn’t given me your phone number, so……
Dreja: Oh, don’t worry.
St. James: So Iceland, how’s the crowd over there?
Dreja: It’s good. I mean, have you ever been to Iceland?
St. James: No, I sure haven’t.
Dreja: Yeah, it’s a tidy island….like upstate Maine or somewhere. Right up the top of Canada in character. It’s like a luna landscape.
St. James: Yeah, I bet.
Dreja: But the crowd’s great, I mean once they warm up. They’re a little reserved at first — any northern hemisphere country they usually are. I don’t know, maybe it’s the fact that they only get the sun for three months a year. (laugh) Yeah, it was good, it was a nice gig.
St. James: Cool, cool. Where else are you playing these days?
Dreja: Say?
St. James: Was that just a one-off gig?
Dreja: That was a one-off gig, but we go to Germany on Monday for a short German tour. Then, of course, we are coming to the U.S. I think starting around the 30th or 31st of May.
St. James: Cool.
Dreja: Yeah.
St. James: I look forward to seeing you. I’m in the Chicago area so….
Dreja: Oh, I love Chicago. Great town, great city.
St. James: Great music city.
Dreja: Yeah.
St. James: So, you started putting this group back together about eight years ago, huh?
Dreja: About mid 90s. Yeah, that’s correct.
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St. James: And what did you do for the first couple of years…you were just kind of getting it back together just playing a bit and trying different guys out?
Dreja: Yeah, what happened was an agent…a UK agent asked if we wanted to play the Marquee on Sharing Cross Road, the third Marquee, and I’ve always thought they were great clubs and obviously The Yarbirds were very kind of synonymous with the Marquee Clubs way back, you know, so we did the gig with some musicians from Jim’s band mainly, but we just enjoyed playing music so much we said well, let’s see how it goes, you know, and we eventually were lucky enough to get the band members right, because it’s pretty important with a band like the Yardbirds, you know. And the momentum just picked up. People just kept offering us work, so you know. It was kind of organic really.
St. James: That’s cool. And how did you hook up with Steve Vai in Favorite Nations?
Dreja: Well, as you know it’s pretty tricky to get any record deals these days. Yeah, it’s like a nightmare out there. We had a few offers, but they weren’t really right for what we felt the Yardbirds should come back on and then we actually hooked up with Steve which is as you know he’s got a guitar oriented label. It just felt very right for the band, you know. And that was about two years ago, I think.
St. James: And had he at first…when you first talked to him, did you lay out a timetable for this release? Did you know you were going to take a couple of years to work on it? Or how did that come about…how did that play out?
Dreja: Well, when we first approached Steve he had just literally started to set up his…the label – the FM Entertainment – and he said well I am interested when I’ve got this up and running a bit more. So in fact, we signed, I think in July of 2001. We had been working on songs prior to that, but of course, one of the things with Favorite Nations we’d get to use….part of the deal was to use Steve’s recording facility in L.A. So of course, being a European band, a lot of recording needs to be done there, but we couldn’t get over all the time to do so it took probably a bit longer perhaps. And we did some of the work in England.
St. James: Do you have your own studio?
Dreja: No.
St. James: Somewhere in one of the bios that I read, I thought it said something about “in my own studio.”
Dreja: Well I have a photographic studio.
St. James: That’s right. You’ve been a photographer for years and years, haven’t you.
Dreja: Yeah, well when the original band split up, we went our different ways, you know whatever and I went on to my other passion which was photographer and designer so I did that for many years.
St. James: What kind of stuff do you shoot?
Dreja: Well I started off shooting travel oriented stuff. I use to actually shoot when I was on the road with the band because we use to find all these great places….well, I don’t know if you consider the Detroit riots great places, but I must have been crazy. I mean I did work off the energy for me to get up in the morning after a gig with somebody and take photographs then sell them to magazines and things which is what I did, you know. And then I moved on….I came and lived in New York for a few years and got involved in studio photography; design and advertising mainly.
St. James: So what kind of guitar are you playing these days?
Dreja: Well, I…..since the 60s I pretty much played Les Pauls.
St. James: And you’re still doing that?
Dreja: Well I like the sound very much…..I like the sound, the warmth. For what I do, it’s really good for lead and chord work. And it’s a very kind guitar, you know. But right now I’ve got a Les Paul custom which is sort of a very light weight guitar – P100s, because of the touring. I mean, we travel a lot you know, maybe did 100 shows last year and we do a lot of …… well luckily the band is, you know, has fans in many different countries so we really get to travel a bit, you know.
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St. James: Right. What do you play….
Dreja: And then on my first plane today back from Iceland, it was half empty. Now I wonder why. I mean, every time I get on the plane up until now it’s been like stuffed…..it’s always packed, you know.
St. James: Yeah, I know. I just flew last week too and it was pretty empty.
Dreja: Well, I have to say, I like that. I had a whole row of seats to myself. It was like the 60s man.
St. James: What do you plug your guitar into?
Dreja: Vox AC30 or Fender Bassman or the Marshall Blues Breaker. I like all three.
St. James: Do promoters supply those for you?
Dreja: If we’re lucky. Not in Italy. In Italy it’s just good pasta and pizza. (laugh) Well, no, yeah, we have riders for when we’re traveling….even in Moscow they find the stuff for us. It’s amazing
St. James: Right. So you don’t carry your own stuff with you.
Dreja: Well on an American tour, for instance, we’ll hire gear, or use whatever gear we have from sponsors — we would use that for the tour. You know.
St. James: Sure, sure. Do you use any pedals or anything?
Dreja: Well, you know, the Yardbirds is a pure sound…pretty much a pure sounding band. We like to have the origination very….the right guitar, you know through the right amps. We keep it very clean, you know. But I do use a little bit of distortion drive. I like a little tremolo I like sometimes and maybe a little chorus and I have a little interesting pedal ….it’s an acoustic pedal.
St. James: Which makes your Les Paul sound like an acoustic guitar?
Dreja: Well, if I’m lucky, yeah. It’s a bit temperamental, but it can sound great.
St. James: What kind of pedals are you using for all those things?
Dreja: I use Boss. I’ve been using Boss.
St. James: Just the little boxes?
Dreja: That’s it, yeah.
St. James: They work well.
Dreja: They do…well, I have to tell you, when they clang around Europe for some of the times I’ve done it, they come back and still work. They’re great, you know.
St. James: Yeah, yeah. So you use all Boss pedals then?
Dreja: At the moment, it’s all Boss pedals, yeah.
St. James: And the distortion pedal is what…that orange one?
Dreja: No, it’s the blue one.
St. James: The blue one? Okay.
Dreja: Yeah. Picked it up in Italy.
St. James: Did you ever at a point use all the classic pedals, like the Fuzz Face and all that stuff?
Dreja: In the early days I didn’t tend to use any distortion pedals, just wound the amp up. You know, you could really push them and get a good sound.
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St. James: You were playing the amp pretty loud then.
Dreja: Well, you know, yes. They were pretty powerful amps. Well, yeah. That’s all the sound we had, man. We didn’t know PAs in those days.
St. James: I imagine you don’t play quite as loud through the amp these days.
Dreja: Well, actually though, I do like to hear my own amp sound. I don’t like to hear any monitoring sound at all. Pisses me off. I just don’t…..I have to hear the purest sound on stage, so I need to have that as loud as it gets me the sound and then I can hear it.
St. James: Now are you guys still using wedge monitors or have you switched over to in-ear monitors?
Dreja: No, no. wedge monitors.
St. James: Do you prefer those?
Dreja: Yeah, well, I mean I would always prefer those as a guitar player, I think, because it impairs me hearing my amp. You know.
St. James: That’s true, yeah, yeah.
Dreja: Maybe great for a singer…or a drummer because he sings, of course. We were thinking about that quite recently, but at the moment, it’s wedges just about everywhere we play, you know.
St. James: So when you came out to Steve’s place to do some recording were you using Pro-Tools and all the modern digital stuff?
Dreja: Well, yeah. I mean, we had done some work analog which we put onto Pro-Tools and that was always a big concern for us because you know, we did the bulk of the recordings back in the 80s, but we just wrote songs and recorded them. But it wasn’t as high-tech as it is now and we were really concerned that we would lose the live edge feel of the band by going on to modern technology. And I have to say I hated it for about six months. I really thought this is not happening for us, you know. We are slaves to the computer. It really, really pissed me off. But it’s like getting into high-tech stuff in digital photography or whatever. It’s two feet back every time, but eventually you crack it, you know what I mean? And it becomes much more fluid and we had a great producer anyway, who has been a fan for a long time, but also is familiar with us and a lot of modern bands and a lot of technology and he was able with us to get that semi sort of live sound the Yardbirds has onto modern recording technology, but without it getting sludgy. He did a really great job.
St. James: Did you use regular amps or did you end up using amps the Pod….the line 6 Pod or anything like that?
Dreja: No, no, no. Just great amps….vintage amps. We hired a lot of great vintage amps ….15 watt Fenders and old Marshalls. Some of them were so old, and you get great sound and then they burn. It’s bloody hell before they cool down, you know. We like the vintage sounds. Gotta be just nice.
St. James: So you used smaller amps in the studio to be able to crank them up and get that really cool sound then?
Dreja: We were using several.
St. James: You know, I’ve talked to both Steve Vai and Joe Satriani at length about digital recording and all that and everybody seems to agree that while the analog systems seem to have more warmth to them, you just can’t beat the functionality of the digital stuff.
Dreja: Well, I have to say, I’m a convert. I really enjoyed it once I cracked it. I mean it’s so much quicker. Qhat use to take maybe three weeks you can do in half an hour now. You know what I mean?
St. James: Yeah.
Dreja: It is brilliant.
St. James: And if you don’t like it, you can just erase it and start over or step back a stop and it’s back to where it was before you made that mistake with it or whatever.
Dreja: We were…..Ken was quite clever recording us cause we did a lot of stuff like the band would just play the shit out of it. And we would take a lot of that and hook it over to Pro-Tools and then sort of do parts as well. And then we had choice of what we could put onto the record, you know. It was a great system. But as I say, I went in and thought it was the black dog from hell for a while.
St. James: Yeah, yeah. So when you started to bring in people like Steve and Joe Satriani and all that….
Dreja: We didn’t bring em in, we posted them hard drives.
St. James: Oh did you? (laugh) That’s true.
Dreja: (laugh) Fed Ex, man. Fed Ex. Play all over this when you open it.
St. James: That’s cool.
Dreja: Yeah, well I mean, I was there with Luke (Steve Lukather) when he did his part, but apart from that, I wasn’t in attendance to the guys. I played live with them since, some of them. They all did a great job because they kind of joined the band for their track…..brilliant.
St. James: Right, I’m sure it was a great thrill and honor for all of them to be able to play with you like that.
Dreja: Well, it’s an honor for us to have some…..this generation and standard of guitar player on our materials. It’s a great honor, but I think they did reciprocate, you know. We find there were so many people who said, well, you turned my ears on. And like yes they did put a bit back, well they certainly played the shit out of their stuff.
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St. James: Now when you did the track with Jeff Back, were you there for that one?
Dreja: Oh yeah, sorry, Jeff, yeah. That was interesting because that’s probably the most original way….the way we use to record. He knew we were doing some pre-production work and trying songs out, so he very kindly invited us down to his own studio and we just ….you know, as an ensemble rhythm section and whatever, we just put the tracks down, beat the shit out of it and he intimated he wanted to play on something and he did a top line to it. And he got a great sound…..a great drum sound he got.
St. James: He has an engineer working with him?
Dreja: Yeah, he has an engineer, yeah.
St. James: So you guys could just set up and play and enjoy it.
Dreja: Yeah, that’s it. It was very much that atmosphere. And they had all the sound there, you know. I mean, I was knocked out when I heard this sort of real heat of that track. Considering the circumstances, you know, played live pretty much. It’s probably the only one that was sort of not pieced together a bit in that sense.
St. James: Did he play live with you?
Dreja: Well he did fiddle on his guitar in the booth, you know. Not actually playing with us, but he’s always got a guitar in his hand that way. Fascinating. No he did little bit with us, but a tag….a little tag at the end, but mainly he put the slide guitar down on his own…on his own time.
St. James: And is there any chance that he’ll be showing up at any shows?
Dreja: With us?
St. James: Yeah.
Dreja: I don’t know about that. I mean, you know, Jeff has, you know moved on so many times in his career that….I mean, nothing is impossible of course, but I think that he sees it as a great part of his life and he’s great sometimes working with us on other projects, but I doubt it very much if he’ll do a live show. Hey man…..(laugh)
St. James: You never know.
Dreja: You never know.
St. James: Was there any discussion with Jimmy Page about doing any tracks?
Dreja: There wasn’t because the way we threw it at him was that you know, being away for so terribly long, so we felt we wanted to re-introduce some of our classic tracks to our following, but also a new audience. We do approximately 50% new material, so as the guesting materialized and more guests kind of got on board on the project, we made a conscious decision that we weren’t going to ask any of the old players because they’d already done their thing on the track, you know and we wanted to keep all the new material for our own guitar player, Jippy. So it kinda was never on the radar.
St. James: Uh huh. What is Jippy’s track history and how did you come to decide to make Jippy the guy that came forward with you after you….I know you tried out a couple of other people through the years since ’95.
Dreja: Yeah, well I mean, with a band like this you can’t, you know, get a yellow pages and order up a guitar player even if they’re great. They have to have the right head and the right style and the right everything, you know. And that’s why I said earlier it was very important for us to get…..you know, before we could do it properly, we had to get the right musicians. And of course, we knew Dr. Feelgood was a great band….great band and we knew of his work and we were actually playing a concert somewhere in England and he was on the bill as well. And we kind of got talking, you know, and the old bond happened, you know and then a little later on we invited him down for an audition. He came and played and….when you play live, you know very quickly whether it’s gonna happen or not, you know.
And he’s great because he’s…..I mean you know, he knows he’s joined a sort of finishing school for guitar Gods but he’s very comfortable with his own work. And he has that wonderful sort of thing that Beck had, which was….you know, you never knew what he was going to do. I mean Jip is, you know he doesn’t remember what he did sometimes, but not even playing the same thing twice….we have to remind him sometimes, you know, “Jip that was great, Jip, please it went like this.”
So once we had him and, you know harmonica’s always been great, I think a very important part of the band. It’s an additional sound, especially these days with PAs that are so good, you know. We’ve got Alan Glennon from a band called Nine Below Zero which is another good Bristish based blues band for a couple of decades.
St. James: Who is the …..I’m sorry, I’m looking at your website real quick. Are you involved with TheYardbirds.com?
Dreja: The new one?
St. James: Yeah.
Dreja: Yeah, that kind of is our website.
St. James: Are some of these your photos?
Dreja: It’s pretty embryo, I must say.
St. James: Oh no, you’re in all the photos.
Dreja: I could have still done it, you know. Not impossible…not with the technology, you know. Or you get an assist to press the button. No, no, I’m not sure what’s happening at the moment, Adam, I haven’t looked at it in the last few days.
St. James: Do you know what kind of gear Jippy plays, just offhand?
Dreja: Yes, I do. He plays a 62 reissue Japanese Fender Stratocaster. He has an original 62, but he doesn’t take it on the road now. And I think he’s just getting some special pickups from Seymour Duncan. But I mean he goes basically through….he has a delay pedal. Very nice delay and he has…it used to be a tube screamer kind of thing he has. Now he strictly plays AC30s….AC30s I think the blue speaker, I’m not sure. It’s not the green, but the blue. But that’s his set-up.
St. James: That’s pretty simple.
Dreja: And the rest comes from the brain and the fingers.
St. James: That’s cool. What is….you know, a lot of the things that I read about you mention the term “rave-up” and can you explain to our readers the difference between a solo section and a rave-up.
Dreja: Well a rave-up is a block band sound where you increase the tempo and the volume. It’s a sort of climactic piece of…..it could be quite….you know, up to sort of maybe 16 bars or whatever. It’s like a climactic, you know, heavy brick, pretty much (laugh). Pretty much when Eric was in the band, we were playing a lot of clubs and had lots of long shows to do and we started experimenting. And the band always had so much energy that we would just start using power chords and crescendoing them, you know.
So it’s pretty much a band block sound. Often it will be the rhythm section will completely lock in together. And then the bass will bring us down from the climax and it could be a drop dead spot which is an amazing thing if you’ve got a good PA or it could go into something else and, you know, carry on with the structure of the song.
St. James: So it’s like the whole band comes up at the same time as opposed to just the lead guitarist shining for….
Dreja: That’s right, that’s right. Yeah often lead in by the lead guitar player. It drives audiences crazy…or it use to. It’s just an exciting moment, you know. It’s just a real high dynamic thing. I could say it’s like you know, coming, (laugh) but maybe I shouldn’t say that. It’s whatever you like.
St. James: Do you have a whole lot of classic gear yourself? Guitars, amps and things?
Dreja: Well, I have to say that when I went into photography I kind of lost my grip on a lot of that stuff. But I’ll tell you a funny story if you would so like to hear it.
St. James: Sure.
Dreja: The bass guitar, cause I played bass and you know…we had Jimmy Page came in on bass, etc. We had this one Gibson bass that had everybody’s blood and guts and finger bleeds on it, you know. That bass had played every album, every single the band ever did. It was pretty much down through the band, you know. And when I was in photography in ’75 and I was propping for a shoot for some posters…some music poster thing and I was up in the Sharing Cross Road and I saw in this store, this guitar hanging up…the very one. You know, I would always know it. Well, for about well actually about $150 and I walked away from it at the time. But it’s my one regret. What a great instrument emotionally that would be.
St. James: What brand was it?
Dreja: It was a Rivoli, a Gibson Rivoli.
St. James: Oh, okay.
Dreja: Yeah, I mean that’s the base of all that crescendo….all that rave-up stuff was invented on. What a piece of history.
St. James: Yeah. I just actually read an article about classic instruments versus the stock market and the classic instruments are winning.
Dreja: Oh. Well, they will now. Yeah, invest in stuff like that. I mean anything’s going to win over the stock market, Jesus. Why do I always invest when it goes to pieces? I’m like a jinx, you know. The second time I put some money into the stock market and it all crashed.
St. James: So are you interested in vintage instruments?
Dreja: Oh they’re things of such beauty.
St. James: Yeah, yeah.
Dreja: I mean there’s two things I’ve always loved….and that’s some great guitars—the way they’re put together, the way they play, the bridges. You know, all the little bits. And again, cameras; beautifully designed cameras. I mean, they’re iconic. You know.
St. James: Do you shoot digital now or do you shoot film?
Dreja: I do everything. I don’t do much shooting now, I’m with the Yardbirds, but I pull a digital camera around with me as much as I can cause it’s small and with a chip I can do……yes, I shoot…..it’s like everything, it’s a bit like music, you know, there are no rules. You use whatever instrument you do to get the effect that you want to get and that encompasses for me digital as well now, yeah.
St. James: Sounds good Chris. It was nice talking to you. Thank you very much.
Dreja: Okay, take care.
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101 Recording Tips Includes tips from Satch, Jeff Beck, B.B. King, Steve Vai, and many others on recording, home recording, and capturing not only your guitar sound, but your whole band! With a one-hour demonstration CD. Written by GuitarLife editor Adam St. James.
Legends of Rock Guitar This book is a virtual encyclopedia of great electric guitar players, with 35 chapters examining the major players in each important era of rock. The book begins with rock’s birth from the blues, covering masters like Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. It proceeds to cover rockabilly greats like Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly; through the mop tops and matching suits of the British Invasion; to the psychedelia of the Dead and Hendrix; glam rock’s dresses and distortion; fusion virtuosos like Metheny, Gambale, and Henderson; metal masters; shred stars; grunge gods; grindcore; and much more. Legends of Rock Guitar is not only a great resource for guitar fans, but an interesting and well-researched chronology of the rock idiom. 264 pages, 8-1/2 inch. x 11 inch.
Chop Builder For Rock Guitar DVD Take your hard rock chops into the stratosphere with Berklee professor and world-renowned guitarist Joe Shred Lord Stump. In this master class DVD, Stump breaks down his disciplined approach to scale patterns and practice routines. He’ll show you how to improve your technique and increase your speed, no matter what style you play. All you need is your guitar and a metronome. Stump will help you achieve a greater mastery of the instrument, with routines to get your chops in shape for the intense physical demands of the rock guitar idiom. 43 minutes.
Beginning Rock Lead Guitar DVD This comprehensive DVD introduces you to all the essential scales and techniques used to play rock lead guitar. On the DVD, Dave Celentano demonstrates and will have you playing the following: alternate picking, sweep picking, hammer ons, pull offs, slides, vibrato, tapping, string bending, legato, pinch harmonies, and many tips. At the end of the DVD you’ll put it all together by learning a complete solo and then performing it over the rhythm track. 60 minutes.
Intermediate Rock Lead Guitar DVD This comprehensive DVD picks up where Dave Celentano’s Beginning Rock Lead Guitar left off. On this DVD you will learn exercises to improve finger dexterity, three note per string scale exercises, alternate picking, tremelo picking, sweep picking, advanced string bending, triads, arpeggios, long legato licks, speed licks, string bending licks, connecting licks to make solos, and a complete solo to play over the rhythm track at the end. Transcription booklet included. 60 minutes.
Advanced Rock Lead Guitar DVD In this DVD, Dave Celentano concludes his three level rock lead guitar course by introducing the student to a variety of complete solos to learn and play over the band rhythm tracks. Topics include: ’80s style soloing, modal soloing in rock, acoustic blues soloing, triads, arpeggios, legato string bending, vibrato, tapping, and more. Dave demonstrates all the solos, then breaks each down into small sections for learning and discusses important concepts, theory, and scales. Transcription booklet included. 60 minutes.
Incredible Scale Finder: A Guide To Over 1,300 Scales Learn to use the entire fretboard with the Incredible Scale Finder! This book contains more than 1,300 scale diagrams for the most important 17 scale types, including major and minor scales, pentatonics, the seven major modes, diminished, melodic minor, harmonic minor, and more – in all 12 keys! Basic scale theory is also presented to help you apply these colorful sounds in your own music. Written by GuitarLife editor Adam St. James.
Related Links
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Parts of this interview may have previously appeared on or in the following publications: Guitar.com, Musician.com, Guitar World, Guitar Edge, Guitar, Guitar Shop, Guitar World Acoustic, Frets, Bass Player, Maximum Guitar, Los Angeles Daily News, Fender Frontline Magazine, MusiciansFriend.com or any of the other 50 or 60 publications I’ve written for since the mid-’80s. But hey, I wrote it, and this is my archive — Adam
