Yardbirds – For Your Love

This is the song that introduced the Yardbirds to me. I got into them heavily as a teenager. I just found one of my old Jr High notebooks with band names on the front, and The Yardbirds are on there. I always thought this was a different-sounding pop hit. Yes, you have the harpsichord, but the song also has a couple of time signatures. 

The song was written by Graham Gouldman, a teenage songwriter whose knack for hooks would later find full bloom in 10cc. For Your Love was handed to them by manager Giorgio Gomelsky, who saw the group’s potential beyond the blues clubs. The song offered a chance on the pop charts. Clocking in at under 2:30, it was compact, catchy, and just different enough to resonate with people. This was one of the few hit pop songs at the time to feature a harpsichord. 

And for Eric Clapton, it was the final straw. Clapton wanted blues, and Gomelsky wanted hits. He couldn’t get behind its commercial lean. Within weeks of its release, he was gone, off to join John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, where the amps were loud and the blues roots ran deeper.

The song peaked at #6 in the Billboard 100, #1 in Canada, and #3 in the Uk in 1965. This song was more pop than blues. This inspired Eric Clapton to leave the Yardbirds because he feared they were becoming too commercial.

The Yardbirds had three of Rock’s greatest guitar players pass through them. Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. They had such a raw edge to them with Jeff Beck, so that is the version I like best.

Jim McCarty on the songs by Graham Gouldman: “Well, they were always very original. Very interesting songs, very moody, because they were usually in a minor key, the ones we did, anyway. ‘For Your Love’ was an interesting song, it had an interesting chord sequence, very moody, very powerful. And the fact that it stopped in the middle and went into a different time signature, we liked that, that was interesting. Quite different, really, from all the bluesy stuff that we’d been playing up till then. But somehow we liked it. It was original and different.”

Jim McCarty: “To try and get a hit song in those days was quite a difficult thing to do for us. We could come up with ideas, but our first hit song was very important for us. And with ‘For Your Love’ we heard it and had the demo of it and it sounded like a hit song to all of us. Yeah, there wasn’t a problem doing that. It was the sort of thing that you relied on to get into that other echelon, to have a hit song. All our contemporaries were having hit songs: The Beatles and the Stones and the Moody Blues and Animals, they were all having #1 hits and we were really trying to keep up.”

For Your Love

For your love
For your love
I’d give you everything and more and that’s for sure
(For your love)
I’d bring you diamond rings and things right to your door
(For your love)
To thrill you with delight,
I’d give you diamonds bright
Double takes I will excite,
Make you dream of me at night
For your love
For your love
For your love
For your love,
For your love
I would give the stars above
For your love,
For your love
I would give you all I could
(For your love)
(For your love)
I’d give the moon if it were mine to give
(For your love)
I’d give the stars and the sun for I live
(For your love)

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

32 thoughts on “Yardbirds – For Your Love”

    2. Gouldman also wrote ‘No Milk Today’ and though I loath Herman and his Dimwits the song itself is really well written. I think he was still just a teen when he started writing hits.

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  3. Pingback: Yardbirds – For Your Love – MobsterTiger

  4. Jimmy Page played bass for the Yardbirds.

    I loved the Yardbirds during their early period and bought some of the singles. This was probably the first I bought.

    I saw Keith Relf at The Marquee in the mid or late 70s guesting on vocals with Steamhammer, a band with a very heavy bass presence that I loved. He also had a band of his own (I’ve forgotten their name now, but easy enough to look up) but I wasn’t keen on them.

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    1. Val….I want to know more about him…you gave me something to go on. He is the one member you didn’t hear much about except in the strange way he died.

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      1. There’s a biography about him by David French (called ‘Heart Full of Soul – Keith Relf of the Yardbirds’) I’ve not read it, but maybe that’ll give you more to go on.

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    1. Yea and he later didn’t mind as much with Cream or others. Plus I would argue that this song isn’t your ordinary pop song…it has some strange sections.
      Jim I’ll get your site tonight. This flu or whatever it was just won’t go away.

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      2. You know Jim… Christian texted me yesterday afternoon and told me about it! So no I didn’t feel it or know about it until later on.

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  7. If I recall it correctly, “For Your Love” was my first song I heard from the Yardbirds as well. I’ve always loved it. And, yes, the chord sequence and the time signature change in the middle make for an intriguing song that was different from the blues rock the group had done up to that point – not that there’s anything wrong with blues rock. “For Your Love” has a psychedelic vibe to me. That harpsichord is pretty cool!

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  8. Great tune, great ’60s sound…hate to say it but they were probably better off without Clapton because this was a great single as were several of their later pop-rock hits

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    1. I just told Jim….his wasn’t an ordinary pop song…it was a very different sounding song. It’s not exactly Bus Stop by the Hollies.

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  9. Oh my gosh! I was just listening to the Yardbirds the other night. I love them. For Your Love is one of my favorites. Can’t believe Clapton didn’t like it. This band…they were so raw and yet so innovative at the same time. The best of two worlds colliding.

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    1. The Clapton thing confused me as well. This isn’t just some run of the mill pop song…it was very different for the time and for now.

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  10. am not sure which version of the Yardbirds I liked better, but, well, liked their version of outside woman blues more than Cream’s which sounds weird just to say……and for your love, Fleetwood Mac did a great cover, the Bob Welch era on Mystery to Me…which is at times my fave Mac album?

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  11. We all know that Sir Eric went on to bigger commercial success, but if he would have stayed just a bit longer with the Yardbirds, who knows? A great band with some excellent players. Our teenage band did that tune, and used a mic’d autoharp to get that sound of a harpsichord. Our drummer, Lil Spector dreamed that one up, as he did the rest of anything unique, we did. The sitar incident was I believe the final end to all of his crazy ideas.

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    1. Oh yes! I remember the sitar incident lol. Yea I wonder what would have happened if he would have stayed longer. He never stayed with a band for a long time…Yardbirds, Cream, Blind Faith, and The Dominos…

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  15. I just heard that Chris Dreja died September 25, 2025. While the attention is on the three guitarists, Dreja’s rhythm was invaluable. Listen to it and let me apologize for preaching to the six string choir.

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