Mixing With Kinky Cats

The last of the Yardbird's great guitar-driven singles was also the first with Jimmy Page as lead guitarist.  Little Games was released in March of 1967, one month after Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane changed the universe of pop music.  The insistent repeated guitar chord telegraphs its message, later taken up by strings.   The lyrics have lost the cosmic philosophy of the previous singles and deal straight out with the free living of a young man in the swinging sixties.  The single bombed in the UK and barely scraped to #51 in the US.   In fact it would be the final UK single for the Yardbirds, though there are three more odd pop-leaning singles to come in the US.