Excerpt from a Rolling Stones interview with Jimmy Page, 1984:
SC: So, how did you go from Yardbirds to forming up with Clapton?
JP: In early July, we played our last show in Bedfordshire. After this Relf and McCarty finally left the band, as they had wanted since March. A few days later, Dreja and I began looking for new artists to join the band. The word had gone out when on the 15th, Dreja decided to leave the band early because he really wanted to pursue a photography career. I’m sure it would have affected me less if I had actually gotten some new band members before he had left. Anyways, I got frustrated and went to a local bar to drink it off. It must have been fate that I met Eric Clapton there, who was also a bit down because of a review in the Rolling Stones and constant fights between Bruce and Baker. We knew each other already, as he recommended me as his replacement when he left the Yardbirds. We talked about music for a while, and after a few drinks I suggested to him that if things were so bad perhaps he should leave his band. He did confess that the scathing review made him wish to move in a new direction musically. We made plans to meet again the next night, same place. We did, and he said he heard that I was looking for new band members, and said he was considering possibly joining me. We set up a studio date to jam. After I set up the meeting, I realized I was going to miss a meeting with Terry Reid that Dreja had set up, but I decided that the opportunity to play with Clapton was a better one. The jam went quite well, and we decided to do it again. We talked about Bob Dylan briefly before our next jam, which inspired us to put together a version of In My Time of Dying. I listened to it before showing up and started to play a version of it I had quickly cobbled together in my head on the way there, and Clapton started to play on top of it. It sounded very good, and luckily we recorded it, as it formed the basis of our future band’s first single.
A copy of the original guitar-track played by Page and Clapton.
As August rolled around, Clapton decided to officially quit Cream, and we set up a third studio jam session. When we arrived at the studio, we found a drummer there, having stayed late after his own band had recorded. He discovered our guitar track and put a drum track to it, he liked it so much. His name was Nicholas Johann Beets, his father a German. But his stage name was Nick Beats. We quite liked his drum track, and asked if he’d like to stay and play with us. As he was doing a sound check he began improving and I knew he was the perfect drummer for our project. While Clapton could sing, we decided we needed another singer, as Clapton was better at guitar than singing, and he’d prefer to serve as back-up vocalist instead. While we thought about who could sing with us, I invited John Paul Jones, who I previously worked with in the Yardbirds, to come to the fifth jam session, which was in mid-August. As before, it was a joy to work with the man, who is a very talented bassist and pianist.
Clapton eventually came up with an idea for who could sing with us. His decision seemed out of the blue, to say the least. He didn’t tell us until the man showed up at our sixth jam session in the studio.. I was pleasantly surprised at his choice:
George Harrison.