For Your Love

This was written by Graham Gouldman, who later became the bass player for the group 10cc; he wrote two other Yardbirds hits as well: "Heart Full of Soul" and "Evil Hearted You." Musically, Gouldman was inspired by The Animals' version of "The House Of The Rising Sun." "There's a general sort of popular chord sequence which is C, A minor, F and G," Gouldman told Songfacts. "Well, 'House Of The Rising Sun' is pretty much the opposite of that. So, it starts on a minor and goes to the relative major instead of the other way around, and I really responded to that, it resonated with me. I became so enamored with the sequence that I used it on the first two chords of 'For Your Love.'"

This is one of the most famous rock songs to feature a harpsichord, which was arranged by Yardbirds bassist Paul Samwell-Smith, who made wholesale changes to Graham Gouldman's original demo. Gouldman observed to Uncut magazine August 2009: "The harpsichord was an absolute stroke of genius. The record just had a weird, mysterious atmosphere about it."

The Yardbirds wrote many of their own songs as a group, but had some of their biggest hits with the ones Gouldman wrote. What did they think of Gouldman's songs? Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty told us: "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."