Thanks to chindem from gnrforum.com

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/ne...=16492&afl=mnew

Rzeznik, Slash Fly With Yardbirds

Sixties band to release first new album in thirty years



The Yardbirds' will release their first album of new material in over thirty years next spring. The album will feature guest spots by guitarists Slash, Brian May of Queen, Johnny Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls, Steve Vai and Steve Lukather.
"It's eclectic again, because it's a no-rules band," guitarist Chris Dreja says. "It's going to be pretty guitar orientated. The three or four tracks we're putting down at the moment are beginning to happen quite nicely. It's sort of the Yardbirds but with a bit extra, something else. I always think all the Yardbirds songs -- take things like 'Shapes of Things,' 'Happenings Ten Years Time Ago' -- there was a sort of philosophy going on within the band. It's not a band that's too lightweight musically and lyrically. It's melancholy but with a whack. Just when you think you know where it will go, something will turn. Like the middle of 'For Your Love.'"

The Yardbirds recorded most of the as-yet-untitled album at Vai's Mothership studio in Hollywood with producer Ken Allerdyce, and they are finishing it in London.

Inspired by the group's 1992 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Yardbirds reformed in the mid-Nineties without any of their three famous guitarists -- Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page -- and now feature a lineup of original members Dreja and drummer Jim McCarty, as well as newcomers Gypie Mayo on lead guitar, Alan Glen on harmonica and John Iden on bass and lead vocals.

"I thought if we could get the right musicians together, I might quite enjoy playing that material again," says Dreja. "I hadn't played it for thirty years. Eventually we got the right musicians together and what a kick-ass band it is, and what kick-ass material it still is!"

COLIN DEVENISH
(August 15, 2002)