Chris Dreja, a founding member of the Yardbirds whose work on rhythm guitar and bass provided a foundation for the band’s holy trinity of lead guitarists, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, died on Sept. 25 in a nursing home in London. He was 78.
The cause was complications of multiple strokes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, his daughter, Jacqueline Dreja Zamboni, said.
The Yardbirds never achieved the global dominance of their contemporaries (and sometime touring partners) the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Still, with their driving, at times pyrotechnic brand of blues rock and their ear for pop hooks, they scored five Top 10 singles in Britain.
They also marched with the British Invasion to notch two in the United States. “For Your Love” rose to No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1965, and “Heart Full of Soul” climbed to No. 9 the same year.
Any discussion of the group begins — and often ends — with a roll call of its celebrated ax men, who, with Jimi Hendrix, essentially invented the concept of the rock guitar god.
On the surface, serving as rhythm guitarist behind such stars would seem to be as anonymous a job as Spinal Tap drummer. But Mr. Dreja was more than that.
“Chris wasn’t the greatest guitar player,” Paul Samwell-Smith, the Yardbirds’ bassist, wrote in an email, “but he was always such a stable rock for the band — ever reliable, never temperamental and as such invaluable.”
In an interview, David French, the author of “Heart Full of Soul,” a 2020 biography of the band’s lead singer, Keith Relf, invoked a sports term, calling Mr. Dreja a “glue guy” for the band.
“He provided an essential counterpoint to the big personalities and mood swings of the Yardbirds’ lead guitarists,” Mr. French said.
The band needed glue more than most, given its ever-shifting lineup. The Yardbirds formed in London in 1963, with Mr. Clapton as its first star of the six string; he came to be so revered that “Clapton is God” graffiti proliferated around the city.
He left the band in 1965, replaced by Mr. Beck. Mr. Page joined in 1966, briefly teaming with Mr. Beck in a scalding twin-guitar attack until Mr. Beck departed later that year.
In a 2010 interview for the book “Trampled Under Foot: The Power and Excess of Led Zeppelin,” by the rock historian Barney Hoskyns, Mr. Dreja said that each of the three luminaries brought his own flavor to the band.
Mr. Clapton was “an extraordinary blues player; the way he attacks notes is fantastic.” Mr. Dreja called the fiery and inventive Mr. Beck a “genius,” but also “moody — you either got a great night or you got a dismal night.”
As for Mr. Page, “I always found Jimmy’s solo playing a little bit mean-sounding,” Mr. Dreja said, adding that it was “very exciting at times.”
“He had that ability to make a guitar sound very fat,” Mr. Dreja added of Mr. Page, “and his chord work and riff work is really unsurpassed.”
Christopher Walenty Dreja was born on Nov. 11, 1946, in Kingston upon Thames in southwest London, the middle of three sons. His mother, Joyce (Gillan) Dreja, was English; his father, Alojzy Dreja, was a Polish émigré who flew with the Polish air force stationed in Britain.
A fan of American rock ’n’ roll and blues, Mr. Dreja met the guitarist Anthony Topham, known as Top, while studying part-time at the Kingston School of Art, which several future Yardbirds attended. They joined Mr. Relf, Mr. Samwell-Smith and the drummer Jim McCarty in a blues group that evolved into the Yardbirds, with Mr. Clapton eventually replacing Mr. Topham.
When Mr. Clapton joined, he was “very much learning his craft,” Mr. Dreja told Mr. Hoskyns. “He used to play a phrase for a week, the same four-note refrain. He used to practice with a guitar in front of the mirror.”
Mr. Clapton appeared on the band’s first album, “Five Live Yardbirds” (1964), as well as their first hit, “For Your Love.” But he lacked interest in the band’s flirtations with pop and followed his purist blues impulses to join John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers.
“I was sorry to see him go as a friend,” Mr. Dreja told Mr. Hoskyns, “but yes, he did us a favor because there was no more ‘I’m not doing that’ and we now became totally free to become eclectic.”
The Yardbirds pivoted to Mr. Beck, whose genre-blending instincts and extraterrestrial licks expanded the group’s sound, as demonstrated on hits like “Shapes of Things” and “Over Under Sideways Down.”
The band’s self-titled 1966 album, their first studio release, became known as “Roger the Engineer,” because of Mr. Dreja’s playfully satirical sketch of the audio engineer Roger Cameron that was used for the cover.
Mr. Page, then a top session guitarist, signed on as a musical sparring partner to Mr. Beck. This double-barreled incarnation of the Yardbirds was showcased in an explosive performance scene in Michelangelo Antonioni’s classic 1966 film “Blow-Up.”
It was not an ideal match. “They were friends,” Mr. Dreja said of the pair. “But they’ve got egos, big egos in one way or another. It was a bit of a cacophony of sound, two gunslingers shooting at each other.”
Mr. Beck left the band, followed by Mr. Samwell-Smith, leaving Mr. Dreja to take over bass duties. The group’s 1967 album “Little Games” had disappointing sales, and Mr. Relf and Mr. McCarty quit. Mr. Page pressed ahead, forming the New Yardbirds.
Although it is often reported that Mr. Page offered Mr. Dreja the opportunity to remain as the bassist, Mr. Dreja told the music site Spinner that he “was never asked.” He added that John Paul Jones, who got the gig, “was the best bass player in Europe at that point.”
Mr. Jones was joined by the vocalist Robert Plant and the drummer John Bonham, and the group rechristened itself Led Zeppelin.
By that point, Mr. Dreja was already committed to making a career of another passion, photography. He eventually opened a studio in London, specializing in commercial photography, but along the way also shot cultural figures like Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan, as well as the back cover portrait for Led Zeppelin’s first album in 1969.
He returned to music in the 1980s, joining Mr. Samwell-Smith and Mr. McCarty in the blues-rock band Box of Frogs, and again with the reformed version of the Yardbirds in the 1990s and 2000s.
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Dreja is survived by his longtime partner, Katy Levy; his brother Stefan; and three grandchildren. His marriage to Patricia Lally ended in divorce in 1977.
Mr. Dreja expressed no regrets over missing out on Led Zeppelin, one of the biggest rock bands of all time. “I’m not as rich as Jimmy,” he told Mr. Hoskyns, “but I get by.”
And, he added, “I still have a nose and a bit of a brain.”
Alex Williams is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.
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