"Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" came about in the period after Yardbirds' founding bassist Paul Samwell-Smith left the group to pursue record production full-time.
[5] During the group's American tour in August and September, the Yardbirds' lead guitarist Jeff Beck experienced health and personal issues.
After Samwell-Smith's departure, Yardbirds singer Keith Relf and drummer Jim McCarty spent more time together and began exploring shared interests in mystical ideas popular among the counterculture, including the concept of reincarnation.
[20]In another interview, Page explained that some of the material he contributed to the Yardbirds was actually developed while he was still a studio guitarist and asserted that "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" was "basically my thing".
[23][b] The song begins with a four-bar instrumental opening,[10] then settles into the main rhythm, which music educator William Echard describes as "distorted punctuating chords, a repeated descending chromatic line, and drums with strong accents on every beat", along with electric bass.
[26] McCarty adds a harmony to Relf's vocal while single guitar chords are played, which suggest "tones of the ritualistic, epic, and ancient".
[28] During the recording sessions, Beck provided some humour by imitating comments made by an attendant who examined members of the group at a sexual health clinic.
[36][37] On 4 November, Epic Records issued the single in the US, which was coupled with another vocal by Beck, "The Nazz Are Blue",[d] taken from the Yardbirds' 1966 self-titled album (also known as Roger the Engineer in the UK and Over Under Sideways Down in the US).
[36] Two days before Columbia issued the single, the Yardbirds were filmed performing "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" for BBC Television.
[51] McCarty recalls that he and Dreja produced a short film, which he describes as "a precursor to the modern pop video", prior to departing for another US tour.
[52] After a concert performance at the Fillmore in San Francisco on 23 October, the group were filmed miming to "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" for television.
[10] It was the first appearance by a rock group on a programme hosted by veteran comedian Milton Berle,[53] who preceded their performance with "An ancient English philosopher once said ... if you want to add wild sounds to your shows, let the yardbirds of paradise fly up your nose".
[54] It was broadcast on 2 December and biographer David French writes: "Unfortunately, the band did not look very enthusiastic miming to the record and bad psychedelic effects marred the entire appearance.
"[10] In concert, "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" was performed by the dual lead guitar line-up, until Beck left the group at the end of October 1966.
[55] A performance on 15 March 1967 was filmed for West German television and the audio is included on the semi-official Cumular Limit (2000) and Glimpses 1963–1968 (2011) compilation albums.
The song received a favourable review in Billboard magazine's "Pop Spotlights" column: "Infectious driving beat and unusual arrangement combined with an off-beat lyric content makes this hot contender for a fast chart climber.
"[67] He adds: Led by a dark, Middle Eastern/psychedelic guitar riff, the song is quickly transformed into a frenetic, almost psychopathic rhythm, giving the whole affair a weird and powerful atmosphere.
[68] In a similar vein, biographer Martin Power comments: "If the Yardbirds had invented or at least contributed heavily to the birth of psychedelic music in their past, they had come to define it with 'Happenings Ten Years Time Ago'.
"[19] In his book 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded, Jon Savage writes: "It was a compressed pop-art explosion, with a ferocious staccato guitar figure, a massive descending riff and rolling instrumental break and LSD-inspired lyrics that questioned the construction of reality and the nature of time.
"[70] However, author Frank Hoffman sees it as following "Shapes of Things" in "enabl[ing] the Yardbirds to remain commercially viable despite a pronounced experimental orientation".
[73] Far Out magazine contributor Arun Starkey writes in a 9 January 2022 article "Jimmy Page's 10 best songs with and without Led Zeppelin": A psychedelic rock chef-d'oeuvre, "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" is credited with helping to influence the creation of metal genre ... Slightly ominous-sounding, the dovetailing guitars of Beck and Page are intelligent, and today the track remains as stellar as it was when released in 1966 ... in many ways, "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" set Page on his path to forming Led Zeppelin, wherein he’d perfect his long-standing aim of modifying rock in a much weightier way.
Pink Floyd biographer Julian Palacios writes that Syd Barrett "assimilates" the instrumental section for "Candy and a Currant Bun".
[86] Daryl Easlea writes in his biography of the American rock duo Sparks: "It [the song] was three minutes of surreal, psychedelic aural imagery.
[88][d] In a review of Faithful, Stephen Thomas Erlewine calls this version a "re-creation, with Rundgren 'faithfully' replicating the sound and feel of the Yardbirds [original]".