Roger the Engineer

Roger the Engineer (original UK title: Yardbirds) is an album by the English blues rock band The Yardbirds, released in 1966. It was produced by bassist Paul Samwell-Smith and Simon Napier-Bell. It was the only Yardbirds album with all originally written material. Although the record was officially titled Yardbirds (and still is in authoritative chart sources, such as The Guinness Book of British Hit Albums), it has since been referred to, first colloquially, then semi-officially, as Roger the Engineer, a title stemming from the cover drawing of the record's audio engineer Roger Cameron by band member Chris Dreja. Due to the influence of Jeff Beck's experimentation with guitar distortion, the album is considered a precursor to heavy metal.

The original American versions of this album (issued with a completely different album cover and entitled Over Under Sideways Down after the hit song of the same name) omitted the songs "The Nazz Are Blue" (which was sung by Jeff Beck) and "Rack My Mind" and are mixed differently to the British editions. Regardless, record collectors have sought out both the mono (LN 24210) and stereo (BN 26210) versions since several tracks are featured with slight differences in the mixes (see U.S. album listing below). Epic's 1983 reissue (simply entitled The Yardbirds) featured the original UK album cover, the two missing tracks, duplication of the British mixing, and two additional tracks, the 1966 single "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" b/w "Psycho Daisies", both featuring Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. "Happenings" is frequently cited as the first psychedelic rock song.

In 2003, the album was ranked number 349 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.