The Dirty Knobs

The Dirty Knobs with Mike Campbell got together when schedules permitted, playing music without an agenda, expectations or deadlines, without worrying about outcome or hits, pushing boundaries of taste, imagination, and genres and creating some of the most brutally confident yet psychically dangerous rock and roll since sonic-renegade juggernauts the Yardbirds first sauntered onto a London stage and ripped into “For Your Love.”

As the years went on the Knobs played out here and there, almost incognito, in little clubs in Southern California. Looking mysterious and a little troubled in their mirror shades, neck scarfs, black shirts and vests, they were propelled out of rock’s murky past, but born full-blown. In a way, they were doing their own version of the Beatles’ formative, tighten-up Hamburg years: performing oddball covers but mostly original songs about bad women, complicated relationships and messy confrontations.