For Your Love (4:27)

“For Your Love” is a 1965 single written by future 10cc member Graham Gouldman and performed by the British Invasion band The Yardbirds. It peaked at number three on UK Singles Chart and became their highest charting single in the U.S., peaking at number six.

The song was also recorded by Herman’s Hermits, Humble Pie, The Greg Kihn Band, Nils Lofgren, Fleetwood Mac, Chilly and Graham Gouldman himself.

Gouldman wrote the song at the age of 19 while working by day in a gentlemen’s outfitters near Salford Docks and playing by night with the semi-professional Manchester band the Mockingbirds. He said: “I was sleeping most of the time because I’d been gigging with the Mockingbirds the night before, and then during the day when I’d got any spare time I’d write in the shop. I used to shut up the shop at lunch time and sit in the back writing.”

He said he was prompted to begin writing songs for the band out of frustration in finding new material. “We went down to Denmark Street and went round all the publishers trying to find a song . . . we didn’t get any songs that we liked or we weren’t given any songs period and the Beatles had started and I thought ‘well, I’m gonna really have a crack at song-writing.’ I had dabbled a bit, but they were really my inspiration and gave me and I think a lot of other people the courage to actually do it. We all wanted to be like the Beatles. I wrote two songs and the record company we were with turned down one of the songs.