SOUNDS GUITAR HEROES – SPECIAL EDITION

FROM FEBRUARY - 1983 –  ALVIN LEE

Interview by David Sinclair

 If you cast your minds back to the first week of last November you’ll remember that amidst a fanfare of largely self-congratulatory publicity, Channel Four was launched. For rock fans that Friday there was the opening edition of the sporadically brilliant The Tube with the Jam doing a live set, and later a real guitar hero’s bonanza. Jimi Hendrix, Santana, and The Who amongst others jostled for space  in your front room, as British television’s first screening of the Sixties classic, Woodstock unfurled on the nation’s T.V. screens.

Also present at the festival, though not in the film, were Johnny Winter and Leslie West Mountain. But there was one guitarist featured for whom  Woodstock had perhaps  the greatest significance of all. For eleven minutes in the film, Ten Years After held forth with their epic version of “I’m Going Home” a showcase for the talents of vocalist, writer, and guitarist Alvin Lee.

After its general release in 1970, the film became a box office smash throughout the world, and Alvin Lee found himself leading a group that had become instantly elevated to a level of superstardom. It was simultaneously a peak of success, and the start of the group’s decline.

Prior to Woodstock, Ten Years After were a respected and successful blues / rock band with a particularly pleasing habit of occasionally dabbling in their own personalized brand of high-energy swing jazz, such as – Woody Herman’s “Woodchoppers Ball” and “I May Be Wrong, But I Won’t Be Wrong Always”. Woodstock, whilst bringing Ten Years After to a wider public’s attention in a most spectacular way, particularly Stateside, also disproportionately emphasised one particular aspect of the band. “I’m Going Home,” the climax number of an otherwise varied set of material, became the style that Ten Years After were most recognized for and which audiences now came to demand. A twelve bar Rhythm and Blues shuffle / boogie workout. “I’m Going Home” was notable for the incredible velocity of Lee’s guitar playing. The lyrics were throwaway to say the least, the keyboards inaudible, drums and bass providing a monolithic thump behind Alvin’s awesome Gibson guitar. Notes flew like supersonic laser flashes as whole sequences passed in the blink of an eye, and Alvin Lee stood there stage centre, the quintessence of Rock and Roll cool.

His features looked as if caved from granite, high cheekbones, perfect skin, and sneering down-turned mouth, all framed by a shock of thick blonde hair. He looked like an ideal of Caucasian manhood, eminently photogenic and totally confident in his mastery of his chosen craft, but then, he’d had a fair old while to develop his skill.  

Alvin Lee was born in Nottingham, England on December 19, 1944. His father Sam, owned an extensive collection of blues records, and both his parents played the guitar. So there was always an instrument laying around the house. However, young Alvin’s first musical endeavours were pursued on the clarinet, an instrument which his brother-in-law- played.

After a years lessons, Alvin swapped his clarinet for Broadway Plectrum Guitar, and took chord lessons. His earliest influences were the old jazz musicians, Django Reinhardt and Benny Goodman’s guitarist Charlie Christian, but it was Rock and Roll that was starting to percolate through. “I was very into Chuck Berry and Scotty Moore, who was Elvis’s guitar player,  and Jerry Lee Lewis, all straight rock and roll. I still like it the best now. I did practice about four hours a day, and when I was eighteen, I hocked myself up to the eyeballs for my first electric guitar, it was a Guy-a-tone with crystal pick-ups. Later on I got a Burns Tri-Sonic which was awful, and then I got a Grimshaw, which  was the nearest thing that I could afford to Chuck Berry’s Blonde Gibson. I had that right up until the time that I bought my Gibson ES-335 which I still use today.”

His first group, featured the Guyatone guitar, was Alan Upton and the Jailbreakers. Upton was a Jerry Lee Lewis style pianist, and they played the local pubs on the weekends. Then, in 1964 Alvin teamed up with bassist Leo Lyons, and drummer Pete Evens, to form The JayBirds. Pete Evens was later replaced by Dave Quickmire, and for awhile The Jaybirds featured vocalist Farren Christy. However Christy dropped out just prior to the group going to play for six weeks at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany. 

"The singer dropped out and I just voluntarily became the singer. I was underage at the time, and had to lie my way in, but it was good experience for me. It was like getting a years training crushed into a six week period. Albert Lee was there. Around the corner, playing at “The Top Ten”. He could play the “Hound Dog” solo which had always eluded me, so I introduced myself and got it off”.

By 1967, Alvin Lee and Leo Lyons had teamed up with drummer Ric Lee (who is no relation to Alvin Lee) – along with keyboard player Chick Churchill, to form Ten Years After.

The group came riding in on the crest of the blues boom wave. (Alvin was now in his element) “Thanks in part to my father’s record collection, I suddenly found that I had this great repertoire of blues songs, that previously we could only perform at 3:00 in the morning, when the clubs had emptied out”.

Decca, in an unusual move, signed them to an albums only deal, though singles were subsequently released, most notably their 1970 hit from their album Cricklewood Green, “Love Like A Man”, which reached number ten in the British charts. Their first album, self titled “Ten Years After” caught the ear of American promoter, Bill Graham, who booked them into his prestigious Fillmore Auditoriums, and they quickly became a major concert attraction in the States. Their albums from 1969 release “Stonedhenge” were consistently strong sellers in their native Britain.

  “Underground”, was a word that was bandied around at the time, and I quite liked being “underground”. I had been through the situation of wearing satin shirts and what have you, doing a mini-Elvis Presley. And I realized that with the kind of music we played, you don’t have to do that. That was good, because it suited me to just turn up in blue-jeans and a T-Shirt and not have to dress up and have your hair done and things like that”.

  Ten Years After were an unpretentious but highly souped up rock n´ roll unit. Although Leo Lyons, Chick Churchill and Ric Lee were all admirably capable musicians, the band’s principle appeal was in the dirty gritty voice and high speed guitar of Alvin Lee. Emerging as contemporaries of “Cream” (with Eric Clapton)  and “The Jimi Hendrix Experience”, Ten Years After were cast firmly in that mould of 1960’s groups that adhered to principles of technical excellence and musical bravado and flash.

Alvin Lee was in those days, an unnervingly fast guitarist, and while he de-emphasises this important aspect now, he was without peer in rock  guitar circles. Certainly for sheer speed, Eric Clapton couldn’t have got near him, and it’s very doubtful if even Jimi Hendrix could have matched Alvin in this respect. Check: “I Woke Up This Morning” from Ten Years After’s Ssssh album and see for yourself, what I mean.

Alvin says: “We used to sell a hell of a show (put on a hell of a show). Ten Years After were specialist in blowing people (other bands)  off the stage, that was our ultimate goal – it wasn’t how well we played, it was how well we went down, as long as people went home, remembering that we played above all else, then that was our motivation. Very unsubtle.”

Actually, a lot of Alvin’s speed as a guitarist derived from his background in jazz where ultra fast tempos are far more commonplace than in rock, and the super-hyper- live approach that Ten Years After utilized in their live shows, energised themselves as well as their audiences.

According to Alvin: “I never tried to be fast, it’s just that when I got on stage, all the numbers sped up, then suddenly the solo came and all of a sudden I’d think, “Hell” I’m not going to be able to handle this, but I’d just go for it…..”  But speed is not everything. The critical backlash was not long in coming and particularly after the Woodstock film was released. Alvin’s playing was branded as “tasteless”, lacking in “finesse” along with “excessive” – “self indulgent” and “all haste and no taste” among other things. It became a received wisdom that Alvin Lee, “the fastest guitar in the west” couldn’t play subtly to save his life. When in point of fact, Alvin Lee is one of the most extremely versatile guitarist capable of playing more styles of music, such as: Ragtime, through to Classical and he was understandably and undoubtedly affected by these snide criticisms as indicated by his change musical direction subsequent to Ten Years After.

Woodstock the movie was the watershed in the career of Ten Years After – Alvin states: “It was a big break, but it was the start of the end for the band too. Up till then we had been playing eight to ten thousand seat venues. After the Woodstock movie it changed drastically, almost overnight to playing to 20,000 to 30,000 people every night, and along with that, the quality of the gigs dropped off as well. That’s when I’m positive that the “Disenchantment” set in. Alvin continues: “When a band is just starting out, in the early years, all you really want to do is fill up your date sheet, to keep working. Then, if and when the band finds some success, you find that your date sheet is now full everyday of the week. You work for maybe a year before you come to the realization that you need some time off, in order to write songs etc. and that’s exactly what happened to Ten Years After.

Alvin says: “ We just kept working and working and working, then we had to fight just to get three weeks off and the fun went right out of it. We didn’t feel that we were achieving anything particularly, it was just what I came to call “The Travelling Jukebox Syndrome”. This is where you get on stage, plug in and away you go, and do the same as you did the night before.

Ten Years After did twenty eight American Tours alone. Each one lasting about two months each, and in the end they simply toured themselves out. Call it burn out or total exhaustion, but that’s the fact. Their last official album release as a band, came in 1974 with “Positive Vibrations” and the vibrations were no where near positive at this point. In fact, the band had already split up long before this album was released – although it was never officially announced in that way, the band just stopped, and in an interview Alvin just said,  that it was over, Ten Years After ceased to exist any longer.

Alvin embarked on his solo career, in a direct attempt to shake off some of the “No Subtlety” comments.

Alvin continues: “ Some of the criticisms about me being all flash and no taste affected me personally, but I was pushing that side of it for a long while, and then I started to back off a bit and I went through that whole psychological thing of thinking, “I must do something more tasteful just to prove it”. But overall it didn’t do me much good in the long run, all it did was confuse the audiences.

Thus a collaboration with Mylon Le-Fevre  began that yielded an album called: “On The Road To Freedom” released in 1973, which established a more tasteful tone, that continued on through three albums during this period. For live work, Alvin formed a nine piece touring band: “I did a very tasty set, that worked out very nice in clubs, but put that into big arenas and it was frustrating to me, because halfway through the set, and although I’d gone off doing the unsubtle stuff, I suddenly felt that the audience was wanting some real grating rock n´ roll. But the way that the band and the equipment were set up, we really couldn’t deliver grating rock. I was going through the fifteen watt WEM only, miked up and coming through the monitors – it’s a totally different feel to having four cabinets behind you.” 

Alvin was grapping with the problem that faced all of the sixties guitar-axe heroes: how to move forward into the seventies without disappointing audiences who know you for one particular body of work, that’s rooted in the sixties. “Through that period I came back to my roots, one of the reasons for that was because I went to see Jerry Lee Lewis in Birmingham, and at the time he was playing only country songs, I came out of that concert feeling really disappointed, because he didn’t do “Whole Lotta Shakin´” and “Great Balls Of Fire”, and it occurred to me that if people come to see me, and I don’t do “I’m Going Home” and “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” then maybe they would feel that way too”.

The combination of this thinking and pressure from R.S.O. records with whom he got a record deal in the States, led to the new formation of “Ten Years Later”. Comprising of : Tom Compton on drums, Mick Hawksworth on bass guitar, and Bernie Clarke on keyboards, they cut two albums: “Rocket Fuel” 1978 and “Ride On” in 1979. It was the start of a frustrating period for Alvin Lee, where the output had been dictated more by the record company demands, then by his own artistic requirements.

“Ten Years Later was actually a joke name, it didn’t last very long. I thought that “Rocket Fuel” was quite good, and I thought “Ride On” wasn’t. That’s my personal opinion. There’s not many people that agree with what I think, even the people who follow it closely. R.S.O.  specifically wanted a rock band. They particularly  wanted us to play heavy rock, and so we moved towards that, but it didn’t happen the way they wanted it to, and we  weren’t enjoying it that much”.

Since then, he has released two more solo albums, teamed up for six months with Mick Taylor with whom he toured in Europe  and the States, and is currently working on material for a new album. He’s down to a three piece “Alvin Lee Band” for touring, comprising of:  Fuzzy Samuels on bass and Tom Compton on drums, both of whom are featured on his most recent album release, “RX5. I talked to him in a sumptuously well appointed flat located near Holland Park.

Thirteen years after Woodstock, and approaching his 38th birthday, his face is lined, and he has put on weight, he remains courteous and dignified master guitarist.

  What’s your view in 1982 about that Woodstock appearance? “Actually I saw it only the other day on Channel 4 and to be quite honest, I was getting really worried before my bit came up, because I was thinking, “now I’m going to watch this and I’m going to think, where have I gone since then?” musically. Often in moments of doubt, and everyone has moments of doubt, I used to think, “I’ve done my best gig somewhere in Cleveland or, I don’t know when it was, but I probably played as best I’ll ever play”. And I was quite relieved afterwards, because actually I didn’t play that well!!! The energy was good, but I did a few horrible things that I’d never do now. In fact, I’ve improved quite considerably, so I didn’t feel as bad as I thought I would.”  Do you think that your best gig’s still ahead of you? “Hopefully, hopefully”. I always thought that Ten Years After, had a bit of a problem, getting that energy across on record sometimes.

“Yeah – we never cracked that, we never got the energy in the studio that we got live. To me there’s a whole different attitude to playing live, as opposed to playing in the recording studio.

Even when we’re recording live, I don’t think about the recording. I play the gig, I play to the people. I show off a bit, I go for things that I might not get, on the off chance that I might get them, and often when you’re that confident you do get them.  

  “That’s where the new licks come from, those bravado tries, and in the studio I kind of go safe. You start constructing the number and it gets more subtle, and I think what Ten Years After had live was very unsubtle, and no matter how we tried in the studio, we just couldn’t get it to have that rawness. Of course a lot of it is more than sound at a gig, a lot of it is the environment – the feedback that you get from the audience. If you do something a bit outrageous and the audience loves it, it encourages you to be more outrageous. “There’s no such encouragement like that happening in the studio.  

Pic by Barry Plummer

  How much were you influenced by Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix?

“Well I wasn’t terribly influenced as far as what I actually played, but what did influence me was the effects of the way Hendrix played, and the area in which they played, gave me a good idea as to what I could get away with. I never tried to play like them, but I could play in that vein, with no problem.

Jimi Hendrix to me personally, was an innovator. When I first heard him I didn’t know where he’s come from; the closest that I could figure, was like a psychedelic version of John Lee Hooker. After hearing Hendrix and getting into him, then I’d suddenly go into an extra long, sustained distortion bit, and really his music gave me the idea and the freedom to do that. I’d probably have not done that before I heard him.

  Eric Clapton:

I think that I borrowed his vibrato technique; I used to vibrato very fast, and Eric used to do it so much slower, and I used to think “now, how can he do a really hot lick and then go right into that vibrato at the end of it ? But I liked it. With Eric, it’s easy to see his roots, you could look into all the Kings – Freddy King – Albert King and B.B.King and the old bluesers and things and I knew lot of it anyway.

“I think you take a bit from everybody you hear. It all mucks in – into one thing; sometimes I hear a guitarist that nobody’s ever heard of, then or since, and you can learn something off of them too. Everybody who picks up a guitar plays something different, usually the first thing you do, you just fiddle around, just to get the feel of the instrument. Those fiddles are often the basis of their style patterns. Not reading music you see, I work in patterns and a new pattern, is a good thing to fall across. I find fewer and fewer the more I play. They get less and less. There are still hundreds.”

  What advice would you give to an aspiring young guitarist, who is very anxious to achieve your kind of speed ?

“Well the speed just came from all that energy. I mean I’m not really that fast, a guitarist Jazzers play much faster than me, but they ply smoothly, so it just doesn’t come across as fast. My so called fast runs are very staccato and they come out like jarring machine gun bullets, whereas a jazzer will use a smooth bloopey sound. I hit every note with attack, and I play with a lot of aggression: I think it’s more that than speed. I’ve found the way to practice is when you get new lines and new licks is to work them really slow and repeat them over and over again. If you can do three or four hours a day of that they get faster without you even realizing it”.

  Do you still use the same Gibson ES-335 with all the stickers on it ? (Known Affectionately As “Big Red”)

Yeah, I bought it for 45 pounds actually, in Nottingham, with case. It was quite a good investment. It’s had a new neck. I broke the neck at the Marquee. It’s very small headroom there, and I got carried away with the old guitar, and chopped the top off. I had to send it away to Gibson, they kept the old head with the serial number on it, and spliced a new neck on it. They also re-sprayed right over the body, and I had all the stickers on, which is why they’re  still there today. They’re kind of cellulosed over. It’s a dotted neck. “I’ve got an additional Fender pick up on which I mainly use in the studio, and those TP-6 turnable  tailpieces – I like those, they’re great, you don’t have to take your hand off to tune up. Apart from that, it’s a pretty regular one. It’s a bit of a good one.. I think it’s a 1958 model actually.

  Now do you have the action set on it ?

“Pretty high and hard. The original teacher that  I had did a lot of Django tape stuff, so I got hard finger pads pretty early. I use a 54 on the bass end. because I like to hit open E’s a lot and if you have them much lighter than that, I find they ring sharp at first, so I have a very heavy bottom and a comparatively light on the top. For example: From the bottom up it’s – 54. – 44. – 28.- 15.- 12. and 9.

  And Guitar Pick ?

“I use three cornered ones. I got about 12 gross of them in New York one time. With the side scrubbing I wear them out quite a bit. With the side scrubbing technique, I can turn it around and get three times the use, a very hard pick.

  What amplification do you use ?

“I’ve got a Marshall 50, an old one, a small flashy one and I’ve got four outputs on it and I use four cabinets. I’ve always used that, it’s great. I’ve found that the 100 is just a bit to middley. While the 220’s are totally useless: One time I had the guys from Marshall come down, I really wanted to find out exactly why my 50 was so much better than the brand new Marshall 50’s. – and they said, it shouldn’t be any different, and they got out the old dentist’s mirror, they looked in the back, and the guy said, “Oh, this must be an old one, because they didn’t have these when I’ve been working here”. He’d found a component. I said, “Whatever it is, stick it on all of them”, and it seemed to do the trick actually.

“Also I power the valves a lot. Hell of a lot of bias on the valves, so I change the valves once a week on the road; but that gives you that high sustain. In the studio I’ve got a 15 watt WEM with one Celestion which sounds just like a stack of Marshalls milked up, they’re actually a bit better for  recording”.  

  What sort of volume setting do you put that on ?

“Three quarters to full, I find that the Marshall 50 watts practically flat out, that’s the best sound. If you turn it down, it gets a bit dry”. 

  Do you have any pedals or use any other effects ?

“No, I always avoid those. I like a strong lead, that also gives me the level I need. I sometimes use effects in the studio, but I don’t put them between the guitar and the amplifier: I put them after. I do like reading about all these effects boxes. Makes me laugh; I’m so glad I don’t have any. How on earth musicians choose nowadays. You open those books and there’s 80 guitars and 300 foot pedals to choose from. It was Gibson or Fender when I started, it was quite easy to choose, if you could afford it”.

  What Acoustic guitars do you have in your collection ?

"I’ve got a Martin and a Yamaha, not the most expensive Yamaha, but it’s got a turn-able bridge so I can use a wire third if I want. My favourite one is the cheapest Yamaha in their price range, with gut strings on it. That’s the one I pick up and fiddle with all the while”.