MELODY MAKER, September 5, 1970   ... the melody maker interview ...

In Person He Is A Mild Mannered, Belaying The Grimacing, Pouting Figure In "Woodstock."

He Seems To Have No Positive Ambitions About Politics, The Contemporary Situation Or Life In General. He Is The Epitome Of The Ordinary Guy In The Street Who Has Made It: A Pop Singer Who Has Grafted His Way To The Top, Just As The Bank Clerk, Becomes The Bank Manager. His One Conceit Is His Guitar Prowess, And Who Can Deny He Has Good Technique? After All, He Is Paid For Playing Guitar, Not Shooting His Mouth Off.

He Lives In A Small Mews, Cottage, Which Used To Be A Stable, At The Back Of London’s Baker Street. He Was Thrown Out Of His Last Place, In Belgravia, Because Neighbours Thought He And His Friends Were Drug-Crazed-Hippies. That’s The Price One Pays For Being A Pop Star, I Suppose. The Small Down-Stairs Room Reflects The Interest And Outlook Of It’s Occupant. A Sitar Is Propped In The Corner By The Stairs, An Electric Piano Stands Like A Child’s Toy Against One Wall, And An Amplified Acoustic Lies Flat On Its Back In The Centre Of The Floor. A Quick Look Through The Record Collection Housed In A Long Shelf Establishes The Fact That The Owner’s Taste Are Largely Confined To Rock. All The Ten Years After Albums Are There.

It’s A Revealing Room. In A Notebook Lying Open On A Pouffe Are Written Words Of A New Song, The First Verse Goes: "Gonna Run, Runnin From The City, Gonna Run, Runnin To The Country, Gonna Run, Runnin From The City, Got To Ease My Aching Mind (Oh Yeah)" – And The Last One Reads: "Gonna Run, Runnin From The Ego, Gonna Run, Find Out Where The Free Go…." Alvin Lee Walks In Dressed Completely In Maroon.

You Look At Him Carefully. He Has Hollow Cheek-Bones, Which In Less Successful Years Gave Him The Appearance Of A Tubercular Victim. That Was A Long Time Ago, Though When Ten Years After Was Just Another Cute Name For A Group. And When A Residency At The Marquee Meant Steady Work In God Knows How Many Months.

It’s A Long Way From Nottingham Now…

(The Alvin Lee - Melody Maker - Interview).

Question:
First Off, A Lot Is Made About Your Guitar Speed: That You Are Fast To The Detriment Of Feel And Emotion. What Do You Think About This Whole Question?

Answer - Alvin Lee:
Who Says This? Some Guys Say You Can Always Tell A Good Guitarist Because He Doesn’t Look At The Fret-Board, And A Good Drum Solo Is One Where The High-Hat Goes All The Way Through. You Can Only Answer Criticism If The Criticism Is Valid, And I Don’t Think It Is. I Could Play A Lot Faster If I Wanted To Blind People With Speed. Perhaps I Do Play Faster Than Some, But I Just Play my Style. I Could Play In Another Way If I Wanted, But I’m Going Somewhere Else Myself You Know, I Use Speed As An Effect, A Kind Of Crescendo. If I Want To Bring Something Up I Use Set Phrases, But Perhaps To Some People, It Doesn’t Sound Like A Kind Of Feeling. It’s Not Like B.B. King, Where He Slurrs The Notes; That’s Another Trip. A Guitarist To Me, Is Not How Good He Is, Because The Top 30 Guitarist Can All Play Like Each Other, If They So Wished. It’s Just A Matter Of The Style They Prefer. And You Either Agree With Their Preference, Or You Don’t. But It Doesn’t Make Them A Bad Guitarist, If You Don’t Like The Style They Prefer.

Question:
Can You Pick Out Any Contemporary Guitarist You Admire?

Answer - Alvin Lee:
I Don’t Listen That Much. When I Do Listen, I Listen To People Like George Benson And Such. You Know, Rock To Me Is Something I Play The Way I Feel It, And I’m Not Interested In The Way Other People Feel It. I Suppose It Sounds Weird, But I Play Rock The Way I Like To Hear It. So In That Sense I Suppose I Could Say, I’m My Favorite Rock Guitarist, And In That Sense I Suppose Every Rock Guitarist Is Their Favorite Guitarist.

Question:
Let’s Put It Like This. Which Guitarist Have Influenced You, If Not Now, At Least When You Were Growing Up.

Answer – Alvin Lee:
First Off, Scottie Moore, Elvis Presley’s Guitarist. Chet Atkins, I Got Into A Finger Style Thing. Then I Went Into A Bit Of Classical. Merle Travis. Then I Got Into Charlie Christan And Barney Kessel, And Yes Les Paul. I Went Down To His Studio In New York, It Was Really Incredible. We Had A Little Blow, It Was Good Fun. He’s Very Clean, And He Plays With A Lot Of Swing. He Really Is Neat.

Melody Maker:
Not Unlike You In A Way. You Don’t Use Feedback, For Instance.

Answer – Alvin Lee:
No, No Boxes Or Anything Like That. I Haven’t Got Anything Against Feedback, But All Gimmicks Like Fuzz, Wah-Wah And Such, You Can Get The Sound By By Buying The Equipment; They Are Not Very Individualist. Anybody Using A Wah-Wah Pedal Has Got To Be Exceedingly Lucky To Find Something New He Can Do On A Wah-Wah, Because It Makes All Guitars Sound The Same.

Question:
How Far Is Jazz A Big Influence On You?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
It’s Not A Big Influence, I Like The Feel Of Jazz; I Don’t Like The Jazz Tradition, I Don’t Like The Philosophies, The Attitude, Of Jazz People At All. They Are Inwards Looking People, Jazz People, They Look In All The Time.

Question:
How Is It Then, That You Played With Woody Herman?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
We Didn’t. Somebody Fixed It Up, But We Didn’t Do It. The Only Reason We Were Going To Do It, Was That We Had Recorded "Woodchopper’s Ball," And The Only Reason It Was, "Woodchoppers Ball" Was Because Of The First Verse And The Last Verse, It Was Just A Jam With A Tune Vaguely Resembling "Woodchoppers Ball" To Start It Off With…And We Were Going To Do Carnegie Hall With Woody Herman And Do "Woodchopper’s Ball" Together, And I Happened To Mention To The Powers, That What We Did Was Nothing Like The Original, So We Dropped The Idea. The Only Kind Of Jazz I Play Is Mock-Jazz---It Has A Jazz Feel, A Jazz Tone. I Like A Jazz Tone Sometimes---More Mellow Sounds---But Really I Am Still Playing The Same Style Of Guitar.

Question:
What Therefore, Do You Feel About These Apparent Fusions Between Jazz And Rock? Do You Think They Ever Succeed?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
Not To My Taste They Don’t, Because The Only Kind Of Fusions I Have Heard Are Like A Watered – Down – Brass Section. I Don’t Think It Is Either Jazz Or Rock, It’s A Middle Of The Road Between The Two, A Fusion Of Lesser Jazz and Lesser Rock. The Thing I Like About Jazz Is The Feel and The Freedom."

Question:
If Jazz – Rock Is Out, In Which Musical Direction Are Ten Years After Going?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
Mmmm, It Is Difficult To Say. If You Evaluate Where You Are Going You Tend To Jump To Conclusions, Which Is Bad. We Just Let It Happen, Really. We Won’t Know What The Next Lp Is Like Until We Have Got It Down. That Is The Way We Have Always Done It. Like, An Album Comes Out The Way We Feel At The Time We Make It. Sometimes It Comes Out Of A Whim, Other Times It Just Comes Out Naturally. Sometimes We Experiment A Bit And Say, Let’s Lean This Track A Little More Towards This Or The Other."

Question:
There Will Be No Future Changes In Lineup Then, Such As The Addition Of Brass?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
Personally, I Don’t Like Anything Over A Four Piece. For The Sake Of Music It Is Nice, But Creating Music Is Another Trip Again. We Are Not Really Into Creating Music, We’re Musicians Working Out. Do You See The Difference? Like Say, You Have A Brass Section, Or Reeds And Things, That Limits What You Can Do. You Know, Brass And Reeds Have To Riff, So You Are Tied Down To A Riff. The Way It Is Now, We Can Just Start Something Off On Stage, And If We Don’t Like It, We Can Just Change It Round Completely. Nobody Knows That They Have To Do Something Particularly.

Question:
You Started Off In Nottingham Didn’t You? What Was Your First Group?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
The First Band I Was Ever With Was A Weird Affair, Called Vince Marshall And The Square Caps. I Played Rhythm And I Would Be About 12. It Was A Very Amateur Affair – Well, It Was And It Wasn’t. This Guy Had A Very Freaky Mind. He Was Planning It Like A Show, And We All Had Different Numbers. He Just Advertised In The Papers For Everyone To Meet Him In Lyons Café In Nottingham. He Was In There, And He Waited An Hour, So That Those Who Weren’t Very Keen Would Go, And He Said He Would Keep The Rest. It Ended Up With Two Drummers, Five Guitar Players, No Bass Player, An Electric Accordionist And A Country And Western Banjo Player. We Rehearsed About Three Times A Week For Six Months, Did One Gig And Broke Up And That Was The End Of Marshall and The Square Caps.

We Played All Souls Church Hall, And We All Had Little Plywood Stands To Stand On Because It Was His Idea Of Professionalism, And This Guy Vince Marshall, Conducted And Sang One Number Out Of Key. But I learnt A Lot Off The Guitarist There Who Played Lead, And I Picked His Brains And Got To Know Quite A Bit. Up Till Then I Had Been Playing Just On A Hobby Basis; I Never Thought I Would Be Able To Get It Together On Stage. But That Broke Up, And When I Was 13 I Phoned Another Band, Called Alan Upton And The Jailbreakers.
We Played Sort Of Rock ‘n’ Roll Because He Played Piano And Liked Jerry Lee Lewis, And By This Time I Was Into Scottie Moore And All Those Rock Guitarist. I Played Lead With That, And I Got A Proper Electric Guitar For My Birthday – A Guyatone, Crystal Pick-Ups, A Weird Thing. But We Had Some Fun, It Was An Experience.
We Used To Play At A Cinema, At Sandiacre, The Palace Cinema. We Used To Play In-Between The Films. I’ve Still Got One Of The Things In a Scrapbook Somewhere Where We Are On With Brigitte Bardot, And I Was Also Learning A-Lot Around That Time About Amplifiers Ang Things. When That Finally Broke Up, We Were Playing At A Lot Of Pubs And Low Places, You Know."

Question:
That Was Still At 13 Was It?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
Yeah. I Did That Probably, For About A Year, Then I Did Nothing Again For A Year, Then I Left School, When I Had Almost Turned 16. I Got Out As soon As I Could, I Decided What I Wanted To Do, And I Was Wasting My Time At School."

Question:
Which Was What? To Be A Musician?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
Yeah! Somehow, Someway. I Did Not Really Think About It In Those Days, I Just Thought, Oh, I’ll Do It. And Er, I Left School And Got A Job In A Factory For About A Month, Which Didn’t Seem To Go Down To Well. But My Folks Said, If You Want To Get A Band Together And Work Like That, You Had Better Leave Your Job. Which Was Very Cool Indeed."

Question:
What Does Your Old Man Do?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
He Was A Bulider, They Were Not Very Well Off At All, But You Know A Lot Of Parents Would Have Demanded Their Three Pounds A Week Board. They Were A Bit Cooler Than That, And They Encouraged Me All Along. So I Left This Job And I Answered This Ad In A Nottingham Paper, For A Band Based In Mansfield, Called The Atomites, And Leo Lyons Our Bass Player Was In There – He’s Just A Few Months Older Than I Am, And We Met, And Were Into, Like Well, We Were Playing Shadows Music To Get Gigs. And I Knew This Singer From Nottingham Blond Hair And A Very Early Freak, Who Used To Do Well On The Pub Circuit – Ivan Jay Was His Name. So We Roped Him Into It, And Changed The Name To Ivan Jay And The Jaycats. We Tried Various Combinations For Awhile, And Then Came Up To London; I Would Be About 17 Then.We Came Up To London For About Six Months, And Lived In Finsbury Park, And Nearly Starved To Death."

Question:
Did You Have A Manager Then?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
No, Leo Was The Manager. He Used To Call Himself Mr. Lyons. It Was Very Funny Because He Used To Ring Up The Pub Owners The Next Day And Say, How Were They, Were They Great? All This Spiel. He Was Pretty Good. But Down Here In London, We Hardly Got Any Work At All. We Came Down Here To Get Work, But The Only Work We Ever Got Was Up North. We Did A Few American Air-Force Bases, But We Were A Bit Proud. Like We Had Been Getting 15 Quid A Gig In Nottingham, And They Would Offer Us Eight Quid Down Here. I Think, Though, We Had Some Sort Of An Original Style…Oh, I Don’t Know, It Was Like The Early Cliff Richard Stuff, "Nine Times Out Of Ten" And Stuff Like That, The Ravier Ones, And Some Of The Old Ones, And Some Of The Elvis Ones. Anyway, We Didn’t Do Very Well, So We Went Back To Nottingham, And The Singer Ivan Jay, Stayed In London. He Didn’t Do Anything, And That Was The Last We Heard Of Him. We Got Another Singer When We Went Back To Nottingham, Called Farren Christie. We Worked With Him For Awhile, And We Were Doing Alright, Like Travelling Around To Places Like Rugby. It Was A Bit Of A Giggle.

Anyway, We Went Over To Germany As The Jaybirds, With A Rhythm Guitarist We Got From Rugby, And Hamburg Was Very Interesting. I Learnt A Lot There. Cliff Bennett Was In Hamburg With Nicky Hopkins On Piano and Strawbeffy Watson On Guitar; Tony Sheridan Was There.

A Lot Of Good Musicians Were Kicking Around On The Scene – Albert Lee Was Playing Down The Road In A Club On The Reeperbahn, The Top Ten, A Very Seamy Place In Hamburg. The Big Three Were There, A Lot Of Liverpool People There. Everybody Was Talking About The Beatles, But They Hadn’t Done Anything, Then We Saw Photographs In Windows Of Them In All The Leather Gear, And There Were A Lot Of Stories About John Lennon. Hamburg Made Us A Lot More Professional, Because We Were Playing To An Attentive Audience, Which Is More Than We Were Doing Before, And When We Got Back To England, We Really Pulled It Together, Like The Band Got Into Playing Its Own Stuff, Doing An R and B Thing. So We Tried London Again, Moved To A Slightly Better Part Of Finsbury Park, But Failed A Second Time, With The Result That We Went Back To Nottingham, Where We Began To Do Pretty Well; We Were Getting 40 Quid On A Saturday Night, And Doing Co-Op Halls And All That."

Question:
This Must Have Been The Time Family Was Coming Up As Well?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
Oh, We Used To Play With Them From Leicester, When They Were Called "The Farinas" And Even Before Then. Roger Chapman Used To Wear A Leather Hat And An Overcoat And Do "On The Boardwalk" And Things. He Was Good As Well, A Sort Of Smoothie Type. He Used To Do Standards And Things – Quite Incredible. Anyway Back In Nottingham, The Drummer With Us Left – Dave Quickmire – And Ric Lee Was Playing In A Group Called "The Mansfields" And Doing Everly Brothers Type Things And Buddy Holly Numbers, And He Was About The Only Drummer We Ever Heard, Who Could Do The Bass Drum Best, Which Was Bum-Ba-Bum, Instead Of Bum-Bum-Bum….He Was Reluctant To Join At First, But Somehow, We Talked Him Into It; And We Were Doing Chuck Berry Stuff Still, And He Was Never Into It As Much, As The Other Drummer, And We Wondered At Times, If He Was Going To Be As Good As The Other. (Dave Quickmire Was Replaced By Ric Lee – Ric Was Reccomended By Dave To Replace Him).

Then Of All Things, For A Joke – We Auditioned For, "Saturday Night And Sunday Morning" – At The Prince Of Wales, And They Were Interested In A Nottingham Band. A Bit More Authenticity, As It Were – To Play In The Wings, And Do A Pub Scene, And That Was All Right For Half an Hour’s Work; It Was 30 Quid A Week.

Question:
Did You Ever Think At Any Time, During This Period, That You Weren’t Going To Make It?

Answer – Alvin Lee: 
I Always Thought We Were Somehow.

Question:
You Can Read Music?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
Er, Just The Chords…We Used To Do All The Really Corny Standards, And A Few Spanish Things, And We Get A Free Meal and 24 Quid A Week, Which Was Pretty Good, But The Only Gigs We Were Getting Were In Wales and They Were Terrible. You Know, We Could Still Get The Backing Jobs, And Do The Odd Session, But Everybody Was Down-Hearted Indeed. This Was About The Time I Started Thinking Perhaps It Is Not Going To Work At All."

Queston:
You Were Very Disillusioned At This Point?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
Exceedingly So.

Question:
Did You Ever Think Of Packing The Whole Thing In?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
Well I Walked Along By The Thames A Few Times, But I Never Got That Together (Laughter). But It Was Really Grim, Because We Could See How It Had Been For The Last Six Years, And It Had Everything Pointing In That Direction For The Next Six Years If Not Worse. At This Point We Decided We Were Going To Stop Playing, What We Thought We Should, To Get Paid, And It All, Play What We Wanted Like, We Had Always Jammed Jazz Together And Done A Bit Of Blues And Stuff, And At Some Clubs We Used To Do A Gig At 10:00 To 11:00 Of Stuff Which Was In Vogue To Get The Bread (Money) And Then Go And Do What We Liked. I Would Get About Five People Who Were Really Into It, And That Used To Give Us More Pleasure Than Anything."

Question:
So This Was The Turning Point In Your Career?

Answer – Alvin Lee: "Yeah".

Question:
What Were You Called During This Period? The Jaybirds?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
No, We Dropped The "S" Off To Be A Bit More Trendy, And We Were The "Jay Bird". Then We Changed To The "BluesTrip" And We Did The Marquee Under The Name Of The "Bluesyard" And Nobody Liked Us; John Gee Didn’t Like Us, And I Still Think To This Day, He Doesn’t Know We Were The BluesYard. But During This Period We Were Really Together, And The Epitome Of Everything That Was Not Commercial. If It Looked As If The Audience Were Liking It, We Would Not Do It. We Were The Opposite Of Being Commercial, We Wanted To Play What We Liked."

Question:
It Was A Bit Masochistic?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
Yes It Was, We Really Wanted People To Hate Us. We Were Still Pretty Pissed Off With The Whole Musical Scene. Then We Decided That People Did Make Bread Out Of Jazz And Blues, And There Was A Band Around Called, "Cock A Hoop" Who Were Getting 20 Quid A Night, Which Was Cool…And Their Manager Was Chris Wright And Like We Told Him, That We Were Much Better Than Cock A Hoop, And We Could Blow Them Off Any-Day. We Were Much Better Musicians And All That Bull, And We Did An Audition For Him For Ten Quid In Manchester – I Think We Made About Four Shillings Each For The Time We Had Taken Out For The Petrol Money, And Split It At The End. A Few Places Thought We Were Very Good, The Hip Places, Where The Promoter Was Interested In The Music And Not Just Getting The Money From The Kids."

Question:
Were You Writing A Lot?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
No, I Just Used To Mess Around and Jam Things. Anyway, We Talked Chris Wright Into Moving Down To London, Which Was A Good Move, And We Got The Name Of "Ten Years After" – Leo Lyons Picked It Out Of Almost 100 Names, Which We Narrowed Down To 20 We Liked. We Got Ten Years After Out Of The Radio Times, We Liked The Name Because It Didn’t Pin Us Down Musically, Didn’t Mean Anything, It Was Very Abstract. And Then We Got A Residency At The Marquee, Which Did Quite Well. We Grew From Strength To Strength As They Say, And We Got The Jazz Festival Thing, What Is It At Windsor, The 7^Th Jazz Festival At The Time – And We Went Down Well There.

That Was Followed By An Audition A Decca Records With A Producer Named….I’ve Forgotten His Name, He’ll Be Glad About That, Because They Turned Us Down, And Then Three Months Later They Approached Us (To Sign A Contract) Which Appealed To Our Sense Of Humour."

Question:
By This Time The Name Was Getting Around?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
Yeah, That Was Really Going Well. That’s Why They Approached Us. We Were Doing Good In London. Like, We Were Playing Up North And Getting Thrown Out Of Gigs. One Guy Sais, "It’s Bands Like You That Are Ruining The Ball-Room Business"! Another Guy Said, "I Like What You Are Trying To Do, But If I Let You Go On Again, The Kids Will Tear The Place Down." We Had Quite A Few Places Like That, We Would Rather Go Down Very Well Or Die A Horrible Death; There Were No In-betweens in Those Days. We Still Had This Masochistic Trip. We Weren’t Trying To Please Anybody; If They Didn’t Like Us, We Didn’t Like Them. And With That Policy, We Really Seemed To Get It Together. We Put The First Album Out, Which Did OK, And Then We Had Heard That It Had Done Well In A Place Called America, Which We Had Never Not Even Thought About. So We Got A Telegram From Bill Graham Saying, If We Ever Got Over There, He Would Back Us. So, We Got An American Tour Together, And The Whole Thing Went Zoom."

Question:
Is There Any Particular Time When, Or Place Where, You Can Say That You Made It? Was It The Marquee Residency?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
Right, Because It Was The First Time We Had Played To People Who Wanted To Listen, Rather To Anything Else. That Really Inspired Us, Like After The First Few Gigs We Thought, Well They Really Do Want To Listen To Us, So We Started Trying Acoustic Numbers, Different Things, This And That, A Lot Of Experimation."

Question:
There Have Been Reports From The States That People Are Trying To Isolate You From The Rest Of The Group, Turn You Into A Super-Star, And Make You Travel In Your Own Limousine Separately From The Others. True?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
That’s A Complete Fabrication. I Mean, I Do Get Super-Starred Up A Bit Because I’m The Singer, The One The Light Goes On. But There’s No Pressure In That Range At All. It’s Nice To Know That People Want To Listen To Me, But Sometimes It Gets To The Point Where It Is Beyond Listening. They Just, Some Audiences, In The Less Cool Places Can’t Experience …It’s A Very Diluted Form Of Beatlemania, I Suppose."

Question:
But It Will Never Be Alvin Lee And Ten Years After?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
No, I Mean, If People Choose To Say That, Then This Is What Happens. Some Say, Like Oh, Alvin Lee, Leader And Star Of Ten Years After, Then Other People Say, Ah, Ego-Tripping Alvin Lee. It’s Got Nothing To Do With Us – Me, Or Any Of The Others."

Question:
So What Do You Envisage (Envision) Doing In Three Or Four Years Time? Will Ten Years After Still Exist?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
I Don’t Know, I Don’t Care To Think About It. I Know That I Will Always Be Playing Something, Somewhere, To Somebody, But Who With? If The Band Ceases To Play Together, Then We Will Just Have To See What Happens. We Have Never Aimed For Anything Musically, You Know, We Have Never Said, Let’s Try And Become Super-Stars And Do This. It’s Just Happened And Its All Very Flattering, Nice And Rewarding. But It Would Be A Failure For Us To Revert To Thinking, What Do People Want Now? So, Musically We Will Take Ourselves As Far As We Can Go. These Bands Who Make A Couple Of Albums And Then Break Up Because They Can’t Go Any Further Usually Do So Because Of Head Problems And Ego Trips Rather Than The Music. But We Have Been Into (Through) All That And Come Out Okay, So I Don’t Really See Any Problems."

Question:
How About The Problems Of The Musicial Scene In Britain?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
Well, Technique Is Better, Musicians As Such Are Getting Better. It’s Bound To Happen. When I Was Learning To Play Guitar, The Popular Things To Kind Of Learn From Were Very Basic Pop. You Had To Search Around To Find Anybody Who Was Laying Down Anything More Musical. Now Everybody From Miles Davis To Roland Kirk Is Heard Of By Anybody Interested In Music At All. So You Have To Get A Much Vaster (Larger) Scene To Pick Things Off From."

Question:
But, Surely It Is Hard For Rock To Go (Get) Beyond A Certain Limit, Because Then It Does Not Become Rock Anymore, Does It?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
If You Call It What It Basically Is "Beat-Music"Then It Has Never Died At All. Bassically, What Is Appealing To Most People About Music Is A Beat. It Is Right To Get Away From Beats And Basic Formats, And Some Have Done It, But ….  I Like The Beat It Is Kind Of Animal Instinct, And The More Intellectual Music Lovers Usually Get Into The Reasons Why And Where It Is Progressing, But It Is Still Basically Beat Music."

Question:
But How Far Can Rock Go Before It Becomes Something Else?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
I Don’t Know. It Has Progressed A Long Way From The Rock Which Bill Haley Was Playing. (Released In 1954) Yes, And Also In The Paripheral Interest That Are Connected With The Music. Their Appears To Be A Drive At Present To Establish A Rock Culture. When I Was A Teeny-Bopper Fan Of Elvis Presley, I Used To Read These Magazines About How He Used To Comb His Hair, And People Used To Write Letters To Him Like Saying, My Mother Says I Shouldn’t Have My Hair Combed In A D.A. and Have Long Side-Boards, What Do You Think? Now It Has All Become Intellectualised, It Is On A Sociological Basis; It Is Now A Way Of Actual Life Rather Than A Fantasy. The Beatles Led A Lot Of These Sociological Changes (Hair and Beatle Boots) – But Now There Are Attempts To Relate Rock To Everything, Such As Politics And The Chicago Conspiracy Trial. It Was Never Like This In The Days Of Elvis, And All You Are Getting Really Is A Lot Of Different People’s Theories. The More Intellectual Minds, The People Who Create These Theories Have The More Intense The Whole Thing Seems To Become."

Question: Is Your Name Really Alvin? Answer – Alvin Lee: No, I Left The Other Name Behind In School. But It’s Irrelevant, You Know. Question: Cedric? Answer – Alvin Lee: No, It Is Graham, Actually It All Goes Back To The Old Days In Nottingham With The Jail-Breakers, When We Got Round A Coffee Table And Said, Let’s Get Some Groovy Names, Alvin Is The Only Thing I Answer To Now. (It Came From Alvin and The Chipmunks = "Alvin" and Guitarist Albert Lee = "Lee" = Alvin Lee).

Question:
How Old Are You?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
25.  26 In December. Sagittarius With Aquarius Rising, They Tell Me.

(Born December 19, 1944).

Question:
What Is Your Reaction To The Success Of The Single "Love Like A Man"?

Answer – Alvin Lee:
I Don’t Know. I’ve Always Been Shy Of Pop Parades, Because It’s Such A Fickle Little Scene. The Drag Is That The Single Isn’t Very Relative To Us. It Was Cut Off The Album, (Cricklewood Green1970) The Solo Was Chopped Out, And It Was All For The States As An Advert For The Album. I’d Like To Think That The Reason It Was A Success Over Here Is That The B-Side Was A Live Cut. We Didn’t Put The Live Cut On The B-Side In The States, We Released A Track From Our Last Album, And It Didn’t Do So Well Over There. We Did Once Record A Single For The Actual Idea Of A Single, But We Scrapped The Whole Thing Because We Thought It Was Too Unrelative To What We Were Doing Musically. You Know, It Was Nice Soul, And It Could Probably Have Got Into The Top Ten, But It Was Not Really Anything To Do With What We Were Doing."

Question:
Why Haven’t You Appeared On Top Of The Pops To Promote Your Single?

Answer - Alvin Lee:
We Have Made A Point Of Not DoingThat Because I Think That Is A Very, Very Poor Programme. It’s Unprintable What I Think About It. It’s Just A Conveyor Belt. We Have Been Approached, They Wanted Us On, But We Can’t Represent Ourselves Miming Or Even Playing Live To A Two Minute Number. All We Would Be Doing Then Would Be Selling To The Nation, Something That Does Not Exist. We Need At Least Eight Minutes To Do Something That Is Relative To What We Play. And Even Then, Television As A Music Medium I Do Not Like, Because It’s Not A Thing You Concentrate On. It’s Not A Thing You Sit And Get Into, It’s Like A Noise In A Corner."

Question:
What Do You Think Then, About Pop Films? Woodstock, Obviously, Comes To Mind.

Answer – Alvin Lee:
Woodstock Is Very Good, The Camera Techniques And Everything Are Very Fine. It’s A Very Artisitic Film, And Being A Documentary It’s Very Valid. But Now Because Of The Success Of Easy Rider And Woodstock, We Have Been Offered, I Have Been Offered A Film Part In The States, Which Is Just Like A Commerical Hype. The Story Was That We We’re An English Group (Band) In The States And We Go To Texas Because We Hear That Robert Johnson Is Alive, We Get Locked Up On A Drugs Charge, And We Get Bailed Out By A Bird In A White Cadillac. It’s Really Yuk! I Mean It’s Far Out, Filming Would Be Really Interesting….But It’s Back To The Powers, The Commerical Powers; The Studios Say All These Cats At Woodstock Are Draws Now (Famous Now).

Like, If I Was To Be In A Film, False Modesty Aside, It Would Probably Do A Certain Amount Of Business, Because The Name’s There. So That’s Why We Get The Offers. But Unless We Get Anything That Has Any Artistic Value At All, Forget It. It’s Nice To Be In A Position Where You Can. To Turn Around And Say, It’s A Load Of Rubbish, Go And Stuff It.