
Photos by Charlie Auringer -
Detroit, Michigan 1973







Photo by Charlie Auringer

Record
Mirror – January 1, 1972

Ten Years
After have been awarded
their first gold disc, for
sales worth in excess of
$1,000,000 for their album,
“A Space In Time”. The group
will make its first tour of
the British University
Circuit since 1969 this
month. The dates are:
Reading January 8th,
Birmingham 13th,
Sheffield 14th,
Lancaster 15th,
Cardiff 19th,
Liverpool 21st,
Leeds 22nd,
Brighton
25th, Nottingham
27th, Salford 28th,
and Lancaster 29th.
TYA will be
supported by Jude, a new
group formed by ex-Procol
Harum guitarist Robin Trower
and former Jethro Tull
drummer Chris Bunker, on the
dates at Cardiff, Brighton
and Nottingham. At
Sheffield, Salford and
Lancaster, Supertramp will
be the supporting act.
|

29 January 1972

|

MUSIK EXPRESS - February
1972

|

February 1972
“Alvin Lee
and Ten Years After did a tour
of Scandinavia with us
supporting (Patto). On the first
night we played an absolute
perfect set, and not one person
applauded. NOT ONE!
Then Ten
Years After come on, they hadn’t
played for six months. Ric Lee,
their drummer was so rusty, it
was unbelievable. It was like
Sweep playing the drums, with
Sooty on the magic organ! And
the audience went crazy. It made
me wonder, what it was all
about…certainly not about going
on and playing well. Anyway,
Alvin Lee couldn’t believe how
sensational and extraordinary
Ollie Halsall, our guitarist
was. He’d never heard him
before, and he absolutely
flipped. So he got a Revox tape
recorder, and recorded every
single Patto gig on the tour.
Alvin even used to travel from
gig to gig in our van. He just
wanted to be with Ollie”.
From John Halsey - Patto’s drummer
24 February 1972 - Stockholm,
Sweden
3 March 1972 - Berlin, Germany
Danish
Magazine "vi unge" February
1972


Poster,
Danish Magazine "vi unge"
|
|
TEN
YEARS AFTER
in
Düsseldorf, Germany
5.3.1972
Photos
taken by
Hans
Hübner
Courtesy
of
B &
D
9. März
1972 Münster
Brigitte's
original ticket DM 9,50
|


|
The
following photos were taken by Hans Hübner - 5
March 1972 at Philipshalle Düsseldorf
|



6 March 1972 - Offenburg

|
DISC
-
March 25, 1972

“Alvin
Lee on the Hassles of Being a Success”
Alvin Lee is currently suffering from a surfeit of
everything. He’s had too much touring, too much hype,
too much idolatry. Nowadays the band can’t play
without being drowned by screaming or a constant barrage
of blue flash bulbs from photographers. They’re
hounded at airports and their records are bootlegged.
“As
a band we were always thinking, perhaps we were being
successful and achieving something, but this is the
first year we’ve felt we’ve actually done it to some
degree. Before we were still kind of struggling to
control what we were doing, and now it’s settled down.
Tours come easily; the music changes, it’s almost
boring because nobody’s struggling any more. “I used
to enjoy the days when we’d get into the van together
and sit in it for five hours, our heads were much more
together then. Now there’s no hassle and you have a
clockwork schedule to follow, and a tour is run like a
campaign. It
completely does away with that feeling of companionship.”
Alvin
is talking at his large Berkshire home. It is homely and
comfortable, with lots of bric-a-brac gathered on tours.
One room is devoted to his photography and filming, a
passionate hobby, which seems to be fast overtaking the
music, with a screen that pulls down from the ceiling,
and lots of big cushions sprawled on the floor for happy
viewing.
I Want To Make A Film
He
runs through some excellent slides he’s taken in
America, France and here and there. He undoubtedly has
photographic talent, and is still very proud of the
article a photographic magazine did on him. We also
listen to some tapes of numbers for the next album,
which the band recorded in France recently, using the
“Rolling Stones” mobile unit. They have captured a
raw, driving bite not often heard offstage, with some
beautiful rock and blues numbers. They hired a chateau
to record in and used the vast marble hall so the drums
have a metallic bounce, and the organ echoes off into
the distance. Alvin
was amazed at how much was due to the unit, and how much
to its psychological effect.
“Another
drag about being successful,” says Alvin, “is having
to record out of the country to avoid tax. I wish it
would all be logical and straightforward, but instead
you get more and more into sympathy with Ray Davies
singing about the taxman taking all his dough. “It’s
unfair anyway because you’ve got ten years maximum in
this job, unless you want to go on and do cabaret work,
and there’s no way I’m going to be doing that. I
want to get into producing and recording; I want to make
a film. There’s so many things I want to do, it’s
like standing at a multi-crossroads.” Before we go any
further, let it be stressed, that this doesn’t in any
way mean Ten Years After will split. A group that has
been together for as long, and through as much as they
have, doesn’t just cave in overnight. Alvin is merely
taking stock of his thoughts; pausing before starting
their thirteenth tour of America. Since
the hoo-hah following Woodstock, the posters, the
superstar treatment that Alvin got, which he didn’t
want, he’s obviously been doing a lot of thinking,
which has left him feeling rather wistful and nostalgic
for the pre-success days.
“We
just wanted musical success really, the money is great
when you earn it, it allows you to put things back into
what you’re doing. Before we were just starving to do
well, we were so hell-bent on getting through, we would
work every night we could. When we did make it, we had
so much work coming in, we were on our knees, and not
daring to turn any of it down.”
“You
see, we need to reach beyond our capabilities, and now
we come to the point where, are we best to reach a bit
further, or are we best to play the things we’re doing
well? We’re going to try and do some stock old blues
things, and see how that comes out, integrated with
other live things. The band isn’t the kind of band
that can just play in a studio. “The Beatles reached
out in the studio, and didn’t play live at all, and a
lot of bands are doing more studio than live things now,
but we’ve always been more of a live band, and you get
a feedback from an audience, which keeps you in touch,
and stops you going out on a limb. “But concerts, in
some places become more and more difficult. In Germany
recently, there were fifty photographers out in front
with flash bulbs going the whole time. It was terrible
for us, and terrible for the audience. I stopped playing
and got somebody to come onstage and tell them to stop
in German, but they all started up again three minutes
later. And once you begin to notice the hassles, it’s
a psychological thing, and it gets worse, like at
Madison Square Gardens, about two percent kept quiet.
English Tours Are Fantastic
“English
tours are fantastic because they just sit and listen, we
want to do more in England, but the commercial aspects
mean you have to play the bigger places, abroad as well,
and of course the places where the money is, there’s
thousands of people pushing and shoving and screaming,
and you feel like a circus freak.” Alvin now realises
the need for him to get into other things for relaxation,
and diversification, otherwise his music will suffer.
“I need to diversify my interest, I’m so wrapped up
in music, I just get technically involved and bogged
down. The music I enjoy playing now on my own is
virtually Music. I need a fresh outlook, something I can
get into.”
Alvin
has wanted to make a film for some time. He wanted to
take a camera and sound crew on the road with the band
some years back, and make a film about touring, but then
“200 Motels” came out, and said more or less
everything he wanted to. Alvin also wants to produce a
group, although he realises the irony of the situation,
as he himself is terribly anti-producers.
“I would never use one because I believe a true musician
is the only person to produce the music on record. Lots
of producers will say, “Oh, we’ll make that bass a bit
more like James Brown.” But my ideals about music seem
to be less and less important. But to produce a group
properly, I must be completely into their music, and
respect them.”
Alvin also despairs of the music that
is selling in these days. Ten Years After struggled for
years unheard, but playing the music they loved, and
believed in. “But now, you get bands playing so-called
progressive things because it’s the thing to play, and
it’s gone very shallow. I get sad when I hear all this
middle of the road stuff too, because it will mean that
everything we struggled for musically, over the past
four years, everything the under-ground brought
over-ground, will slip away and mean nothing, and more
serious music won’t have got a hold.”
Alvin
also wants to do some more electronic music, which he
experiments with endlessly at home. He won’t use a
Moog, because he reckons that’s cheating, but fiddles
around with microphones on brass plates, and echo
effects. He’s got hours of tape, and is considering
giving it to somebody to put out if they’re interested.
!I
mostly write things for the band, but what we put out is
an amalgamation of all of us, so for every one number of
mine we do, there’s eight the others haven’t liked,
that I’ve still got on tape. I’m not saying
they’re fantastic, but they’re a lot better than
some things I’ve heard that people have put out.”
Article
written by Caroline
Boucher
|
 |
|



Ten
Years After - Alvin
Lee & Company (Deram Records)
This
LP, is a compilation of previously
unreleased material recorded prior to
their label switch, (To Chryalis Records) would
seem to be comprised of mainly throw-away cuts which is
definitely not the case. The material is easily
as exciting and diverse as that exhibited on
their “Space In Time” LP. (1971 – Columbia
Records)
Alvin
Lee again establishes
that he is a consummate guitarist, his licks
irresistibly insistent.
Check
out – “The Sounds” – “Boogie On” and “Portable People”.

|
New
Musical Express April 1, 1972 |
Ten Years After –
"Alvin Lee & Company" 1972
This is a
collection of songs that didn’t make it onto the
studio albums during the 1967-1969 period. The
original album features six tracks, the last one being
a mini-jam-session called, “Boogie On”, which uses up
as much running time as the other five combined. The
jam evolves around a simple riff, that’s played over
and over and from time to time being interrupted by
Chick Churchill’s organ, Ric Lee’s drums, Leo Lyon’s
bass and Alvin Lee’s guitar solos, that feature all of
the usual aural gimmicks. However, the first five
songs on the first side are a totally different
matter. Plain old boogie-woogie songs, represented by,
“Rock Your Mama” and “Hold Me Tight”. Then there’s
some old blues with the Robert Johnson classic,
“Standing At The Crossroads”, then a simple sounding
bluegrass shuffle called, “Portable People”. It’s only
“The Sounds” that comes across as an “experimental”
piece, complete with the obligatory synth effects with
a grim and desperate mood.
These
out-takes all fit into the criteria of “Good but not
Perfect” category, as each one of them shows distinct
flaws, which make it understandable exactly why they
never made it onto the official studio albums in the
first place. They come across as exactly what they
are, generic, underdeveloped and inferior to other
similar ones. The reason being, these tracks were
never intended to be released in the first place, the
Decca Record Company high jacked
Ten Years
After’s unfinished work, when the band decided to
change record companies, and that’s how this release
came about. To cash in on the bands current success.
By Gene
Herbert CA.
|
Ten Years After – “Alvin Lee and Company” - 1972
This originally surfaced as a six-track retrospective
in 1972, after the band left Decca for Chrysalis. It
now includes three extra cuts, the seven-minute blues
B-side, “Spider In My Web”, and the mono-only single
edits of two of their most famous tracks, “Hear Me
Calling” and “I’m Going Home”.
The original album was dominated by the fifteen-minute
“Stonedhenge” out-take, “Boogie On”, which is exactly
the way it sounds. The 1968 export single “Rock Your
Mama” and “Hold Me Tight” are in a similar vein, while
the live “Crossroads” isn’t very exciting.
More worthwhile are the brooding “The Sounds”, which
opens the CD,
and the 1968 A-side “Portable People”, which belongs in
the same distinguished company as Canned Heat singles like
“On The Road Again”.
|



1972, April 3
Bern, Switzerland
Many thanks to
Christoph Müller for his contributions |

|
 |
Ten Years After in der Festhalle Bern,
Ostermontag 3. April "Der Bund", 5. April 1972


|

Ten Years After with Procol Harum
|

April 28, 1972 (our thanks to Alessandro B.)

Ten Years After in concert,
April
29, 1972
at the University of the Pacific - Amos Alonzo
Stagg Memorial Stadium, which is a Stockton,
California Landmark. It first opened in 1950 and overnight
it became the city’s entertainment centre. The Stagg
Stadium really was the centrepiece of the Stockton Campus,
because it hosted so many big sports and concert events. A
lot of our alumni have a lot of fond memories of events
that took place there. When the rock group Ten Years After
performed at the stadium, the opening bands were, Wild
Turkey and the Tower of Power. On May 5, 1972 the rock
band Chicago also performed at the stadium. The Ten Years
After Set List, is as follows:
- One Of These
Days
- Once There Was
A Time
- Good Morning
Little School Girl
- Hobbit
- Slow Blues In C
- Classical Thing
- Scat Thing
- I Can’t Keep
From Crying Sometimes
- I’m Going Home
- Choo – Choo –
Moma
- Baby Won’t You
Let Me Rock and Roll You
- Sweet Little
Sixteen
13 Roll Over Beethoven |
|

All was not
peaceful at this concert. Garry Lemmons, a nineteen year
old Madesto, California cannery worker, was killed and
another man wounded from a “wild gun shot” during an
altercation at the Pacific Memorial Stadium Concert that
featured England’s Ten Years After, the Bay Area’s own
Tower of Power and Ex-Jethro Tull members who formed Wild
Turkey.
This and the fact
that three men suffered strychnine poisoning at a Chicago
Transit Authority concert in 1972, which drew an estimated
20,000 people, brought an end to the concert run there.
Marc Corren recalled that on May 10, 1969 – the stadium
hosted the “Pacific Pop Festival” which featured: Santana,
Cold Blood, Elvin Bishop and Sons of Champin.
A very sad ending to something that started out so good
and positive.

The Audience Photo Above Was Taken By
Alvin Lee From The Band's Stage Perspective |

Record Mirror – April 29, 1972
Ten Years After –
Alvin Lee & Company (Deram)
This is an album,
that it must be pointed out, that Ten Years After are
totally against the release of, since moving on to another
record company (Columbia). Only six tracks are featured
here, including the mammoth “Boogie On” lasting over
fourteen minutes.
Heads around the
Lyceum might bob to a live performance like this, but on
record it’s pretty disastrous, with each member taking a
solo outing on their own instrument, then join in all
together for the big build up. The opening track “The
Sounds” has a fair vocal treatment and the most
interesting aspect of “Rock Your Mama” is the vocal
effect, that is alternating between each speaker in
stereo. But generally, it’s all pretty uninspiring.
Article by V.M |
POP
Magazine, May 1972


New
Musical Express 6/5/1972
Question: To Get Into Another
Completely Different Kettle of Fish, As They Say.
What Do You Feel About Decca’s
Release of Alvin Lee & Company. I Know We Mentioned It
Earlier, But We Didn’t Completely Go Into It. Could You
Tell Me About The Material On That Particular Album?
Answer: It’s Left Over From
Albums. It’s Left Over From "Stoneheng". "B" Sides of
Singles Which Were Put Out and Were Nothing To Do With Us
Anyway. You Can’t Tell Them They Can’t, It’s Like Saying
You Can’t Have Any Money – "Well" – You Say, "If You
Release A Single It’s The Record Company Promotion For The
Album. We Don’t Do "Top of the Pops" and We Don’t Do Any
Television. We Won’t Do Any Promotion On It, So Please
Yourself." This Album Is The "B" Sides. One’s A Very Early
Single We Did At The Same Time We Recorded The First
Album. It’s Not Too Bad: Everybody’s Interested To See
What Kind of Material We Decided Not To Put On Our Albums
For Them To Buy. But Apart From That, They Didn’t Consult
Us On What They Call The Packaging of It. They Didn’t Say
They Were Going To Use A Photograph of Me and Call It
"Alvin Lee and Company" If They Had I Would Have Said No.
What In Fact I Said Was, "If They’re Going To Release An
Album of Rubbish, Why Don’t We Look Around Ourselves For
Better Material To Use?
Question: Would You Object To
Decca Releasing "The Best Of…"?
Answer: You Can’t Object. We
Have A Recording Contract Which Everybody Has To Sign,
They Own The Songs. We Can’t
Re-Record With Decca. They’ve Got Thirty-Five Original
Songs, Some of Which We Play Completely Differently Now
Because of Those Deals.
We Signed When We Were A Bit
Green. We Don’t Even Own The Rights To Play The Stuff,
Which Is Sad. But It’s Irrelevent Really, Because We’re
More Concerned In Doing New Stuff. I Don’t Mind Albums
Being Released, As Long As People Know They’re Leftovers.
If They Did Do A "Best Of" It
Could Be Good and It Could Be Bad. There’s Nothing We
Could Do About It. The Thing Is, We Could Do A Better One,
But They Won’t Communicate With Us About It.
Question: How Long Have You Been
Together As A Band, and How Long In The Present Form?
Answer: About Four and a Half
Years. There’s No Reason For The Band Not To Continue In
Its Form For A Long, Long Time. A Band As Old As We Are,
Has A Problem In Keeping Ourselves In Tune With The Music
We Play. The More We Play, The More Rehearsals We Do,
Because The More Used We Get To Hearing What We Do. When
You’re Doing An Extensive Tour – Playing Every Night –
What You’re Doing Is Performing Your Music To The Audience
Every Night. After Awhile, Although There Are Subtle
Differences Which A Musician Could Get Into, It Does Tend
To Sound Much of a Muchness. You Tend To Fall Into What
You Did Last Night, Because "That Sounded Good Enough".
That’s The Kind of Attitude That Comes In. It’s Really
Hard Playing Every Night and Travelling On A Plane.
You Don’t Have Much Time To
Rehearse Or Think of New Ideas. This Is Why We Work In
Tours, Rather Than Just Play. We Do A Tour For A Month,
Play Every Night, Then Throw New Ideas Around. If We Can
Come Out With Three New Numbers For The Next Tour, Well
That’s Enough To Get Into. We Record Every Night
Ourselves. We Always Record Ourselves Live, and We Listen
Back To The New Numbers and Make Changes.
Question: About Two Years Ago
You Nearly Went To Russia, But You Didn’t Go There,
Are You In The Future Planning
To Do Iron Curtain Concerts?
Answer: Well No. That’s One
Thing That "Woodstock" Stopped, Actually Because We Were
Going To Play The Iron Curtain Countries On A Basis of a
Cultural Exchange. "Woodstock"
Led Them To Believe It Would Be
More A Rock ’n’ Roll Concert Than A Cultural Exchange,
Which In All Fairness, It Probably Would. So I Don’t Think
There’s Much Possibility of That Happening Now. We Get
Loads of Letters Now From Iron Curtain Countries. They
Can’t Buy Albums There, They’re So Surpressed, Silly
Things Like They Can’t Buy A Ten Years After Album Or
Anything. It Really Affects These People and They Write
and Say They’ll Exchange Their Czechoslovakian Folk
Records For Anything We Can Let Them Have.
It’s Sad, Sad. Something Like
Music, Man, You Should Be Able To Go and Listen To
Whatever You Want. Ideally, You Should Be Able To Go
Whereever You Want and Say Whatever You Want. But It Does
Seen Difficult In This Over Populated World.
|
 The
Private Life of Alvin Lee
- by
Simon Stable
New
Musical Express May 6, 1972
Alvin
Lee of Ten Years After seems to spend more time on tour than
on holiday, but recently before
yet another American tour, I managed to get to see him at his
country home. After a pleasant and enjoyable chat he played me
a track he’d written and recorded the night before, a number
he’s thinking of putting on the next album. It was
another of his fast foot-tapers with plenty of harmonica and
guitar panning from side to side. He told me he was planning
to call the song “Holy Shit”, though he did say he might
be forced to change the title and some of the words. I’ve
known Lee for about three years and, despite his success,
I’ve always found him to be an easy-to-get-on-with guy. He
is, as the following interview may show, an interesting and
intelligent person.
After
your third album “Stonedhenge”, why did you change
producers? Why produce yourself?
Good
question. Well, when we did our first album we were very new
to the whole recording situation, and our producer was
provided with the studio and we were told to appear at ten
o’clock in the morning and make an album. And it was out in
four days. We were very green. We just recorded all the
numbers we did on tape in the studio. I don’t think at the
time we even heard it until it came out. When it finally did
go out, we were quite disappointed, really, as the result
didn’t seem to have the dynamics of the record we had played
within the studio. And we realised this was down to the
recording techniques. The second album was live, so there was
nothing to do about that. Then we decided to produce ourselves.
Still, being rather green we used the same studios that we’d
been given. It’s a Decca album, so we used a Decca studio.
It only had a four-track machine. There were no facilities for
panning stereo, and what little bit of that we did we had to
have equipment specially made.
We had this little box made to pan across an instrument,
from one side to another. That’s the reason for all the
corny panning, just
one box with one knob on. It was just a matter of getting into
the format. Getting to know what it was all about. We realised
that rather than doing what somebody else suggested, who
wasn’t really interpreting our music the way we wanted it
interpreted, anyway, it would be best doing it ourselves. Even
if you make a mistake, I believe that your own mistakes are
better recorded than someone else’s. Ten Years After
music is quite personal to us as musicians, and I think it
should be recorded our way than the way a third party sees it.
I believe of all musicians , I find it hard to respect a
musician who uses a producer, because I think that if a
musician knows what he wants to put down, he should do it
himself. That’s
where the art of recording comes in, to know how to apply your
music to the tape, to get the results in. We haven’t, to my
own personal satisfaction, done anything at all incredible,
but every album has had good bits, and we’ve learned from
them. So, hopefully, we are in control and will make them
better and better as we go along, which is the logical
progression anyway. I must be putting producers out of
business!
Do
you feel your part in “Woodstock” helped your career as a
musician or not? I mean, it put you in the public eye, but did
you not find you were playing more and more request, and less
and less of the things you actually wanted to do?
Well, we
never play request. We never play anything other than what we
want to do. However “Woodstock” did have considerable
effect. When we did “Woodstock” we didn’t realise it was
going to be such a big thing, just a festival which we had to
arrive at on time. It wasn’t until we got into a helicopter,
and flew in, that we realised what a big thing it was. Even
then, we weren’t to realise how much world attention it
would get, which it did. It was on national news in America
and everything, and that’s more than I expected, so the kind
of publicity we got from being in the “Woodstock” film
initially, like gave us a boost in popularity.
A
lot more people had heard us, where as before “Woodstock”
we were still playing the concert halls and we were still
selling enough albums, we were doing really well. After
“Woodstock”, well we found that more people were coming to
the concert halls, more people were buying the album, but it
was on the strength of “Going Home”, which is a nasty
situation. You can’t take control of it. First, like, a lot
of young kids were coming to the concerts who weren’t
particularly into what we were trying to do, merely into us
having been at “Woodstock”, and it was more or less a kind
a rock ‘n’ roll circus, which is what we’d been trying
to avoid up to then. And it got a bit out of hand, and I did
in fact regret having been in “Woodstock”…fearing it was
going too far out of hand, but we used the opportunity of the
press and that, doing Press articles to say that we wanted
people to get into the structures of the music, and listen to
what we were trying to do as well as rock ‘n’ roll.
EXHILARATED:
I explained, that we rock ‘n’ roll at the end, just to have
a good time. Roland Kirk does the same thing—plays all his
serious structures for two hours, then ends up laying on the
piano playing a twelve-bar. It’s a good way to finish off a
gig: gets
everything out of your system, and everyone can have a good
rave-up and go home feeling exhilarated, which is a good thing.
But I feel that if “Woodstock” had used “I Can’t Keep
From Crying”, it might have been a bit more helpful to us,
‘cos it would have spotlighted the more constructive stuff
we’re doing. But all in all, now that “Woodstock” has
died down, I don’t think it has made much difference. It
might have turned-on a younger audience, maybe they’re now
into something else. I find the straight pop, the
entertainment side of music, has a very select audience.
It’s not something we get involved in. Like singles, we
don’t get involved in them, because you have a hit single,
then “Top Of The Pops”, it doesn’t bring anything that
progresses the band. Like a band that’s nowhere can have a
hit single, and suddenly start getting a reasonable turn out
for their concerts and probably better contracts for their
next single. But they’ve got to keep on recording hit
singles, and to do that there are people that specialise in
aiming hit singles at the mass market. It’s a disgusting ,
soul-destroying kind of business to get into. I believe the
musician should record the sounds he likes and wants to
express, and a lot of it as far as we’re concerned is left
to chance.

When
TYA took off it wasn’t because we aimed to write music at
the audience, it was just that people had picked up on what we
were doing, and the more we did it, the more people got into
it. That’s all it’s ever been really.
When thinking of Ten Years After, one usually thinks of
Alvin Lee rather than the rest of the band. Do you ever feel
any resentment from the others? TYA is a co-op, we all get
paid the same; we all attempt to do the same amount of work;
we all tour the same, because I’m the singer and the lead
guitarist, it was quite on the cards I should be singled out
as the front man, because I stand in the spotlight. It was
intended originally, when we started out, we hoped to make it
four people on an equal level. It was through nothing to do
with ourselves that this Alvin Lee business got picked out, we
didn’t encourage it.
We had to disown this new Decca album
they’re bringing out of old tracks, because it’s got Alvin
Lee and Co., and that’s the very thing we’ve been trying
to avoid. We talked about it when it happened and said,
“look, this looks like it’s going to happen, and there’s
nothing much we can do about it.” When people say Alvin Lee
this and that at concerts, I usually personify what they
either like or don’t like
about the band. It’s just how they refer to the band.
You yourself say that when one thinks of TYA, some people do
think of an Alvin Lee back-up band.
To our minds it isn’t.
It’s not a thing to really get concerned about ourselves,
it’s irrelevant to what we’re trying to do. It’s a kind
a super-star role, which we’ve never encouraged, it’s just
a kind of misunderstanding. I mean, I can explain myself
completely to anyone who calls me a super-star, but I know
very well they don’t know me, they’re just saying that
without enough knowledge, so there’s no answer to it. It’s
a shame that everybody can’t understand every musician that
exists for the true fact of what he’s trying to do. Eric
Clapton is your number one guitarist, and so many people adore
Eric Clapton and hate everyone else for no logical reason,
it’s just the way things go. You can’t control it, it’s
just the way people think.
Your
last album “A Space In Time” didn’t do incredibly well
in England. Do you feel this had anything to do with the fact
that American copies were imported and on sale long before its
British release? Or was it that the album wasn’t up to
standard?
Well,
I wouldn’t say up to standard, I think the standard as far
as we are concerned was better in some ways. The major reason
it didn’t do as well in your album charts was due to us not
releasing it at the right time in England. We were pressured
to get a release date with the new Columbia label in the
States, so we released it there first. It was three months
before it was released in Europe, and a lot of European sales
were lost because of the import shops buying it from the
States.
NO
IMPORTS: That helped the sales in the USA, it was a gold album
in the States, the first one, so obviously it was received
there better than anything else we’d done. That’s the
reason I was given when I said “what’s happened to the
last album?” I think it’s true. Our next album is going to
be released on the same day world-wide, so every market that
sells it will be selling their own copies, not importing it
in.
What
did you feel about your concert at the Colosseum. Was the
Sunday night better than the midnight, Saturday?
Oh
yeah, The midnight show was a bit slow, the audience seemed
tired. Those things like having to wait an hour from the time
you got in, to when the first band played, always affect a
concert. That can be the difference between going down well
and having chairs thrown at you, whether the road managers and
equipment function well, and it all comes together in time or
not. If it doesn’t go well there’s nothing you can do
except get it together as quickly as possible. I wasn’t
disappointed with any of the concerts.To my mind there’s no
good concert hall in London. We didn’t play the Rainbow
unfortunately, that might have changed my mind.
You see, we were playing to four balconies at the Colosseum, an
eighth of the audience. With our spherical array of speakers
and horns we can hope to cover about a hundred degrees of
sound, which is about forty percent getting good sound. It’s
just acoustic problems and technical difficulties in
projecting the sound into the audience, which is always a
problem where ever you go.
UNFORTUNATE:
There will always be people getting bass boom, always
be people hearing too much guitar, too much vocal. I think
people who sit in the middle, about ten or fifteen rows back,
get a good sound and know what’s going on. It’s
unfortunate that someone standing at the back gets the sound
blocked off by people standing up in the front.
It’s
Better At Festivals, in Fact?
Right,
you’ve got no acoustic problems, and you’re in the open
air, which is always nice. There is a problem being in the
open air that is easy to overcome, you just have to use a lot
of power and a lot of speakers. It’s when you get sound
bouncing around halls, hitting the ceiling and bouncing back.
When you play loud, it’s a different case. You get good
sound drifting across an auditorium, reaching a listener up on
an acoustic level, but when you’ve got a lot of sound coming
out of the speakers, then suddenly the corners of the room,
and what the ceilings are made of, start affecting the sound.
These are the problems, more or less.
You’ve
just been on an extensive European tour and you frequently
tour America and Japan. Which countries do you prefer to play
most and why?
Well,
it changes, at the moment I really enjoy playing in England.
The last concert we did, you could hear a pin drop all night
long, and people really sat listening, getting into what we
were doing. When it came to like rock ‘n’ roll at the end,
they got into that and had a jive around, which is—as far as
the format of our concerts go—perfect . More recently than
that we did the colleges, which was like getting back to the
roots-razzle-bit after playing Madison Square Gardens and the
Philadelphia Spectrum. Twenty thousand people. Really it was
almost a shock. The first college we did was at Reading
University: it’s just a little wooden hall with about 1,300
people in it. You
go on stage and there’s none of this Ten Years After bit,
awoah! You just walked out and said hullo, and people were
sitting there and it was like getting back to the old club bit,
I really enjoyed it. I felt you had to really kind’ve work;
get things to work on stage. At a really big concert it
becomes a bit like a circus, often comparable to feeding lions
to the Christians at the Colosseum in Rome. You stir up so
much excitement: by the time the band goes on you sometimes
feel that what you play isn’t that important. That’s a
wrong feeling to take, but sometimes it occurs to you when you
do a lot of concerts. When you walk on stage and people cheer
for two minutes you feel flattered but are they going to
listen to what we are going to do? And half the while,
they’re cheering through the first three numbers as well.
They’re just having a good time, which is great, but I like
people to listen to the music. If you go down well I like to
feel it’s been earned—rather than just happened.
Are
you going to do any festivals here?
I
hope so. I want to see festivals continue myself, for more
reasons than one. I don’t know of any plans to do a festival,
but we’ll spend time in England after we’ve recorded the
next album. We’ve got possible dates for festivals, but
nothing’s been confirmed.
On
your last album you added strings to your last track—are you
in fact thinking of adding horns on the next one?
Yeah,
thinking of it. On an album we try and show where our music is
at, but for variety, we try and have a couple of tracks to
play around with, and we always find it nice to do a track
which is out of character so everybody says ‘Why Good Lord
This is Nothing Like Ten Years After!!!! So therefore, if you put a nice soft mellow un-Ten Years
After between two Hard TYA tracks, it adds to the overall
variety of the album. You don’t get this grind, grind, grind,
grind of some rock albums, because they’re all the same
tempo throughout. So for that reason alone, we really enjoyed
doing the strings on the last album.
It was just an experiment to see what we could do with
strings, and I’m really happy with it. It’s one of the
best string things there is. It had very little to do with
TYA’s music as people would think of it, but there again,
music doesn’t really mean that it’s just what people have
picked up through things like “Woodstock”, and variety is
quite important to us.
We’ve
just been recording in the South of France. We hired a big
house there and the Rolling Stones’ mobile truck, and
whether we were influenced by being in the Rolling Stones’
truck, or whether it’s that the Rolling Stones truck has its
own sound, I’m not sure—but a lot of the tracks we did
there sounded very similar to the Stones. So rather than just
forget them, just for a joke we got a saxophonist from
Supertramp to overdub some sax parts on it and beef it up. If
you listen to the last Stones album without the overdubs
it’s quite surprising, and if you listen to some Beatles
tracks without the overdubs there’s nothing there. Some
people specialise in overdubs, but we don’t. We specialise
in the basic four instruments. But I don’t see any reason
why, for one or two tracks, we don’t have a
nine-hundred-piece orchestra just for the variety of it all.
It’s a groove to do, so we’ll probably get into something
like that.
INFLUENCE:
Your
best album to my mind was “Cricklewood Green”, and the
best track on that was “Circles”. I liked it because it
was acoustic. Are you planning more things in this vein?
This
was a side trip again. It was a direct influence from
“Astral Weeks”
by Van Morrison, 1968
which moved me considerably at the time,
and I used that kind of format; the folk acoustic format, to
say something I wanted to say. Which was life going round in
circles, which is a pretty…..well, it was just a phase I was
going through. I mean. I still think that way sometimes. It
was more of a folk outlet to me….more like a truthful
thought….a thoughtful thought being sung instead
of spoken.
I
haven’t had any other ideas along the same vein. We could
always do something like that. We did acoustic stuff on the
first album and third album. It’s not planned. It was where
we were at, really. I mean, the last album showed we could
play some nice tunes, so I’m happy with that, that’s past.
I think we have to show now, more of our expression of our own
selves and our instruments.
|

New
Musical Express
May
13, 1972
This
is the concluding interview by Simon Stable with Ten
Years After guitarist Alvin Lee. Here Lee talks about
his film ambitions, and discusses Ringo Starr’s
venture in the same field.

Simon:
Alvin, I know you’ve been into photography and making
your own private films for some time. Are you planning
in the future to make a full length feature film. With
perhaps your own electronic sound track?
Alvin:
I’d very much like to. At the moment I’m finding out
how much practical experience I lack to do that. However
perseverance could bring something out like that along
those lines.
Looking
at the world of commercial films, it’s rather
disenchanting ---a bit like looking at pop singles.
I’d much rather be involved in something artistic, in
making a documentary of what a camera sees rather than
making a story about whatever---combining visuals and
sound to create an environment for the watcher.
All of this very much in the air at the moment.
It’s all gossip, depending on what type of filming or
video system is going to come out.
If
you can get your hands on a video studio that will
convert your tape into film, you’ve got a lot more
technical control with what you can do with the visuals.
I’m well ahead on sound, I’m quite confident I can
do a good soundtrack to any movie, and I’m quite
confident I can do a good movie, but I’m not quite
sure what direction I want it to be yet.
Simon:
Ringo’s doing this documentary of a rock ‘n’ roll
star…(Note: I believe this movie to be “That’ll Be
The Day” released in 1973 which also
features Keith Moon).
Alvin:
I wouldn’t want to get involved in anything like that.
I mean it could be good actually. Anything can be good,
but more likely than not it will be more like light
entertainment than an artistic masterpiece. Ideally a
film I make will be more like an album, being kind of
what happens with the camera with the sound at the time
of making it, and whether it’s good or bad will depend
on whether the heads behind the film are together. To a
point, you have to pick something good to say in a film,
the way that you have to pick something good to say in a
song. It’s the way that you do it that makes it
artistic or a rip-off, isn’t it?
Simon:
Would you like to direct a film yourself?
Alvin:
I’d like to be involved in it, but I’d like
practical experience, meet somebody whose done some work
on films. Obviously, it’d help me a lot. I think I’d
have a few original ideas to contribute.
Simon:
To get into another completely different kettle of fish,
as they say. What do you feel about Decca’s release of
Alvin Lee & Company. I know we mentioned it earlier,
but we didn’t completely go into it. Could you tell me
about the material on that particular album?
Alvin:
It’s left over from albums. It’s left over from
“Stonehenge”. “B” sides of singles which were
put out and were nothing to do with us anyway. When you
do an album, the record company will take a single off.
It’s part of their bread and butter.
You can’t tell them they can’t. It’s like
saying you can’t have any money. “Well”, you say
“if you release a single it’s the record company
promotion for the album, and not a single. We don’t do
“Top Of The Pops” and we don’t do any television .
We won’t do any promotion on it---so please yourself.”
So they release them for promotion of the album, and
this album is the “B” sides.
One’s
a very early single we did at the same time we recorded
the first album. It’s not too bad: there’s some nice
jammers and things on it. At the time we turned it down
for release, so obviously we wouldn’t have chosen it
now. Everybody’s interested to see what kind of
material we decided not to put on our albums, so it’s
probably a good album for them to buy, but apart from
that, they didn’t consult us on what they call the
packaging of it. They did say they were going to use a
photograph of me and call it “Alvin Lee and Co.” If
they had I would have said no. What in fact I said was
“If they’re going to release an album of rubbish and
left over tracks, why don’t we look around ourselves
and get some good stuff put on? But they didn’t want
to have anything to do with that.

Simon:
Would you object to Decca releasing “The Best
Of…”?
Alvin:
You can’t object. We have a recording contract which
everybody has to sign---they own the songs. We can’t
re-record any songs which we recorded with Decca.
They’ve got thirty-five original songs, some of which
we play completely differently now because of those
deals, that we signed when we were a bit green. We
don’t even own the rights to play the stuff, which is
sad. But it’s irrelevant really, because we’re more
concerned in doing new stuff. I don’t mind albums
being released, as long as people know they’re
leftovers. If they did do a “Best Of” it could be
good and it could be bad. There’s nothing we could do
about it. The thing is, we could do a better one, but
they won’t communicate with us about it.
Simon:
How long have you been together as a band, and how long
in the present form?
Alvin:
About four and a half years. There’s no reason for the
band not to continue in its form for a long, long time.
A band as old as we are has a problem in keeping
ourselves in tune with the music we play. The more we
play, the more rehearsals we do, because the more used
we get to hearing what we do.
When
you’re doing an extensive tour---playing every
night---what you’re doing is performing your music to
the audience every night. After awhile, although there
are subtle differences which a musician could get into,
it does tend to sound much of a muchness. You tend to
fall into what you did last night because “that
sounded good enough”. That’s the kind of attitude
that comes in. It’s really hard playing every night
and travelling on a plane. You don’t have much time to
rehearse or think of new ideas. This is why we work in
tours rather than just play. We do a tour for a month,
play every night, then throw new ideas around. If we can
come out with three new numbers for the next tour, well
that’s enough to get into. We recorded every night
ourselves. We always record ourselves live, and we
listen back to the new numbers, make changes to them,
and they just progress.
Perhaps
the way to stay interested in your own music is to keep
it progressing, keep it moving. There’s no limitation
in my mind as to what four musicians can do, as long as
they want to keep progressing. As long as all the
members of Ten Years After want to play, and want to
play better, and want to play the music to people, then
there’s no limitations. The only limitations are in
your own head, as soon as you start saying you’re fed
up and you don’t want to do this or that---you’re on
the downward slope.
It
does happen, we do get fed up, instead of breaking up we
rehearse, which is the right way of doing things, and
although we probably won’t be playing the same numbers
in five years time, I don’t see any reason why we
shouldn’t be still making music in five years time.
I
don’t see why there shouldn’t be people that want to
hear Ten Years After in five years time.
There
might not be as many people as now---we might phase out
of popularity, but we don’t stop playing just because
fifty thousand don’t want to hear us. We used to play
to a hundred people, and I’d imagine we still would,
if it got around to that again.
We’re
all opportunists---that’s about the nearest to being a
business musician---but we’re still not out-and-out
entertainers. We don’t put on a show---tell jokes and
things like that, a lot of the business is getting into
that now. You can go and see Jethro Tull and you get an
actual theatrical presentation, which is OK….but I
find it rather limiting to the band, because once
you’ve got your presentation set---once you’ve done
it five times---it all starts seeming like a cliché to
me. If we ever do a tour with a bad band, and they use
the same jokes every night, it all seems a bit
un-artistic to me.
Simon:
Last year, it might have been two years ago now, you
nearly went to Russia, but you didn’t go there---are
you in the future planning to do Iron Curtain countries?
Alvin:
Well no, That’s one thing that “Woodstock” stopped
actually, because we were going to
play the Iron Curtain
countries on a basis of a cultural exchange.
“Woodstock” led them to believe it would be more a
rock ‘n’ roll concert than a cultural
exchange----which in all fairness, it probably would. So
I don’t think there’s much possibility of that
happening now.
We
get loads of letters now from Iron Curtain countries,
saying they can’t buy our albums there. They’re so
suppressed, silly things like they can’t buy a Ten
Years After album or anything. It really affects these
people and they write and say they’ll exchange their
Czechoslovakian folk records for anything we can let
them have. It’s sad, sad.
Something
like music, man you should be able to go and listen to,
whatever you want. Ideally you should be able to go
wherever you want and say what ever you want, but it
does seem difficult in this over populated world.
Special
Thanks
to Simon's wife Judy Dyble for allowing us to use her
personal copy of this third article, written by Simon
Stable.
|

1972 May - French
Magazine BEST

1972 May, French
Magazine EXTRA, No. 18

Poster, May 1972, EXTRA



Mexico Canta No. 377 - 16-VI-72
|
SOUNDS JULY 1, 1972 -
ALVIN LEE in the Talk-in



Alvin
Lee had his producer’s hat on, in the studio doing
overdubs and mixes for Ten Years After’s new album. It was
late at night when we finally got down to the interview and
it made a pleasant change to just sit down and talk rather
than keep to the straight and narrow of questions and
answers. What follows is basically what was on his mind that
night, and obviously the most immediate thing was the new
album. (Rock
And Roll Music To The World)
Lee:
That session we just heard happened in February in the South
of France – we hired a big house there. It was an
experiment really, an expensive experiment, but hopefully
we’re going to get some good tracks out of it. We got the
house and the Rolling Stones Mobile Recording Truck. We
rehearsed for five days, and recorded for five. It was just
to see if we could get a sound out of England, because
we’ve never tried that before. Although we were going to
record them we’re working on them as they are now, because
they’ve got a sound we could never get again. We’ve
got five tracks we’re considering using from there, and
then another ten tracks we’ve just done back here; we’ll
get rough mixes of them all and then decide which ones we
want to use. It’s interesting, but it’s also a hustle
this part of the album, because we’ve done all the
recording and that’s really what counts, the performance
with the whole band together.
I
can get into overdubs and put something here and something
else there, it’s interesting but it doesn’t change the
structure. The first track down is the one that counts
really, no matter what you put down afterwards.
Steve:
Do you find it difficult to change roles from musician to
producer?
Alvin:
Not really. I’ve always been into the recording side.
I’ve got a natural leaning towards it anyway, so part of
me enjoys that as much as the musician part enjoys playing…and
anyway, I’ve always thought I want the records to come out
as we, (the band) envision them. I
found that another producer puts your ideas into bags, they
hear something and say “yeah, but that would sound better
with this and that”; if you play something that’s a
little like soul stuff, a producer will tend to make it very
soul, and put it into the whole soul bag, and the whole
thing takes on another character altogether. We try and keep
the basis of the jam and work on that.
INTERPRET
Steve:
That way you tend to be a bit inflexible about the way
they’re turning out.
Alvin:
Right. This way, it was the way the band interpreted the
songs, which is where this album is hopefully at.
Steve:
Is that something you haven’t felt able to do before?
Alvin:
We’ve been able to do it before, but we’ve never
actually tried. All our albums are experiments, but this
time it’s come out a lot more rock and roll, more basic.
We’ve got a lot more of the basic tracks without overdubs,
about half of them haven’t been overdubbed.
Steve:
With a much live-er feel to it.
Alvin:
Yeah, all these numbers we could play on stage, that’s the
difference. Before, I’d play a rhythm guitar all the way
through and then overdub the solos, that’s the safest way
of doing it. This way everybody has to be right at the same
time, but you’ve got that counterpoint between the
musicians which you can’t get when you start dubbing solos
on.
Steve:
Did you feel you’d gone as far as you could with that more
complex approach to recording?
Alvin:
Not really, but we all have different opinions on albums
when we’ve finished them, and we learn things from them.
And what we learned from the last album was we can play
tuneful structures as well as rock and roll, which was
really the idea of the last album. “Going
Home”, had taken on a silly proportion by the side of
everything we did through the Woodstock (1969) film. It was
like our little splash of “Superstardom”, but we
didn’t want it, we didn’t want it to be that
uncontrolled and we didn’t want to get into something that
hassled us, all the side issues. The kind of hassles the
Rolling Stones get on tour are the kind of things we hope to
avoid. We’ve never gone full-bore to be a phenomenon, a
lot of people want to do that, be everywhere and do
everything first. Quite honestly, that would break our band
up, and breaks up most bands that try it, because basically
we’re musicians and if things get too out of hand in that
direction, there’d be no will to play. That’s
what happens to a lot of bands, they just don’t want to
work, because it’s more than just getting on stage and
playing. If it gets like that, the people don’t come to
listen half the time. We’ve done gigs in America where
we’ve said, instead of doing two nights at a club in
Boston, we’d do one night at a bigger hall. And then
because the promoter has to sell 60,000 seats on one night,
he super-hypes the advertising and in their own little way
they try to make a phenomenon of the event. It never works
for us, because you get all the noisy ones down the front,
and the people who want to come and hear the music get
hustled, they can’t see for people standing up at the
front, and throwing Frisbees.
HASSLES
I
think this is the inevitable problem that all bands face. In
the days when we were travelling around in the van, we could
blow a few gigs out, or fight with a manager of a place, and
get banned from a whole round of breweries or something, it
didn’t matter that much. But with concerts in the States,
particularly, you’ve got really heavy things going on,
with people jumping off balconies, people with ridicules
motives wanting to jump on stage and shout down the
microphones. Lines of police who usually aren’t in tune at
all with what’s going on, and if they see someone standing
up, their immediate reaction is to push them down again;
you’ve got those kinds of hassles going on. It just makes
you wonder what you’re doing it for. One gig we did,
someone threw a bottle that hit my guitar neck, and I just
put my guitar down and walked off, I just didn’t want to
play. After about an hour we went on again, and it was cool,
but I thought “What for, why travel all this way to play
just for people to throw beer bottles”?
But
it’s just that state of mind you get going on the road, it
gets so intense. Also, before we go away on a tour,
there’s always that paranoia about going away and
wondering if I’m ever going to come back, there’s that
to it as well. Then when you do come back, and take some
time off, really lay back, then it’s just the absolute
opposite. You get this kind of on/off relationship in your
life; one minute you’re touring, and you really are a rock
and roll band on the road, playing the part and being the
part in every sense, and then you come back to a different
reality, which is home and the different levels of that. But,
if I take too long off, I find I get this intense urge to
get back on the road again, and it’s all I can do really.
I can get into photography. I can get into other things, but
never having a trade, or anything, being only a musician,
there’s nothing else to do. That’s why we’re
interested in longevity and just producing music for as long
as we can, not being a big name in the Daily Mirror or
anything.
Steve:
Do you regret that you made it as big as you did?
Alvin:
No, because now I think it’s in control. The last album we
did to counteract the “I’m Going Home” frenzy, and
once we’d established that we can get back to this basic
rock and roll thing, but it’s a little more laid-back, a
little more structured, and for the mind as well as the
boot.
Steve:
And yet there are a lot of bands trying to break through to
a large number of people at the moment. Why do you think
it’s so difficult?
Alvin:
I don’t know. To me there’s a sadness in it all because
it seems that to break through now you’ve got to wear
outrageous clothes, and have some outrageous gimmick, which
is like back to ten years ago. It’s not all like that I
suppose, there is some good music around, but I think
relative to what “Underground” was then, folk music is
now happening, there’s interest in it but it’s not big,
it’s like a minority thing, for thinking people. It
wouldn’t surprise me if that emerged, but then again, it
might be a mistake for it to emerge, because then it would
go the same way as all the other trends.
Steve:
It might be safe because some of it emerged about a year ago
as that kind of singer/songwriter explosion.
Alvin:
Oh, that’s true, soft rock from the Americas. That’s
almost on the level of, not music, but easy listening. You
can’t be offended by all those soft rock kind of things,
but then again, if you hear a lot together, you always get a
bit thirsty to hear something with a harder structure.
Steve:
Do you think perhaps there’s too many musicians to go
around at the moment?
Alvin:
There’s too many musicians that’ll jump
at anything to get going. I mean I always used to think in
terms of teeny-bopper bands and real bands, I had a very
black and white attitude, and I thought myself and a few
other people were really trying to lay it down, and the rest
were just in it for the bread (money). But you get to meet
all these people, and they’re all really into it, but
they’ll play anything until they get their thing together,
or perhaps they’re saving up for equipment. They start
realizing, that if they have the nerve to dye their hair
ginger, do cartwheels across the stage, and set light to the
organist, then something’s going to happen for them.
CIRCUS
And
this is the case, and it’s almost getting to the state of
the Roman Games. I’m sure with Alice Cooper going around
his --- what is it? A weird circus? That’s great, and I
can dig the person who wants to go and see that, but its not
very relevant to music at all, and the fact that they’re
making music is almost just setting up sounds for them to
freak out to. But then you’ve got Zappa, who appears to be
doing that on the surface, but he’s doing incredible
things musically. Entertainment is another thing entirely,
but they fuse together in the minds of a lot of people. Four
people performing music on stage is entertainment in itself,
but after awhile it isn’t entertaining unless something
happens, and unless it happens musically. It won’t happen
visually, and I think visually is the easiest way to happen.
To
my mind, the failure is when it happens visually, and
doesn’t happen musically, but on the other hand, when it
happens musically, it doesn’t happen visually, there’s
an amount of failure in that also. I think light shows were
my favourite era because whenever there was a light show,
playing as long as it wasn’t hard strobes all the time,
the audience could get off on the music, and watch the
pulsations. I think that’s the nearest an observer can get
to what the musician is doing himself, because you get that
kind of light show in your head when you’re playing live
and trying to break barriers as it were, within yourself.
Whereas when you get spotlights or something at a gig … I
mean I’m very aware that people refer to me as an “Ego-Tripper”,
Pop-Star, Rock and Roll Star”, whatever and it really
freaks me out because I’ve always tried to avoid that, and
gone out of my way not to push myself out to the front. When
someone says, “Here Comes Mr. Album Cover” or something,
it really freaks me out, that’s the worst thing they could
say. It’s the structure of the music that means something
to me, and if I can gain a sympathy with an audience, an
audience that’s getting off on the sounds, and if you see
somebody just rise up out of their seat because they’re
getting off on the sounds, on what they’re getting out of
it, they don’t have to be listening to the notes, then
that’s a really high compliment to the musicians.
SHALLOW
When
they’re all talking, and passing messages to each other,
that isn’t a compliment, that’s just doing a gig. I
couldn’t do that, and we try and avoid those, just keep it
down to the music.
I’ve
seen bands suddenly take off and mentally they’re trying
to suss what’s happening and why, and there are some
people who can assess hit records and things and they can
tell a hit when they hear it, but that to me is the “TIN
PAN ALLEY” side of the business. It’s a very shallow
motivation. You can do that for so long, dress up and
everything, become big, famous and everyone’s attention is
on you; but then you’ve got to continue being as bizarre
and more bizarre, or you’ve got to get into something that
makes sense, which has to be the music.
Steve:
So when there are a lot of people doing it, the whole scene
goes that way, people have to compete to be more bizarre. A
showbiz spiral.
Alvin:
Right, call it what you will, when the underground as such
was “Underground”, I had a feeling that I was part of a
group. I thought it was great, Notting Hill was where it was
at for me, and when I went to the States, it was Greenwich
Village. But what’s been happening is that the whole
scene’s diversified, and there’s no scene left, and
I’m wondering whether it ever was there or not, or whether
it was just in my own head.
But then musicians would talk of good things and
making the music they believed in. But now, you’ve got
this whole element again of wearing pink socks and telling
jokes, theatricals, which is a bit sad.
FREEDOM
I’ve
tried to reach some kind of ideology in life. I’m an
opportunist, I’m not a power seeking ego-maniac or
anything. I’m an opportunist, and if an opportunity arises
for me to do something, I take it. I consider I’ve been
really fortunate in achieving a state where I can have some
freedom of thought and mind and on a physical level. But
your ideology falls through because you can’t live an
ideology on your own or just with a few people, and if you
do, that you start living a fantasy, then something that’s
connected with the real world or brings you down to earth
becomes a bad trip, when in fact it’s just reality. So
in the last year I’ve come down to earth again in my own
head, still wondering where it’s all at. I haven’t
reached any answers at all, and I can’t do all these songs
about where it’s at, because I really don’t know, I’m
as lost as anyone.
Steve:
Do you feel you really have got that freedom?
Alvin:
To a degree. We go on the road and work very hard, and then
come off and there’s nothing to do, and it’s only
because we want to work that we come back and work after
four weeks, and there’s no one standing over us with
hammers saying “Work”! But
television really hampers me a lot, it’s always there and
there’s always something that’s good enough to watch
even though it doesn’t really do anything for you.
Families used to all sit around and all play instruments,
and that’s fantastic. I’d encourage that as much as I
could.
But
then I can’t even switch off a T.V. I always watch “Star
Trek”. But I went through a very disillusioned state where
I was waiting for some kind of explosion where everything
would suddenly make sense, and there’s an awful lot of
people looking for that in their different ways. It
doesn’t come. I don’t really believe in anything unless
I have proof, or anything relative to me, that it exist. I
don’t say there is no God, but until I’ve had any
experience of it for me there is no God. I met a guy who was
intensely intellectual, who’d done everything I could
possibly think of doing in his search for Nirvana. Yet on an
animal level I could still relate quite normally to him, he
was no different. And you get this feeling that what you set
your sights on to make yourself something of essence, or
something god-like doesn’t really exist because everybody
is just a person, just an animal. That’s why I like this
reality cause it makes a lot of things seem silly. It makes
all the establishment and red tape and officials seem, not
wrong, but irrelevant. If enough people get together and say
“You Are Wrong”,
They
can have you put out of the way and be in the right, just
because there were enough of them. But surrealism I think is
an outlet when reality does that to you. I really dig
Salvador Dali paintings, and it’s an alternative to
anything I’ve ever known before.
UNREAL
But,
you meet people and they go “Ah, far out”! and I think
Christ, is this me? And then I flash back to the Marquee, and
one night I was standing next to Eric Clapton and I wanted to
say something to him, anything – That’s Unreal. It’s
just fantasies, you don’t understand them, so anything
that’s surrealism in a way in somebody’s mind.
But
I can’t stand it happening to me, because it freaks me out.
I met a guy in El Passo,
total freak, and he said, “Oh Wow, last time I saw
you, you were playing and I was tripping, and you turned into
a ball of fire and flew across the stage” and that kind of
thing. What can you say to that?
Interview
by Steve Peacock for Sounds Magazine
|
1972, July 20 - Swiss Magazine
"Music Scene" Edition No. 7
- Interview
with Alvin Lee -
Many Thanks to Christoph Müller for his
contribution



1972, (July 20
?) - Alvin
Lee playing sax with David Winthrop from SUPERTRAMP
(Many Thanks to
Christoph Müller)
|


1972 - Swiss Magazine POP Our heartful Thanks to John Tsagas for sharing this picture with us
.
click photos to enlarge
Pop Magazine - 1972
ALVIN
LEE - DER WIDERSPENSTIGE SUPERSTAR
Der
Woodstock – Film porträtierte nicht nur eine
erstaunliche Begebenheit unserer Generation, er etablierte
gleichzeitig verschiedene der Interpreten zu Massenidolen
wie einst symbolisch für die große Hollywoodära. So zum
Beispiel Ten Years After mit Alvin Lee.
Eine amerikanische
Zeitschrift nannte Alvin Mr. Album Cover, eine andere
beschrieb ihn als Mick Jagger 1971. Auf dem kommerziellen
Markt steht Ten Years After an der Spitze, die
musikalische Darbietung der Band dagegen wird von
Kritikern scharf in Angriff genommen.
Alvin Lee Show,
Superstar Alvin, und besonders die letzte England Tournee
in ausschließlich ausverkauften Konzerthallen erhielt kaum
ein anerkennendes Wort: die Rezensionen bemerkten eine
angemessene Rockgruppe, weiter nichts. Andere Journalisten
berichten fortwährend, dass die Gruppe demnächst
auseinander geht, da Alvin die Starallüren zu Kopf
gestiegen seien. Der enorme Erfolg hat jedoch Alvin auf
keinen Fall verändert. Vor drei Jahren traf ich ihn kurz
und war schon damals beeindruckt von seiner Höflichkeit.
Als ich ihn kürzlich wieder traf, strafte er die
unzähligen Gerüchte Lügen, er sei äußerst aggressiv,
arrogant und sehr launisch. Alvins zweites Hobby nach der
Musik sind technische Ausrüstungen. Er interessiert sich
sehr für Fotographie (das Foto auf der Rückseite des
Covers von "A Space In Time" stammt von ihm), und wir
fachsimpelten eine ganze Weile über Tonbandgeräte. In
seiner Wohnung hat er ein Studio eingerichtet, das ihm zu
Demoaufnahmen und anderen Experimenten dient.
Alvin, blond, gut
aussehend und groß, die Sonnenbräune von seinem letzten
Aufenthalt in Hawaii noch nicht ganz verblasst, benahm
sich (the perfect gentlemen). Immer wieder betonte er,
dass er und Chick Churchill, Leo Lyons und Ric Lee sehr
zufrieden und glücklich mit der gegenwärtigen Situation
seien, keine Rede von einem Split.
"Vor drei Jahren
existierten gewisse Differenzen, jeder diskutierte über
eigene musikalische Vorstellungen. Diese natürliche
Entwicklung entsteht bei verschiedenen Musikern, separaten
Egos, aber wir kamen zu dem Beschluss, dass die Band
erfolgreich sein soll, und das kommt nur zustande, wenn
persönliche Meinungsverschiedenheiten gelöst sind. Es ist
nicht allein meine Musik, jeder ist gleichviel daran
beteiligt."
Alvin schreibt zwar die Songs, aber er
diktiert nicht den anderen, was sie spielen sollen. Jeder
interpretiert auf seine Art und als Ergebnis entsteht Ten Years
After – Musik. Deshalb arbeitet Alvin auch nicht an einem
heute schon fast unvermeidlichen Soloalbum. Er hat die
Möglichkeit in Erwägung gezogen, aber ein Soloalbum ist
ihm nicht wichtig. "Für
mich zählt nur unsere Musik, meine persönlichen Interessen
möchte ich lieber privat halten. Zu Hause spiele ich für
mich selbst oder auch für Freunde, aber ich würde diese
Musik nicht auf Schallplatte bringen – sie ist einfach zu
persönlich. Natürlich absorbiert die Ten Years After Musik
viele persönliche Ideen und Emotionen von uns allen, daher
würde ein Solowerk ungemein von Ten Years After
detraktieren." Alvin genießt das Medium Ten Years After, er
glaubt, dass keiner in der Band wirklich verschiedene
Auffassungen zu Musik besitzt und somit ein Soloalbum
keinen Sinn aufweisen könnte. Nach Alvins Ansicht kommen
Soloalben von frustrierten Musikern, die in ihren eigenen
Bands keine Chance zum Ausdruck erhalten.
Zu Hause hört er kaum
Rockmusik. Ich spiele gerne intensive (heavy) Musik, um
eine Aggressivität loszulassen. Aber in seinen eigenen
vier Wänden lauscht er klassischen Werken oder widmet sich
weichen Melodien wie etwa Stephen Stills. "Ich betrachte
unseren Rock als einen persönlichen Kunststil. Wenn ich zu
viele Rockbands höre, werde ich von denen beeinflusst.
Daher höre ich Musik zur Entspannung – bei Rock `n´ Roll
bin ich technisch viel zu orientiert wie der Drummer
arbeitet oder der Gitarrist improvisiert und kann daher
die Musik wirklich nicht genießen."
Obwohl ihre Single „Love
Like A Man“ ohne Schwierigkeiten die Top Ten erreichte,
plant Ten Years After keinen
Nachfolger. Mit einer kommerziellen 3-Minuten-Single
können wir schlecht unseren Stil präsentieren. Auf einem
Album hingegen dürfen die Nummern gut fünf oder sechs
Minuten lang sein. Wir improvisieren gerne und lassen
dabei die Ideen langsam entwickeln. Bei einer Single fehlt
dazu einfach die Zeit. Mit unserem Hit hatten wir auch
nichts zu tun, die Plattenfirma veröffentlichte die Nummer,
nahm sie von einem Album. Wir nahmen sie nicht als Single
auf.
Den Titel Superstar
nimmt Alvin weniger humorvoll auf sich: Ich singe und
spiele die meisten Soli, daher fällt das Scheinwerferlicht
offensichtlich auf mich. Ich wollte noch nie ein Superstar
sein, bloß Musiker. Das Wort bedeutet gar nichts. Niemand
hält sich ernsthaft für einen Superstar. Falls es doch so
jemand gibt, dann stimmt etwas nicht in seinem Kopf.
Article by Margot
|
 |

TYA
FESTIVAL TOP
New
Musical Express – July 29, 1972 – U.S. / Canada .50
cents
Reading
bill toppers, new album in September
Ten
Years After make their first British appearance since
January when they top the bill on the third and last night
of the Reading Jazz, Blues and Rock Festival on Sunday,
August 13.
It
will be the first festival Ten Years After have played in
this country since the Isle Of Wight in 1970, and something
of a nostalgic gig. It was the 1967 Jazz and Blues Festival
that first brought the band widespread popular acclaim.
This
week, Ten Years After finished recording a new album to be
released here by Chrysalis on September 15. Titled “Rock
and Roll Music To The World” the album was recorded at
Olympic Studios in London and on the Rolling Stones mobile
van in the South of France.
Alvin
Lee told New Music Express on Monday: “This album is
leaning more towards rock n´ roll music, but rock in its
American sense, and not the English interpretation, which
means Chuck Berry.
“What
we wanted to do with this LP was to find a natural music for
Ten Years After, and that’s why two of the tracks were
recorded in France on the Stones mobile. The tracks cut at
Olympic have a natural feel too, we recorded most of them in
one take so they have a lot more atmosphere and punch,
rather than being as structured as “A Space In Time”.
Reading
Festival:
Complete
Running order
Full
Running Order for the National Jazz, Blues and Rock Festival
at Reading on August 11th, 12th and 13th
was announced this week. Twenty Nine Acts will be taking
part in the event, and the days on which they will be
appearing are as follows:
Friday:
Curved Air, Mungo Jerry, Genesis, Pretty Things and Jackson
Heights.
Saturday:
Faces, Electric Light Orchestra, Focus, Edgar Broughton
Band, If, Linda Lewis, Man, Jonathan Kelly, Mahatma Kane
Jeeves, Brewers Droop, and the Johnny Otis Revue.
Sunday:
Ten Years After, Quintessence, Roy Wood’s Wizard, Status
Quo, Matching Mole, Vinegar Joe, Patto, Gillian McPherson,
Solid Gold Cadillac, Stackridge, Sutherland Brothers,
Cottonwood and Jericho.

|
Record Mirror Magazine – August 5, 1972

The final line up
for the 11th National Jazz and Blues Festival
was announced last week.
To be held next
weekend at the same Reading site used for last year’s
event, the three day festival features some of the best
British acts on the road at the moment.
Friday’s bill
which starts at 4:00 pm stars Curved Air with Mungo Jerry,
Genesis, Jackson Heights, Nazareth and Steamhamer. The
following day The Faces top the bill in a programme that
starts at noon which also features the Electric Light
Orchestra, Focus, The Edgar Broughton Band, If, Linda
Lewis, Man, and from America, The Johnny Otis Show.
Jonathan Kelly completes the line up.
Sunday’s
programme, which also starts at noon, stars Ten Years
After, Status Quo, Quintessence, Roy Wood’s Wizard, Stray,
Matching Mole, Vinegar Joe, Gillian McPherson, and
Stackridge. Tickets for the whole weekend, which includes
camping and car parking charges, cost three pounds twenty
five and can be obtained “IN ADVANCE ONLY”, from
The National Jazz
Festival Limited, 90 Wardour Street, W.1, or from any
Keith Prowse Agency or Harlequin Record Shops. On the day,
admission will be Friday, one pound; Saturday, one pound
seventy five; and Sunday, one pound seventy five.
|

Record Mirror Magazine – August 12, 1972

No big American
stars are going to fly down to the stage by helicopter
(could you lure Bob Dylan out of his hideaway with a photo
of Reading), but the 11th National Jazz and
Blues Festival maintaining a traditional English flavour,
looks like being a very fine example of just how good a
festival can be within the confines of British talent.
The “Jazz and
Blues part of the title can be totally ignored as far as
classifying the music goes. But it does stand as a
memorial to the long and honourable history of the event.
Originating as a
“purist” event, the evolution of music into less strictly
definable categories led to a change in emphasis, with
such home-grown groups as Cream, John Mayall’s
Bluesbreakers, and the Jeff Beck Group with Rod Stewart,
who had grown from roots in the blues, could play in front
of a mass audience. The folk side was also well
represented in emerging groups like Fairport Convention
and The Pentangle, a new – styled synthesis of folk and
jazz. Through an imaginative choice of bands, and
generally enthusiastic audiences, The National Jazz And
Blues Festivals of the mid-sixties became the forerunners
of the massive pop festivals we know today. Their changes
haven’t been just musical, the organisers have seen a lot
of Southern England during their history, Richmond,
Windsor, and Plumpton spring to mind, but the event has
survived to become our oldest surviving popular music
festival.
Tomorrow’s
(Friday’s) bill has a nicely balanced contrast between the
two top names; Curved Air are musically experimental and
visually slick, while Mungo Jerry keep it simple and
rocking. With names like Nazareth and Genesis on the rest
of the Friday bill, foreign visitors might be forgiven for
expecting a revivalist gospel show. We British chaps know
better.
The other bands DO live up to their names with Steamhammer
doubtless pounding away, and Jackson Heights probably
adding to their considerable promise, as shown at
Lincoln. Any festival purporting to contain the best of
English pop could hardly do without “The Faces”, but
Saturday’s bill, which they top, is full of potential
scene stealers. Most notably, there is the one American
act in the show, The Johnny Otis Show, which ought to
knock them back at Reading as they have been doing to club
audiences. When The Three Tons Of Joy join the Otisettes
and the whole band on stage, the organisers had better
make sure their stage supports are firm.

|
 TEN
YEARS AFTER AT THE READING FESTIVAL 1972
Alvin
Lee Circa 1968, modelling the trousers made from
his mother’s curtains – “with those lamp
shade frills round the bottom”.

Many Thanks to John Tsagas (a true TYA Fan from Greece) for contributing the above photo
from "Life Music" Magazine, Japan, 1972

|
New
Musical Express - August 19, 1972
Concert
Review:
Ten
Years After Reading Festival – Sunday August 13,
1972
After
an inordinately long wait, during which the amount
of amplification at the sides of the stage was
doubled, modest little Alvin and the Three Stooges,
better known as “Ten Years After, took the stage
and commenced to rock. Alvin has eased off the
“Captain Speed Fingers” trip and they’ve
apparently made enough money to buy Chick
Churchill an amplifier. Half the time though it
was genuinely impossible to tell whether he was
actually playing or not, and he spent much of the
set wandering disconsolately about, pushing his
hair back and trying to decide which one of his
inaudible keyboards to play next. When he actually
did manage to get off an organ solo – ( on
“Standing At The Station”) he was excellent,
full of ideas and executing them admirably. More
Please. For my money, he (Chick) is both a more
interesting and more exciting soloist, than Lee,
though less spectacular.
Leo
Lyons, kept pace all the way through, whipping out
those pumping style, and Ric Lee played his usual
(Hobbit) drum solo. Alvin played some nice guitar,
particularly on “Turned Off T.V. Blues”- but
the band seem trapped by their myth to a rather
lamentable extent. Their version of Al Kooper’s
“I Can’t Keep From Crying” was identical to
their performance of it at “The Isle Of Wight
Festival” (immortalised on the triple album set
of – The Isle Of Wight Festival and The Atlanta
Pop Festivals). Even the quotes from “Stepping
Out”, “Sunshine Of Your Love”, “Foxy
Lady”, “Cat
Squirrel”, “Smokestack Lightnin´” and
“You Don’t Love Me” came in the same order.
The material from their new album, “Rock And
Roll Music To The World” went down well, but
what left a sour taste. Was that as they (TYA)
insisted on doing a full two hour set, despite
their delay in getting on stage,
“Quintessence” were unable to do their set.
|

Notes
for Ten Years After Live At Reading.
The
band played there twice, once on August 13, 1972 and
then again on August 28, 1983.
“The
Reading Report” – Ten Years After Play The
1972 Reading Festival:
The
Bill Toppers, Ten Years After played late on
Sunday evening. It was their first appearance in
Britain since January, and their first British
Festival since the Isle Of Wight in 1970. However,
for all the time Ten Years After have been out of
ear shot, their audience seemed less enthusiastic
about the group’s return than you might have
expected.
It
could be that they stayed away just that bit too
long, at least long enough for the fickle public
to latch onto heroes other than Alvin Lee.
As
a stage spectacle, Ten Years After are quite
impressive and whatever your opinions of Alvin Lee
musician, you have to admit that he’s one of the
precious few good rock `n´ roll showmen ever to
have come out of this country (England).
Musically,
Ten Years After don’t wander far from the kind
of raunchy riff which earned them their first fans
some years back, and in this respect, they could
possibly afford to open up a little, maybe by more
use of Chick Churchill’s fine organ playing, to
add more light and shade into the act. Anyway, few
left for home feeling that depressed of feeling,
that they’d wasted time and good money. A good
festival, and without doubt, the best this year so
far.
Article by Ray Telford
|
|
Melody Maker 16 /
9
/ 72
Alvin
Lee Talks About:
The
New Ten Years After Album
"Rock
and Roll Music to the World "
Alvin
Lee accepts abuse with equanimity, or so it appears. He
has received slightly more than his fair share
over
the years. And while he tends to smile philosophically
after being berated, those close to him reveal
that
the barbs of critics hurt him just as much as the next
rock n’ roll super star. The
barbs have been shot at a man whose band has been a shade
too popular to be good for him, and whose
guitar
technique is a mite too nifty to be healthy. The blast has
come because Ten Years After are not the
world’s
GREATEST little rock and roll band, even though they were
one of the stars of Woodstock, the movie and the
festival.
They
have their faults, but if they have been guilty of selling
their image too hard, then it becomes a minor offence
when
one compares them to some of the current visions emerging
on the platforms of rock. Where
one can fault Ten Years After is not on grounds of
exaggerated self-importance . No one who knows
Alvin
Lee, Chick Churchill, Ric Lee or Leo Lyons, would accuse
them of being egotists. Their
problem has been to establish a stronger musical identity
for the band, other than as a showcase for fast
Moving
guitar work. Their albums from “Sssh” onwards have
tried to break out and develop, but they
have
rarely produced exceptional original material.
As
sidemen Chick on organ, Ric on drums and Leo on bass have
not shone as brightly as Alvin. But Ten Years
After
have stuck together. And that is because they enjoy being
together and in consequence have become
one
of the longest surviving British bands. Alvin’s
personal problem has been a shyness an inability to mix
with fellow musicians and the music scene.
While
other guitarist and singers gaily leap from group to group
guest on albums, jam in clubs and rave at
the discos, Alvin fronts his group, then returns to a country
retreat. But now he is within an ace of solving
one
problem and he is working on the other. For Ten Years
After have recorded an album that ignores the
passions
of fashion , and simply represents what they do best---a
little rock, a modicum of roll, and the blues.
The
new Ten Years After album is called “Rock And Roll Music
To The World,” as is certainly their best
since
“Undead.” Although not a “live” album it was cut
on the Stones’ mobile unit in France and gives
TYA
a spontaneity and brilliance that has been lacking on
previous albums.
More
surprising has been Alvin’s determination to get out and
blow in different environments. He has been
recording
at a friend’s home studio with American gospel singer
Mylon LeFevre , and guitarist
Steve
Sanders, both from Georgia. Mylon and Steve have been
staying at Alvin’s home, a Tudor house, set in
spacious grounds, once isolated from the world, but suddenly
threatened by massive motor way works which
tear
through the soil a few hundred yards away.
Alvin
is so keen to jam that he even purchased a minibus in
which he can drive his musicians around if
they
are
stuck for transport.
“I
used to drive Ten Years After around when we first started,”
he revealed sitting in the low-beamed lounge
surrounded
by toys, gadgets and guitars. “I used to drive to London
before they built the M1. Because I did the driving,
the others had to unload, although Leo used to pretend he
was the manager. “He’d ring up after a gig
and
ask how we had gone down. “Mr Lyons the manager here.
Were the group to your satisfaction’?” Alvin
laughed
at the memories stirred by the sight of the white Commer
parked on the gravel drive. Once they were
the chief group transporters, before the mighty Transit
took the road. “I
only bought it yesterday.
You know, it’s almost therapeutic when a group travels
together in a van. It’s like being married. You get downs
and ups, but if you don’t travel together you don’t
know each other or play together.
On
our last European tour we shared a bus with Patto and they
are an incredible band and incredible
People.
We all had a great time on that tour.” But how will
Alvin use his new van? “Oh, if I’m going to a session
in
London, or if I have to pick up a drummer for
a rehearsal. They always have transport problems.
It will also help
me to keep my driving down to a reasonable speed, as
I’ve got two endorsements driving my Jaguar. I’ve
got
a Triumph TR3 as well, and I wouldn’t part with it, but
it’s a real bone shaker.”
Who
has Alvin been jamming with?
“This
guy called Mylon from Georgia. He’s asleep upstairs at
the moment. He’s a gospel singer from Macon.
He
used to have his own big band, a 13 piece. We did some
gigs with him in the States , and his band was
incredible,
although it never took off.
His music has got that laid back beat and it’s
much less frantic than
what
I have been playing. I’ve been really enjoying playing.
That style, and I’ve become a lot more relaxed.
“We’ve
been recording with Ian Wallace on drums from King Crimson.
He’s incredible And we had B.J. Wilson on
drums
from Procol for
a couple of tracks. Leo played bass and although nobody
has heard of any of the numbers,
it
really slotted together well.”
Alvin
thought it was time to wake up Mylon, as it was around 4
pm and he removed a hunting horn from the
fireplace.
He gave a deafening blast and the distinctive moan of a
gospel singer from Georgia filtered
from the
minstrel
gallery overhead. Alvin acknowledged the moan with a cry
of “Noy!” “That’s
the Patto group call.
You’ll
hear that a lot if Patto are around.” It seemed a fair
warning.
Mylon
lurched downstairs, a young American with quite a bit of
hair around his face, blessed with a beautiful
drawl
that made Bonnie Bramlett sound like John Cleese. “This
is Mylon,” said Alvin with some pride.
“We
really got off on his music in the States. When he sings
about the south bound train for Tallahassee it’s
all
real. When I sing, it’s only how I IMAGINE it all.
It’s probably only psychological, but it gives you the
feeling
it’s all right to sing the blues when Mylon is around.”
But
how did Alvin relate Ten Years After to his new friends.
Presumably the band would continue? “Sure---right.
Ten
Years After has become itself. The music is an
amalgamation of all four of us. On the next LP we strived
to
make
it natural music from the band with nothing different,
just for the sake of it. It’s more of a rock album.
The
music of Ten Years After is pretty hard rock, but my
listening tastes have mellowed. I like Stephen Stills
and
Poco and I figured it would be nice to play that way as well. And
I’m particularly interested in meeting
other
musicians and jamming, although I’d never felt like it
before.”
“You see, I had a socialising
problem. The music business
should be like a big club. On the surface
it is
but
relationships don’t go deeper unless you work at it. And
that’s what I’m doing, and it’s widening my
horizons
a lot. I take
other people’s music a lot more seriously. I’d be into
any music outside of what we were doing
if
it was ”heavy” and progressive on the albums. We
always like to end our sets with some rock but we wanted
to
try and do something else as well, so that people could
hear a bit of everything.
“We
recorded the new album in a chateau in France. We did five
days rehearsal then spent five days with the
Stones’
mobile. At the time we thought the results hadn’t been
that good, and the experiment hadn’t worked.
But
when we got the tapes together, it sounded really good.
It’s captured an atmosphere on record that we
have
never got before. Like, the drums were just set up in a
room lined with marble, and the drums got a
bright
sound you couldn’t repeat in studio conditions.”
While
Alvin is pleased with the new TYA album he admitted he had
been itching to try something new.
“Everybody
enjoys playing with different musicians from time to time
and after awhile a regular group does
become
like work, when you earn your living from it. And then it
becomes harder to find really new things.”
By
now Mylon was beginning to open his eyes to the fading
afternoon light. How did he meet up with Alvin?
“We
met about two and half years ago in New York. I had a band
called Holy Smoke and we jammed
together.
Alvin told me to call up anytime I came over to England
and me and Steve came over about six weeks
ago.
I quite the road last December. We only had 91 days off in
two and half years, and it was getting hard.
We
were a 13-piece band, and we worked all over the States.”
Mylon has a couple of fine albums to his credit,
including
one on the Cotillion label, produced by his friend Allen
Toussaint, famed for his association with
Lee
Dorsey. Mylon has been managed by Felix Pappallardi, and
has also recorded with Little Richard. He
has
an open soulful vocal style. The recordings that Alvin and
Mylon have made together are a revelation.
Although
only rough mixes from a home studio, the tracks they
played sounded like a gold album, with Alvin
emerging
in a startling new light. The two seem to have a good
effect on each other. Said Mylon: “We’ve done
about five or six songs together. I was up at 5 am writing.
In fact yesterday was one of the best days
in
my life.” He grinned
with pleasure at Alvin as the tapes began to roll,
while Steve shook his head,
uttering
a soft “wow” as Alvin’s guitar pushed along the
vocals. The first number “It Ain’t Easy,” showed Alvin
in a completely different light, far away from his usual
jet propelled style. Rich, mellow chords and
an
easy country feel prevailed, but even so, his remarkable
technique marked him as a guitarist of
distinction.
“This
is all original music,”
said Steve. “I just play
rhythm guitar and sing the back up vocals, but we
all
believe
in it. Alvin plays some guitar on this that kills me.”
There was some more fine playing on “Starry Eyed
Child”
and “One More Chance,” all with a relaxed down home
beat, that recalled the Band or the Byrds. Did
Alvin
sing on any of the tracks? “No, faced with that Georgia
accent, I don’t make it. Mylon wants to take
this
eight track recording back to Georgia and get it
transferred to a 16 track. Then I’ll go over there with
Leo and
finish it off.”
Next
Alvin played the new Ten Years After album “Rock And
Roll Music To The World,” which is due out
tomorrow (Friday). And the band sounded much better for their
fresh,
frank approach. The tunes concentrate
on
a solid rock beat, mixed with some rave-ups like “Choo
Choo Mama.” “We kept it all very basic,” said
Alvin,
“but there are some really good solos from Chick. Listen
to this one on ‘Standing At The Station.’
It
took nearly six hours to mix the Moog synthesiser and
organ tracks together. As
Alvin blew some tremendously exciting guitar solos,
particularly on “Station,” which climaxes with an
express
train thundering across the speakers, it seemed this will
prove the best album TYA have produced.
“The
first two albums we did were representative of how we
played at the time. ‘Stonehenge,’ the third one
was
influenced by flower power, and the others were aimed to
be progressive. This
is just how we are now.”
By
Chris Welch


|
Ten
Years After Autumn Tour in Germany
 September 11, 1972
TEN
YEARS AFTER in Düsseldorf Germany 1972
From Disc Magazine - September 23, 1972
DÜSSELDORF:
Day two in Ten Years After’s German tour. Having
flown in from Bremen, driven from the airport to
hotel; to backstage the long wait continues to get
onstage, and actually fulfil the purpose of the
whole exercise.
Until
you go on tour the word “wait” doesn’t
really mean too much-on the road it takes on a
whole new significance. You wait in airport
lounges, outside airports for the coach, in hotel
lobbies, in draughty backstage corridors or
backstage in a world of wires and harassed roadies.
Then after the gig you wait and wait until the
crowds clear and the band can escape safely.
The
arrival at the Essen gig from Düsseldorf was
nothing short of spectacular when the bus bearing
us all swished in to the stage door, all lights
blazing so that every kid outside the building
swarmed round leaving you to swim for your life
through a sea of people. But Ten Years After are
seasoned tourers and nothing seems to worry them;
after fifteen tours of America and still sane they
obviously can’t allow anything to.
We
arrive at the Essen Grugahalle as the band Stray
reach the end of a good set ( they’re on tour
with TYA). The bands five tons of equipment has
mostly been set up by their small army of roadies
who dance by the side of the stage at their more
ecstatic moments. The band is fairly wary of Essen
– last time they played there, a crowd of 3,000
outside the building, broke in through the windows
to see the gig for free and TYA had to foot the
glass bill. Already one of the crowd outside has
broken a window, but rumour has it he was
apprehended shortly after the heinous offence.
Part
one of the long dressing room vigil begins,
sitting around in a monastic cell of a room on
hard plastic chairs drinking beer and coke. Down
below the window, a
rousing sing-song is in progress by those
who refuse to pay to get in.
The
German audiences are currently on a big free gig
kick, and although the promoter lowered his
original ten marks a head to ten marks per couple
to entice the final few in, they remained
adamantly singing in perverse two part harmony
down below, handing out showers of Jesus Freaks
literature.
Back
in the dressing room Ric Lee—who by any normal
human standards should be throwing up his
phenomenally large supper, is reminiscing about
the two gigs the band did a great many years back
when Ric tied sparklers to his drumsticks and
Alvin played his guitar with one when the lights
were down. Although it was very effective in
practice, they couldn’t get them lit on the
night and were left to play in total darkness.
Alvin
is expecting Steve Ellis and American singer Mylon,
to join the tour tomorrow. He, Leo and Ian Wallace
have all been doing sessions with Mylon at Roger
Daltrey’s home
studio and hope to release the results as an album
sometime.
Ten
Years After’s next album is just out called
“Rock and Roll Music to the World.” It is
their first in almost a year and some tracks are
from their experimenting in the South of France
with the Rolling Stones mobile unit in February.
“We hired a house just to see if it would be
different from going to the studios everyday in
London. “This new album is more of a rock album
than any of the others, and we’ve tried to get a
much more live sound. It’s worried us in the
past that the albums have been very different from
the stage act and it’s taken us a long time to
work out why. “We used to use the stage
equipment in the studio but we found it was so
loud we had to turn it down so it wasn’t making
any distinction, it was too clean and clinical.
The secret is to have much smaller equipment
turned up full.
“The
last album was more songs and melodies. That was
because before that it was the Woodstock aftermath
that featured on “Going Home” and we thought
we’d get away from that for awhile just to show
we could play other stuff because a lot of people
just picked up on Woodstock. So we did a
structured album to show there was another side of
us and now we thought we’d go back to rock again.”
Recently
TYA came round to thinking they might do a single,
because the singles market seemed so much less
“poppy” than it used to, but when their record
company told them it had to be two minutes long,
Alvin told them to forget it. Another reason they
had steered clear of singles was that they were
frightened of a flash in the pan , non lasting
success. “The only time concerts are threatened
is when you get a hit record or are in a film or
you become the darling of the “Daily Mirror.”
I think Marc Bolan and David Bowie will realise it
sooner or later.
The
band do their 16th tour of America
shortly. They are still a dazzling success out
there and don’t seem to diminish at all. Even to the extent that Alvin was offered $3,000 to do a
toothpaste ad the last time he was there. The
offer he said was tempting, but the thought of
getting off the plane to be confronted by his own
giant image wasn’t.
The whole group has also been offered a
variety of awful film roles, one of the themes was
of an English rock band going to America in search
of Robert Johnson, getting busted and sent to jail.
Alvin is freed by a beautiful girl in a white
Cadillac, and when they turned down the script,
the guy re-wrote it and returned it nine months
later. “We’d do it if something good turned
up, but I’m still involved with making my own
movies and want to do one about my own environment.”
Meanwhile
back in the dressing room the roadies have finally
finished setting up and it is time to go on. Stray
had a bit of electrical trouble with their set,
and when TYA get on Alvin’s mike fails within
seconds. The audience still annoyed from waiting
an hour between groups, starts whistling and
shouting. More trouble as the lights fuse (dim)
the mikes and the circuit is clearly under
pressure. They do a quick “jam” to drown some
of the noise. Finally after shouting at the lights
people and a worried German called Manfred Lurch (who
had previously confided in the dressing room that
he saw falling trees and white rabbits dancing in
the road when ever he was tired ), the show got
underway.
The
band played a mixture of old things, stuff from
the new album, an Al Kooper number and ended with
Rock-n-Roll encores. As a band they’re playing
well together, these days better than when I last
saw them. The
empathy between Alvin, Ric and Leo nowadays seems
to be amazing especially with Alvin and Leo.
Unfortunately the organ just doesn’t feature
dominantly enough in most of the numbers and seems
rather superfluous. When Chick does do a more
featured solo such as “Standing At The
Station” he’s really good. Ric Lee’s drum
solo was a little too prolonged , especially with
the audience in its edgy mood.
But
honours have to go to Alvin and Leo for their
lovely intertwined
guitar work. Alvin’s crystal clear style
is still good although he does tend to shape each
number rather the same---soft start, crescendo,
climax, end. A heavy number
alternated with a lighter thing would
perhaps be a better substitute. Leo is getting
better and better as an inventive bass player.
By
the end of the show the audience is frenzied and
scaling the enormous crash barrier, there are
about three or four thousand in the hall. Someone
about three rows back has an arm in plaster but
nonetheless waves it ceaselessly. There are two
encores.
Then
another endless wait in the dressing-cell for the
crowds to disperse so we can escape to the hotel.
Then another wait at the hotel for food at 3 am
and the thought that the whole process is repeated
tomorrow and the next day and the next day…….
|

Sounds
Magazine – September 23, 1972

Ten Years After,
noch einmal

Leo Lyons is
sitting in the dressing room of the Stadthalle in Bremen,
back resting on the metal lockers that run along two of
the four walls, applying mentholated spirit to the tips of
his fingers from a tiny plastic bottle that accompanies
him on every gig.
Ten Years After
are on the first of a week of gigs through Germany and
Austria and bassist Leo wiles away the boredom before
their set running through a sound check with Alvin Lee.
Toughening up the
fingers of his right hand and sampling the odd bottle from
a crate of Coca-Cola and beer resting on the bare dressing
room table. Like most “artists” rooms, whether you’re
headlining or just a bottom bill support band, this one’s
empty, (apart from tubular chairs and a couple of tables),
without character and nestles under the banking of the
cycle track which is housed in the Stadthalle.
Bad Press:
This tour promises
to be an important one for Ten Years After, important as
it’s followed closely by two tours of America (making
their US tours total around seventeen), and the first time
they’ve played since the Reading Festival where they
enjoyed three encores and a barrage of bad press.
Strangely, Ten Years After are one British band that have
never really enjoyed good Press reaction since their start
around six years ago. They’ve almost always sent the fans
home smiling, but have had to scrimp around foe whatever
rave reviews were going.
Reading was a
prime example and as a result, Ten Years After were hurt
by what the music Press had to say. But their problem is
almost certainly a question of image. It’s an image that
was basically built up in America where image is all
important and ability secondary in most of their Press,
the idea of Alvin Lee “fastest” or the “greatest”
guitarist alive, both ridicules observations about any
musician and certainly an image that Alvin himself has
never tried to foster. And again their “Woodstock”
appearance, which reached millions via cinema screening,
has meant that they are almost duty bound to play “Goin´
Home” on every gig since, thus having one foot too firmly
planted in their past. Therefore, every time he steps on
stage, some of the Press inevitably are saying, “OK let’s
see what the greatest guitarist around can do”, and of
course if he doesn’t shape up the reviews reflect badly.
And while Ten Years After aren’t naïve enough to believe
that what the Press say is taken as gospel, how about the
people weren’t at Reading? They have no way of gauging the
band’s performance, other than what they read and Ten
Years After are certain it wasn’t a fair representation of
what their gig was like. But Reading’s over, and Leo,
Chick Churchill, Alvin Lee and Ric Lee file out from the
dressing room in the long walk to the stage. In the
stadium itself, the crash barriers are pressed tight
against the stage surround as more fight their way down to
the front. The wooden banked walls stretch up steeply with
rows of seats around their edge.

The Stadthalle’s capacity
is 5,000 but nearer 4,000 look to be in attendance. Stray,
who are accompanying Ten Years After,
have left the stage heavy with smoke from their exploding
odds and ends and the audience is in a good mood for
moving around a bit. Without the slightest sign of fuss,
Ten Years After are on and Alvin announces “One Of These
Days”, which drives really hard for an opening number,
guitar and tough harp from Alvin who confesses after “You
Give Me Loving”, the next number, “Three wrong notes
there”. “Loving” has Chick playing stabbing, authoritative
organ which conjure up shades of Santana with a close jazz
/ rock feel that was Ten Years After’s trademark in their
early years. “Here’s another one you might remember”,
announces Alvin, before launching into “Good Morning
Little Schoolgirl”, rubbing his guitar across the
microphone stand, which brings a roar from the crowds who
clap along in time while Alvin and the remarkable Leo
rustle up a rocking little jam in the middle of the stage,
backed by the barest percussive rhythm from Ric. During
the next number the stage monitors blow and Alvin attempts
to explain to the audience that: “We’re going to jam until
the system comes on”. During this jam, Ten Years After
really work up a sweat playing hard for a four-piece with
Leo’s bass making it tough for anyone else to compete,
even Alvin’s nice laid back guitar breaks. “Standing At
The Station” shows a slower, less rock based opening and
this slightly subdued angle lends itself well to Chick’s
organ solo, but the audience seem to be willing the band
for more speed and during the next number are chanting for
“Going Home”. From the side of the stage, the sound
doesn’t seem too good, only snatches of Alvin’s vocals
filter across and the organ seems to be on top of Leo’s
bass for much of the set. But a change of position only
reverses the dominance and the hall’s acoustics banked
wooden walls and a very hollow sounding stage don’t seem
to be helping too much.
Texture:
“I Can’t Keep From
Crying Sometimes” seems to have the right sort of rhythms
to complement Ten Years After’s skills to the fullest. The
many changes in texture is a nice relief from the frantic,
non-stop raving of the faster numbers and while it grows
to encompass almost every sort of music the band can play.
It’s a refreshing fifteen minutes in the set.
The number runs on
and on and things are really roasting by the end. “Goin´
Home” follows as everyone knows it must, and again it’s
Leo Lyons, his head shaking about like a rag doll, who’s
plugging in those thick bass lines while Chick leaves his
keyboards to play congas on the edge of the stage. Two
encores follow, Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen”, and

“Baby Won’t You
Let Me Rock And Roll You”, and over zealous actions of the
lighting man leaves Ten Years After in mid-exit as the
house lights go up, and for a minute they’re all frozen in
slight embarrassment while the audience anticipates
something to follow.
Back in the
dressing room there they sit around one of the tables,
discussing the set. Dissatisfied with the sound on stage
Alvin believes it wasn’t a very good gig at all.
Ric Lee asks what
everyone else thought and the whole band are genuinely
interested in outside opinions or criticisms.
Critical:
But they’re not
too despondent, even Chick who admits that his fingers
were too stiff after such a long layoff. They must get
better is the general opinion, but the real test will be
when they listen critically to the tapes of the gig. Every
Ten Years After gig is taped and everyone’s eager to see
who did what wrong and where. Overall, the show was a good
one. Ten Years After aren’t into any real stage
showmanship like Bowie, Bolan or Slade, and this is
something which audiences, both at home and abroad are
aware of. The Bremen gig appeared to go from frenzied
number to the next and the definite lack of light and
shade in the overall act left a void.
Ten Years After
have been together, without personnel change, for an awful
long time now, and this, plus the upsurge of theatrics
around them, might cause the non-Ten Years After fan to
view the band in a rather dull light, but from this gig
(and the following day in Essen) it’s obvious that they
are still one of the leading rock and roll bands in the
world, warts and all.
The “trial” by
tape that evening, or was it early the next morning,
proved to be a release for Ten Years After. The sound was
a vast improvement from the expected and everything looked
rosier for their next gig at the 8,000 capacity Grugahalle
in Essen. But, Essen had unhappy associations for the band
who’d ben landed for a bill from the German authorities
the last time they played there. Fans, who felt they were
entitled to hear them play without paying, smashed windows
and broke down doors to the hall and Ten Years After were
forced into settling the bill which ran into a couple of
thousand pounds. Essen proved to be a headache again and
after the first number, the power failed. For the next few
minutes, while Ten Years After roadies, (Andy, John and
the two Jacks) rushed around the back of the Grugahalle’s
huge stage, the band trickled behind the PA for a quick
swig at their bottles or a drag.
Images:
The on-off
merry-go-round dragged on and the stage lighting seemed to
be affecting the sound system too, and the audience began
to get a little restless. But, “You Give Me Loving”, a
track from the band’s new album settled things, before it
got out of hand and they were on their way again. “School
Girl”, “Rock and Roll Music To The World” (the new LP’s
title track), “Essen Express” with one of the fiercest
drum solos you’ll ever see, followed by “Standing At The
Station” all thundered along, pushing the pace up and up.
Then like an oasis in the Sahara, “Turned Off T.V. Blues”
drifted slowly from the PA. It seemed to be just the right
tempo to show Ten Years After at their best and influences
and images aside, Alvin played some beautifully restrained
guitar during this number and the rest of the band showed
up equally well. Through two more numbers (including
“Goin´ Home) and the same two encores as in Bremen and
it’s over for another night, but this time a little
happier and with hands full of concerts to come Ten Years
After are warming very nicely.
Softer:
The shouts of “noch-einmal-noch-einmal-noch- einmal”,
(once again / one more time) are still ringing through the
hall, as Ten Years After reach their dressing room. These
crowds see Ten Years After as an honest to goodness rock
and roll band for the people, but can the band themselves
– see themselves as this alone forever? To the audience
the frenzy that accompanied Ten Years After’s set, and the
inclusion of “Goin´ Home” was enough, but will it continue
to be enough for the band themselves? They know the score
and having almost reached the peak of their R & R
performances don’t be surprised if there’s a change (but
not a drastic change) in Ten Years After’s music. Thing’s
are softening up these days, and Ten Years After might
just get a little softer themselves.

Sounds - September 23,
1972
|

New Musical
Express September 23, 1972
 September 26, 1972 – Ten
Years After – Maple Leaf Gardens
Toronto, Canada
On the bill or: Edger
Winter and Frampton’s Camel
Ten Years After Set List: One Of These
Days – You Give Me Loving -
Good Morning Little School Girl – Rock and Roll Music To The World
- Hobbit – Standing At The Station – Turned Off T.V. Blues - I Can’t Keep From Crying Sometimes – I’m Going Home –
Choo-Choo-Mama
|
New Musical
Express – September 30, 1972

Ten Years After –
Take Their Music to the World
The Concert Hall
Vienna: In a city whose history is deeply rooted in
classical music, three faded portraits hang on the
dressing room wall. One of them is Richard Wagner. Another
is Franz Liszt. And the other…? Nobody quite knows, but
then nobody cares much either, as most of the room’s
attention is focused on Alvin Lee, tuning up his big, red,
Gibson guitar and preparing to shake the walls of the
ancient hall with some of that ear-splitting,
Ten Years After
style of rock and roll. Neither the concert hall or Vienna
for that matter, are exactly used to rock concerts. Even
though it is a major European city, surprisingly, few
bands make a stop here on Continental tours, and the
result is that when a band does play, everybody tends to
over react. Outside, for instance, the local forces of law
and order have just arrested twenty kids even before the
doors opened. While inside, the hall manager is still
uptight from the night before when, with the band on
stage, the audience got out of their seats, boogied a
little, and broke a few chairs in the process. Tonight,
while the support band “Stray” play the first half, and
Alvin and the others prepare to go on stage, the man’s
paranoia increases. He anticipates, and quite rightly,
that in the second half, the crowd might commit the
ultimate sin of enjoying themselves, and then
maybe…horrors…they get out of their seats and dance. He
wouldn’t have much sympathy, for a line in one of Alvin
Lee’s songs, that goes, “give peace a chance…get up and
dance…while I sing rock and music to the world”.
Anyway, as he
rushes around the backstage corridors, giving futile last
minute orders, back in the dressing room the atmosphere is
calm. Alvin Lee continues tuning, Chick Churchill watches
and waits, Leo Lyons rubs methyl ate spirit into (onto)
the tips of his fingers and Ric Lee cracks endless jokes.
It’s obvious that after so many years on the road,
(including an amazing fifteen tours of the States) Ten
Years After have touring down to a fine art. All right, so
there’s a few cases (crates) of beer around, and a couple
of chicks who might turn out to be groupies, but mostly
there’s no big deal, no hassles. Everything’s Cool.
Genuinely, all their thoughts seem to be focused on
getting on stage and playing at their best, and Alvin Lee
admits, that he’s pleased that he doesn’t have to worry
about putting on a show, as such…
A presentation of
the type more expected from the likes of David Bowie or
Slade.
“I think if we’re
to get any satisfaction at all, its got to come from the
musical side,” he said.
“It would be a
limitation for me to have to think about doing shows,
rather than just play the guitar. “Personally, I don’t
think we would have gone on as long as we have, if we
hadn’t just concentrated on the music. “And I feel sorry
for the bands that put themselves in the position of
having to do performances. I feel really happy, that all
we have to do, is go on and play well”. Certainly the lack
of any “show” as such, didn’t worry the 1,500 or so people
who packed the concert hall and let out a bellowing Cup
Final Cheer when Ten Years After took the stage and drove
almost straight into, “One Of These Days”. As Alvin pouted
his lips and pounded out the licks, Leo Lyons thumped out
tremendous bass-lines and stamped around the stage, as if
he was treading on red-hot cinders, both of them showing,
even on the fast numbers, the remarkable understanding
that has grown up between them. Overall, the band’s set
was made up by a mixture of old things like, “I Can’t Keep
From Crying Sometimes” and new ones off of their fourth
coming album, with the flavour of the act, mainly frantic
and energised rock and roll blues. And the newer numbers
were among the best they played,
“Standing At The
Station,” featured a highly inventive solo from Chick
Churchill on keyboards, though sadly, it was his only one
of the night, “Choo – Choo – Mama” was near-enough for
straight rock, while the pace slowed down for, “Turned Off
T.V. Blues” with Alvin Lee easing back and playing
excellently around the standard blues format.
Later, back his
hotel, Alvin explained how, in a way, the band were
getting back to straight rock n´ blues, especially on
their new album called, “Rock And Roll Music To The
World”.
On our last album,
“A Space In Time”, it was more like Ten Years After
playing songs, whereas this one is more second nature
stuff. In a way, it’s an attempt to record the band in its
most natural form, rather than experiment up a blind
alley. And I think the result is perhaps the most positive
album that we have done. “After Woodstock, we got a lot of
rock and roll exposure, but very little else. So we tried
to take the focus off that a bit by making some song,
structured albums. Now, having done that, we’re back to
rock and roll. “In fact, we didn’t actually plan it that
way. It’s just that we had around thirty numbers, and
somehow these were the ones that we found most natural. I
think, we feel the happiest with this kind of music”.
A new development
in Lee’s career is a number of jamming-sessions, of which
he’s been part, particularly with Mylon, a gospel singer
from Macon, Georgia, Ian Wallace from King Crimson and
B.J. Wilson from Procol Harum. He admits that, jamming was
something he’s never taken much interest in before. “About
a year ago, I would have said, I don’t believe in jamming,
because it’s very limiting to play with other musicians
who don’t know you and who don’t feel the same way as you
do”. And I think that’s still true. If I was playing the
kind of music as Ten Years After. But lately I’ve got into
playing completely different styles and following them up.
“Also, it’s only been in the last year or six months, that
the band’s felt any advantage from the success we’ve had.
When things start to happen, it’s almost like a whirlpool
effect, and almost the last person to realize that you’re
established, is yourself”.
But now we feel
secure, and we know Ten Years After is not going to break
up and we know where we’re at musically. Everybody can
branch out and explore different things without feeling
bad / guilty, because it isn’t one hundred percent
directed towards Ten Years After.
“With the
sessions, that I’ve been doing with Mylon and the others,
everybody is playing out of their normal style, and really
enjoying it. We’ve got about eight tapes and when we
finish our next American tour, I hope to go down to
Mylon’s place and finish them off”.
Obviously, Alvin
doesn’t feel that these activities pose any threat to the
stability of
Ten Years After,
and since the band have kept the same line-up so
successfully, for such a long time, I wondered what was
the secret of staying together. “Really it’s the other way
round. I find it difficult to understand how bands don’t
stick together,” replied Alvin.
“To me, it seems
much easier to really get to know the musicians you’re
playing with, rather than fight with each other. “And the
music really is of all four of us, not just mine, whatever
people may say. Even if I write the words and the chords,
once it’s played around in the group, it can change almost
completely. “Like if I was to tell Ric how to play, I
don’t think that he’d be very satisfied, and I think
that’s one of the reasons why we’ve stayed together.
We can all play
our own music and explore our ideas within Ten Years
After”.
As for his own
position, Alvin Lee isn’t exactly, “Captain Ego” as some
would imagine. In fact, he says his role as a “Guitar
Hero” at times makes him feel distinctly uncomfortable.
“It’s always
really embarrassing for me to think of myself as a “Rock
and Roll Star,” or any other kind of star. “It’s a strange
thing, like sooner or later you meet so many people who
come up at concerts, all smiling with their autograph
books and things, that it gets really strange. In fact, I
find it very difficult to relate at all, to an actual fan,
because they treat you as something out of the ordinary.
“Like most people I meet, whom I’ve never known before
always say, “Oh it’s good to meet you, I never realized
that you were such a “Nice-Bloke,”.
Where as, it’s not that I’m a “Nice-Bloke,” it’s just no
different from normal. Yet people seem to expect you to be
something else, and somehow expect you to live up to it.
“It can get really weird”.
|
 |

Muziek Express - October 1972 |

Chicago Sun Times – October 1, 1972
Ten Years
After brings its flashy blues-rock to the Arie Crown
Theatre “Park West”
for shows at 7:30 and 10:30 pm Saturday.
Also on the bill are Nils Lofgren who opens the concerts.
October 7, 1972
|

The Release of the 9th TEN YEARS AFTER
LP

Rock&Folk, No.69,
October 1972, R&RMTTW France

Billboard Magazine October 14, 1972
|
Record
Mirror – October 14, 1972

Ten Years After,
whose latest album “Rock `n´ Roll Music To The World”, has
put them back into the Record Mirror charts, and they are
to do two dates at the Rainbow in London, as part of a
British Tour, starting in October. The group is currently
engaged on their sixteenth American Tour, the band flies
back home to open their British engagements at
Manchester’s Hard Rock Theatre on October 26th.
It will be the band’s first British appearance since
headlining at the Reading Festival in August.
Ten Years After-
Tour Dates:
Birmingham Town
Hall (October 28th), Newcastle Town Hall (29th),
Edinburgh, Caley Cinema (30th), Rainbow
(November 2nd and 3rd), Liverpool Stadium
(4th), Leicester, De
Montford Hall (6th), Bradford Street –
George’s Hall (7th),
Hanley, Victoria Hall (8th) |

New Musical
Express October 14, 1972
1972
Details
Of The Autumn British Concert Tour By Ten Years After
– have been finalized – it will mark the outfit’s
first appearance in this country since the Reading
Festival in August, and their first British Tour since
the beginning of the year. Ten Years After will
interrupt their Sixteenth American Tour to play here –
during the next two weeks, they are appearing on the
U.S. East Coast, then they return home for the British
Tour prior to flying back to the States for a string of
West Coast gigs. On the British Tour, they will be
featuring tracks from their newly released album –
“Rock And Roll Music To The World”.
The
British Dates Are:
Manchester Hard-Rock (October 26th)
Birmingham Town Hall (28th) Newcastle City
Hall (29th) Edinburgh Empire (30th)
Liverpool Stadium (November 4th) Leicester
De-Montfort (6th) Bradford St. George’s
Hall (7th) Hanley Victoria Hall (8th).
A
venue in London has still to be confirmed, and there is
also the possibility of further dates, including an
additional Scottish gig.
Support act on all dates will be Frankie Miller,
formerly with “Jude” whose debut solo album – on
which he is backed by members of Brinsley
Schwartz – is released by Chrysalis on October
27th. He will be accompanied on the tour by a
well known group whose identity has not been announced
– due to contractual reasons.

TYA on stage -
Music Scene 1972

|
|

Thursday, October
26th, 1972
|

New Musical
Express October 28th, 1972 |

November 9th, 1972 at Colston Hall, Bristol |
|
New Musical Express – November 11, 1972

One thing about a
Ten Years After gig, is that you know roughly what to
expect. It’s unlikely that you’ve seen them since their
last tour just under a year ago, but the chances are that
you’ll notice many changes in the band, this time round.
There are some new numbers, but the formula is much the
same and a very successful one at that. They near enough
sold out two nights at the Rainbow last week, and on
Friday laid down a strong, powerful show which generated
the usual Ten Years After fervour from the audience.
Personally, I don’t feel they have the credibility to be
one of the world’s very top bands, yet as rock and roll
bands go, they’re still mighty fine. Basically, you either
like them, or you don’t. On Friday they got off to a bit
of a slow start, until the third number, “Good Morning
Little Schoolgirl” which got things moving a little. This
was followed by what Alvin Lee described as, the self
indulged jam that we always get slaughtered for” – which
in fact was really quite good, with the occasional touch
of jazz coming through at various points. Apart from Alvin
Lee’s extroverted guitar work, he proved once again that
he is an ace showman, drawing as much spectacle out of the
band’s music as is possible, strutting across the stage,
pushing his guitar-neck along the mike stand and
occasionally substituting his plectrum (guitar pick) for a
drum stick, while Leo Lyons, an excellent bass player, and
Ric Lee and Chick Churchill concentrated solely on
providing the musical backdrop. Much of their material was
taken from the new album, but the three numbers that came
across most strongly were,
“Good Morning
Little Schoolgirl,” “I Can’t Keep From Crying Sometimes,”
and “Goin´ Home,” are also the three they’ve been playing
the longest. That’s not too healthy a reflection on their
newer material.
Frankie Miller
opened the evening with a brash, soulful set. Backed by
Brinsley Schwarz, who also accompanied him on his album,
“Once In A Blue Moon” and a couple of other people’s
songs. “You Don’t Have To Laugh To Be Happy” is one of his
better, self-written tunes. He has loads of potential as a
vocalist, but he’ll have to be very careful of his
direction.
By James Johnson
|

Spectrum, Philadelphia, 24 November 1972 |
 |

POPFOTO
Magazine
November 1972
From Bravo Magazine 1972 – Article by
K.E. Siegfried – Fotos: D. Zill
Alvin Lee: Lasst
mich rocken, wie ich will !

Hier erzählt Euch Alvin Lee alles
über sich und Ten Years After – seine Wünsche, seine Ziele
und seine Probleme
BRAVO: Bei eurer jüngsten
Deutschlandtournee sah es so aus, als seiest du der große
Star, der von Ten Years After nur noch begleitet wird.
Stimmt das?
ALVIN LEE: Nein, keineswegs. Wenn ich
die meisten Lorbeeren ernte, so liegt das an meiner
Aufgabe in der Gruppe. Ich spiele die Sologitarre und
singe – klar, dass ich da besonders im Scheinwerferlicht
stehe.
BRAVO: Viereinhalb Jahre spielt ihr
jetzt zusammen. Ist was an den Gerüchten dran, dass ihr
euch trennen wollt?
ALVIN LEE: Nach monatelangen Tourneen
durch Amerika und Japan waren wir nervlich völlig fertig.
Doch wir sind uns bewusst, dass eine Trennung nicht nur
das Ende der Gruppe bedeuten würde, sondern auch das Ende
eines jeden von uns.
BRAVO: Hat sich für euch erfüllt,
wovon ihr am Anfang eurer Karriere geträumt habt? Hat sich
zwischen euch etwas geändert?
ALVIN LEE: Wir machten alles
gemeinsam, jeder den gleichen Anteil an der Arbeit - jeder
den gleichen Anteil an Erfolg und Geld. Keiner sollte im
Vordergrund stehen und der Star werden. So sah es aus. So
sieht es nicht mehr ganz aus, aber wir werden mit den
Schwierigkeiten fertig.
BRAVO: Wurden dir, dem Star, schon
besondere geschäftliche Angebote gemacht?
ALVIN LEE: Ja, in Amerika. Ich sollte
für Zahnpasta Reklame machen. Aber was hat Musik unbedingt
mit Zähnen zu tun? Ich sagte nein, obwohl mir umgerechnet
150.000 Mark dadurch durch die Lappen gingen.
BRAVO: Privat drehst du Schmalfilme
und fotografierst. Hast du keine Lust einmal selbst in
einem Spielfilm mitzumachen?
ALVIN LEE: Überlegt habe ich mir das
schon. Aber vor der Kamera will ich mehr sein als nur die
Marionette eines Regisseurs. Ich möchte am Drehbuch
mitschreiben, mich um die Produktion kümmern – und das
bedeutet Arbeit, viel Arbeit. Ten Years After würden
darunter erheblich leiden.
BRAVO: Ihr bereitet euch jetzt auf
eure 16. Amerikatournee vor, eure Platten laufen in den
USA wie die Feuerwehr. Wie macht ihr das eigentlich?
ALVIN LEE: Wir lernen aus jeder
unserer Tourneen, Tag für Tag proben wir. Außerdem
schneiden wir jedes Konzert auf Band und hören es
anschließend gemeinsam ab. Schließlich versuchen wir, bei
jedem Konzert im letzten Drittel einen neuen Song zu
spielen – so schlaffen wir nicht ab und werden nicht
gleichgültig. Denn: Was wir können, ist uns nie gut genug.
BRAVO: Früher spielten Ten Years
After reinen Jazz. Dann kam der Blues, jetzt seid ihr eine
Rockband. Wie hat sich das entwickelt?
ALVIN LEE: 1967 beim
Woodstock-Festival kamen wir mit unserem Rocksong, „I’m
Going Home“ am besten an. Also ließen wir Jazz und Blues
und spielten immer mehr Rock. Ich muss zugeben, dass mir
diese Umstellung Schwierigkeiten macht. Ich mag mehr den Rock-Blues und arbeite zur Zeit an
zwei Rock-Blues-Singles. Da kann ich rocken, wie ich will.
Und davon lass´ ich mich von niemand abbringen. Die Gruppe
jedoch liebt den Rock `n ´ Roll.
Darum wurde unsere letzte LP eine reine Rock-LP.
BRAVO: „Rock And Roll Music To The
World“ ist eine eurer besten LP’s. Was ist das Geheimnis
dieses Erfolges?
ALVIN LEE: Für die Aufnahmen dieser
LP mieteten wir das fahrbare Tonstudio der Rolling Stones,
ein wahres technisches Wunder, dem wir die Qualität dieser LP
verdanken.
BRAVO: Der Rock `n´ Roll bringt euch
Erfolg. Wollt ihr eine weitere Rock - LP produzieren?
ALVIN LEE:
Ich glaube nicht. Wir suchen wieder nach etwas
Neuem. Wir wollen nicht stehen bleiben. |



From
Disc Magazine 11/25/72
Alvin Lee …Wanted To Stay Together
Alvin Lee is rather like a man amongst
boys. Rock, with
its temporary nature, is constantly coming up with
fresh faces to titillate the fickle public, but Alvin
Lee has survived it all with the help of Leo Lyons, Chick Churchill and Ric Lee, four people dedicated to
the furtherance of the music of Ten Years After. We were backstage at Bristol’s Colston Hall after the
final gig of TYA’s recent British tour. It was a marvellous gig with “Spoonful” and “Crossroads”
brought back into the set after a long absence.
We headed back towards London, veered off at the
Reading by-pass and manoeuvred our way through
narrow lanes which ultimately brought us to our
destination—a rambling old home, kept in immaculate
repair, set in fifty acres of land.
After listening to some tapes put down in the
States,
we had an hilarious supper, a bottle of champagne to celebrate
Lorraine’s birthday, a couple of tunes
played by Alvin on the piano and a lot of fun watching the men play
billiards.
TYA have become something of a rock institution. Is
there any one thing
that has kept you together? Alvin says: “There are a
few things, but the main thing is that we wanted to stay
together. It isn’t always easy, but if you
look for a way to work problems out rather than split up,
it’s much better. All bands have arguments, but we
look for a way to work it out.
“Each one of us is free to do what we
want, to a degree, and it’s our own music. A lot of people say they are
still playing the same way, but that is the style of
the band. Breaking up seemed entirely negative to us.”
Yours has been a natural progression as opposed to one
that followed the trends. Was that purposeful?
“It has always been part of our policy not to force
any progression. In the old days, as it were, all the bands I knew had to play popular
numbers, figuring that you
would get more work like that, but that was a matter of
doing gigs at the weekend to get some money rather than
having any long-term thoughts about playing your own music.
After a few years, we got to thinking about it and we
decided we would best be known for playing the kind of music we
liked. “Having been involved with a bit
of the Tin Pan Alley side, I really didn’t like it. I used to do guitar sessions and they would tell you
what style to play—that you were playing too much—
and it was awful. We decided we were going to be free
and play our own music which we did for about a year and a half with no success at all
(much laughter),
but we still kept at it.” Ten Years After were and still
are the most blues-orientated band to find mass acceptance. Why do you think you succeeded where others
failed?
Alvin replies: “In all fairness, John Mayall was a large
inspiration, due to the fact that he was earning a
living playing his own kind of music. This gave us a great
deal of encouragement to try to do a similar thing on
our own level. Mayall’s group was a purist blues band, where as we interpreted the blues in a way which
offended the purist. “I think there is a lot of luck
involved because I
know a lot of good musicians who are now doing nothing, just
because they didn’t have the
perseverance. “You see, the one thing our band had in
common when it was rough was that we didn’t have anything else we could do. We didn’t have a
trade.
The only way I could earn a living was to do a gig in a pub which was all experience
anyway.”
Do you think Charisma plays an important part?
“That of course, is in the eye of the
beholder.
I’ve always liked to believe there wasn’t such a thing but,
of course, there is. Take ‘Woodstock’ as an example.
After we had been at Woodstock the attitude towards us was entirely different. We seem to have acquired
some kind of prestige from being on celluloid. “Some people
are totally affected by it and others not at all, and
they are the kind of people I can get along with. I can’t
get along with people who sit overawed just because you
were in a ‘Woodstock’ film.”
However, even though you have tried to take the
emphasis off yourself by having the rest of the band do solos,
most of the attention is still focused on yourself.
Would you agree that some people have more of an aura than
others? “Sure. You get a much more positive reaction if you
have something that people can either relate to or recognise.
For instance, there’s Elvis Presley whom I, as a 13-
year old, hero-worshipped. I was totally in an aura which
I had made up in my own mind about him, and everything
he did was fantastic and there was no knocking it— until I eventually went off him and, in fact hated
him.
You see, no rationalisation at all. “It could have been
because he changed, because I still think his early recordings
were incredible. They have so much earthiness—so much country funk, but he then went into that plastic
Hollywood pop star game and his music became stereotyped.
“ I went to see him in Las Vegas and he was like an
Elvis Presley impersonator. He really overdid himself.
“I think if he had just played his own music instead
of relating to all those other images, he would have been
better off —commercially as well. To get any lasting
pleasure,
you have to believe in what you do. You should take it
seriously. “With Ten Years After, the thing is I
don’t lead it. I may stand at the front and write the songs,
but I don’t tell anyone what to play. It’s the music of
four people and it grows itself and finds its own level.”
Your guitar style has become very distinctive. Did this
happen gradually?
“It was very gradual. Originally, all my phrases were
either made up or copied off records—most of them I adapted from other
things. Very few of them were
original. But the more I played them the more I twisted
them around and other people brought my attention to
it. “I would say ‘I played this solo just like it was
on the record’ and they’d say ‘it’s nothing
like it’ and play the record. It would have changed without
my noticing it.
“However, I did become aware that my own style was
developing—in fact, I got really paranoid as to what
I should do if I didn’t because I didn’t really
know what I was doing. I figured it was a matter of listening to good
records, picking things up, adding to them and
interpreting them my own way.”
This follow-through attitude you have towards your
music also seems to apply to your interest in
electronic music and photography. Is it true of you
generally? Alvin
says: “It’s nice to think you think that, but
the only thing I believe is that if you want to do something
or be involved in it, then you have to learn all the
angles about it. “Even if you want to run a sweet shop,
there’s a right way to do it. It’s a help just
talking to people who know something about it, but best of all
is actually doing it. “It’s one thing to think
something out perfectly, but doing it is something else.
“I’ve always basically been
a thinker and I’ve had to adapt to doing. What I do have is
the ability to be involved one hundred percent.” We haven’t had a “live” album from TYA since “Undead.”
Can we expect another one? “That’s on. We’ve avoided another ‘live’
album for the same reason we’ve avoided putting slow
blues’ numbers on recent albums—because it seemed too easy.
It just didn’t seem right to put down an album in one evening instead of working for three months in a
studio. “However, I’m convinced that it would be a good
time to do one now and we’re going to record with the
Stones’ mobile studio which we tested out on ‘Rock and
Roll Music to the World’.
“We’re going to record four dates on the Continent
in January and mix the tapes in Los Angeles where
there are good studios for mixing. “If it turns out
all right, then we’ll definitely release it. That’s our
next plan.”
What about the U.S. hysteria that followed
“Woodstock.” Has it eased up?
“That kind of flashed up and flashed off really. It
was a bit of mass media exposure
and it went the way I always figured it would—just a flash in the
pan.”
Author Unknown
|

13 December 1972 -.
Hollywood Palladium
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