ALVIN LEE BAND  /  Alvin Lee - Steve Gould (b) - Alvin Schrempf (dr)

Newspaper Article /Concert Review by Thomas Hagen

Photos by Brigitte Scholz

"Playing The Fillmore East 1970" By Ric Lee  (2001)

Ten Years After Fillmore East – February 26^th , 27^th , and 28^th  of  1970.

The Fillmore East, opened after the fin nominal success of the Fillmore West, in San Francisco, California, owned and operated by concert promoter Bill Graham. The Fillmore East was located on Second Avenue and Sixth Street, Manhattan, New York, New York, USA.

It officially opened on March eighth 1968 and closed forever on June 27^th 1971.

 Ten Years After’s first performance at the Fillmore East was on the second and third of August 1968, this was during our very first tour of America. We opened for Big Brother and the Holding Company which featured their female singer Janis Joplin and The Staple Singers. The Staple Singers were magnificent, but the awesome Janis Joplin completely blew the audience away.

 Our next appearance there was on September 27^th and 28^th of 1968, this was sandwiched in between Country Joe and the Fish and the openers Procol Harum, who were friends of ours with the same management.

 February 28^th and March 1^st of 1969, saw our first headline gig, supported by John Mayall and Slim Harpo. It was at this gig that I got into trouble with our managers for going on stage in the first set to jam with John Mayall and Mick Taylor, the guitarist that replaced Peter Green in John’s and who would leave again very soon, in order to join The Rolling Stones.

Although, this was in a time of spontaneous jamming between members of different bands at assorted venues, I was told in no uncertain terms, that on this occasion, that it was not appropriate for a member of the headlining act to jam with the support bands, this in spite of the fact, that the entire audience went crazy when I did that, and my actions didn’t jeopardise our status later in the evening in any way. There were other jam sessions at the Fillmore too.

After hours, Bill would supply some food and drinks and the bands, along with some invited guest, would get together and jam until dawn, when everybody staggered out into the cold morning light, and hoping to be able to find the way back to their hotels without too much grief.

The English Invasion was next on April 9^th and 10^th, 1969 with our mates (friends) The Nice and Family. Family and Ten Years After had enjoyed a friendly (and healthy) rivalry, since the early Marquee Club days in England, when both bands were booked by separate agents from the same office. A wager was taken as to which band would first receive a sixty pound fee for an engagement, at any club in the UK during the 1967 period. We won!

On the second day of this engagement at Bill Graham’s burgeoning venue, all of us were pleasantly surprised and flattered when Jimi Hendrix turned up to watch the show.

Alvin, Leo, Chick and I had met Jimi on a couple of previous occasions; the first of which happened when we played support to The Experience at Sussex University, in Brighton, England, early on in our careers, and later when Jimi, drummer Mitch Mitchell and guitarist Larry Coryell came to sit in with us during our residency at Steve Paul’s Scene Club, which was the first New York venue that we played back in 1968.

 In 1970, we headlined on February 26^th with John Hammond and Zephyr (featuring Tommy Bolin on guitar) and on the 27^th and 28^th with John Hammond and Doug Kershaw. Luckily, the shows on these dates were recorded, and have been re-mastered, in their entirety for this double CD set. None of the tracks here have been released before, this the exception of: “Love Like A Man” which was the B-Side of a vinyl 45 single that was released in April of 1970 on the Deram label, and gave us a Top Ten hit in the UK, in the summer of that same year. 

The Fillmore East was a cosy theatre with a seating capacity of 3564, and unlike it’s brother venue, The Fillmore West in San Francisco, which was previously known as the Carousel Ballroom, it had very limited seating arrangements. Before the shows, the street outside would be teeming with hippies, stone freaks, groupies, fans and street people from the East Village. Sometimes, we entered the gig through the front door and were immediately bombarded by all of them, requesting “Spare Change”, and do you have any spare change?”

None of those demands were ever threatening to our safety in any way, and Leo’s initial response was, “Thanks, how much have you got?” Which later would become our stock answer to all panhandlers. Wisely, we never gave in to these constant request, and later on some of these same protagonist who were protesting poverty, would be seen in Chicago and Los Angeles making similar request outside of the gigs in those cities.

 Shows at the Fillmore East were twice nightly at eight and eleven thirty. But, no matter which time you went on stage, with three other acts on each night, there was always a long wait until your second set. So in order to relive the boredom of sitting in what were pretty basic and somewhat dismally (grim) dressing rooms, we would often go out front and watch the other acts perform for awhile, and then if it was going to be a long evening, we would venture next door to Ratners. Unlike its English namesake, in later years, Ratners was not jewellery chain, but a superb Kosher dairy restaurant. Their nut cutlet was fabulous. This was a dish of mashed potatoes and mushrooms with an outer crust of bread-crumbs. It looked very similar to Chicken Kiev, but the taste was strikingly different and inimitable. (Indescribably Delicious).

 Backstage was Spartan. The bands performed on staging built out over the old orchestra pit. The area behind the light show screen was stripped of wings, flies and backdrop to facilitate quick changes between acts. It was very stark (barren/empty) and even though the old theatre was very well heated, it always seemed cold on the main stage; surrounded only by three bare brick walls. (Hi Ric, most likely if you drilled a hole in those walls, you would find the outside right behind those bricks. No insulation, and a never ending draft from one end of that stage to the other.

All of the heavy back-line gear; Drum Kit, Hammond Organ, Marshall Amp Stacks, and the like were set on low, mobile risers. When the first act finished, the light show screen was raised and the equipment was rapidly rolled in and out of position. Beneath the stage was a grim, mucky basement, but more about that situation later. The stalwart engineer of the tracks on this CD package was pucker Englishman Edwin H. Kramer, better known to us as Eddie.

He is perhaps, most famous for recording all of Jimi Hendrix’s hits, and is the master-mind behind the building of Jimi’s New York Recording Studio called “Electric Ladyland”.

 For these Ten Years After recording sessions, poor Eddie was consigned to the grim mucky basement, with: “What was probably a rented, handmade, console and a Scully eight track tape machine, which I believe, I also used at Woodstock 1969 for recording the festival.

The desk was probably made by Bill Hanley who supplied all the PA systems around that time. There I was in that dingy cellar, cans (my headphones) on, crouched over the desk, surrounded by enormous heating pipes and although I never actually saw one, I’m convinced that there were rats within spitting distance. As soon as the band on stage right above me leapt into action, I was showered with dust and had to dash to cover the sensitive recording gear with sheets, polythene and anything else directly at hand. Not the easiest (or the most ideal way) way to record”.   

 The atmosphere up top side however was electric. As Bill Graham introduced us individually and the minute you hit the stage, the hot air from the overhead lighting, the air thick with the smell of dope, instantly warmed you, and set you up for the show. The audience at once seemed like best friends, just wanting to share whatever we were going to give them with tremendous involvement and appreciation. In addition to the usual stage lights, was Joshua’s fabulous light show. Behind my low drum riser was an enormous screen which filled the whole of the proscenium arch, providing a kind of living backdrop / background to the band, which was projected, from a gallery at the back of the stage, the most amazing psychedelic images; forming, then disintegrating / then re-forming again and again in sympathetic

(unison / synchronicity)  with the music.  

A quick note about some of the rare gems that are included here:

“Spoonful” – has been an intrical and principal  part of our stage act in the early days and was incorporated in our very first studio album for that reason. By the time this Fillmore East concert came along, it had unfortunately been dropped  from our set list, in favour of new tracks from the bands forthcoming; “Cricklewood Green” album. This studio album produced such powerful / memorable hits such as – “Love Like A Man” – “50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain” – and “Working On The Road”.  This is most likely why it shows up here an encore. 

Ric Lee:

“We seemed to be playing quite spur of the moment stuff in this period as witness, “Help Me Baby”, about which Alvin comments, “I might add, that’s the first time we’ve played that number for about nine months. Yeah, was a good trip, wan-nit?” (great / perfect)!

“Roll Over Beethoven” – the Chuck Berry classic, has to my knowledge, never before been released  on any Ten Years After set, which makes this track extremely rare”.

 “Hobbit” – my old chestnut, is included here as it was an integral part of our live sets all through our career and is different to a later version that was on “Recorded Live” 1973.

I was experimenting with different forms at this stage, in the live context. Similarly, many of  Ten Years After’s classics gained development on stage, in front of our fans. I don’t mean we were getting paid for rehearsing. What we were doing was more akin to the way jazz players had developed their chops in the years before; taking a basic theme and then jamming it out.

This way, each performance would have something different, however small and the music was kept exciting for both the performers and the aficionados. A good example of this happens in, “I Woke Up This Morning”. There’s a “living on the edge” approach from the rhythm section during Alvin’s extended solo. In effect, we were all soloing and you’ll hear Leo and Chick and me all playing phrases across the beat in a jazz style to both complement and contrast with the guitar, which became one of the trade marks of a Ten Years After performance.

 In my humble opinion, these tracks are among some of the best Ten Years After live recordings. When putting this collection together, we tried hard to recreate the excitement and ambience of the gigs when mixing and although the final selection is taken from different nights, we’ve tried to present the album as near to the running order of the show, so that you the listener can sit, get stoned or whatever, and either imagine being at the Fillmore, soaking up the atmosphere if you were never there, or relive it if you were, in what was one of rock’s most famed and revered venues.