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July
13, 2002
INTERVIEW
WITH ALVIN LEE:
FROM
NOTTINGHAM TO WOODSTOCK TO CHAMPNEYS
ALVIN
LEE ENDS UP IN A
DRUG REHABILITATION PROGRAM FROM ALCOHOL AND COCAINE ABUSE.
WHILE DOING HIS LAST GRAM OF COKE AT THE GATE, HE CHECKS
HIMSELF INTO CHAMPNEYS HEALTH FARM FOR A COMPLETE
DETOXIFICATION, AND THUS TRADES IN HIS WHITE CLOGS FOR….
The
story starts as a helicopter drifts over a sea of faces and
heads towards the stage. 5000,000 people, some naked, some on
drugs, mostly hippies, were there to see some of the biggest
names in rock and to celebrate peace and love. Man.
Many
shielded their eyes as they looked into the bright August sun
towards the helicopter, as they wondered who might be inside.
The
helicopters had been ferrying the artists in and out all
weekend long, as it was the only way. The two lane highway
that led to this cow pasture in upstate New York was totally
blocked for seventeen miles. Groups of youngsters had driven
halfway across the country in their flower-daubed V W’s in
order to get there. But the fact remains, that less than half
of them actually paid for tickets.
Police
stood helplessly by as the crowd, who were expected to reach
60,000 swelled, tore down fences, smoked pot, took acid,
danced naked and listened to some of the best music on the
planet.
Some
who had already been and gone on the Friday and Saturday
included, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Sly and the Family
Stone, The Who and Jefferson Airplane. Now it was Sunday
August 18, 1969 the final day of this amazing, unique event,
and the guest would include Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker, The
Band, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
As
the helicopter in question touched down in the backstage area,
out trooped four lads from Nottingham, England called Ten
Years After.
Says
singer, songwriter, and guitarist Alvin Lee, “We were only
there about five hours in all, and three of those
waiting around because it had been raining, the stage
was soaked, and electricity was sparking.”
“It didn’t look likely that anyone would be going
on stage for an hour or two so I went for a walk through the
crowd and around the lake. It was the best decision I could
have made, I saw the festival from the other side.
”Backstage was utter confusion, bands and managers were
vying for who goes on next, and during this, the whole
backstage area had run out of cigarettes so I volunteered to
go and find some. “It was a different world out there, the
people were fantastic. No one knew who I was but people were
offering me food, drinks, joints, anything they had. They were
happy to share. “I remember near the
stage entrance area there was a police car with nowhere
to go. It was totally wedged in by people so the two cops were
sitting on the grass smoking a joint with some of the crowd.
“If you can’t beat’em join’em, a grinning cop said to
me. I asked if he had any cigarettes. He said no and handed me
a couple of joints. “I walked off around the lake area there
were lots of naked people swimming, and it all seemed serenely
natural in this setting. “It reminded me of a native Indian
scene with camp fires, and barbecues, and circles of people
passing round pipes, and stuff. I asked for cigarettes, and
they handed me a couple of joints too. “When I eventually
arrived backstage after my adventures, it was still chaos.
“Have you got any cigarettes?” they asked. “No, but
I’ve got 18
joints.” Alvin’s walk seems to have done the trick.
Ten
Year’s 90 minute set on that Sunday would change their lives
forever. In fact, before Led Zeppelin came along, Ten Years
After were Britain’s biggest selling rock band. It was a
nine minute version of their encore number called “I’m
Going Home” that became a festival highlight, when the
‘Woodstock’ movie was released the following year. The
reason was Lee’s guitar wizardry. “I have watched it a few
times since, and it’s still pretty good,” he admits today.
“Of course you see the mistakes, but that was all part of
it.”
Ten
Years After is: Alvin Lee on guitar and vocals; Ric Lee on drums; Chick Churchill on keyboards; and Leo Lyons on bass
guitar. The band would sell millions of records, tour the
United States more than any other band in the world, and rub
shoulders with rock legends such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis
Joplin, and George Harrison.
There
came the country mansions, the fleet of cars, and inevitably,
the sex, and the drugs, along with their rock and roll. It was
a long way from Wollaton Park where Alvin grew up, with his
two older sisters, Janice, and Irma.
By
trade his father Sam was a builder, while his mother Doris ran
a hair-dressing salon. They both played guitar. They used to
do odd gigs as a cowboy trio; my mum, my dad, and my sister
Janice. My dad collected ethnic blues records, prison work
songs, and stuff like that. Big Bill Broonsy, and Lonnie
Johnson. I grew up listening to that, and that’s where my
blues came from.
Along
with his parents musical influence, Alvin was swept up into
the American culture of the late 1950’s including, James
Dean, Bill Haley, and of course Elvis Presley. Alvin says,
“It was all very romantic, and a contrast to my environment
in Nottingham where you were brought up to work at Raleigh or
Players.” As it turned out he would only have one
“proper” job after leaving School.
Leaving
Margaret Glen-Bott School, where he says he was a bit of a
rebel and was regularly sent back home, for wearing
“inappropriate clothing”. It was at Weller Gauge, a light
engineering company that he worked for about two months, Alvin
says, “I cut my fingers one day on some metal work and my
Mum said, ‘you can’t stay there-you have your fingers to
think about. So they
let me pack it in and concentrate on my guitar playing”.
Alvin’s
very first gig had been at the age of thirteen at the Palace
Cinema in Sandiacre, which was located by the railway bridge,
and has long since been demolished. At that time he was
playing with Alan Upton and The Jailbreakers, right before the
screening of a Brigitte Bardot movie, in which the
advertisement announced, ‘Alan Upton featuring Alvin Lee,
and his amazing talking guitar’. His Mum still has got the
cutting”.
He
joined his next band called Vince Marshall and the Square Caps,
by way of another advert in the Evening Post. Alvin says,
“we rehearsed for three months, played one gig at ‘All
Souls Church’ in Radford, then broke up”.
Next
in line, was Ivan Jay, and The Jaycats, and Alvin says,
“Ivan Jay is living in San Diego now. He’s a car racer and
one of my heroes. He was a bit older than us, and we all
looked up to him. He had bright blond hair, and my Mum dyed
his hair pink and blue on the sides, and he had to go home on
the 39 bus”.
By
the early sixties, Ivan had left, and Alvin had taken over the
vocal duties, and the name was changed to the ‘Jaybirds’,
playing in Nottingham at such clubs as, The Dancing Slipper,
The Carousel, The Cocked Hat, and The Regal located in Ripley.
They followed the Beatles
trail to Hamburg, and to the famous Star Club, located in the
heart of the red light district, the Reeperbahn. Alvin says,
“That’s where I learned everything about sex, drugs, and
rock’n roll”.
The
Beatles, had been there and gone by the time the Jaybirds
arrived, but other artists including Tony Sheridan, Cliff
Bennett, and the Rebel Rousers, and The Big Three, were there
performing.
Alvin
says, “I’d seen nothing like it before. The Star Club was
run by gangsters. When you were playing there you got a little
badge with a star on it. I’ve still got mine. It could get
you in anywhere in the Reeperbahn. I was glad to get away from
there alive, it was a bit hairy at times. “All these kind of
gangster things were going on. Hookers used to come down to
the gig at two in the morning, and pick on the young boys for
a bit of fun”. Like you Alvin? “Yeah, a lot of fun
actually,” he laughs, “I was there a month, but it felt
like two years”. Find
below the lyrics to "Little
Boy"
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The
story behind Alvin’s song LITTLE BOY which he wrote as a little
autobiography about a period of weeks that occurred in his teenage years.
He talks about his discovery of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll in
Hamburg, Germany.
It
seems that just for fun, the hookers would come down to the Hamburg club
in the small hours of the morning and have a little fun with the cute
young teenage boys, who were there. Alvin just happened to be one of the
LITTLE BOYS who attracted the attention of these whores. As
I have yet to find anyone who transcribed the lyrics correctly, this
version is the way I heard Alvin sing it, but we’re always open to
making corrections.
The
song starts:
“I’m gonna tell the story now”, he
says, “give me
bass drum”. When I was a little boy, I didn’t know right from wrong, I
was young and innocent, but it didn’t last too long. I went out to
Germany, reefer born and all that, I aged five years in thirty weeks, now
there ain’t no turning back.
(Choirs)
….
Ooh, it ain’t a bad
world, it ain’t bad all the time,
No one gives, gives you no guarantee that you’re gonna like what you find.
You
can’t forget the things you learn, you can’t go back in time. I live
my life to gain experience,
I’ve laid it on the line.
I don’t claim I’ve seen everything, but
I’ve had my share. I don’t understand everything, but I know what’s
fair.
(Choirs)
….
Ooh, it ain’t a bad
world, it ain’t bad all the time,
No one gives, gives you no guarantee that you’re gonna like what
you find.
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While
backing American singers on tour in the UK, like The Drifters,
and The Ivy League, and with ex-roadie Chick Churchill who was
from Ilkeston, joining on his Hammond as organ/keyboard player,
the band also took on a new name and now became Ten Years
After.
It
was in 1966, and blues rock was an emerging force in Britain,
and Ten Years After were signed to ‘Decca Records’ where
Jonathan King, chose Love Like A Man to be released as a
single. It became their only hit in Britain, but like Led
Zeppelin who came later, Ten Years After were really an album
band, particularly in the USA, where Lee’s speed guitar
playing earned him hero worship on a par with Jimmy Page and
Jimi Hendrix. Alvin’s trademark ‘Red Gibson ES-335’
along with his long blond hair, with white clogs, and loons
epitomised a definite kind of hippie cool.
So
that by the year 1968, Decca were pushing the band in the
direction of America. It was during these early tours that the
members of Ten Years After would be rubbing elbows and
shoulders with the likes of Jimi Hendrix and a
hurricane-voiced blues singer named Janis Joplin, who more
than held up her end when it came to drugs, drinking and
living her life in the world of rock ‘n’ roll excess. As
Alvin tells it, “Most guitarists…Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and
the like, I figured we all had about the same influences, and
I knew where they were coming from, but Jimi Hendrix…
from outer space, he was a force on his own”.
Alvin,
like most others during the 1960’s was into sampling the new
drug called ‘LSD’ in great quantities. Alvin recalls, “I
became cosmically conscious. It did me a lot of good. As a
lad, I was a bit of a tear-a-way. With the Jaybirds, we had
shotguns in the van and would go around shooting poor old
rabbits and crows, but it all changed, I wouldn’t kill an
ant after I had LSD”.
So
by the mid 1970’s Ten Years After were feted in the USA and
were selling millions of copies of record albums. Alvin bought
himself a 16th-Century-Country Mansion, located in
Berkshire called Hook End Manor, which included twenty rooms,
and was set on fifty acres of land. It was to become the
band’s headquarters, their studio and their workshop. Alvin
reflects, “I built a large studio in the old barn there
which was called Space Studios. It had no windows, and no
clocks so it was impossible to know what time of day or night
it was.
They
were crazy times. We often used to spend all night in the
studio, and when we came out it was already light outside, so
we’d go back in for another ten hours until it got dark
again”.
“The
craziness went on for several years, but then it started to
get too crazy. At first we just used to smoke lots of hashish,
but later came the cocaine, which was totally unproductive,
and a big waste of money. “We would be in the studio for
three days at a time, non-stop, and I don’t think we
recorded anything worth keeping during the whole two years.
“Fortunately, I saw the light in time, I looked in the
mirror one day, and said ‘Who the hell is that?’ I
immediately went and checked in to Champneys
health farm for a complete detox”.
After
finishing off his last gram of cocaine at the front gates,
Alvin submitted to a check-up. A doctor took his blood
pressure, and informed the guitarist: “It looks like
you’ve got here just in time.”
In
retrospect Alvin laments, “Since then I am glad to say I
have swapped my clogs for trainers (sneakers), and I have my
own gym and studio at home. Alvin concludes, “The drugs are
just a purple haze.”
As
for Ten Years After, they would get back together in 1989 to
make an album entitled ‘About Time’, along with a tour,
but the fact remains, that since the mid-seventies, Alvin has
concentrated more on his solo work, and with the Alvin Lee
Band than devoting any time at all to his fellow band mates or
with his old band, Ten
Years After.
Alvin
now lives in Malaga Spain. He says, “It’s a lovely view
from my studio, I can look out and see the ocean.”
What
does he do everyday? Well lets ask Alvin, “I’m still
writing songs, and touring, though I haven’t played in
Nottingham for a long time, but I’d like to play ‘Rock
City’, I have a music publishing company, with offices still
in Nottingham.” Although he has never been married, he does
have one daughter named Jasmin, who is now in her twenties,
and is also working in the music business as a band manager.
Although
Alvin left Nottingham at the young age of eighteen, he is now
fifty seven (as of this article), and he still carries the
prominent accent, and keeps in touch with his Mum Doris, who
is still living in Wollaton Park. As Alvin states, “ She was
always really proud, to be honest, I don’t often do
interviews these days. I’m not really bothered about the
history books, but my mum said ‘oh I’m so proud of you, go
on, do it.”
Alvin
continues his conversation and talks about, George Harrison,
Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix:
Looking
back, it was at Steve Paul’s Scene Club, that one Jimi
Hendrix stood by and watched Ten Years After perform, as Alvin
reflects, “We were doing ‘I Can’t Keep From Crying,
which had a twenty minute guitar solo, and I went into it with
jazz octaves, and stuff like that, he came up to me (Jimi
Hendrix) and said ‘wow I’ve been thinking of doing
something like that, but you beat me to it’. So there was a
bit of mutual respect there.”
When
they met up once again, it was at The Speakeasy in London.
Alvin continues, “He (Jimi)
asked Leo Lyons if he could get up and jam, and Leo
said ‘no’. I knew who he was, but I don’t think Leo did,
which was a bit embarrassing. (Note:12 / 2004 Leo’s
recollection of this event is much different than Alvin’s
version.) He
(Jimi) did have some terrible gigs though, because he would
treat his guitar in such a way, it would go dreadfully out of
tune. He would come off stage and he would throw his guitars
at the roadies, going raving mad. Apart from that, he was a
very nice guy, very quiet. Quiet and mad, hot and cold, like
all larger than life people.”
Alvin
and George Harrison became close friends and neighbours after
Alvin moved in to Hook End Manor, as Alvin says, “George
lived just down the road at Friar Park in Henley, and we used
to jam together, and play on each others albums all the time.
I remember one time he came over with Eric Clapton and Carl
Radle, and I was rehearsing with my new band Ten Years Later.
We had a jam session and recorded ‘Too Many Lead Guitarists
Blues’. At the end I shouted ‘everybody take it’ and it
turned into the loudest cacophony you’ve ever heard. George
would later come over and play slide guitar on my albums. He
played on ‘Real Life Blues’, ‘Talk Don’t Bother Me and
‘The Bluest Blues’. George also played on my version of
the ‘Beatles’ I Want You-She’s So Heavy. He was a
wonderful man, and I miss him greatly. He always used to send
my mum a food hamper or flowers on her birthday.”
 It’s
no surprise that Alvin’s friendship with Janis Joplin was
far less relaxed, as Alvin remembers it, “I think she had a
thing for me, she called me baby-cakes, but I didn’t know
what it meant, my ass I think…hang on my mum’s reading
this. Alvin goes on, “One night when I saw her play, the
audience were handing bottles up on stage to her, and she
tweaked my ass, and gave me a bottle of Southern Comfort. I
didn’t realise it was a strong whisky, and I drank most of
it. Next thing, I woke up at five in the morning, backstage at
the Fillmore East in New York City, and there was no one but a
guy sweeping up.”
So
had Janis got what she was after from Alvin?
Alvin’s
firm reply, “No, she scared me, she was one of the boys, and
far too dangerous for me at that time.”
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set to surface, with the bands
Woodstock breakthrough naturally among the expected highlights.
Ensuring that credit is given where credit’s due. Ric Lee
admitted that his own performance on the Woodstock
soundtrack’s 
