THE SOUNDS

An Interview with Alvin Lee of Ten Years After
October 17, 1970

 Ten Years After have an unusual place in rock idolatry; their live performances of supercharged rock and roll have made them a monster group. Woodstock has made them even bigger, and yet because of their success they’re now at a crossroads. They’ve arrived at the crossroads because their strength, their success, is in their live performance when they come together as a driving, stomping outfit with a feel that they’ve never quite come across with in the studio. But their strength has also proved their weakness because having reached so far they face the possibility of drowning in their own success and being swamped by an audience of screamers, an audience that they never wanted.

Alvin talked about these problems and other things to ROYSTON ELDRIDGE.

 “Love Like A Man” was a best selling single—the standard requirement for a group’s appearance on Top Of The Pops yet TYA haven’t appeared to date. Why not?
It’s mainly their lack of artistic integrity, really, and television is a very weird medium for our kind of music anyway. It’s very difficult to get into music on a TV because of various reasons—they’re prone to cutting things and making it as short as possible. I’ve never done a session there but I should imagine it’s in and out as soon as you can. There’s no real point in us doing it anyway. The thing’s a hit which we didn’t really want in the first place, so what’s the point of plugging it further. One day, maybe, if we can get it together we might go on and play something which we are proud of but it would just be a waste of time at the moment. The single was just put out as a trailer for the album in the States but Jonathan King wanted it released here and we agreed to it as long as we could have the B side in stereo at thirty three and a third and over eight minutes long. The A side I personally think is a very un-valid thing, it’s not representative of us at all with the solo being cut out. When it comes back in after where the solo was cut, it’s about twice as fast. It makes me shudder every time I hear it.

When we turned down Top Of The Pops we were accused of being superstars and everything but the point is it’s not valid for us to do it. We don’t want to reach the people that watch it and you must admit it’s a pretty poor programme. The bands come on, do their thing, and off. It’s very watery entertainment , superfluous, nothing real.   A television enables you to reach a certain market which we’re not really ready for yet , I don’t think we ever will be actually but definitely not at the moment. The concerts draw full capacity anyway and the albums sell much more than the singles have ever done and as musicians that’s all we want…the appreciation of people who listen. Hit singles tend to bring in people—like the Woodstock film has to a degree—who come to kind of experience the event rather than listen to the music. We try to encourage the listeners rather then those sort of teenyboppers.

Has the Woodstock festival and film appearance affected the group in any way?  
It’s affected the concerts in certain areas like New Jersey where it’s got completely out of hand, you know where it’s like a form of Beatlemania. I hate the word but a lot of people are definitely coming to see us because we’re topical or trendy or what have you. They’re just coming for the event, we played there and there were police barricades outside, it was a joke. We try and discourage it as much as we can—you know all those screamers—without sounding totally ungrateful. It’s flattering in a way but if we can’t hear ourselves then it’s not really worth playing.

The group’s been together a long time now. How does everybody feel at present?
Well we’ve been playing the same number for the last couple of months and you tend to feel a bit machine like and repetitive so we’ll be having a few rehearsals and work on some new numbers which will cheer everybody up a lot. We’re going to make another album, we’ll have some rough rehearsals first and throw a few numbers around, so we know basically what we’ll be doing before we get into the studio. Then we’re going to have a quick shoot around the States—two weeks—and then we’ll have quite a bit of time off for policy talks and everything to work out where we go from here. I think we’ve gone like so far, we’ve gone beyond where we were actually hoping, so now we’ve got to re-assess what we want to do and what direction we want to go in. We’ve so many ideas at the moment. It’s difficult to know which will be the best for us. Everybody’s had lots of thoughts musically and no chance to put them into any solid form.

We’ve got to decide whether we want to go on just as we are because if we do it might get too out of hand, we might get too teenyboppery. We’ve got to discuss if we want to control it and if so, how we can. It’s been suggested that we don’t do any small clubs anymore which in a way is sad because they always have a very good atmosphere. The question is can we play at any small clubs again? If you get a lot of people turned away at the door, which happened in the States, you get trouble outside. There’s not really the venues in England anyway. There’s such a lot of difference between going down well in the clubs and from stepping up to the Albert Hall. There’s nothing between, say the Marquee, and the Albert Hall and then that’s it. Once you’ve played the Albert Hall it’s difficult to go back to the Marquee and there’s nothing beyond the Albert Hall really except for the festivals. I miss the club dates in a way because that was half rehearsal, half playing, sort of thing where we used to experiment a lot. When you’re doing really organised gigs you get rushed in backstage, quarter of an hour before you’re on, and before you know it you’re on, you’ve played and you’re rushed out again.

Have you considered increasing the size or instrumentation of Ten Years After?
Our musical interest in TYA is seeing what we can do with what we have. The format is very loose the way we play now and any more instruments –although it might sound strange—would limit us because then you start getting into set arrangements. As soon as you’ve got a certain section playing this and a certain section playing that, you loose any informal thing that you may have. Now we can just play and if we don’t like the way it is going, I can switch the rhythm around and everyone picks up and we’re off again somewhere else. Any more people than four and you might get some problems.

Do you feel that you’ve reached as far as you can go with four people?
I think when you hear that it’s an excuse. Like King Crimson reached as far as they could go in one album? I don’t believe it, I believe bands break up because of personal problems. I’m sure if we can keep our heads together and keep a good relationship on a personal level, the music will go on forever. It gets to the point when you even surprise yourself with what you’re doing. I don’t like forcing progression, you let it progress naturally, but you can be making and album and you’ll find yourself onto something else which you don’t realise until it’s done. There’s no limitation at all with four people, probably even less with three.

You’re interested in electronics. Have you considered getting into electronic music a little more deeply?
It’s like a hobby thing which is creeping into the albums a bit. I’ve got ideas for using it for effects on stage but there again I’m not too sure because electronics is my personal thing, it’s a hobby, and if it gets to be part of the band, it could ruin the hobby thing about it. Basically we want to stay musical. We want to play music, everyone has interest which are side trips but it’s the music the TYA makes together that is Ten Years After’s music, if you exert any one influence in any one direction on it, it can change the group’s direction and it’s wrong to interfere with something that’s happening all on it’s own. TYA is a fusion of four people and it just happens to work that way. If it doesn’t well, it doesn’t, but if it does that’s fine. We prefer to let it happen and improvise rather than guide it. We could say, guide it more towards jazz, we could take it to jazz, we could take it anywhere, but we prefer to let it have it’s own natural head and see what happens to it.

You’ve been singled out as the face, the spokesman, of Ten Years After. Does it worry you at all, this superstar image?
Only when I’m accused of doing something that I haven’t done like ego-tripping or being a superstar or something. A lot of it is just stories Rolling Stone did a story about me having my own limousine; it was completely untrue. In fact the actual thing was that it was Ric and his wife travelling in another limmo. I think the reason I’ve been singled out is because I sing and it’s the singer who has the spotlight on all the time. It wasn’t planned that way and whether it’s good or bad I don’t know. What does get annoying, and what can happen to anyone is that you get put up on a pedestal, somebody puts you up there, and then other people start knocking you off. I long ago realised that whatever you do some people are going to like it and some people aren’t. Some people write things which they can’t possibly know about, the most common is being accused of being on an ego trip. It’s really weird because that’s the one thing that I have always been aware of and tried to avoid. It’s easy to get too flash and for the seven years that I was struggling I always thought to myself if I got anything together I would definitely not get into one of those flash scenes. And I’ve always done the opposite. I’ve always gone out of my way to be non-egotistical.

What about the criticism that you sacrifice taste for speed in your guitar playing?
I never know how to answer that, I just play the way I want to play and I can see that in some people’s eyes that might be true, but it’s not true to me. I don’t play as fast as I could, I could play a lot faster, I could be a lot showier, a lot flashier and a lot more commercial. If I go too fast for some people then that’s up to them to decide but to actually say something like “he plays too fast”, that’s a very weird thing to say. How do they put themselves into a position to judge anything so definitely. I’m going somewhere, my own style is developing still, and I’m never going to be happy with it. I know that, I’m always striving for something more but I’ve never strived for speed except for perhaps eight years ago when I used to do speed scales and things but that was just to get fluent. When I’m playing I get kinda heated and then what I play is more or less sub-conscious. I don’t think “now I’m going to play this or I’m now going to play that”, it just happens I don’t see any reason to change it.

I think what is most valid is what is most real and what’s most real comes out naturally. If I play too fast for a lot of people’s taste and I therefore slow down because I want to please them, then it wouldn’t be real anymore. The whole business is really funny anyway with all the lights coming down on you and all those people looking. I mean how can it be a normal event. I can’t really relate to it, I just do it, I don’t analyse it. If I thought to myself I’m walking out onto a stage, bathed in floodlights, where ten thousand people will be watching. I’d probably crack up and never do it again.

Rock music is being used as a medium of political protest with bands like MC5, Country Joe McDonald, Grateful Dead and our own Edgar Broughton involved. Does this present a difficulty in the States where everyone seems to be on some political bandwagon?
I don’t believe people can learn from other people’s values. What’s right for me isn’t going to be right for someone else. I’m not really interested in politics enough to talk about it and even if I was to use my popularity as a musician as a platform for something else is a bit strange. When we’re in the States people come into the dressing room and ask you questions but you don’t really talk. You just answer questions—“What do you think of this? What do you think of that? What are your views on this? – They obviously attach importance to your views but I don’t. I don’t attach importance to anyone’s views unless they’re actively involved in it, and I’m not involved in anything besides music—and I don’t think you reach anyone who’s going to do anything about it anyway.

You’ve got a very wide selection of albums here. Do you still listen to people like Broonzy and do you take much notice of what other groups are doing?
No, if I listen to too many rock bands it’s obviously going to influence me in the direction which isn’t very good because we’ll start sounding like someone else. Rock music to me is something that I enjoy playing rather than listening to. Music to me falls into something like fifty different aspects: music for for listening to for company, nice sounds in the corner like Crosby, Stills, Nash and the Band which just make nice noises to me. And then there’s the intense stuff-jazz and the more progressive rock sounds that get into heavy thing. I still enjoy listening to the Beatles, I don’t really know why, it’s just a matter of interest to see what they’re up to. I listen to electronic music as a means of escapism. I think that I probably listen to it in the same way as someone who doesn’t play an instrument listens to rock. They’re not aware of the effects and how the instrument is being played, it’s just a noise to them and electronic music is just a noise to me.

There’s been a revival of interest in rock and roll. A lot of bands are going back to those roots. Why do you think this is?
There’s a tendency to go round in circles in music and as a musician tends to progress much faster than the people in the people who are listening, you tend to outgrow the audience after awhile which tends to make you feel less successful. I think this has happened to the Beatles, they’ve gone on in themselves but they’ve left the audience behind a bit and then they try to go back and pick it up where it was but then you lose your own interest in it. I think it’s inevitable that it’ll happen at some stage and if it does then I’m ready for it.

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