Alvin Lee & Mylon LeFevre – On The Road To Freedom
Overview:
The legendary rock guitarist is successfully paired with American gospel singer Mylon LeFevre on this all-star 1973 set that produces some joyful music. It marked a change from Alvin’s work with Ten Years After, but spectacular guitar playing still remains the focal point. Beatle George Harrison, wrote and performed on standout song ‘So Sad (No Love Of His Own)’ and Traffic stars Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi jam on several tracks, alongside Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood.
Tracklisting:
1. ON THE ROAD TO FREEDOM (Lee) 4:13
Alvin Lee: Vocal, Guitars, Bass, Background Vocals
Mylon LeFevre: Background Vocals, Percussion
Stevie Winwood: Piano
Jim Capaldi: Drums
Rebop: Congas
2. THE WORLD IS CHANGING (I GOT A WOMAN BACK IN GEORGIA) (Lee / LeFevre) 2:45
Mylon LeFevre: Lead Vocal & Background Vocal, Acoustic Rhythm
Alvin Lee: Guitars, Bass, Lead Vocal & Background
Jim Capaldi: Drums
Mike Patto: Background Vocals
Tim Hinkley: Organ
3. SO SAD (NO LOVE OF HIS OWN) (Harrison) 4:34
Mylon LeFevre: Lead Vocals & Harmonies
Hari Georgeson: Guitar, Slide Guitar, Bass, Harmony Vocal
Alvin Lee: Guitars, Background Vocals
Ron Wood: 12 String Guitar
Mick Fleetwood: Drums
4. FALLEN ANGEL (Lee) 3:20
Mylon LeFevre: Lead Vocal, Percussion
Alvin Lee: Guitars, Bass
Ron Wood: Slide Guitar
Stevie Winwood: Piano
Jim Capaldi: Drums & Percussion
5. FUNNY (Lee) 2:48
Mylon LeFevre: Lead Vocals & Harmony
Alvin Lee: Guitars, Bass, Drums, Harmony Vocals
Andy Stein: Fiddle
6. WE WILL SHINE (LeFevre) 2:37
Mylon LeFevre: Lead Vocal, 12 String Guitar, Background Vocal
Alvin Lee: Guitars, Background Vocals
Stevie Winwood: Piano
Ron Wood: Bass
7. CARRY MY LOAD (Lee) 2:58
Alvin Lee: Vocals & Background
Mylon LeFevre: Vocals & Background, 12 String, Bass
Ian Wallace: Drums
Tim Hinkley: Piano
8. LAY ME BACK (LeFevre) 2:53
Mylon LeFevre: Lead Vocal & Background, Acoustic Rhythm
Alvin Lee: Guitars, Bass, Background, Vocals, Sitar and the bag
Bob Black: Steel Guitar
Ian Wallace: Drums Tim
Hinkley: Piano
9. LET ‘EM SAY WHAT THEY WILL (Wood) 2:52
Mylon LeFevre: Lead Vocal, Percussion
Ron Wood: Guitars, Bass, Drums
Alvin Lee: Guitar
Tim Hinkley: Piano
10. I CAN’T TAKE IT (LeFevre) 2:51
Mylon LeFevre: Acoustic Rhythm, Lead Vocal
Alvin Lee: Guitars, Bass, Harmony Vocals
Stevie Winwood: Piano
Ian Wallace: Drums
11. RIFFIN (Lee / LeFevre) 3:31
Mylon LeFevre: Vocals
Alvin Lee: Guitars
Tim Hinkley: Organ
Boz Burrell: Bass
Ian Wallace: Drums
12. ROCKIN’ TIL THE SUN GOES DOWN (Lee / LeFevre) 3:08
Alvin Lee: Guitars, High Vocals
Mylon LeFevre: Lead Vocals & Background
Tim Hinkley: Piano & Background Vocals
Boz Burrell: Bass & Background Vocals
Ian Wallace: Drums
Mike Patto: Background Vocals & Percussion
Tracks 1-12 originally released as UK-Chrysalis CHR 1054 in 1973.
BONUS TRACK on CD re-release by label Repertoire Records 2003:
13. SO SAD (NO LOVE OF HIS OWN) (Harrison) (Single Version) 3:00
Single A-Side F-Chrysalis CHA 118, P 1974
The history behind the song “So Sad” written by George Harrison: it was written at the time of his divorce from Patti Boyd. When she left George to be with Eric Clapton..
So Sad (No Love of His Own) – Lyrics:
Now the winter has come, to eclipse out the sun, that has lighted my love for some time, and a cold wind now blows, not much tenderness flows, from the heart of someone feeling so tired.
And he feels so alone, with no love of his own – so sad, so bad.
While his memory raced, with much speed and great haste, through the problems of being there. In his heart at arms length, to ward off such a great despair. But he feels so alone, with no love of his own – so sad, so bad. Take the dawn of the day, and then give it away, to someone who can fill the past, of the dream we once held, now it’s got to be shelved, it’s too late to make a new start. And he feels so alone, with no love of his own…so sad, so bad.
New Musical Express 1973
NME – September 15, 1973
October 1973 – Rainbow Room at Biba
Alvin and Mylon are filmed performing a concert at the Rainbow Room, which belonged to Big Biba, the iconic London fashion retail store.
Also on stage are Boz Burrell -bass, Ian Wallace -drums, Tim Hinkley -hammond organ, Steve Winwood -guitar, as well as Mike Patto, Jim Capaldi and two unnamed ladies on backing vocals. About a month later, the concert is aired as part of the TV show Midnight Special.
Photos (c) Steve Potter
Sounds Magazine – November 3, 1973
On Monday evening of last week, a band of such stature as rarely can have been assembled in London Town played at a rather unlikely venue – the candy coloured Rainbow Room on the top floor of Biba’s extravagant new department store in Kensington High Street.
A small audience seemed hardly to appreciate the supreme rarity value value of a gig which brought together Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Mike Patto, Boz Burrell, Ian Wallace, Tim Hinkley to back up “new discoveries” Alvin Lee and Mylon Lefevre.
In the audience: George Harrison, Rick Grech, Legs Larry Smith, Peter Sinfield and more. The show was put on at about two days notice and will be seen by no less than thirty three million people, which is what NBC-TV claims is its audience figures for the “Midnight Special” programme. What was more, everyone seemed to be having an amazingly good time.
Capaldi and Patto, singing backup at one mike, were grinning broadly and clapping and spinning round in synch just like an old Four Tops routine, Boz gave vent to the occasional holler of joy, and Alvin and Mylon sang and played together at the front like a couple of soul brothers shouting “I’ve got a woman back in Georgia”. Which is where Mylon comes from of course.
It’s a fascinating story, how these two men came to meet each other, dream together and finally transmute those dreams into reality. Their partnership seems to have revivified the musical careers of both men, which until their encounter with each other had been flagging.
The constant criticism of Ten Years After is too well worn to need repetition here; suffice to say, that the group were never going to get higher than their justly-acclaimed at Woodstock, and Mylon, with his group “Holy Smoke” had played to perhaps millions of people without reaping any reward other than that of being washed-up, exhausted and strung out.
Together, they have pooled their energies and experience and have made a new start, which offers scope for continuing fulfilment of their ambitions – first and foremost, their personal ambitions, which have little to do with fame and fortune and stardom, and a whole lot to do with making the best music they can. As they put it, it’s a case of “rolling the dice”; if you don’t roll the dice, you’ll never come up with a six.
As we reported earlier this year, Alvin has just built a studio of his own in his sizeable country home near Reading. It’s a beautiful place, and perhaps an ideal environment for making music, and as chance would have it, Mylon turned up at the right time to help Alvin make something of it. For much as the good life might appeal, eventually it must become frustrating and lonely if you’re out there on a limb with only yourself for company. What is remarkable is that, given the challenge of working on something completely new, Alvin Lee has not only evolved completely new styles of playing, but mastered the studio too.
The result is the new album, “ON THE ROAD TO FREEDOM”, featuring strongly the gospel voice of Mylon Lefevre, and Alvin Lee on guitars of all sorts and making a surprisingly strong showing on vocals. Together, their new-found enthusiasm has attracted the interest of various of our own most highly-respected musicians, and at various points on the album you may hear the talents of Steve Winwood, Ron Wood, and one Hari Georgeson, all of whom live in that neck of the woods, and were only too pleased to make a contribution, even if they had only just called in to see what was happening. Yet, for an album recorded in the depths of the English countryside, this record has a curiously American feel. Mylon is a great singer and steeped in the music of the Southern States, so for his part I guess that is to be expected. But what I was not prepared for was the way the harmonies worked together, for example, or Alvin Lee’s radically pared-down guitar sorties – a million miles away from the baroque English-Chicago blues for which he has been either hailed or hauled over the coals.
During a play-through in the commodious control room (sprawled out on a ten foot American flag cushion) I noted moments which reminded of Bob Dylan’s “Knocking On Heaven’s Door” or bits of Roger McQuinn’s writing, even a tweaky guitar lick reminiscent of the Band’s “Up On Cripple Creek”. Mylon and Alvin really are extremely good mates, just like brothers, if you can imagine fair stolid Alvin and dark mercurial Mylon being brothers.
But it’s in their differences, rather than their similarities that the partnership thrives.
Alvin freely admits to being a bit of a recluse. He would sit and play his guitar all day and nobody would ever hear him; Mylon provides the spark of recklessness to undertake anything and to hell with the consequences. “It’s funny, we’re completely different really”, Alvin said in his parlour. When the thing about the TV show came up, I talked about it on the telephone with Mylon (who was back in Atlanta, Georgia, at the time) and I thought it was a great idea but why bother? When something like that happens, I just feel like staying in bed for three days, and when we decided to do it, our approach was completely different. I thought we’ll get Ian and Boz and Tim down and just do it like that, with the five of us, but Mylon said, “Hey, let’s call up everybody we know and get them along to do it”. It was Mylon’s plan that was adopted, despite several difficulties in organizing the whole thing at that sort of short notice, and there’s no doubt that, particularly for American TV, it strengthened immeasurably the presentation. And the problems were severe. Alvin himself had been gigging with Ten Years After, right up till the Saturday night before the program was due to be filmed. Mylon had to come in from Georgia. Everybody had to be called and asked to take part. Equipment and transport had to be set up. The final deadline for mixing the album was at the same time, so that had to be slotted in over the weekend. Two mixes had to be done for the TV program, one in mono for TV – the other in stereo for FM radio. Yet it all came together. “It’s amazing, so many dreams coming true, it’s like a miracle”, reflects Mylon in that characteristic silky drawl. “Maybe they’re not dreams after all”, counters the down to earth Alvin.
All the scheming started two or three years ago when Mylon supported Ten Years After on one of their innumerable tours of the States. At that time Mylon and Holy Smoke, which featured present “Sharks” drummer Marty Simon, were playing support to just about every English act that played big tours in the States. They would work the beginning of the show and get the crowd vibed-up for the main act; and by the end of the evening, everyone would have forgotten who the openers were. Holy Smoke would then join another tour as soon as that one was finished. Mylon recounts, with a certain pride, that in two and a half years on the road, Holy Smoke had but ninety-one nights off. Mylon then quit because his records were not selling and he was getting strung out on dope (on his own admission). He went back to Georgia and was just sitting on his ass doing nothing, trying to cool out. Alvin saw all this happening to him and was appalled to see such a talented musician going down the drain, and invited him to spend some time in Jamaica with him, and that’s where their friendship started.
As Mylon tells it, part of the problem was that he changed record labels in the middle of this most intense period of gigging. His first, straight down the line gospel album on Cotillion records, was the only album out; and Atlantic records then took him down to Criteria Studios Florida with a whole bunch of session-men to cut an album. Little Richard and Mac Rebennack were two of the people there helping out, but Tom Dowd and Jerry Wexler had too much on their hands to worry much about a country-boy from Georgia with a bunch of philosophic songs about life and stuff, and who wanted to record, not with session men but with his own friends from Holy Smoke, whom he had grown up with. So with the switch to Columbia, a year and a half of public-appearances in twenty-thousand-seater hall could not be capitalized on. “We were just killing the people” says Mylon, but nothing could be done about publicising Holy-Smoke without record albums and the band would insist on staying together as a unit. “I really loved my band, and we all stuck together. We were all country-boys and not cut out for riding around in limousines. We were with Atlantic for two years and nobody came to see us in all that time.” Despite the long lay-off, some people did take some notice of what he was writing, and several artists in the country field recorded his tunes: Elvis, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard and, in another field, the great Mahalia Jackson, which he is particularly proud of. By the time Columbia Records started to put out Holy Smoke records, it was too late. Mylon had retired, decided to leave the rock business. His tales of the tribulation of the rock groups life on the road would not surprise the groups who have toured there; but it would make everyone else’s hair stand on end.
Mylon’s last album for Columbia was, “Over The Influence”, a celebration of his kicking dope and starting a-new. It was then that I first met him, last year. He was over the moon with joy about it, told everybody. He started to do some solo things with the assistance of Alvin at Roger Daltrey’s Sussex home, already with the already with the assistance of some big names, but it wasn’t until Alvin put together his studio that things really started to happen seriously.
“People say we’ve got an ideal situation here, but when it really comes down to it, you’ve got to get your shoulder behind it and work”. Said Alvin, and he should know. Though Ten Years After have been engineered by some notable people, Alvin acknowledges that he picked up very little of the technique of using the sound-board, so it was down to sussing (figuring it out) from first principles. Did he foresee this as a start to realising the old musician’s dream to control all his own business and release him from the need for financial interlopers to dictate how they should play? “As soon as you start tying a musician down and telling him what to do, you’ve got an unhappy musician. A couple of years ago, I had everything done for me and I thought that was an ideal situation, but I spent two years doing nothing but watching the TV and that was OK – but so unrewarding. But after doing it, knowing that we hadn’t even run through the whole thing perfectly once, the sense of satisfaction was incredible. Although it’s more of a hassle to have your own control, it’s better that way”.
Article by Martin Hayman
New Musical Express – November 10, 1973
The Title of this album is significant for Alvin Lee. Lately his credibility has sagged badly as Ten Years After have floundered on in a constricting and unexciting formula. Worse still, Lee fell into a kind of vicious circle whereby the more Ten Years After became a drag, the more disinterested he became in music in general. He needed someone like Mylon to pull him out of his lethargy. So enter Mylon LeFevre, who used to front an underrated and unnoticed gospel band called “Holy Smoke” which used to open Ten Years After’s shows in the States.
Alvin and Mylon became friends. Alvin helped Mylon off his drug habit and the result is this fine album recorded at Alvin’s home studio in Berkshire, called Space Studios. Mylon gave Alvin the motivation to shift himself and the initial energy both put into the project attracted the likes of George Harrison, Ron Wood, Steve Winwood, and Jim Capaldi who all turn up at various points on the album, along with Ian Wallace and other one time members of King Crimson plus a couple of guys from Commander Cody’s band. Despite the heavyweight line up however, it’s still essentially Alvin and Mylon’s album and avoids any of the excess that the all-star gathering might lead one to expect. If anything, there’s more of Mylon’s influence on it than Alvin’s since it’s very American in feel, acoustically based and featuring more country guitar picking than speeding solos that Alvin Lee is more famous (infamous?) for.
When Alvin does turn to electric guitar, he uses it with more calculation and style than he normally does with Ten Years After.
The fact that Harrison, Wood and Winwood are on the album is of little importance since Harrison’s track “So Sad” is disappointingly Harrisonesque, Woody’s “Let em’ Say What They Will” is not very memorable, one way or the other, and Winwood on keyboards is almost overshadowed by the tracks which feature the sparing and neat organ and piano work of Tim Hinkley. The album mostly veers between soft gospel and a kind of crisp country sound as on a track like “The World Is Changing” which starts off reminding one of Dylan’s “Country Pie” before moving into more Memphis influenced chorus.
Only on the last couple of tracks does Alvin Lee come close to Ten Years After material with “Riffin” and “Rockin’ Till The Sun Goes Down” a couple of straight ahead rock tunes that give the album a lift at the end. Altogether though, it’s like Alvin Lee with the help of Mylon has decided to take a breath of fresh air and found it tastes sweet and clean.
Article written by James Johnson – for New Musical Express
Melody Maker – November 10, 1973
By Geoff Brown
If Mylon LeFevre never does another thing (which is unlikely) then he’ll have done sufficient in liberating the musician that’s been hiding inside Alvin Lee. If Alvin Lee never does another thing (also unlikely) then he’ll have done sufficient in saving Mylon LeFevre’s life, which the white gospel singer clearly believes has happened. Mylon was a drug addict. A heavy habit, the result of two years solid work on the road. Alvin took him off the road and kept him away from the pushers. Here in the dark control room of Lee’s Woodcote recording studio the bond is easy to see – you can almost touch it. Two men who, with a little help from their friends, have produced an album, “On The Road To Freedom”, that’s really something of a milestone for both of them. The studio is a converted barn, is an odd mixture of old beam and modern console. Lee in denims and white clogs, paces around the control booth. There’ve been two people besides Lee that have believed in Mylon LeFevre, one was his record producer Allen Toussaint; the other was his manager Felix Pappalardi. Both were going to produce the album. Both were prevented by prior contractual commitments. Mylon’s been playing a long time; playing around the south, his homeland. He can remember seeing the Allman Brothers Band as recently as three years ago, playing a high school prom for $200.00 on a Saturday night. “Me and Duane Allman used to sit in a bar and dream about the day that we would have enough money for a motorcycle. He was making $85.00 a week.” Georgia music is the thing that binds Lee and Mylon together. LeFevre lived it; Alvin was first inspired by his father’s 78’s of it. Pappalardi discovered Mylon in a gospel group. LeFevre had short hair, wore a suit and tie and was also playing bass in Nashville on country sessions. “This gospel group wouldn’t let me put out all my songs, because it was getting a bit, you know, a bit… – been high for about ten or eleven years.” Elvis, Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard were doing his songs, but he wasn’t able to do any of his own material himself. “I was having these dreams and I wanted the songs to sound like the dreams, and the only way to do that was, to do them myself.” The southern drawl is deep; it cracks occasionally, but it’s as smooth as julep syrup.
“So I went to this pop festival in Macon Georgia. Mountain was playing there. I went on my motorcycle, and I took some acid. I was just tripping my brains out. I climbed over the fence backstage and I was just gawking around all the rock and roll stars, you know? I was thinking boy, I would really like to do that gig instead of having to do all this session stuff.” I met ole Felix, I didn’t know who he was, I just knew he was pickin’ because of the way he looked.”
They talked, and after the gig Mylon went into the Mountain trailer where Terry Reid and Corky Laing were sitting playing and he played them some of his gospel tunes. Felix thought he’d like to back the boy. “So about ten days from that day he bought a church and about $40,000 worth of amps and sent all the money to hire the people. I got this band together. We didn’t even know each other’s names, and we were on the road together.” The first gig was in Burlington, Vermont, opening the tour for Traffic. “We had made this album on 8-track tape in the middle of the night by splicing a huge tape and piecing it together. It was really chicken-wired together, my first album, anybody that would play free.” So they hit the road: Twenty One Thousand people that first night, scared me to death.” Mylon was, he says the first white guy Toussaint ever produced. “He didn’t know I was white. Allen heard me and thought I was black, I guess so he produced me.” That was about four and a half years ago. Mylon had one Atlantic and two Columbia albums released and did gigs and sessions with loads more. Mylon was on the road for two and a half years during which time they had 90 days off. “I’d come off the road with Ten Years After and go with Jethro Tull and the Who and Traffic. In all, he did four tours with Ten Years After: And during that time, Alvin Lee saw me getting sick and he said, “Let’s just take two weeks off and go to Jamaica”. So we just quit then and got this house and schemed up all these high fliers. Everything we decided, we were going to do man, we’ve done. I junked out, I just quit in March two years ago. I was in bad shape. I was just a country boy and I went off to the big city man, and I ran into drugs. I didn’t know anything about getting into trouble. I just quit for my mental health, I just couldn’t handle it anymore. I couldn’t get away from the people, you know, the pushers and dealers. When you’re a drug addict the only people you can trust are drug addicts. People can put you in jail for a long time. I mean heroin’s something that people are really down on and they ought to be. I almost died from it. It’s the sneakiest thing in the world, and you think you’ve got it under control and you try to quit and it’s impossible. I came over here and Alvin hid me out here in his house in the country and there was just no place to score and everybody was up and cooking and doing things. It was really just a good atmosphere.” He stayed for three months. When Alvin, Leo and some others went down to do some tapes at Roger Daltrey’s studios, Mylon went with them. They took a bunch of their songs that were written in Jamaica. “That let us know we could do it,” says Mylon, “and besides, Pete Townshend and Steve Winwood had both offered their studios.” Everyone Mylon had supported in the States was eager for him to get straight and get playing. The Daltrey tapes lit the spark. Alvin Lee’s recording studios were being built. “Mylon came over to record the album and ended up labouring to build the studios.” The whole album was recorded while they were still being built, so although they think the music on the album’s great, the production could be bettered now that the studios are completed. Recording the album was a stone joy they say. “We tried to get up before sundown”, says Mylon, “have a swim or a ride on the motorcycles through the woods, just something to get some air inside of us. We’d come in here about dark. We’d go on until about 4:00 pm the next afternoon, thinking that it was still dark outside. We’ve been up two days doing things in here and George Harrison would be asleep for two days and he’d come over. He’d be ready and raring to go, and we’d get into it again. We’d do 50 hours in here.” Now that they’ve done the album Mylon and Alvin are both looking forward to doing another one.
There’s plenty of material left but says Mylon, they’ll be going to Jamaica again to write fresh songs, and they’re working out ways to get the album on the road. After his drug problems, he’s feeling reborn: “Addiction is a sickness man, but because you can’t be honest with yourself when you’re that stoned, you believe the things that you’re thinking. You go on lying to yourself and to other people, but Alvin stuck beside me and just cared.” Mylon got a second chance. The album in another way has given Alvin Lee a second chance too. A musical one. As one who’s been completely unimpressed with Ten Years After, it’s a revelation and a delight to hear that Alvin knows the importance of taste and space in soloing. Alvin knows it’s done him proud too. That’s why he’s pacing the control room like a caged tiger. He’s got the creative juices flowing again. Mylon says, it’s done Alvin good to get out and jam – the structures of Ten Years After were too choking.
On The Road To Freedom – An Introduction:
This was Alvin’s break away chance, to express what he had been suppressing for so long, within the limited confines of the Ten Years After frame work. Alvin kept insisting to his colleagues and the record company, that he wanted to do something else. As with every true artists, they thrive on creativity and want change at different intervals in their career.
This was Alvin’s big chance to try and follow what was in his shell-shocked heart.
Combine this with another man, suffering from a sick soul, who was road weary and numb. A musician heroin junkie, hooked and sinking quickly into the abyss of no return.
His name, Mylon Le Fevre, and he comes from a long line of famous gospel singers and preachers. You now have the essence of this true life drama. It’s where Alvin and Mylon help heal each other. It’s “Redemption, A Spiritual Awakening Through Music.” That you’ll feel !
The album they created was called ” On The Road To Freedom.” It’s their first and only recording. Their very first public gig together, was on November 30, 1973 on NBC television, on a hit music show called: “The Midnight Special” – with host, Wolfman Jack.
The show aired at 1:00 AM in the morning, on a Friday night. Alvin and Mylon performed with a band extraordinaire. They were introduced to a viewing audience of approximately 33 million. They covered these three songs from their new album:
1. “Rockin’ Till The Sun Goes Down”
2. “Carry My Load”
3. “The World Is Changing (I Got a Woman Back in Georgia)”
It was a one time event. Captured hear for all to see.
Midnight Special
Hosts: Procol Harum Guests: Humble Pie, Mylon LeFevre & Alvin Lee, Steeleye Span
Show taped in London, England:
Procol Harum – “Conquistador,” “Whiter Shade of Pale,” “Grand Hotel,” “Fires Which Burn Brightly,” “Drunk Again,” “T.V. Caesar” & “Rule Brittania”
Humble Pie – “Oh La De Da,” “I Don’t Need No Doctor” & “30 Days in the Hole”
Alvin Lee and Mylon LeFevre – “Rockin’ Till the Sun Goes Down,” “Carry My Load” & “The World Is Changing (I Got a Woman Back in Georgia)”
Steeleye Span – “Cam Ye O-er Frae France”
30-Nov-1973
photo location and exact date unknown
Disc Magazine – November 24, 1973
Alvin Lee and Mylon LeFevre – On The Road To Freedom (Chrysalis CHR 1054)
Alvin has talked about working with Mylon for years now. They met up in America a long time ago, and have had a mutual admiration society ever since. Now, besides doing this album they have recorded an NBC “Midnight Special” at Biba’s with much the same line up. The album overall, have a lot of the feel of George Harrison’s solo things – that sadness that comes from a minor key Guitar, blues and lonely country feel – indeed Harrison’s is on there. Nice work from Alvin; admirable session work from Jim Capaldi, Stevie Winwood, Rebop, Tim Hinkley, Ron Wood, Mick Fleetwood etc.
Review by CB
1973 – Scene Magazine, Ohio
November 29 – December 5, 1973 (Volume 4, Number 46) issue of SCENE magazine featuring Alvin Lee of Ten Years After on the front cover.
This super-rare, northeast Ohio tabloid-style magazine contains a 1-page article/interview along with a great offstage picture of both as well.
POP No.24 Magazine (Germany, Switzerland) – December 1973
December 15, 1973 – Billboard Magazine
Alvin Lee & Mylon LeFevre – On The Road To Freedom
Combination of Ten Years After leader Lee and pop gospel singer Mylon is a winning one, with the two producing a fine rock set which seems less harsh than Lee’s group but tighter than Mylon’s previous efforts.
All-Star guest list including: Steve Winwood, Ron Wood and Jim Capaldi also add depth, especially on cuts such as “So Sad (no love of his own)”.
Beat Instrumental – January 1974
Almost ten years later, Ten Years After have proved their point in both name and deed, but Alvin Lee, guitarist, song-writer and front-man with the band, has recently brought out an album which shows his interest and ability in other musical fields, and one which moves right away from his “Speed-Fingers” image. Ten Years After have been together since 1967, playing their own brand of rock n’ roll and jazz-influenced numbers in a stormy act that has been to the States 18 times, and most other countries in the world.
His new album, “On The Road To Freedom,” consists of country, blues gospel and rock-flavoured songs written mainly by Alvin and his friend Mylon LeFevre. Mylon is a guitar-picker and singer from Georgia, U.S.A. who first met Alvin in the States, when his band, “Holy Smoke,” opened some of Ten Years After’s shows.
PLAYERS:
The list of musicians who played on the album is staggering, but Alvin explained that they “just dropped in”- and see who did: George Harrison, Stevie Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Ron Wood, Rebop, Mick Fleetwood, Andy Stein, Bob Black, Tim Hinkley, Mike Patto, Ian Wallace and Boz Burrell!
“On The Road To Freedom” – is important in many senses for Alvin, being the first album recorded in his new home studio, and the first brought out by his “Space Productions” production company. He also feels that the recorded music is a side of him that’s long been unexpressed, and when Beat Instrumental went down to his country manor, hidden deep in the Berkshire countryside, he and Mylon were keen to tell how their friendship and album came about. Mylon began by telling how, when they were in the States together, he and Alvin used to spend hours in hotel bathrooms – “we used to call it “Bathroom Music” – picking flat-tops-and generally having a good time with country-flavoured music. Why in the bathroom?
Well, just think how good anything musical sounds in the bath and you’ll see why.
“Our managers ended up trying to keep us apart, thinking we were a bad influence on each other. Because we’d miss planes and sleep just spending the nights pickin’ our guitars, because you get a beautiful sound in a bathroom,” he said. Since then, a strong friendship has developed between the two musicians, and when Mylon came to England in the summer, he found Alvin hard at work building his studio, in a barn near the main house, together with friends and musicians. Everybody worked to get the studio ready, and in between working, Alvin and Mylon together, with the musicians previously mentioned, were able to play, record and get material together. Alvin explained, that when they started recording there were no definite plans for an album, and with the tremendous freedom offered by his own studio, he and Mylon were able to do practically anything they wanted.
ALBUM:
“We had often talked about an album in the past, because our tastes are very similar in a number of ways. We don’t plan albums, though, we record, and I think that if you can record freely, and then worry about whether it’s going to be an album, single, tape or whatever afterwards, it’s a better approach. When you’ve got to play music for something in particular, it becomes something else,” said Alvin. “We wanted to be as relaxed as possible, which you can’t get when you’re paying 30 pounds an hour. We’re right out in the country here, and can play and record any time. There isn’t even a clock in the studio, just so there are no time worries. Sometimes we’d go in during an evening, and not come out until the middle of the next afternoon! When we started recording, and all these musicians started dropping in, it was amazing how well they fitted into the music. George Harrison, Tim Hinkley and Ian Wallace all live locally and we go round to their music rooms and studios and play. Some live in London and like to come out here for a few days´ rest because it’s so relaxing. It was very strange at times how everything worked out so well, at one point we ideally wanted a Nashville steel guitarist, and then we found there was one in town, and the next day he was up here! That was Bobby Black of “Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen”. I think one of the reasons we like the album so much is the fact that it’s completely home-made, recorded and mixed here, and even the sleeve shots and design done here. That makes you a lot prouder of something”.
Alvin has always divided his time between actually playing, and handling the production side of recording. His interest in the production side goes right back to when he had his first tape recorder. “I like machines, in fact cameras, precise machinery, I get off on that. The production interest stems from wanting to have more control over what I play. It’s frightening to think that 30 or 40 years ago it was all mono, with musicians playing into a horn and straight onto a disc – the facilities today, with a 16-track, are just amazing, and I’m still learning. I’ve also learned a lot just inviting people down here, because everybody has a different approach to making and recording music, and most people have one and stick to it. I’m seeing lots, and it’s really interesting. I haven’t co-ordinated anything yet because I’m still learning, but I’m very excited.
APPROACH:
“On The Road To Freedom” is an approach to music, but what I also want to get into in the future is using a 16-track almost as an instrument and supplying sound sources, and taking them through pipes and around corners, but not like is done with a synthesiser, which is almost ready-made. I think a lot more can be done with recorded natural sound. “One of my heroes in this field is a guy called Tod Dokstod, who does what he calls “Organised Sound” and he’s even done an album with an orchestra, but what he did was record all the different instruments playing different notes, cut the tapes up, index them, and then fit them together for the “organised sound” – it’s really amazing. Being a musician, I want to use all these advantages. The sky’s the limit really, with the facilities in this studio. But you can’t buy time, and that’s what becomes the main factor.” Although all this seems far away from his accepted role with Ten Years After, the band’s followers needn’t worry: “We’ll keep Ten Years After together for the people more or less. I can’t see the band as an object, though, because it’s been going so long. A lot of bands say: “We’ll do this or that,” but Ten Years After have always been very much into the validity of following through and progressing at the right pace, it’s like finding a channel and exploring it, rather than trying them all. And that may be the success of Ten Years After – we went out on a limb and stuck with it, where as, if we had tried to play all the types of music we thought people would buy, it would not have worked.”
BOXING:
“For me, Ten Years After is like a workout, or a boxing match with a guitar. I go on and do everything I can with the instrument, and the rest of the band do the same. It’s quite mind blowing, but it’s not the sort of music I can sit in the living room and listen to. Playing fast is like a reaction really. When you learn to drive a car, using the steering wheel and pressing the break and accelerator, it becomes automatic, and when you get in, you become a part of it.
It’s the same with the guitar, get in the groove and you’re away. “Some nights with Ten Years After, it’s really silly, I can stand on stage and just listen to myself playing, and think, “Oh! That’s amazing,” and the guitar seems to be playing itself. The fans are pushing and I can really let it flow. I never really try to play fast, that just comes with time. I might try to play intensely, but I’m also trying to create whirlpools of sound, rather than just play notes. I play a lot of notes, but they’re all based around patterns and chord formations, up and down the neck.”
FASTER:
“There are a lot of faster guitarist than me, I’ve heard them. Olly Halsall is very fast and fluent, but people don’t think it’s fast because it sounds easy, and it slides around.
Every musician at some stage, has to decide which direction he’s going to take, which is what I did when I decided to have these guitar workouts as my thing, and I’ve really enjoyed it, but the more ground you cover, the less there is to do. Things have slowed down a lot now, and we do two major tours and an album a year, but that’s because it gets harder the longer you go. It’s the same with the instruments. When you start, in the first year you go from playing nothing, to playing tunes, and the ground you cover is fantastic. Then you get into style and new licks, and it all slows down. That’s the state I’m in now, with that side of my playing, I maybe, pick up a new lick and work it into some phrases about once a month.
That’s why it’s so good having Mylon here, he has all the enthusiasm that I lack, and it seems anything we say, “let’s have a go at,” we can do, it’s the way our characters work together. On my own, I probably wouldn’t do so much, because the enthusiasm has been washed out of me a bit, but now, I fiddle around on everything, playing harp, piano, bashing the drums, it’s almost as if I’ve realized my own potential, which is quite frightening”.
RED TAPE:
Alvin and Mylon also hope to go on the road with some of the musicians who played on the album, but as they explained, there’s a lot of red-tape involved before ten “known” musicians can do it. “It seems a crime really, not to get anything on the road, everyone wants to play, and as far as I know, everybody who’s heard it likes it. We might go on the road anonymously. Our attitude was to have something fresh and musical, and the fact that it comes across on a piece of plastic is fantastic”.
SPACE:
Alvin’s “Space Productions Company” now allows him to record other artists and have their albums and material released through Chrysalis and although he’s looking forward to recording and producing artists at his studio, he wants to be personally involved in all that’s done there, and not use it as just another commercial studio. It’s situated in a barn near the main house, completely insulated, with the control room raised up at one end and the observation window high in one wall. Giant oak supports reach from the studio floor into the high roof, a nice “down on the farm” touch, but there the similarity ends, for the desk and recording equipment are very sophisticated indeed.
The control room features an 18 – channel Helios desk, with two channels for reductions. It also has monitor mix facilities, so that one can monitor mix recordings, while actually listening to it, band or 16-track, without switching to reduction. There’s also a remote box in the studio with a PPM meter and slider-fader, so that one man can go in and record himself.
The desk also has direct injection sockets so that guitars and other instruments can be plugged straight in. The recorders consist of a 16-track Studer with Dolby M16, a Studer two-track and two Revox machines and both Tannoy and JBL’s because most American musicians are used to them.
Your Letters and Queries
1. Dear Beat Instrumental, I would be very grateful if you could give me details as to where I may find information on the design and circuitry of “humbucking” pickups and their advantages. You have helped me before and I hope you will help me again.
From Andy Wason, Wishaw, Lanarkshire.
2. Dear Sir, I have been intrigued for some time now about guitar pick-ups. However, I have been unable to convince myself why some guitarist alter their pick-ups when they already have perfectly good ones which came with the guitar. For example, guitarist Alvin Lee of Ten Years After, altered his Gibson Humbucker pick-up for a conventional make and also Clem Clempson of Humble Pie had a different pick-up fitted to his Gibson Les Paul. Is this something unusual, or something to do with the sound? Also, please could you tell me what is a better pick-up to replace a Gibson Humbucker on a Les Paul, and what types of pick-up Alvin Lee, Clem Clempson and Jimmy Page use now.
Yours faithfully, Wilhelm, Heidenoldendorf, West Germany
Reply To The Questions Above:
The main feature in humbucking pick-ups, is the use of two magnetic poles under each string instead of one, resulting in a fuller sound and the cutting of hum and extraneous noise, very useful in a recording situation. Single-pole-pick-ups give a thinner tone generally, but the actual strength of the output is dependent on pole size and the windings. One guitar which can be switched to either single – or double – pole operation is the new Dan Armstrong six-string model, which has a single sliding pick-up.
We couldn’t contact either Clem Clempson or Jimmy Page, but Alvin Lee, who uses a Gibson ES-335, has two humbuckers fitted, and one Fender Strat pick-up (single pole), situated between them. The Fender pick-up is wired to a separate volume control, and wired in parallel with the bridge humbucker – that’s how he gets that variety of sound!
For further details on humbuckers, we suggest you write to Henri Selmer and Co. Ltd. Woolpack Lane, Braintree, Essex.
Teen Magazine – March 1974
It’s an old but beautiful story, the friendship of Alvin Lee and Mylon LeFevre.
There’s Alvin: lead guitarist and star of Ten Years After; tall, blond, stolid Sagittarian; very together English guy. Then there’s Mylon: blues singer, black-haired, admitted Libran eccentric; a Georgia boy newly clean from years of heroin usage, who drawls: “If it wasn’t for my friend here, I’d be dead.” The friend-Alvin looks embarrassed and talks about the new album they’ve made together that’s called “On The Road To Freedom.” (1973) It’s likely no work’s been more aptly named, because for both it marks a liberation: Alvin from the artistically stifling confines of the band Ten Years After and Mylon from the far worse restricting terrors of drug addiction. I met them both when they were in Los Angeles recently, and heard the story of their friendship firsthand. First, from Alvin: “I first met Mylon when Ten Years After were touring the United States, Mylon and his band used to open the show. We did, let me see, four tours together and we became good friends.” Mylon takes up the tale: “Man, Alvin and I would get back to the hotel after a gig and it freaked me out. Here was this English dude who knew all the old blues songs I grew up with. So we’d just sit up half the night, picking and singing. I’d been on the road since I was fourteen and things were getting kind of rough. I was just a Georgia country boy and when I got to the city – man – I didn’t know about drugs. I didn’t know what it’d do to you, all the bad stuff. So I just started using and by the time Alvin came along and helped me I had a $300.00 a week habit.”
Alvin Lee – Using Dee Anthony’s Boat For A Little Test Drive
“He took me to his house in Jamaica for a holiday, kept me away from the hard stuff and started spinning me dreams about the kind of album we could make together.” According to Alvin: “I’d started building a studio at my house in the countryside just outside London. So Mylon came over with me, actually helped build it and we started laying down tracks. It was as simple as that.” Mylon chips in: “That saved me, man. I was away from heroin users, there was no way I could score and so many people, like George Harrison and Steve Winwood, were really on our side. They all contributed something. Wrote a song. Sat in on a session. It was great. Sometimes I’d sneak away to the local pubs and get drunk. Alvin said: “Okay. But while you’re gone I’m going to just keep on recording.” And he would. One time when I got back he’d laid down everything. So all that was left for me to do was shake a tambourine. I didn’t get drunk too often after that.
“The best thing Alvin’s done for me, I guess, is he’s shown me by his own example, the kind of life he lives, that it’s possible to run your life and not have your life run you. He’s a very together guy.” Alvin smiled: “Well I’m not that together, but I try to act as though I am. I find that helps a lot.”
Next on the agenda: a song writing holiday in Jamaica and then a tour. Since Alvin Lee is Ten Years After, where does that leave his old band? He said: “I have certain commitments to Ten Years After which I intend to complete. We’ll be making an album early 1974, and we’ll be touring. I think it’s to combine my work with the band and Mylon. We’ll work something out.”
“On The Road To Freedom” is successful on several counts: It gives us Mylon’s superbly bluesy voice and Alvin’s surprisingly delicate, restrained guitar work. There’s little doubt, as you listen to it, that it’s been a labour of love.
Now the last word goes to Mylon: “Heroin’s the sneakiest thing in the world. You think you got it under control and then you turn around and you’re hooked again. I’ve been clean two years now, but only because Alvin’s stuck beside me. Says he’s going to give me a medal when I’m clean for five.” With such a friend it’s likely he’ll make it.
Circus Magazine – March 1974
The “Midnight Special” TV videotaping was finished at last. Striding into his dressing room, his blonde hair plastered to his forehead, Alvin Lee looked like an angel drenched in a thunderstorm as he hung up his slim guitar and wiped the sweat from his face. Synchronizing his movements with Alvin’s swashbuckling character with flocks of curly black hair and gold hoop earrings, Mylon laid down his twelve-stringed Gibson and leaped around the room, whooping with glee. “We was singin’ so tight tonight, it was amazing,” he crooned in a southern Georgia drawl that flowed like syrup on hot cakes. “That felt sooo good, it satisfied mah soul.”
Georgia music is the tie that binds the country picker, Mylon LeFevre and the British superstar Alvin Lee together. But the ties that bind the musical duo are even stronger than the songs they play together. Because, if Mylon LeFevre never does another thing (which is highly unlikely), he’ll have done enough in freeing Alvin Lee from the musical trap that was slowly clamping down on him. And if Alvin should abandon his group, Ten Years After, and disappear tomorrow, he would still have accomplished one great miracle in saving Mylon’s life, which the white gospel singer swears he has done. Two years ago both men had their backs against the proverbial wall. But then they met on the road, and through a growing friendship, travelling, gigging, and jamming together, they freed each other from the terrible troubles which were making prisons out of their lives. The first product of this exhilarating liberation is a soulful peach of an album, “On The Road To Freedom” (on Columbia Records). “This album has really got me off again,” said Alvin with an enormous twinkle in his blue eyes.
Star In Hiding: For quite some time, Alvin Lee, the mythical “Captain Speed Fingers,” lead guitarist of the British super-group, Ten Years After, had found it difficult to come up with any new material for his heavy metal choogling band. Alvin was determined not to impose his new guitar and blooze-oriented style on his band, for fear of ruining Ten Years After’s own unique style. The structure of the group would not allow them to play the kind of tunes Alvin had been collecting and writing in his three worn spiral notebooks. So after every frenzied Ten Years After concert, Alvin would retire to his country home while other superstars were out gaily jamming at clubs and raving at the discos. “With Ten Years After I played the music, and had nothing to do with the rest of it, the hype, the Captain Speed Fingers reputation and all. I guess I was, well, snobbish, and didn’t get involved. I spent a lot of time sitting in me house,” he reflected in his melodious Nottingham accent, “with ma dogs and watching the telly. I hadn’t any ambition or drive anymore, you know? And then I met Mylon, and it was like a re-shot of energy.” Mylon gave Alvin a second chance to stretch out his gleaming guitar and play the kind of music that’d been rippling through his head for years.
“I used to feel frustrated, having all this in me and not being able to get it out. Now there’s more energy than ever coming up from under the ground”.
STRUNG OUT: During the year Alvin was adrift in the musical doldrums, Mylon was struggling in a more deadly vice. When the sonic-fingered Englishman first met LeFevre, the Georgia rocker was deeply hooked on drugs, the result of exhausting years of road touring and repeated musical disappointments. Mylon had been playing a long time. “I used to play bass with this gospel group”, he recalled, reaching back into his past. “I wore short hair and a suit and tie – I wore it all over the South. Then I did cutting sessions with people like Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and even Little Richard, every weekend makin’ a livin’ singing gospel and being an all around country artists. My parents started doin’ the Grand Old Oprey in 1928 and then we started doin’ the church circuits. They’re still at it”.
Mylon can remember seeing his Georgia neighbours, the Allman Brothers, as recently as three years ago playing a high school prom for $200.00 a night. “Me `n Duane used to sit in a bar and dream about the day we’d have enough money for a motorcycle. He was makin’ $85.00 a week. And all this time I was having these dreams and I wanted mah songs to sound like the dreams and the only way to do that was to do ‘m mahself. But,” continued the lanky singer, “the gospel group wouldn’t let me put out all mah songs `cos it was getting a bit…y’know, I’d been high for about ten years on these sounds”.
LUCK FADES: For a while it looked like luck was going to smile on the boy from Atlanta, Georgia. Felix Pappalardi discovered Mylon singing backup and introduced him to the funky recording wiz, Allen Toussaint. Toussaint and Pappalardi helped Mylon form a band called “Holy Smoke”. The group was ignored by the critics, but it was his band that propelled Mylon to the fateful crossroad meeting with Alvin Lee. “I was on the road, two and a half years with only ninety one days off,” Mylon related, stretching in his elaborately patched dungarees. “I did four tours with Ten Years After. After the shows, in between gigs, Alvin and me was always jamming together”. “Yeah”, Alvin agreed smiling broadly, our managers tried to keep us apart. Mylon was supposed to be a bad influence, staying up all night, hitting the taverns. But we started hanging out anyway”. “During that time, Alvin saw me getting sick,” said Mylon with a serious expression in his green eyes. “I was really junked out, in bad shape. You see, I was just a country boy who went off to the big city and ran into drugs. I didn’t know anything about staying out of trouble, and after awhile, I just couldn’t get away from the drug people you know. I almost died from it. It’s the sneakiest thing in the world, drugs. You think you’ve got it under control and then you try to quit and it’s impossible.” Alvin fled to Jamaica with the sick singer, and when they returned to England, he invited him to stay in his 15th century manor house in the Chiltern hills. “There was no place to score out there,” Mylon admitted, “and everyone was up and cooking and doing things. It was a great atmosphere. It was then we began to scheme up these high fliers.”
“Alvin was nothing like the guy I’d pictured him to be,” Mylon revealed. “One night he picked up his acoustic guitar and started playing music nobody’d heard him play, really laid back, easy Hank Williams tunes, stuff like “Good Night Irene,” and “Get Drunk,” and things. I said, “it’s not fair having to be “Captain Speed Fingers” just because people pin that label on you”. Because Alvin was playing some real mellow stuff taking a whole lot less and making it go a whole lot further”.
With Mylon around it seemed all right to play the blues, and Alvin began to enjoy the jamming sessions. Previously the shy superstar had steered clear of his rocker peers. “The trouble with so-called superstars,” Alvin explained thoughtfully, “was that they all have such concrete styles, either you have to play theirs or they have to play yours. The secret lies in having sympathy with your musicians and trying to reach somewhere new among yourselves.”
CLOCKLESS ORANGE: And fed up with the clock-dominated rented studios, Alvin with the help of Mylon and neighbours Roger Daltrey, Stevie Winwood, George Harrison and Ron Wood, built a complete sixteen track recording console in a wooden-beamed barn behind the house. “It’s not a studio for hire, you can just work to your heart’s content, leave it, come back and carry on,” he said, while he polished the frets on his acoustic instrument. “And there’s no clock,” added Mylon. “You can just ignore the sun and the moon.” Every afternoon Alvin woke up Mylon by sounding a deafening blast on a hunting horn hanging by the fireplace. Then they would go for a sunset swim or ride through the woods on their roaring choppers, “to get some air inside us,” Mylon said. “Then we’d go into the studio and play until 4 PM the next afternoon, thinking it was still dark. We’ve been up two days in there sometimes, George Harrison who sleeps for days at a time would wake up, and come over ready to go and we’d get into it again.” Added Alvin, “We just recorded what we liked, about fifty songs. Everyday people would drop by. Originally, we started with two acoustic guitars and were going to overdub everything else ourselves. But all the neighbours got word and started coming over.” Mylon chimed in, “You know, guitar pickers, just love to pick.”
COUNTRY LICKS: On of the pickers contributing to the album was George Harrison who cut the song “So Sad (no love of his own)”, especially for the occasion. The song has that particular Harrison-esque sadness produced by a lonely guitar playing blues in a minor key.
And Harrison (who’s listed on the credits as Hari-Georgeson) blends his pulsating pedal steel with Ron Wood’s twelve string and Mylon’s soulful half-tone vocal progression, to carve out a genuine country tear-jerker. The George Harrison track is followed on the album by a powerful Alvin Lee composition called, “Fallen Angel.” On this track Alvin’s driving resonant chords clench with Mylon’s soaring vocals:
Fallen Angel, do you hear me? Do you know if you walk off we’re through?
Fallen Angel, do not fear me, I’m the one who’s gonna to pull you through.
The questing singer tries to persuade his woman that no matter what she’s done in the past it doesn’t matter to him.
Fallen Angel, if you love me, then I know that your wings will fly,
Silver Lady with your baby, I don’t care what you have done,
Everybody, needs somebody, and for me I know that you are the one.
You’re the one.
The song climaxes with Alvin’s guitar and Mylon’s voice crashing together like tidal-waves against a beach. But the final notes subside into the gentle silvery bars of Stevie Winwoods piano. “I was always into background vocals,” explained Mylon, the un-mistake-able flavour of the Bayou Country in his voice, “which Alvin had never done. But when me and him started dubbing them together, we would stack those voices up on the tapes, ten times higher than we had originally sung them. And when we would play it back, it sounded like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. But Alvin’s tour-de-force is the title track of the album: “On The Road To Freedom”. Alvin Lee is a multi-talented musician, as was way too modest to tell the song’s history himself, so Mylon leaped right into the tale. “That’s guitar-city, sitting right over there,” as he pointed a finger in Alvin’s direction. “He has played drums, bass, about ten different guitars, and sang all those parts. There was nothing left for me to do but play the tambourine.” The result of Alvin’s virtuosity, is a driving tune in which the bass lays down an insistent marching beat, augmented by Rebop’s (from Traffic) conga pounding and Steve Winwood’s hammering on the lower piano keys. The song is about discovering freedom and by laughing in time’s face, the song sounds like a Cajun ritual dance, the bass line slowly circling around the leaping fire of guitar and vocals.
“”On The Road To Freedom” is an outlet for my emotions,” Alvin smiled. “I want to try everything. I want to explore all these musical directions. Just make music, that’s what I’m really doing on this album. Ten Years After is still very much together, more than ever in fact. But the music of Ten Years After is still Hard Rock and my taste have mellowed out somewhat. After all, my father used to collect these really funky chain gang rhythms, work songs from the South and stuff like that. So my roots are in that kind of music even though I’m from England. And I’m not afraid of being vehement about loving it, because it’s all music, and I play music for music’s sake.” “Love is a very stretched out word, boy,” Mylon said with heartfelt southern soul. “It’s some great reason for making music. And Alvin’s not doing it for the money. We did “On The Road To Freedom” because it’s a happy time.
You hear all those melodies in the air this year, and sunshine. Everybody’s gonna play outside, dance in the sun, and all the things that you originally decided to rock and roll for”.
Hit Parader Magazine – April 1974
ALVIN LEE – TEN YEARS AFTER
AN APPRECIATION
Article Written By Leonard Brown
Songs and Stories Special Edition
One day they’ll be writing about all of this excitement as a “Golden Age of Music”. And it’s a fair bet that some Toynbee of tomorrow will make his reputation by proving in scholarly terms that Ten Years After was the most important, and possibly the only durable and prototypical band of its time.
Four young musicians, that future historians will remark, about whom a few facts have been preserved, and these largely the work of an anonymous early chronicler who set them down in that archaic form known as a “bio”. (Here there will be a footnote, of course, stipulating that bio writers were less concerned about their facts than with the rapturous style they affected, the point of the bio apparently being to extol the merits of its subject. It further seems that bio-writers were paid to speak praises).
Having qualified his source and offered a wink of caution, our historian will then proceed to elaborate on his thesis with juicy excesses of enthusiasm which would shame the most venal bio writer amongst us. We can only be grateful that the members of Ten Years After will never see his words, lest their modesty be offended….
To turn the page and take a peak – our special privilege here – is a treat, however, for those who really dig Ten Years After. What will this man of letters say? From the perspective of time beyond, he will look back and report:
By the year 1973, the band known as Ten Years After has emerged from it’s formative cycle, uniquely intact and poised for its greatest period which then lay ahead. The four, Alvin Lee, guitarist and vocalist; Leo Lyons, bassist; Chick Churchill, organist, pianist; and Ric Lee, drummer, had (in the words of the bio) “got Ten Years After together, had stayed together and grown together”. Hence, if one cares to survey the accelerated evolutionary course of pop music in what might be called the post-Beatles era, the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, the most significant trends are epitomized by the career of this outstanding group, Ten Years After.
Moreover, one could see an increasing influence by Ten Years After upon the direction of musical change and development. The immense popularity of Ten Years After, as well as the musical innovations of the band’s members, prompted other artists to raise their standards of performance, so that the effect upon music generally was to stimulate technical perfection and encourage artistic integrity.
There follows a welter of footnotes, and a couple of these are relevant. First, the two Lee’s of Ten Years After are not related to each other: and a quote from an obscure source: “Keyboardist Chick Churchill out-phrases and phases out the memory of that other Churchill”. (Whoever he was.)
To speak of the band in 1972, bringing “rock & roll music to the world”, to quote the title of their most recent album (Columbia), is to praise a polished and matured Ten Years After, at a point five years later. For Ten Years After was fledged in 1967. Before that year, Alvin Lee and Leo Lyons had worked together in the provinces, in Hamburg and in London, a route similar to that yellow brick road along which so many British musicians had scuffled from subsistence to stardom.
Fortune’s touch was on Lee. Some kids arrive with the silver spoon plus a bowl to put it in, but Alvin was luckier. His father was a collector of ethnic blues recordings, funky old 78’s, and as a child Alvin heard little but the root-sack of pop music at its best. Leadbelly, Big Bill Broonzy, Muddy Waters, and the whole beloved roster of shouters and strummers and mumble-ers, and tricky pickers. He couldn’t have had a better prepping for his share of the action when blues later seized it’s hour in British music of the mid 1960’s. Another event was fortuitously timed to remake our music historian’s chosen subject. In the mid-50’s, the Presley tidal wave hit the shores of Blighty. Again, lucky Lee was at the precise age to be impressionable, wide open to accept-and later elaborate upon-the Elvis manifesto.
Leo Lyons, like Lee, was from Nottingham, and for what it’s worth, so were Robin Hood and his Merry Men. If Robin was as near to spot on with his bow-and-arrow as Leo Lyon learned to be with his bass, then all the stories are true. Leo Lyons, -there’s nothing in the source material to indicate his astrological sign, but he even looks leonine- was noted in his pre-Ten Years After days as a fast-jamming bass player. His preference for jazz fingering established him as a flexible and resourceful equal player with the other members of the group.
Our scholar digresses to say that the majority of bass players were a sad lot back then, made to stand out of the way and play rhythm effects , “Whomp, whomp, lump, lump….” And so on. However, Leo Lyons could play flashy riffs and variations, which gave him a unique status amongst his peers. If this seems to be a distortion of things as they are, remember that our historian is reporting from the distant future, and besides, it’s that there are far fewer great bassists than there are guitarist. Further, it’s also true that Lyons is incredibly quick and agile on an instrument of very severe limitations. No questions, he’s one of the great bassist of our times.
These two, Alvin Lee and Leo Lyons, were joined by the other two, Chick Churchill and Ric Lee in 1967. For a break, the band was booked into London’s famed Marquee Club, which incubated whole generations of British Rock Artists. Ten Years After was playing blues, into the unswerving musical commitment which initially bucked the trends. “We would do an occasional ballroom where we would die a death,” Leo Lyons told a reporter in reminiscing about the bands first year. They weren’t exactly a rich band , according to Leo, with second hand equipment and an old van to haul it in.
As a house band at the Marquee, Ten Years After began to pick up prestige and a following. Then came 1968, and the Windsor Festival, an annual blues and jazz event. Ten Years After played it collective heart out for 20,000 people. Then 20,000 people stood up and roared their approval of Ten Years After.
Stepping Stones: Marquee Club and Windsor Festival, recording contract , and their first album. On the back of that first album is a picture of four very serious young guys with Beatle haircuts. And shirts with collars – Alvin Lee in a zipper jacket. Chick Churchill in a leather jacket, looking straight at the camera, maybe hoping someone will show up to pay for this so they can go free when it’s over. Scared and just unbelievably wet behind the ears.
There was some nonsense in the liner notes on the first album. John C. Gee manager of the Marquee Club, wrote them. “I got to know the group pretty well over these past few months, but even so, the mystery about their past still persists. For example, the organist Chick has no other name.” Well, what would you do if you were a kid playing loud music and owning the name? Leo Lyons was hyped as an ex-cowboy actor who played in German produced Westerns. (Achtung, Herr Dillon…”) And Gee spoke of a ring in Ric’s ear, the mark of a very Bohemian life! The “mystery” was, that there was no mystery, just comfy British middleclass boys who had, for reasons only other musicians could understand, chosen a trade which is tougher, more competitive, and on the average, less rewarding than say, had carrying.
Ric Lee, for the record, was a woodshed disciple of Gene Krupa, the innovator who first played drums as a solo instrument, and a student of all that was good enough to be preserved on shellac or acetate. He listened to the big bands – Buddy Rich, Duke Ellington, Louis Bellson. Given an opening, he would tell any interviewer of his dream to be a big band drummer. He too cut his teeth on ethnic blues, but quickly outgrew the simplicity of the older form. Today he is absorbed by the complexities of Afro-Cuban percussion techniques, which is a logical phase of his development, and of the dedicated musicians quest for origins.
As for Chick Churchill, he is that rarest bird of all, the rock musician who can read and write music. He was a child prodigy, and began coaxing classics out of the piano when he was a mere five-year-old. Alvin Lee has spoken of Chick as being “the best musician in the band”.
To characterize Chick Churchill in a couple of words. He’s shy in conversation, and laid-back in performance. Where Alvin Lee is flashy, Churchill is quietly impressive. Leo Lyons works in great bursts of energy, and Ric Lee plays clean, crisp sets. Each of the four is visually as well as audibly distinctive, each a different presence from the others.
But, it was in terms of their total energy that Ten Years After broke through to fame via the short and unforgettable excerpt from their performance at Woodstock in the film of that name. Woodstock was a stunning experience for Ten Years After, as it was for all who played or listened during those fabled days and nights of music. The picture? “I saw it. I saw the film, and I couldn’t relate to that person up there doing that…..” Alvin Lee saw Woodstock as a mixed blessing. An hour and a half of hard and heavy jamming had preceeded the out of context climatic performance of “I’m Going Home” which had always been the Ten Years After wrapper-upper. Lee’s sense of form was offended. To get the feel of Lee’s attitude, you would have to experience a Ten Years After concert. A Ten Years After concert is a faithful as a band can be to the basic premise of all concerts. It gets the people off by structuring the tensions of its program into an ascending curve of excitement. It’s not unlike theatre, having a beginning, a middle, a climax and a ending. As formal as a corrida, as breath-taking as a sky dive – as surprising as a new lover, Ten Years After puts the audience through changes and turns in direct response to its high energy command. At the right moment, they jam, and when the moment is intuitively right again, they tie all the parts together into an irresistible, tightly, executed spasm of musical fulfilment. It’s orgasmic. No other word quite says it.
From beginning to end, the suspense is in knowing what this amazing band can do, but never exactly know, how it will all be accomplished.
Historian or biography writer or sixteen year old at his or her first concert – all alike have joined the great international tribe of Ten Years After fans, because Ten Years After is just about the best there is……
For our future historian, these last few details……
Woodstock thrust the band’s career into the super – dimension of stardom and audiences screamed for “I’m Going Home” – which Ten Years After stubbornly saved for last, as it always had. The recording pace stepped up, and Alvin Lee, speaking for the band’s feelings in the matter, described the problems of the studio. They wanted live sounds on their albums, but the live recordings which were released were never wholly satisfactory by the bands criteria.
Until “A Space In Time” Ten Years After seldom endorsed its own product without reservations. (Their audience agreed – “A Space In Time” became their first gold album).
When they returned at last to the spotlight and the studio, they were as they had been, four musicians doing what they wanted to, in the way they wanted to do it. Nine albums, eight tours, and an un-counted number of sets and sessions later, their faces on the newest photographs are cool and confident and unguarded. Times have changed. The music is always changing. Ten Years After is part of a whole, affecting its art and its times and moving surely with the motion of these currents, occasionally returning to the small concert halls, in an attempt to re-establish the intimate communication necessary to make the emotional growth of their music relevant to their audience.
Here that future historians will begin to tell us what comes next, but we may have to wait a bit to see that page.
Rolling Stone – April 11, 1974
On The Road To Freedom – Alvin Lee and Mylon Le Fevre
Two often unpersuasive musicians have combined to make an album better than any of their past work. Alvin Lee and Mylon LeFevre may have always been talented, but their performing contexts did not highlight their strengths, each has released the other from the conventions in which they both stagnated.
On ‘On the Road to Freedom’, we discover that Alvin Lee isn’t just a slick blues guitarist and purveyor of boogie, and that Le Fevre can do more than spew out gospel jive. The new music doesn’t conform to any idiom, just a general feeling of Southerness. The original material has a self-scrutinizing aspect that is simply stated and credible. Among the best are Lee’s “Fallen Angel”, “Carry My Load” and the title cut. The two non-originals are beauties. Ron Wood’s “Let em Say What They Will” is a good-natured but hard-nosed guitar rocker. George Harrison’s “So Sad” (No Love of His Own)” sounds to me like one of his best songs. Both writers perform on the album. Le Fevre and Lee sing with a virile dignity reminiscent of Eric Clapton’s singing on Layla. They have my respect, and their partnership is too mutually beneficial to be limited to a single album.
By Bud Scoppa
Mylon LeFevre Ministries
From Rock’n’Roller to Holy Roller – Mylon’s own Story
Elvis Presley recorded the first song I wrote when I was only seventeen.I was stationed at Fort Jackson,South Carolina,at the time,and had just finished basic training in the Army. My sergeant was an alcoholic,and it was well known that for a pint of “Jack Black “whiskey you could get a weekend pass. That weekend I hitchhiked to Memphis to meet my parents at the National Quartet Convention where my mother asked me to sing my new song “Without Him “. Elvis was there in a side room recording songs to consider for his next album.
When I joined the army, I was 17 years old,5’4″tall and didn’t even shave. I was making $84 a month as a private when I got my first check from Elvis’ publishing company.Those checks kept coming every three months. There came a day when I sat down to figure things out. My choice was simple: I could write another song, or I could stay in the army for 800 years to earn the same amount of money. It was a career crossroads, and I decided to go for the music.
In one year, 126 artists around the world recorded my songs. So I took the money from writing and started a band that later became the Atlanta Rhythm Section. My family were gospel singers and I loved to sing gospel music, but the music I was writing was too contemporary for them. Shortly thereafter I got my first car.A ll of a sudden the girls in high school, who would never even talk to me before, were available to me. They still didn’t say much to me, but they were riding in my new car, if you know what I mean. I thought that in life you had to fight for what you wanted,and that you only got what you fought for. I thought it was up to me to get to the top. Was I ever wrong!
Mylon the rock star 1972
I wanted to be a star more than anything. In the 70 ‘s I recorded an album with Alvin Lee from `Ten Years After ‘. Some of the artists on that album were George Harrison from the Beatles, Boz Burrell from Bad Company, Ron Wood from the Rolling Stones, Mick Fleetwood from Fleetwood Mac, Steve Winwood from Traffic,and Ian Wallace from King Crimson. We had what they called in the early 70 ‘s, a “super group “. Between the members of the group we had sold more than 400 million records. Some of the others that I eventually recorded or toured with were Eric Clapton, Billy Joel, Little Richard, the Who, Mountain, ZZ Top,and Grand Funk Railroad, etc. (…)
Ron Wood, Mylon LeFevre and Alvin Lee, 1972
This was Mylon’s story leading up to his collaboration with Alvin.
Mylon became minister in 1980 (check out his website) and passed away in 2023.
Single – ‘So Sad’ / ‘On The Road To Freedom’
Single Japan – ‘The World Is Changing’ / ‘Riffin’
photo published in Raves Magazine (USA) July 1974
