1973 — January to June

POP No. 2 Magazine (Switzerland, Germany) – January 1973

Poster

POP Magazine January 1973 / Article

**GERMAN:** Es gibt zweierlei Arten von Rockgruppen. Auf der einen Seite stehen die Formationen, die im Kollektiv auf das Publikum wirken, bei denen sich jeder einzelne Musiker ein Stück vom Erfolgskuchen abschneidet, jeder seine Fans hat. Dazu gehören die Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin oder Slade. Und dann gibt es jene Gruppen, deren Ruhm sich auf einen aus ihrer Mitte stützt. Gruppen, in denen es einen großen Superstar gibt und in denen die restlichen Musiker, wenigstens in den Augen des Normalkonsumenten, als bloße Statisten fungieren.
Typische Vertreter dieser Art von Gruppenbild sind Marc Bolan und seine T. Rex – oder eben die Ten Years After des Alvin Lee. Würde vor einem Ten-Years-After-Konzert unter den wartenden Zuschauern eine Umfrage starten und die Leute nach dem Grund ihres Kommens fragen, würde die Antwort in neun von zehn Fällen lauten : Um Alvin Lee zu sehen. Denn Alvin Lee ist – vor allem für die ganz junge Generation der ungekrönte Speed-King, der Gitarrenheld schlechthin.
Viele seiner Gegner sagen zwar, dass er außer seinen schnellen Fingern nicht viel mehr zu bieten habe; feeling sei ein Fremdwort für ihn. Nun-egal, was man von Superstars im allgemeinen oder von den Qualitäten des Mr. Lee im speziellen hält. Unbestrittene Tatsache ist, dass Ten Years After seit langen fünf Jahren zu den beständigsten und beliebtesten Rockformationen der Welt gehören. Und dies haben sie wohl nicht zuletzt ihrem Superstar Alvin Lee zu verdanken.

**ENGLISH:** There are two types of rock groups. On one side are the formations that work on the audience collectively, where each individual musician cuts himself a piece of the success cake, each has his fans. These include the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin or Slade. And then there are those groups whose fame rests on one from their midst. Groups in which there is one great superstar and in which the remaining musicians function, at least in the eyes of the average consumer, as mere extras.
Typical representatives of this type of group image are Marc Bolan and his T. Rex – or indeed Ten Years After with Alvin Lee. If a survey were started before a Ten Years After concert among the waiting spectators and people were asked about the reason for their coming, the answer would be in nine out of ten cases: To see Alvin Lee. Because Alvin Lee is – especially for the very young generation – the uncrowned speed king, the guitar hero par excellence.
Many of his opponents say that apart from his fast fingers he doesn’t have much more to offer; feeling is a foreign word to him. Well – regardless of what one thinks of superstars in general or of the qualities of Mr. Lee in particular. The undisputed fact is that Ten Years After have belonged to the most consistent and popular rock formations in the world for a good five years now. And they probably have their superstar Alvin Lee to thank for this not least.

—

## Interview Mit Alvin Lee – „Ich bin nicht Ten Years After”
## Interview with Alvin Lee – “I am not Ten Years After”

**POP (GERMAN):** Was hat Woodstock für Euch bedeutet?
**POP (ENGLISH):** What did Woodstock mean to you?

**ALVIN LEE (GERMAN):** Woodstock brachte uns in erster Linie Erfolg und Zufriedenheit. Und natürlich einen weltweiten guten Ruf. Erst später ist der Gruppe dieser sogenannte gute Ruf beinahe zum Verhängnis geworden. Die Leute wollten immer wieder unseren Woodstock Song „I’m Going Home” hören. Sie erwarteten von uns Rock `n´ Roll und immer wieder Rock `n´ Roll. Natürlich spielen wir gerne Rock `n´Roll, aber es gibt so und so viele Musikarten, für die wir uns ebenso interessieren.

**ALVIN LEE (ENGLISH):** Woodstock brought us primarily success and satisfaction. And naturally a worldwide good reputation. Only later did this so-called good reputation almost become the group’s undoing. People always wanted to hear our Woodstock song “I’m Going Home” again and again. They expected rock ‘n’ roll from us and always more rock ‘n’ roll. Of course we like playing rock ‘n’ roll, but there are so many types of music that we’re equally interested in.

—

**POP (GERMAN):** Trotzdem war Euer letztes Album eine reine Rock-Angelegenheit.
**POP (ENGLISH):** Nevertheless, your last album was a pure rock affair.

**ALVIN LEE (GERMAN):** Stimmt. Wir wollten eine LP rausbringen, die die Art von Musik enthält, die das Publikum immer wieder bei unseren Live-Auftritten verlangt. In vielen Ländern war „Rock `n´ Roll Music” ein voller Erfolg. Seltsamerweise ist aber die LP weder in England noch in den U.S.A. sehr weit nach oben gekommen.

**ALVIN LEE (ENGLISH):** That’s right. We wanted to release an LP that contains the kind of music that the audience always demands at our live performances. In many countries “Rock ‘n’ Roll Music” was a complete success. Strangely, however, the LP didn’t climb very high either in England or in the U.S.A.

—

**POP (GERMAN):** Ihr arbeitet nicht mehr so hart wie früher. Warum?
**POP (ENGLISH):** You don’t work as hard as you used to. Why?

**ALVIN LEE (GERMAN):** Wir können heute sicher sein, dass Ten Years After eine vollkommen etablierte Sache sind. Deshalb hat es keinen großen Sinn, sich unnötigerweise zu überarbeiten. Es kann sogar vorkommen, dass die Musik unter zu großem Arbeitsanfall Schaden nimmt.

**ALVIN LEE (ENGLISH):** We can be sure today that Ten Years After is a completely established thing. Therefore it doesn’t make much sense to overwork ourselves unnecessarily. It can even happen that the music suffers damage from too heavy a workload.

—

**POP (GERMAN):** Möchtet ihr auch andere Stilrichtungen als Rock `n´ Roll auf Platten bringen?
**POP (ENGLISH):** Would you also like to put other styles besides rock ‘n’ roll on records?

**ALVIN LEE (GERMAN):** Aber sicher. Es haben sich innerhalb der Gruppe verschiedene Ideen herangebildet, die wir unbedingt verwirklichen möchten. Es stimmt zwar, dass ich das meiste Material geschrieben habe, das dann auf die Platte kommt. Trotzdem möchte ich betonen, dass ich mich nicht auf einem Egotrip befinde und sehr daran interessiert bin, dass auch meine Mitmusiker etwas vom Scheinwerferlicht abbekommen. Ich war sehr verärgert, als unsere ehemalige Plattenfirma alte Nummern unter dem Titel „Alvin Lee & Co.” auf den Markt brachte. Ich muss immer wieder betonen, dass nicht ich allein die Ten Years After ausmache!

**ALVIN LEE (ENGLISH):** But certainly. Various ideas have developed within the group that we absolutely want to realize. It’s true that I’ve written most of the material that then goes on the record. Nevertheless, I’d like to emphasize that I’m not on an ego trip and am very interested in my fellow musicians also getting some of the spotlight. I was very annoyed when our former record company put old numbers on the market under the title “Alvin Lee & Co.” I must repeatedly emphasize that I alone don’t make up Ten Years After!

—

**POP (GERMAN):** Du bist inzwischen sicher Millionär!
**POP (ENGLISH):** You’re surely a millionaire by now!

**ALVIN LEE (GERMAN):** Kann sein, dass ich in Dollarwährung die Millionengrenze erreicht habe. Sicher aber nicht in Pfund. Ich habe ehrlich gesagt keine Ahnung, wie wir finanziell stehen. Ich weiß nur, dass ich in unseren Anfängen immer Musik eines Tages unseren Lebensunterhalt bestreiten können würden und das haben wir immerhin erreicht.

**ALVIN LEE (ENGLISH):** It’s possible that I’ve reached the million mark in dollars. But certainly not in pounds. To be honest, I have no idea how we stand financially. I only know that in our early days I always hoped that music could one day provide our livelihood and we have at least achieved that.

—

**POP (GERMAN):** Seid Ihr nur noch des Geldes wegen im Geschäft?
**POP (ENGLISH):** Are you only still in the business for the money?

**ALVIN LEE (GERMAN):** Keineswegs. Wir sind glücklich als Musiker. Obwohl wir Abend für Abend die gleichen Songs spielen müssen, gelingt uns immer noch eine schöne Portion Improvisation. Es ist ganz ähnlich wie beim Jazz. Wenn man während vielen Jahren immer mit denselben Musikern zusammenspielt, lernt man die Gefühle und Talente des einzelnen sehr genau kennen mehr und kann mehr und besser improvisieren, als dies bei neuen Musikern der Fall wäre.

**ALVIN LEE (ENGLISH):** Not at all. We’re happy as musicians. Although we have to play the same songs evening after evening, we still manage a nice portion of improvisation. It’s quite similar to jazz. When you play with the same musicians for many years, you learn to know the feelings and talents of each individual very precisely and can improvise more and better than would be the case with new musicians.

—

**POP (GERMAN):** Wen Zählst Du zu Deinen persönlichen Favoriten?
**POP (ENGLISH):** Who do you count among your personal favorites?

**ALVIN LEE (GERMAN):** Vor allem die alten Blues-Sänger – und einige Jazz-Namen. Und natürlich auch ein paar Pop-Gruppen. Mein Geschmacksspektrum ist ziemlich breit.

**ALVIN LEE (ENGLISH):** Above all the old blues singers – and some jazz names. And naturally also a few pop groups. My taste spectrum is quite broad.

—

**POP (GERMAN):** Wie verbringen die einzelnen Mitglieder von Ten Years After ihre Freizeit?
**POP (ENGLISH):** How do the individual members of Ten Years After spend their free time?

**ALVIN LEE (GERMAN):** Wir entspannen, lassen uns neue Ideen einfallen und sammeln Material für neue Platten. Einige von uns sind selbst in die Plattenproduktion eingestiegen.

**ALVIN LEE (ENGLISH):** We relax, let new ideas come to us and collect material for new records. Some of us have gotten into record production ourselves.

—

**POP (GERMAN):** Wie denkst Du über Open–Air Konzerte? Ihr habt oft anlässlich solcher Veranstaltungen gespielt und damit immer sehr viel Erfolg gehabt.
**POP (ENGLISH):** What do you think about open-air concerts? You’ve often played at such events and always had great success with them.

**ALVIN LEE (GERMAN):** Wenn ein Open–Air oder ein Festival gut organisiert ist, hab’ ich nichts dagegen. Es wurden jedoch in dieser Beziehung schon unzählige Fehler gemacht. Dann muss auch immer mit dem Faktor Witterung gerechnet werden. Im Regen zu sitzen und vor Kälte zu zittern ist für das Publikum sicher alles andere als ein Vergnügen. Ich glaube kaum, dass es jemals ein zweites Woodstock geben wird. Es wird kaum möglich sein noch einmal so viele Leute und so viele Top–Popgruppen an einem Ort zusammenzubringen.

**ALVIN LEE (ENGLISH):** If an open-air or festival is well organized, I have nothing against it. However, countless mistakes have already been made in this regard. Then you always have to reckon with the weather factor. Sitting in the rain and shivering from cold is certainly anything but a pleasure for the audience. I hardly believe there will ever be a second Woodstock. It will hardly be possible to bring together so many people and so many top pop groups in one place again.

—

**POP (GERMAN):** Wie denkst Du über die heutige Pop – Szene, über die neue Generation von Rockbands, die in den meisten Fällen sehr einfache Musik macht, dazu aber eine spektakuläre Theatershow vom Stapel lässt?
**POP (ENGLISH):** What do you think about today’s pop scene, about the new generation of rock bands that in most cases makes very simple music, but puts on a spectacular theater show?

**ALVIN LEE (GERMAN):** Ich habe mich schon immer mehr für Musik interessiert als für Theater. Ich glaube, dass viele Gruppen sich sosehr auf ihre Show konzentrieren, weil sie hoffen, dadurch populär zu werden, und meistens auch deshalb, weil sie auf musikalischer Ebene nicht sehr viel zu bieten haben. Um Schlagzeilen zu machen, lassen sie sich manchmal die seltsamsten Dinge einfallen. Ich bin nach wie vor davon überzeugt, dass gute Musik das einzige ist, was man dem Publikum bieten kann.

**ALVIN LEE (ENGLISH):** I’ve always been more interested in music than in theater. I believe that many groups concentrate so much on their show because they hope to become popular through it, and mostly also because they don’t have very much to offer on a musical level. To make headlines, they sometimes come up with the strangest things. I’m still convinced that good music is the only thing you can offer the audience.

—

**POP (GERMAN):** Glaubst Du, dass die Popmusik an einem toten Punkt angelangt ist?
**POP (ENGLISH):** Do you believe that pop music has reached a dead point?

**ALVIN LEE (GERMAN):** Nein, ganz im Gegenteil ! Die Musikszene war noch nie zuvor so gut and so lebendig. Vor gar nicht allzu langer Zeit waren es nur die 12 bis 16-jährigen, die sich für Popmusik begeistern konnten. Heute interessieren sich sogar 30-jährige dafür. Die Szene ist breiter und großzügiger als je. Das Angebot reicht von den Osmonds, die vor allem die Favoriten der jungen Generation sind, bis hin zu progressiven Gruppen wie Jefferson Airplane und Greatful Dead.

**ALVIN LEE (ENGLISH):** No, quite the opposite! The music scene has never before been so good and so lively. Not all that long ago it was only 12 to 16-year-olds who could get enthusiastic about pop music. Today even 30-year-olds are interested in it. The scene is broader and more generous than ever. The offering ranges from the Osmonds, who are above all the favorites of the young generation, to progressive groups like Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead.

—

*Source: POP Magazine, January 1973*

   

The loose translation of the snippet is as follows: It refers to the wrist guard that Alvin wears on his right arm to protect that area from cuts and abrasions from the guitar strings. It was made for him by his mother, of leather for a comfortable fit and creative decorations for a stylish look.

 

 

 

Circus Magazine January 1973 — $.75 Cents

 

Alvin Lee:
Ever since the film “Woodstock,” showed Alvin’s blonde hair flying and his fingers sailing over the guitar strings, he’s been trying to shatter the notion that he’s a superhuman sex symbol.

It’s an unseasonably muggy Sunday night and Ten Years After are headlining at New York’s grimy old Academy of Music. The midnight set has just gone into its second encore and there are still cries from the crowd for “More” ! Lead guitarist Alvin Lee whispers to his sweat-soaked cohorts in the wings, “let’s give ’em a quick one”. They take the stage again to thunderous applause, and tear into “Johnny B. Goode” but drummer Ric Lee has taken Alvin a bit too literally and rushes the beat; so they suddenly stop short, count off and start the song again. This time it’s right, the music keeps getting louder and faster while shouts out verses of “Rip It Up” and “Tutti-Frutti” and finally rips off a frenzied guitar solo that leaves literally nothing else to play. Even the jaded backstage denizens are clapping as the band finally stumbles offstage and the house lights go up. This is a strange way indeed for a full-fledged rock star to behave. Less than two weeks earlier, in a theatre only a few scant miles away, David Bowie, the new glamour rock’s prettiest star, danced with unfaltering precision through a tightly choreographed set of songs despite a bass amplifier that resolutely refused to function properly, keeping his show moving even though the sound was going nowhere.

Kicking Solid Gold In The Teeth:

In this musical season of Bowie and Bolan, when even Mick Jagger has taken to wearing eye glitter and purple body stockings, Ten Years After has thrown a strange new twist into its six-year war against superstar flash. Ever since they got together in 1967 they’ve gone onstage in their rock ‘n roll jeans, playing to please no one but themselves, and bringing audiences more accustomed to slumping in their seats to their cheering, stomping feet.

But in the last few weeks, they’ve taken their rebellion against superstar glamour a step further with their new album, “Rock & Roll Music To The World” (On Columbia Records), an LP that deliberately tosses away the formula that only ten months back earned the group its first million-selling LP in over half a decade of patient music making. Less than a year ago the song “I’d Love To Change The World” with its lush, infectious acoustic guitar runs, astonished Ten Years After followers by climbing to the pop fifty on the charts. Then came something even more surprising. After five non-gold LP’s A Space In Time. The very un – Ten Years After – ish LP which “Change The World” had come from, not only turned gold, but stayed on the charts for nearly half a year, rivalling even the longevity of that season’s latest posthumous Hendrix release, “Rainbow Bridge”. But did Alvin Lee stick to the musical formula that had suddenly launched him into the skies of solid gold? Not by a long shot. In a puzzling reversal, he has abruptly snapped away from the carefully structured flash and glitter that made “A Space In Time” his most commercially successful work to date, and taken “Rock & Roll Music To The World”, back to the sound of his previous six albums.

The funky, rocking blues the group likes best. Alvin explains, “This album isn’t the songs I write for the group. I didn’t construct anything. All the songs just came off my head and we all played what came out is just the natural music of the band”.

Just Another T.V. Hater:

While “I’d Love To Change The World” the top 50 single from the last album, catalogued the horrors of war and pollution to a melancholy acoustic guitar backing, the new album sets its mood in the hard-charging title cut: “Ain’t no relation to the United Nations – I just shout and do the rest with my guitar – Give peace a chance, get up and dance – I’m singing rock & roll music to the world.

“Turned Off T.V. Blues” stabs a pin into the gilded dream of rock star glamour to show just another bored human being sitting in a hotel room with nothing to do but gaze blankly at a 21- inch screen: (Lyrics) – I’m sitting here in oblivion, what a great night to watch T.V.

“It just fills my mind with garbage, that my eyes ain’t supposed to see. Watching T.V. is a real energy drain,” Alvin says, stretching his long legs in the back of the sleek black limousine taking him down to the Academy of Music. “I’d sit down to watch something and before I knew it, four or five hours would be gone and I’d have done absolutely nothing creative.”

The songs just grew out of my reaction to that whole trip, in all its drab and universal humanity, is what Alvin Lee would like the world to know he’s all about.

Cool The Hot Pants:

From the very beginning Ten Years After have been a group who couldn’t care less about six-inch silver boots, strobe lights, hot pants, dyed hair and mascara. They emerged from the grimy British industrial town of Nottingham during the British Blues Explosion that also launched such groups as Cream and Fleetwood Mac, after an extended residency at London’s famed Marquee Club. They cut their first album, which was about equally divided between their own songs and well-known blues such as “Help Me Baby” and “I Can’t Keep From Crying Sometimes” (still one of their most popular on-stage numbers today), that fall, and followed it up with an excellent live album, appropriately titled “Undead”, that featured an extended workout on Woody Herman’s big band hit of the 1940’s “Woodchoppers Ball”.

“We did “Undead” in this tiny club right next door to Decca recording studios,” Alvin recalls. “We just ran the wires over the roof and put the mikes through the club window, while Mike Vernon, our producer, sat in the studio mixing it right off the line, which was pretty handy.

It was rude and crude, all done in one night with no retakes or overdubs to cover the rough parts”.

Reluctant Sex – Symbol:

But once the first flush of success had established Ten Years After as a well known, working band, Alvin took over as the group’s undisputed leader and chief songwriter, and that’s when Ten Years After’s problem with Alvin Lee’s image as a sex-symbol and superstar reared its unexpected head. Their third album, “Stonedhenge”, reflected Alvin’s growing interest in electronic music and attempted to break away from their image as a blues band.

With their fourth album, “Ssssh”, Alvin took over as the group’s producer as well as songwriter. Unfortunately, the album’s best cut was the only non-Lee composition, “Good Morning Little School Girl”. The groups last album for Deram, “Watt”, went to far as to picture, on the inside cover, Alvin sitting at the studio engineer’s console mixing the album while the rest of the group looked on from behind a glass partition. Alvin had inadvertently taken the first step toward becoming Ten Years After’s mini Jagger.

Alvin Lee, guitar:
Upstairs in the New York’s Academy of Music dressing room there were groupies, food and wine enough for everyone. But Alvin Lee just sat down on a couch and explained why, on his new LP “Rock and Roll Music To The World” he completely abandoned the sound that last year won him his first gold LP.

Blonde Hair and Flying Fingers:

Then came Woodstock and the movie that followed. The film featured Ten Years After’s Rave – Up encore of “I’m Going Home,” but the camera ignored the rest of the group and focused on Alvin’s frantically waving blonde hair, flying fingers and screaming lips as if he were the only musician on the stage. The movie elevated the festival to a legend, and carried Alvin Lee along with it, but Ten Years After was apparently being left behind.

Alvin tried to stop his on-rushing superstar image in its tracks with “A Space In Time”. He explains that “It was the culmination of all our experiments. We’d gotten tagged as a heavy rock and roll band because of the whole Woodstock thing, so for that album I wrote some more structured numbers. I’d been listening to Van Morrison and James Taylor and some of that feeling got into my music”. But, Alvin’s Space In Time experiment backfired.

It was the group’s most successful album commercially, giving them their first single, that even Top Forty Stations would play, and their first gold LP; but just like their exposure in Woodstock, it presented them with a danger they loathed – the risk of attracting hordes of kids to their concerts who would be more interested in screaming than in listening to the music.

Back To Blue Jeans:

So, while most groups once they find a hit-producing formula, they stay with it. Ten Years After turned away from the softer, more complex sounds of “Space In Time”, to return to the straight – ahead – blues and jazz that originally inspired them. “In our early days, before we recorded, we used to get thrown out of clubs for playing blues, because people couldn’t dance to it, so we used to play what the people wanted to hear. But we’ve always liked blues and jazz best. We proved, with “Space In Time”, that there was another side to us than “I’m Going Home”, and that sort of music.” A year ago Alvin Lee sat in a darkened room grumbling to a writer from a British photographic magazine about how a series of moody, pin-up like album covers had made him the hard-rock David Cassidy. Then, as if to show he was a musician, not a beauty queen, he boasted with quiet pride, “We’ve never had a gold record, you know”. Now it almost seems as if Alvin wishes that were still the case.

 

 

 

 

MUZIEKKRANT – January 17, 1973

Amsterdam Vrijdag 26 Jan.
Rotterdam Zaterdag 27 Jan.

 

 

 Disco Expres (Newspaper, Spain) – January 19, 1973

 

 

 

Extra Magazine (France) – January 26, 1973

 

 

 

January 26, 1973 – Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Holland

Photographer: Gijsbert Hanekroot

 

 

 

1973 Tour Dates in Germany

 

 

 

January 28, 1973 – Festhalle Frankfurt, Grmany

January 29, 1973 – L’Olympia Paris, France

Photographer: Claude Gassian

Photographer: Jean-Pierre Leloir

 

 

 

Beat Instrumental – January 1973

 

 

 

The Berlin Observer, January 1973 

   contribution by Alessandro

   contribution by Wolfgang Stender

 

 

 

Berlin, Germany 1973

contributions by John Tsagas

 

 

 

Rolling Stone Magazine – February 2, 1973

Group Gropes: Ten Years After’s Bout With Image

Los Angeles – It’s almost Twenty Years After, if you believe the story that Alvin Lee turned pro ten years after Elvis Presley’s English invasion of 1954, but Ten Years After are still struggling with their image. Ever since Woodstock has dragged around the “Going Home” albatross, a “boogie, get-yer-rocks-off number” that imprisoned them in the Grand Funk category, had them setting off riots in LA and finally drove them into a three month rest-retreat in an effort to escape.

“Part of it was my fault” says Lee, “When I first came over to the states I was very headstrong and I thought interviews, radio and anything other than playing was just hype. So I didn’t do any interviews for a long, long while. Then all sorts of stories built up – about me and the band and everything else, so I figured it was just due to lack of communication on my part. LA always tends to be a little more freaked out than the other places. I remember the first Forum concert we played, the cops were hitting people with sticks on the front row; we ended up just walking out halfway through our number, and as far as I know, nobody particularly noticed, they all applauded at the end of the half number and thought that was it. I just felt really sick; I couldn’t get high with that going on.”

Recently, in front of an L.A. Forum audience disposed towards chaos after an hour’s equipment delay, Ten Years After was marvellously unaffected, making no effort to incite the crowd beyond the energy of the music itself. Instead of the classic glowering, menacing British blues band demeanour, TYA just laid back and played music. To some degree, of course, the stage antics remain. “I think it’s called histrionics isn’t it?” said bassist Leo Lyons playfully. But, overall the actions remain natural, something they just feel like doing. “It’s not forced in any direction”, says Alvin, “and it’s not meant as phallicism, it’s meant as a bottleneck with the mike-stand.” Throngs of gasping young ladies might dispute the claim, but Alvin insists that he avoids the superstar role as much as possible. “I think it affects Alvin more than it does us”, said Lyons, “because his face was on Woodstock more than anyone else’s. I think it’s the cause of all this knocking. We’ve probably had the worst press that anybody’s ever had. To a certain extent, Woodstock set him up as a figure larger than life, and people are gonna come along and want to knock him down, see if he really can walk on water.”

Alvin, a filmmaker of sorts himself (“It’s a side trip”), complains that Woodstock took “Going Home” out of context and set them up cinematically as something they are not. “It represented part of us, but that part was put out of proportion to the other parts. It brought us to the attention of a wider audience; however, that wider audience wasn’t particularly the right thing for the concerts. The whole FM, underground feeling is one I’ve always been happy with. To play to the minority audience, to me is better than playing to a mass audience that just came for the event. But we started getting that kind of audience, little 13-year old screamers and gigglers and people pulling your shoes, which wasn’t helping us do what we wanted to do – to turn on people with our music.” A three-month, self-evaluating layoff before the Space In Time album seems to have exorcised some of those elements.

“We’re all equal members of the band”, said Alvin. “We all get paid the same; we all work the same. I personally don’t think a band’s structure should have a leader and the rest of the musicians just a backup band. When people started to say “Alvin Lee and Ten Years After’ that caused some alarm to me as well. At first I ignored it, but it didn’t go away, so we sat down and talked about it and we got it together.” To look at the band, it would be only logical to assume that Alvin is the leader; lead singer, lead guitarist, he writes all the material and stands center stage as well. But, he explained, “It isn’t my music, it’s the music of the band. Four heads make up that music. I just write basic structures which the band develops by jamming.”

The other band members, Lyons, organist Chick Churchill and drummer Ric Lee (no relation) agree that they are a cohesive unit, not a backup band, but concede that Alvin still gets the most attention. Among the band, Alvin and Leo Lyons are the closest, having been together since they were 15. Leo dresses like a cowboy, but says, “In a way I’d be ashamed of calling myself a cowboy after reading what a so-called civilized nation did to the Indians. So I’m an Indian.”

That story about Ten Years After and Elvis Presley provided some nice tie-ins about the influence of rock & roll on the band, but, unfortunately, was quite fictional. They just needed a catchy name and Leo dug one up out of the radio program listings: Ten Years After was almost Life Without Mother. Alvin now says, “If it meant anything at all, it meant ten years after now, not necessarily futuristic, but it had that connotation. It was a kind of surrealistic feel, and it was nice. Blues was as much an influence as rock & roll and though Lyons will sportingly try to make a case that blues is a British form (since it was originally African and the British were instrumental in enslaving the Africans) both admit in serious moments that musically they feel more American than British.

“My father”, said Alvin, “used to collect early American blues. My brother in-law used to listen to all the big swing bands. When in England there was a blues boom, I found myself, without having to think, really knowledgeable on blues because of my father’s collection and his interest in it and I read quite a few books on it as well and it kind of gave me a confident edge.” That edge was bolstered by his family’s illustrious career in country music. “About once a year they’d do a local gig – “Home on the Range” with cowboy hats on. They were interested and involved in music; they weren’t tremendously active. There was always a guitar around the house. They encouraged me to take up an instrument seriously. I was 12 when I first took up the clarinet, which didn’t lead me anywhere. It was like a chore.”

“Through playing the clarinet I listened to Benny Goodman a lot. With Benny Goodman was Charlie Christian, one of the pioneers of the electric guitar. I got turned on to him, really… and when I started the guitar lessons, my guitar teacher was a Django Reinhardt fan and all he actually taught me to play was the kind of chording Django plays, those really vamping chords. I got off on hearing somebody with the technical skill to play whatever they want. In fact, for a long while, if I heard somebody play a piece that was really hard to play, I got off more on that than the melody. The melody side of things came later, like the Beatles.” His admiration for technical skill has brought Alvin cartloads of criticism for flashiness. “It kind of gets lodged in the back of the head somewhere, particularly the speed thing where everybody was saying ‘The Fastest Guitarist in the West – so what?’ I just had a fast style. When I got aware of this kind of buzz going on I subconsciously at first wanted to show that I could be more structured and I wasn’t all just speed, which I wasn’t. I knew that, but I wanted to point it out to the people that didn’t, which I think is a mistake. You’re always gonna get knocked and you’re always gonna get praised and neither one is healthy to take seriously.”

But anyone who criticizes Alvin Lee for being the stereotypical arrogant kid guitarist has obviously never met him, at least recently. “The only thing I think about myself,” he said, “is that I am doing something original. I am following my own path. I’m not a great innovator, but I try and do my best. I’m doing something which is coming from inside of me.”

By Paul Bernstein

 

 

Maxipop Magazine (France) – February 6, 1973

 

 

 

EXTRA No. 28 Magazine (France), March 1973

Photos by Claude Gassian



partial TRANSLATION of the ‘EXTRA’ article

**REVIVAL**

In front of a different — but equally large — crowd (chairs had made their reappearance at the Olympia), **Ten Years After** had little trouble matching the intensity of applause and demands for encores that had been stirred up the night before by the old master **Chuck Berry**.
Curiously, the band, like Berry, seemed to be entering its own “revival” period. Just as the American hadn’t stopped singing *“Sweet Little Sixteen”* for years — and the Brits have been carrying that torch for a while now — Alvin and his mates are still playing *“Goin’ Home”*, *“I Can’t Keep from Crying”*, *“Help Me”*, *“Spoonful”*, and more.
Some, like Berry with *“Carol”*, might be perfectly happy sticking to the same old songs. The presence of the **Rolling Stones’ mobile recording unit** at the Ten Years After concert — was that the reason behind this flashback?
Alvin (quite rightly) seems to think that the French public only leaves happy **if they’ve heard “Goin’ Home.”**
Because let’s be honest — it’s no longer about *pleasure* or *personal satisfaction* when he keeps inserting that little *“Blue Suede Shoes”* riff. Isn’t it more likely that the old material simply works better than the new, and carries less risk?
When you’ve been around as long as **Ten Years After**, playing non-stop, that kind of judgement becomes second nature — regardless of the crowd or nationality. It’s a matter of instinct. Is it just a phase, a calculated choice, or a lifeline?
In any case, the concert was **excellent**, even if, when you get down to it, it wasn’t really any different from their usual show.
They were preceded by **Wild Turkey**, a new group formed by former **Jethro Tull** bassist **Glenn Cornick**, who hasn’t quite managed to leave the past behind. Ian Anderson’s influence, as well as Tull’s music, still lingers heavily.
After a bit of persuasion, they entered the stage. From left to right, Leo Lyons (bass), Ric Lee (drums), Alvin Lee (accordion) and Chick Churchill (a bit of organ). As usual, to remind everyone that he was the only guitarist capable of playing faster than his shadow, Alvin’s fingers galloped over the guitar neck (the accordion was a joke). For more than two hours, Ten Years After simply delighted an audience that had come to see and hear the creators of “Goin’ Home” (“Extra”, No. 18, May 72). Naturally, one can always say that it is already highly commendable to remain the same as oneself, that it is better than sinking into the soup, in short, that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Only one must agree to change labels and expect to be considered “ad vitam æternam” as a beautiful, well-maintained, well-polished antique, consigned to the register of pioneering stallions. Finally, it remains to be seen whether one should draw a parallel between the 30-year-old rocker who came to see Chuck Berry again and the 18-year-old feather duster who came to hear Ten Years After. Being nostalgic for one’s 20s is good, but having the blues of one’s first moped is worrying. Perhaps it’s the fault of the decadents! May they then prove truly prodigious. A problem to be revisited later.

Bruno Ducourant
photo caption / Ten Years After: phase, calculated choice, or a lifeline?

 

 

 

Rock & Folk Magazine (France), March 1973

 

 

Rock Newspaper, USA – March 12, 1973

 

 

Best Magazine (France), March 1973

---

Ten Years After at “Olympia”, Paris — 29 January 1973

(by Sacha Reins)

---

F.G.: What are your upcoming plans?
A.L.: We’re just about to go on a European tour. In Paris, in February, we’ll be recording several songs live — using the Rolling Stones’ equipment. If it turns out well, we intend to make a record from it. We’ll be reworking some of our earlier songs that have since evolved a lot.

---

Olympia 29 January

Ten Years After is one of those groups capable of delivering the most exciting shows — but always depending on Alvin Lee’s mood and whether he just wants to deliver the performance or go all in.

On January 29 at the Olympia, everything seemed set — Alvin was in a good mood backstage before the concert. He was fooling around with his guitar while waiting to go on. An added plus: the Rolling Stones’ recording equipment was set up with multiple mics, as the concert was to be recorded.

Alvin was in great shape. The crowd gave him a fantastic welcome. His entrance on stage lit up the room, and his striking red Gibson guitar announced that the party was on.

The songs followed one after another, each ending in only one way: an explosion of joy. Alvin Lee is a clever musician. He takes a short phrase (four or five notes) and plays it over and over, modifying it each time until it becomes a burst of brilliance. It’s an art.

There are few guitarists who truly understand and deliver the energy and simplicity blues requires. In my view, only one other guitarist really “gets” this style, inherited from African American blues: Keith Richards.

About Alvin — and all the technical criticism that some people throw at him — I remember a line from B.B. King. After hearing him play, he said to me:

“That kid plays fast, that son of a bitch”
(in English: “motherfucker” — which in Black slang is a compliment). But he wasn’t saying it with any negativity.

---

Not slaves to the “big hit”

T.Y.A. is no longer a slave to its set-piece showstopper. They could’ve skipped “I’m Going Home”. But they played it — knowing it would make the audience happy. And isn’t that the whole spirit of rock: to bring pleasure, generously and joyfully?

Their setlist pulled from nearly all of their albums. They even brought back “Help Me Babe” and “Spoonful.”

Ten Years After and Alvin Lee have now avoided the dangerous trap that often ensnares “Superstars.” Their path is clear, focused, invigorating and full of life. I won’t say the concert was perfect — but finishing the Olympia show with “Sweet Little Sixteen”, letting you feel the full explosion of joy he created… that was unforgettable.

A concert worthy of one of the best rock bands today. This band leaves a strong mark wherever it goes.

Thanks for everything, Alvin.

---

 

 

 

 

 

New Musical Express – March 31, 1973

Ten Years After are to play a string of selected British concerts in April, before setting out on the second half of their 1973 world tour. Five venues that have confirmed this week are:

Dunstable Civic Hall (April 5), Sheffield City Hall (6), Croydon Fairfield Hall (8), Reading University (14), and Guildford Civic Hall (15), along with other dates still waiting to be finalised. The band have just completed the European half of their world tour, during which they recorded a live double album, for release by Chrysalis Records on May 4. It was recorded on the Rolling Stones mobile unit at concerts in Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam. The album is virtually a Ten Years After “Greatest Hits Bootleg” collection. It comprises of twelve tracks among which are the following: “I’m Going Home” – “Help Me Baby” – “I Can’t Keep From Cryin’ Sometimes” and “You Give Me Loving”. It will retail at the special price of three pounds. Ten Years After return to America on April 25 and tour there until May 13. Then they fly to Japan for a week of concerts, followed by other appearances in the Far East. A spokesman told the New Musical Express, that the group are at present being negotiated for a major London date later in the year.

 

 

 

Creem Magazine — April 1973

Photos by Judy Linn and Richard Creamer

Alvin Lee has the biggest teeth in the world. They’re as big as a horse’s. They’re BIGGER than Carly Simon’s. When sitting on the couch in his hotel suite, he’s a pretty reasonable guy, brighter than you’d expect a boogie man to be. But you still get distracted by those teeth, which flash like big pearly piano keys – except when he shuts up to take a toke.

Onstage it’s even worse, because all the lights are shining on him, and with the adulatory eyes of the masses on him he can’t help but smile; his choppers pierce the gloom like two dozen headlights.

When he really gets into his music, breaking out with an especially involved solo in “Goin’ Home” or leaping proudly back onstage for the “Sweet Little Sixteen” encore, he forgets himself completely and starts to grind his teeth with such ferocity that he looks like Dr. Sardonicus; it’s a wonder he’s got more than molar stumps at this point.

When Lee really gets down to it, though, you can forget his teeth long enough to dig his whole act. As it stands now it’s one of the best-honed unqualified boogie venues on the boards. Lee has been doing basically the same thing for so long that he’s got it pat. It’s not boring or cold but Alvin Lee is a true professional. He knows exactly what his audiences want, and always gives it to them. If you’re on the other end of the noise, there’s a kind of comfort in the absolute predictability that Ten Years After represent. Half a decade now they’ve been at it, and if they’re not quite the monstro superdraw they once were, they still have a good time. You get the feeling from watching them play and from talking to Alvin that even years from now, when the whole pop-star riff is up for them and they’re back playing bars in England, their music and their attitude will both remain the same.

When he’s in full flight Alvin sidles up to the microphone and grins like a moose. He’s built like a football player, and his guitar English is in accordance with the image – none of this fey barely-touching stuff for Mr. Lee (unless he wuz touching one of the Bobbettes) – he grits and grinds and bumps and juts, making it clear without overstating his virility that he don’t fuck around. He has a great sense of humour, too – whilst playing 78 RPM ultimo methedrine guitar with one hand, shacking the mike with the other, bouncing stage front in a kind of electric slouch (like a vibrating spring) and singing in the corniest and most blatant ripoff of something resembling an old New Orleans Smiley Lewis vocal style ever heard, he’ll swivel his skull and literally leer at the audience with glee at once sly and mindless. Naturally they eat it up. That man ain’t no fool.

The other members of Ten Years After have been resigned to being out of the spotlight for so long that they seem almost sheepish about it. I can’t even remember what they look like right now. When you go for the interview it’s apparently a tacit, unspoken assumption that you want to talk to Alvin and if they come in at all it’s to tell their manager something or cop a joint. All of which is too bad, in a way – I still remember Ric Lee in the movie of Woodstock, thrashing back there behind the cymbals, licking his drawn lips like a chameleon, face so literally black and whole visage such a classic frame of beyond-the pale methedrine beatitude (like the cool channel at the eye of the jet stream) as to summarize the nervous immolation of a whole generation in one frozen piece of celluloid.

But that was then and this is now, when Ten Years After are in some ways the grand-daddies of the whole blooming boogie-bloozup-getdown school of band which has proliferated since they first hit the sets. Savoy Brown copped their riffs in all comradeship, Cactus would be lost without their model, and Foghat would never have existed had Ten Years After not blazed the trail, Alvin hacking away the jungle with a machete that arced up the frets of his guitar light years beyond “Lightnin’ Hopkins” pocket-knife.

They’ve been around, they’ve prospered and endured, and now they can afford to kick back just an ampere or a decibel, cruising on the highway they themselves laid. The audience doesn’t care, because the fire is there often enough, on stage or record. Just like their stage show, their new album “Rock & Roll Music To the World” is just more of the Same Old Shit.

“Choo, Choo Mama,” or “You give me lovin’ that I can’t return / Bomp Blam / You give me money that you know I’ll burn…” – but it’s good same old shit, and all the Ten Years After fans, including yours truly, are perfectly satisfied with it. I recall seeing Ten Years After at a West Coast concert back in the summer of 1969, and being highly amused; for a week afterward I went around my job entertaining anybody who would stand still long enough with free vocal imitations of the Ten Years After instrumental sound: “Ah-drnt drnt drnt drnt DUUUUHH, ah-drnt drnt drnt drnt DUUUUUUHH,” and then of course the solo break: “SKREEEEEEEE-harowlarggblunzzzzawonk!”

What I was too snotty to realize at the time was that music like that may have been obvious and one-dimensional, but was still valid as a concept. Fuck aesthetics – it was still a whole crock of fun. Nobody will ever be able to accuse Ten Years After of taking themselves too seriously.

Up in his hotel suite, Alvin Lee sat back, slouched low on the couch with his feet sprawled on the carpet in front of him and the back of his head hitting the couch at Kilroy level. He looked like a lazy sap but he was a cheerful fellow, gave us some grass (marijuana) which made him even more benevolent and made no bones about where both he and Ten Years After, were at now and were headed. “We’ve gone the whole route, from little clubs to ballrooms to festivals to arenas. When we were in the clubs we’d get fired for being too loud, or earlier for having long hair, or for too many long guitar solos. I always got off on solos, even before it became a sort of fad, and now I guess some people come for that and nothing else.”

We asked him how the concert scene looked now in comparison with what he’d seen of it all down the line. “I really wonder,” he said, “why a lot of people come to concerts these days. The places have gotten so big that you lose all contact, and the audiences know what they’re supposed to do. They wait for a trigger. Like tonight, they were waiting for “I’m Going Home,” and the instant it started they were rushing down to the front of the stage.”

“I would prefer it if the process were more organic, somehow, with everybody getting off on the music to the fullest possible extent, all through the evening, building up to a peak. That’s an ideal situation. When you play one of these big arenas, you never know what the audience is thinking. There’s one out there that’s listening to the guitar, the next one’s listening to the drums, the next one’s not paying the slightest attention … the next one’s really listening. So like we play for our audience, not to it or at it. There’s a sea of faces, but I see a lot of individuals, and I play for them. I play for the guy who’s sitting there and he’s listening to it just as if he was listening to it through headphones.”

We’re interrupted by the entrance of the group’s manager, who hands Alvin a silver mezuzah coke spoon on a chain, and tells him that it was a gift from a girl outside. “Where is she?” asks Alvin. “She’s gone now.” “Uh-huh. Stop trying to cut me off from Fate.” He’s joking, but in another way he really means it. He looks at the coke spoon. “It’s nice but I wouldn’t wear it anyway. But you should have brought her up.”

Well Alvin, we press on, ever alert for some scum, (dirt) what about drugs?

“I don’t know … certainly have nothing to tell anyone else on them, as far as advice goes. I just smoke grass (marijuana) myself, though I might take acid again.”

Yeah, we pry, but you guys are supposed to be the big speed-freaks!

“Naww,” says Alvin, and launches into a rap that from anyone else, phrased or intoned a whit more intensely, would start to seem pretentious on the usual dreary cosmic levels. He’s such an easy-going, unaffected cat, though, that it comes out as a simple statement of operative policy, philosophy if you like, in his life and his music. “When I go onstage each night I have to have a certain concentration. We’ve done tour after tour and if you don’t know how to handle yourself it can wreck you. I try to keep things building through the set, but sometimes that can get me wound up so tight that my jaws are clenched and I just grind my teeth away. And it’s really hard to unwind from something like that. But I try to get a certain type of concentration that, if you have it, you can play music or work or do anything you have to do without spending yourself. You can block out the distractions and perform at the peak of your abilities. That’s what I try to do onstage. I’m usually oblivious to what’s going on out front; I have to be. If I’m getting off on it, they will be too. It’s like Baba Ram Dass said: “I perceive nothing but what is essential for me to perceive in the present moment.” He had to go to the Himalayas to find it, and he was a Harvard professor!”

Yeah, we said, but what else would you expect from one of them? Tumbling headlong into a rare non-boring discussion of whether cosmo dudes in the line of Baba R.D. and Leary are or are not worth their weight in shit. Alvin Lee maintained that they were, to at least a limited degree, and said that he had gotten some good advice and hot tips out of Ram Dass’ last book, “Be Here Now”. We said that the reason that Dass the Ass’s Himalayan guru didn’t come on to all that acid he gave him was probably because the old fart was too stupid! Alvin said he wouldn’t know about that, so we changed the subject to football, or more precisely the wide world of sports in general:

Are you a frustrated athlete? We asked shyly.

He pursed his lips, relaxedly swinging the coke spoon in an arc around his head, and considered the question:

“Well, no, but I have wondered what it would be like to play professional football. It must be like being an invulnerable bullock.”

Before he’d even consent to let us talk to his charge, Ten Years After’s manager had fixed us with a probingly icy stare and said: “You’re not going to ask all those stupid questions like “what kind of guitar strings do you use,” are you?” Sheet no,” we said. We’re pros! And since we had comported ourselves in such pro like manner as to keep the interview at a properly lofty level of intellectual dialogue up till now, we decided it would be even more pro-like and super-cool to say fuck it and make idiots out of ourselves, so we shot from the hip:

What kind of guitar strings do you use, Alvino? The next question was going to be, did your parents name you after Alvino Rey?, but he didn’t answer the first one, so we never got around to it. Instead he laughed and said: “It’s really funny, ya know. I could never be the kid who’s screaming out in front of the stage. Not anymore; there’s no way I could ever put myself in his shoes at all. People that wait in line to see you, or shake your hand. But I was just like them once. I remember the first time I met Eric Clapton. I was going to be real cool, not act like I was just some kid. When I wanted more than anything else just to shake his hand. So when I finally met him I blew it, blew my cool entirely. I shook his hand and he looked at me and I started asking him every one of the usual stupid questions. The first thing, the very first thing I asked Eric Clapton was, what kind of guitar strings he used. And now I can’t even remember what he said.”

Note About Lester Bangs:

Born December 14, 1948 in California – Died April 30, 1982 in New York City. Leslie Conway Bangs, was the great gonzo journalist, gutter poet and romantic visionary of rock criticism. No writer on rock and roll ever lived harder or wrote better. Guzzling booze and romilar like water. Dead at age 34.

 

 

 

Musik Express — April 1973

 

 

 

New Musical Express – April 21, 1973

ALVIN GOES SOLO

Alvin Lee will record a solo album when Ten Years After return home from their tour of America and the Far East, which starts next week. A Chrysalis spokesman told New Musical Express: “There are definitely no plans for Alvin to leave the group. Ten Years After will play together soon after they return from abroad, a major London concert is planned.”

 

 

Two versions of a photo of Alvin published in Popfoto Magazine (Germany, Netherlands) in April 1973

 

 

 

 

Beat Instrumental – April 1973 

The magazine reports about the London Sessions where many fine UK artists contributed, Alvin included.

 

 

 

Melody Maker – May 5, 1973 

 

Ten Years After, who became one of the super groups of the sixties, culminating their career with a triumphant appearance at the Woodstock Festival, started their career as an 18 a night band at the Marquee. Alvin Lee in New York this week shared the views of many fellow musicians, that without the break the Marquee gave them, it might have been a different TYA story. Says Alvin: “of all the clubs in London in those days, the Marquee was the most important. I remember That Leo (Lyons) got us an audition there, and we were all very scared of John Gee. He was very strict you know. He’d tell all the bands they had to be in the dressing room a quarter of an hour before they were due on. “And he used to time the road managers at work. Many a band never really a stepping stone. The last time I played there I got to play there again if the roadies were slack. But we knew John Gee was a jazz fan so we did a quickly improvised version of “Woodchoppers Ball” and we got a gig. A lot of bands used to say they were big fans of Frank Sinatra to get in. Our first gig there was an interval spot for half an hour, and we had to follow the Bonzo Dog Band. The stage was literally smothered in blue smoke from their explosions , and we had to go and play. But we managed to build a small following among the blues freaks and got a residency in 1966.

We did a Christmas show when we went down the queue outside playing banjos. We got a quid in the hat, and some people even crossed the road to give us money. They thought we were genuine buskers. They were a very attentive audience at the Marquee and they didn’t clap a lot. Some musicians didn’t like that, and it wasn’t until later the audiences started going wild. I was quite in awe of that place. I remember going to see groups there before we started. People like Peter Green with John Mayall, and a gig where I passed out on stage, through lack of oxygen. It was during the last number and I completely blacked out. They had to rush me to hospital. It was about three years ago, and the size of the audience was beginning to get uncomfortable.

But I still like the feel of playing in a sweaty club. The sound is so much better and you get more interaction with the audience, instead of just being a performer upon the stage. I don’t see why we couldn’t play there again, but it might be a disappointment, as we are more in tune with big concerts now. I’d like to have a jam there. You know, I always used to get nervous playing the Marquee. I only lived three miles away from the club but but it seemed a very important gig. I can play to 20,000 people in New York and it doesn’t worry me at all.”

Did Ten Years After ever contribute to the famed graffiti wall in the dressing room? “I’m sure we wrote something, I can’t remember. But my girl friend told me they had my name written on the wall in the ladies. So that was some kind of status symbol!”

 

 

 

 

Memphis Auditorium North Hall – May 6, 1973 

handbill

 

 

 

Bravo Magazine – May 22, 1973

TEN YEARS AFTER
“Rock & Roll Music to the World”, nennen Ten Years After ihre jüngste L.P. Sie ist ihre siebte und erfolgreichste. Auf ihr rocken die vier Engländer hart und heiss und ohne Schnörkel. Seit drei Jahren spielen Ten Years After Rock ‘n ‘Roll. Damit füllen sie die grössten Hallen dieser Welt, damit sind sie auf der Bühne die strahlenden Stars. In Frankfurt erzählte Ten Years After – Boss Alvin Lee BRAVO die Geschichte der britischen Gruppe, die eigentlich im Sommer 1966 im Hamburger,,Star Club” begann…
Organist Chick Churchill (25)
Schlagzeuger Ric Lee (27)
Sänger und Sologitarrist Alvin Lee (28)
Bassist Leo Lyons (29)
TEN YEARS AFTER:
Anfangs pfiffen uns die Rock – Fans aus
Vor sieben Jahren sah Deutschland für uns noch ganz anders aus, “erzählt Ten Years After – Sänger und Sologitarrist Alvin Lee.” Da feierten uns keine 6,000 Fans -so, wie heute abend.“
Jetzt, sieben Jahre später, strahlt Alvin Lee über das ganze Gesicht. Gemütlich sitzt er bei „,Karrenberg“, einem exklusiven Speiserestaurant in der Frankfurter Innenstadt. Genugtuung über endlich Erreichtes strahlt aus seinen Augen.,,Damals, 1966, nannten wir uns noch „Jaybirds“ und spielten in Hamburg – im Star-Club. Der sollte für uns das Tor zum Ruhm werden. So wie er es für die Beatles war. Dachten wir. Stundenlang schufteten wir wie die Wahnsinnigen, spielten Blues und viel reinen Jazz. Doch der Erfolg blieb aus. Zumindest waren wir davon überzeugt, wenn wir nach der Vorstellung die kahlen und feuchten Wände unseres Zimmers sahen. Die Rocker hatten uns im ,,Star Club” zuvor regelmässig ausgepfiffen. Glücklicherweise waren im Star-Club auch immer ein paar Studenten, bei denen unsere Musik ankam und die uns Mut machten. Aber davon wurden wir nicht satt.
Leo spielte Filmstatist
Darum nahm unser Bassist Leo Lyons noch Statistenrollen in Filmen an, die gerade in Hamburg order in der Lüneburger Heide gedreht wurden“.
Fast ein halbes Jahr blieben Ten Years After in Hamburg. Einen Sommer lang traten sie dort auf. Doch als sie in ihre englische Heimatstadt Nottingham zurückkehren wollten, trennte sich Sologitarrist John Kelly von seinen Freunden. Er wollte einfach lieber in Hamburg bleiben.
,,Wir aber brauchten unbedingt einen neuen, vierten Mann. Allerdings hatten wir in Hamburg so viel gelernt, dass wir nur einen Organisten suchten. Damit hätten wir musikalisch mehr Möglichkeiten. Anfang 1967 fanden wir ihn – Chick Churchill. Kollegen priesen ihn als Wunderkind. Aber Chick besass keine Orgel und wir kein Geld, um ihm eine zu kaufen.
Damit keine andere Gruppe uns Chick vor der Nase wegschnappte, verpflichteten wir ihn erst mal als Roadie.” Chick nahm an, schleppte die paar Verstärker der Gruppe, während Alvin Lee den Bandbus fuhr und Leo Lyons sich als Manager um neue Jobs kümmerte. Alvin „Das ging plötzlich besser als erwartet. Wir bekamen Auftritte im Londoner Marquee und im Roundhouse. Außerdem behaupteten die Clubbesitzer auch nicht mehr, wir würden mit unserer Musik alle Gäste vergraulen, obwohl wir immer noch Blues und reinen Jazz spielten. Hamburg hatte uns doch etwas Glück gebracht.
“Der entscheidende Durchbruch aber gelang Ten Years After beim” 7. National Jazz-und Bluesfestival” in Windsor. ,,20.000 Leute feierten uns, und die Zeitungen schrieben Lobeshymnen wie über keine andere Gruppe. Das brachte uns einen Plattenvertrag ein, den wir dann im Juli 1967 unterschrieben.”
Neuer Name und alte Musik
Schon einen Monat später erschien die erste LP: „,Ten Years After”. ,,Den Namen fand Leo Lyons beim Blättern im Rundfunkprogramm. ,,Ten Years After” (Zehn Jahre danach) war eine damals sehr beliebte Sendung. Uns gefiel der Name sofort. Allerdings hatte er für uns keine besondere Bedeutung“.
Mit dem Namen wechselten die vier aber nicht ihre Musikrichtung.
Bis 1969 blieben sie dem Blues treu. Ihre nächsten LPs,,Undead” (August 1968),,,Stonedhenge“ (März 1969) und „Ssssh“ (August 1969) wurden langsam immer rockiger.,,Trotzdem hatten wir damit nur bei Jazzern und Undergroundfans Erfolg. Geld verdienten wir immer noch wenig“.
Woodstock – das war die Wende
—
Das kam erst nach dem schon legendären Auftritt am 16. August 1969 beim Woodstock-Festival. “Neun Minuten und 20 Sekunden genügten – und wir waren weltberühmt. So lange nämlich spielten wir unseren Rocktitel,,I’m going Home”. Plötzlich hatten wir Fans in der ganzen Welt und füllten bei Konzerten die grössten Hallen. Aber die wenigsten Leute wissen heute noch, dass wir einmal begeisterte Jazzer waren. Wenn wir unsere alten Songs spielen, wundern sich viele, dass eine Rockgruppe auch jazzen kann“.
Seit Woodstock wurden Ten Years After immer härter. Ihre LPs,,Cricklewood Green” |(1970), „A Space in Time” (1971) und die letzte LP „Rock & Roll Music to the World” begeisterten immer mehr Rockfans. „Jetzt spielen wir fast nur noch reinen, harten Rock. Nur wer genau hinhört, kann noch leichte Jazz- und Bluesanklänge entdecken.
K. E. Siegfried

 

TRANSLATION of the BRAVO article:
TEN YEARS AFTER
“Rock & Roll Music to the World” is the title Ten Years After gives to their latest LP. It is their seventh and most successful. On it, the four Englishmen rock hard, hot, and without frills. For three years, Ten Years After has been playing rock ‘n’ roll. With it, they fill the world’s biggest venues, making them the shining stars on stage. In Frankfurt, Ten Years After boss Alvin Lee told BRAVO the story of the British band, which actually began in the summer of 1966 at Hamburg’s “Star Club”…
Organist Chick Churchill (25)
Drummer Ric Lee (27)
Singer and lead guitarist Alvin Lee (28)
Bassist Leo
Lyons (29)
TEN YEARS AFTER:
At first, the rock fans booed us
Seven years ago, Germany looked very different to us, “told Ten Years After singer and lead guitarist Alvin Lee. Back then, there weren’t 6,000 fans celebrating us like they did tonight.”
Now, seven years later, Alvin Lee is beaming from ear to ear. He’s sitting comfortably at “Karrenberg,” an exclusive restaurant in downtown Frankfurt. Satisfaction at finally achieving something shines in his eyes. “Back then, in 1966, we still called ourselves the “Jaybirds” and played in Hamburg – at the Star Club. It was supposed to be our gateway to fame. Just like it was for the Beatles, or so we thought. We toiled like mad for hours, playing blues and a lot of pure jazz. But success never came. At least, we were convinced of that when we saw the bare and damp walls of our room after the show. The rockers had regularly booed us at the “Star Club” before. Fortunately, there were always a few students at the Star Club who liked our music and who encouraged us. But we didn’t get tired of that.
Leo played a film extra
That’s why our bassist Leo Lyons took on extra roles in films that were being shot in Hamburg or on the Lüneburg Heath.”
Ten Years After stayed in Hamburg for almost half a year. They performed there for a whole summer. But when they wanted to return to their English hometown of Nottingham, lead guitarist John Kelly parted ways with his friends. He simply preferred to stay in Hamburg.
“But we desperately needed a new, fourth member. However, we had learned so much in Hamburg that we were only looking for an organist. That would have given us more musical options.” At the beginning of 1967, we found him – Chick Churchill. Colleagues hailed him as a child prodigy. But Chick didn’t own an organ, and we didn’t have the money to buy one for him.
To prevent another band from snatching Chick away from us, we hired him as a roadie.” Chick accepted, lugging the group’s few amplifiers, while Alvin Lee drove the band’s bus and Leo Lyons, as manager, looked for new jobs. Alvin: “Suddenly, things went better than expected. We got gigs at London’s Marquee and the Roundhouse. Moreover, the club owners no longer claimed that we were scaring away all the guests with our music, even though we were still playing blues and pure jazz. Hamburg had brought us some luck after all.”
“But Ten Years After’s decisive breakthrough came at the 7th National Jazz and Blues Festival in Windsor. 20,000 people celebrated us, and the newspapers wrote hymns of praise like no other band. That earned us a recording contract, which we signed in July 1967.”
New name and old music
Just one month later, the first LP, “Ten Years After,” was released. “Leo Lyons came up with the name while flipping through the radio program. ‘Ten Years After’ was a very popular show at the time. We liked the name immediately. However, it didn’t have any particular meaning for us.”
The name didn’t change the four’s musical style, however.
They remained true to the blues until 1969. Their next LPs, “Undead” (August 1968), “Stonedhenge” (March 1969), and “Ssssh” (August 1969), gradually became more rock-oriented. “Nevertheless, we were only successful with jazz musicians and underground fans. We still didn’t make much money.”
Woodstock – that was the turning point
—
That only came after the already legendary performance on August 16, 1969, at the Woodstock Festival. “Nine minutes and 20 seconds were enough – and we were world famous.” That’s how long we played our rock song “I’m Going Home.” Suddenly we had fans all over the world and filled the biggest venues at our concerts. But very few people know today that we were once passionate jazz musicians. When we play our old songs, many are surprised that a rock band can also play jazz.”
Since Woodstock, Ten Years After became increasingly harder. Their LPs “Cricklewood Green” (1970), “A Space in Time” (1971), and their final LP, “Rock & Roll Music to the World,” thrilled more and more rock fans. “Now we play almost exclusively pure, hard rock. Only those who listen closely can still detect subtle hints of jazz and blues.”
K. E. Siegfried

 

 

 

 

 

Presenting New Ten Years After At Their Best

Ten Years After “Recorded Live”. It’s a powerful combination.

When it comes to a live boogie, nobody get’s it on like Ten Years After.

Their in-concert appearances and show – stopping sets make them one of the most popular bands in the United States. And if you thought they were big here, just wait till you hear them “Recorded Live”,

Frenzied fans in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Frankfurt and Paris queued up days in advance, to snap up the tickets. Recorded by the Rolling Stones Mobile Unit, this specially priced two record set captures all the excitement and energy that Alvin Lee and Company can generate, and features some of their biggest hits, like “I’m Going Home” – “Choo-Choo-Mama” – “I Can’t Keep From Cryin’ Sometimes” – “Help Me” and “Good Morning Little School Girl”.

 

 

 

Ten Years After Recorded Live 1973 – Album Review

I’ve just read Ray Telford’s review of the new live album by Ten Years After and I can’t believe it. He says Alvin Lee’s guitar style hasn’t changed. Well no guitarist changes his style much. The dreadful Hendrix never changed and neither have people like Page and Clapton.

Mr. Telford also says that Ric Lee is kept to the background. Yet the first track on side two is an incredible seven minute drum solo from Ric. If anyone was put off buying the LP by the review, take my advice and buy the album.

By Trevor Hogg
Gateshead, Co. Durham

 

 

 

New Musical Express — June 2, 1973

 

 

 

 

 

Sounds Newspaper – June 23, 1973

 

 

 

Melody Maker – June 23, 1973

Ten Years After: Ten Year Itch

When does a band become a jukebox? And when does it cease to be a creative musical force? These are the questions that have been worrying Alvin Lee. But it does not necessarily signify an end to Ten Years After, the band born of the British blues boom that became one of our most popular rock exports to America. Ten Years After are still alive and well and touring the world, despite growing press criticism and an apparent inability to progress. There are progressive bands in this world, and those destined to rock on. TYA are one of the latter. But they intend to fight off stagnation, and a serious reappraisal of their entire structure is underway.

LOYAL: While some claim that Ten Years After are ten years out of date, they can still command a happy and loyal following in the countries they visited in the early part of this year, which for the record included Europe, England, America, and Japan. They could probably afford to carry on regardless, playing the same tunes and completing their twentieth (it’s a fact) tour of the States. But as Alvin explained to me this week besides his sun drenched swimming pool, on the borders of a manor house, parts of which date back to the 15th century: “There’s a million things I want to do.” Alvin has just completed three lengths under water, without coming up for air, when I arrived, and was catching his breath.

PALLOR: Health-giving fruit juice arrived and the pallor of a thousand night clubs and dressing rooms was dispersed amidst this earthly paradise. ” The last tour was a good one,” said Alvin, idly spotting newts in the nearby rock pool. “It was like going to the States a couple of years ago. We played a lot of smaller towns and the audiences were just that bit keener which was nice. We did a few gigs with the Strawbs and they were doing very well, and getting good reactions. I was really surprised when they split up. English bands still have a good name in the States and I suppose the reason is they have to get good in England before they can go across. It’s funny, but there are a lot of American bands being influenced by us, and you hear guys singing with English accents. We took our influences from America, and now they are taking them from us. But I don’t see anything apart from that happening. There’s nothing happening in New York except a trend towards country music. And the radio stations seem to be changing their policy. It used to be the FM stations played underground music and AM played pop. Now the underground has turned into contemporary pop which AM plays, while FM seems to be going for easy listening and classical.” Alvin recalled that one of the highlights of their last US tour was a concert for 10,000 fans at a resort called Big Surf in Arizona. As the State is many miles from the coast, they have built their own sea – a man made lock, with a hydraulic machine to create six foot waves. “The lake is about a mile long and has its own beach and surfing. At the end of the gig, the audience jumped into the lake!”

But what is the future of TYA, I asked, attempting to spot the newt that Alvin was spotting. “We had planned to take three months rest, but there are no future tours planned as yet. It’s the first time we have ever sat back. The rest of the group is scattered on holiday all around the world. For some time I’ve had the feeling that we had started to turn into the old travelling juke box again. We do have a new live album due out, which was recorded in Frankfurt, Paris, Rotterdam and Amsterdam on the Rolling Stones mobile, featuring most of the best numbers we do live. It’s an answer to the bootleg albums that have been issued. We’ll also be doing one of the Alexandra Palace concerts. I’m busy building my own studio, and there will be a lot of recording projects there including Ten Years After. But we’ve got to wait and see what happens. We’ve become directionless musically. The music we play, we play naturally, and we play what we like. It’s been relatively successful. But we’ve got to find something to get our teeth into. We want to do more rehearsals and arrange more music to carry us forward. There are things I want to do on my own as well. Next month Felix Pappalardi is coming to stay with me and Mylon and Alan Toussaint. We’ll be recording an album in my own studio, and it’s going to be very heavy. Allan has been doing production, but he’s a piano player and wants to get back into playing. Felix will come a bit later to play bass, and Ian Wallace will be on drums. We’ll also be doing a thing with Ian and his sidekick Boz. They have a funky rhythm section going and the idea is to do an English Muscle Shoals.”

“We’ll make an LP with myself, Boz, Ian and Mel Collins, who is an excellent musician and a good arranger. I’m learning a lot by working with guys like Mel. In Ten Years After we all listen to similar people. These blokes are laying records on me by people I’ve never heard before. My style is broadening a lot and it’s been very beneficial. The advantages of working with the same people for years is that you can feel what each other is doing. But after a while you can get into a rut.”

Are the rest of TYA happy at Alvin’s involvement with other musicians? “Oh yeah. The thing is, I want to remain active, and to learn more. TYA will pull through and anyway, the others have different projects too. At this stage, we just need to rehearse.” What was the alternative? “The alternative was nothing. We could carry on touring, but the music would suffer and we need fresh ideas. I’ve been listening to bands like Focus and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, and I don’t want to be a dated musician. I want to stay with what’s happening. I’m forming my own production company to release the albums we’ll be doing here, and we’ve got all the facilities and freedom to do so many different things. I could go on touring, but that’s time consuming and my real ambition is to find a new music altogether, something that nobody has touched upon. I have all the facilities, so there is no excuse for me not to do something amazing. That’s what I keep telling myself anyway. I’ve got to
shame myself into doing things!”

BARN: Alvin’s studio is situated in a converted barn and is so huge that it dwarfs many top London studios. Equipped with a 16 track machine, it has the further sophistication of a remote control unit, which will enable Alvin to record himself from the studio floor, without having to climb the stairs to the control room. Ancient beams support the roof, hundreds of years old, now being sealed off with soundproofing material which Alvin and friends put up themselves. But the bulk of the work is being done by contractors and the courtyard of the manor currently resembles a building site. The manor, with its indoor tennis court (once a milking shed), swimming pool, sauna, cattle pens, duck ponds, greenhouses, and acres of surrounding countryside, was once the home of millionaire Charles Clore. It’s expensive to keep up, even for a successful rock idol. And collecting the water rates from local cottages won’t be any subsidy. It depends on whether Alvin can make his ambitious studio project earn some returns, before he can be assured a permanent home.

DESK: “We started work on the studio about six months ago, and the desk was built by Dick Swettenham who built Olympic Studios’ which is reckoned to be the best. He’s a genius, and the new one is really space age. We’ll start sessions with Mylon in July, but up to 3:30 last night, we were still putting up soundproofing. Ten Years After have made eight LP’s and the money we spent in studio time we could have bought our own one. This will eventually be the best studio in the world. We’ll run it on a private basis, but it will be nice to get some good selling LP’s out. Essential in fact, or I’ll be moving sooner than I want.”

 

 

Music Trade News

Alvin Lee: Converted Barn

ALVIN’S STUDIO:

Alvin Lee – Lead guitarist with Ten Years After, has created a modern luxury recording studio out of an old barn in the grounds of his five hundred year old house in Oxfordshire.
Designed and built by musicians, rather than technicians, it took six months to complete and will be used exclusively by Alvin and his friends, starting with a big session for an LP now in progress, featuring Alvin Lee, Ian Wallace, Mel Collins, Boz Burrell and American musicians, Mylon LeFevre, Alan Toussaint and Felix Pappalardi.

Alvin’s assistant and studio engineer is Harold Burgon, an electronics freak, who also plays guitar and piano, has formed a production company called “Space Productions” to handle recordings made in the studio.

Equipment comprises Studer 16 and 2 track machines, M16 Dolbys, Helios eighteen channel desk, Tannoy and JBL monitors, Radford power amplifier, Neumann, AKG and Sure mikes, EMT echo plate, two Revox tape loops and a desk fitted with a special remote box, which can be operated by one person and has constant impedance direct injection input.

By Chris Hayes – 1973

 

 

 

New Musical Express — July 7, 1973

WHEN a musician refers to his band as a travelling jukebox, as Alvin is liable to describe Ten Years After these days, it’s a sure sign that the band is no longer the creative force it once was.

In the case of Ten Years After that’s exactly how Alvin Lee feels. It’s a problem that’s worried him for sometime now, and indirectly is one reason why he’s looking forward to opening his new studio that’s built into a barn standing on one of the forty acres of his enormous 15th century manor house that’s located near Reading.

This is to be the setting for some activities Lee has planned outside the auspices of Ten Years After and which he hopes will eventually benefit the band as a whole.

The house once owned by developer Charles Clore, is impressive even by the highest standards of the rock aristocracy. There’s wood panelling, a maze of rooms and that odd kind of eerie stillness that lends to hang in the air at some stately homes.

It’s especially apparent around the main hall and staircase, where you feel you ought to tread lightly and speak only in whispers.

Things are different in the kitchen though, the gathering point for the twelve man crew that have been working on Lee’s new studio outside.

However, combining now with other musicians has already helped him considerably. “My own guitar playing has come along incredibly since I started playing with new people, also they’ve been turning me on to new musicians I’ve never even heard of before. It seems like a lot of doors have suddenly opened, I feel now I’ve given myself the opportunities and facilities to do anything possible.”
The beamed ceiling looks down on a plethora of activity while Lee himself moves around taking it all in somehow with the style of a pleasant but slightly pre-occupied lord of the manor. In one sense he worries about Ten Years After being groundless, since their popularity appears to be as strong as ever. They’ve just completed their 19th tour of the States, followed by a series of dates around Japan. There’s little to suggest that the band couldn’t carry on in a similar vein for several more years to come.
In fact it all seems so easy to keep Ten Years After rock and roll machine on the road, and the money pouring in, that they’ve already been accused of simply working out until their retirement.

It’s that kind of impression that Alvin Lee is trying to avoid.

At present he lives a luxurious life style, but by the time he’s finished the studio he confesses that he’ll be set well back financially. Also he rightly points out that Ten Years After have always been a hard working band, out on the road somewhere in the world for most of the last seven years. That perhaps, is part of the trouble now. That kind of continuous work can make a band stale, directionless – just a travelling juke box perhaps. Alvin Lee at least has seen the danger signs. As the rain poured down outside he explained with admirable honesty:

“Every band has their limitations and as we’ve been together so long we’ve tended to fall into old grooves and styles of playing rather than attempt anything new. For example I found my guitar playing was, if not exactly standing still, maybe going round in circles, along with my writing.

I think we’re still progressing, but the process has been getting slower and slower. I think it can happen to any band who stay together for so long. We were very experimental and now it’s just fallen into a format. It was bound to happen in a way, you can’t expect to blow your own mind every night….but if you don’t it gets to the point where playing is just really work. I mean, I don’t think any of us listen now to the type of music we play – which is really rather amazing. I can’t listen to a heavy record now without getting super critical about it.

Up till about a year ago I was intent on taking Ten Years After and my own style within the band as far as it would go. Then I reached a point where I seemed to come up against a brick wall and I decided that I needed a lot of other influences to help me through it.”

Since the whole band felt much the same way, the solution was to take five months off, experiment with new ideas on their own and then come back and work on the band’s music from there. Alvin Lee also emphasises that there’s no question of them splitting permanently.

“We all started to get a bit fed up with touring and working the whole while. It became a drudge and everybody sort of said they weren’t really happy doing it. After all, most musicians are the kind of people who want to be free, and touring the whole time is a long way from freedom. If we’d just carried on grinding ourselves into the ground, sooner or later one of the band would have said they’d found something else that they would rather be doing, so before somebody did say it, we decided to experiment instead.”

For Alvin Lee this now means an intense spell of activity centred around his studio which is due to be completed this week, and starting with an album he’s recording with Allen Toussaint, Felix Pappalardi and Mylon, who’s a throaty gospel singer from Macon, Georgia. “Then I’ll concentrate on my solo album and also I’ll be making an album with Boz, Ian Wallace, Mel Collins and Tim Hinkley. After that I want to bring the band into the studio and work on some new ideas from there.”

Alvin in fact already recorded some tracks last year with Mylon in Roger Daltrey’s studio and has been playing with Collins and Wallace. He admits it’s only recently that he’s wanted to work with other musicians, in the past always having avoided any of the sessions that were readily open to him. “I always cut myself off a bit, I’m not a great socialite.” He smiled, perhaps just a shade sceptically, “I don’t drink either, which seemed to put me out of most of the big London scenes.”

“Once we open the studio all there will be left to do, is just do it. I’ll be a great booster for me, a good kick in the pants ya know.” Lee’s first solo album will probably be completely recorded on his own in the studio. “I want to use the guitar as a basic and then use multi-tracks and tricks and harmonies on top of that. Possibly I might use somebody else, but mostly I plan to just sit in the studio and record it myself. Still it would be much looser than recording a normal album. Hopefully it’s going to be very different to anything I’ve done before, that’s what I’m aiming at…to break out of the conventional things I’ve been into – It’s much easier to do that on your own because you only have yourself to argue with.”

Despite this spate of work, Alvin Lee insist the future of Ten Years After is still healthy. Summing up, he said,

“I just want to see the band moving into another direction from travelling around the world, playing the same thing all the while. To be honest, we could easily have just carried on doing that. The concerts we play are all great and we got fantastic receptions everywhere, but what’s more important is what we feel inside ourselves and right now we feel we should be going somewhere else.”

But does he know exactly where?

“I was pretty mind blown when I heard the Mahavishnu Orchestra recently, and perhaps that’s how I’d like to see Ten Years After in a few years time…..but I don’t know really, we’ve got to find our own natural direction.”

 

 

 

From A German Album Cover

 

 

 

Recorded Live — Ten Years After

Album Note: This album is a truthful recording of Ten Years After with no overdubs or additives. What you hear is what happened on the night. Recorded over four nights in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Frankfurt and Paris with the Rolling Stones mobile recording truck and later mixed from sixteen track to stereo at Olympic Studios in London. In answer to the inferior live recordings sold illegally, this is the official Ten Years After bootleg.

 

Ten Years After: Live 2 LP Set Nadat ik de besprekingen over de lp’s “Ten Years After Recorded Live” had gelezen heb ik de pen ter hand genomen. Ik ben niet zo weg van Ten Years After, omdat ik niet zo van die Ellenlange gitaarsolo’s hou, maar ik heb toch de moeite genomen om deze platen te beluisteren. Met als resultaat dat ik hem meteen kocht.Wat re op deze lp’s staat is het summum. Er staan prachtige nummers op zoals het nummer: “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” en de prachtige drumsolo “Hobbit” van Ric Lee. Bij het nummer “Help Me” zit een geweldig ritme. En dan het nummer “I Can’t Keep From Cryin’ Sometimes” wat heel mooi is met die bass-solo. En “I’m Going Home” hoef ik niet eens te bespreken, want iedere popliefhebber weet dat dit een geweldig numer is. En ze hadden geen mooier afsluitingnummer kunnen geven als “Choo-Choo Mama”. Deze dubbel elpee had makkelijk 5 sterren kunnen halen. Ik heb maar van 1 ding spijt en dat is dat ik hun optreden in Amsterdam of Rotterdam gemist heb. En ik zal die andere lp’s van “Ten Years After” eens goed gaan beluisteren.

Afz. J. Tijsse Troelstrastraat 7 Breda – P.S. Een recensie schrijven is toch moeilijker dan ik dacht.

 

Ten Years After – Recorded Live July 17, 1973 – The Boston Phoenix Newspaper

This Album is long overdue. Most of the stars of Woodstock followed through right away with live albums. But Ten Years After held back – till now. Here are dazzling live performances of songs from the first Ten Years After album to the most recent. Recorded in front of rock and rollers in Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam in Lee-o-phonic sound. $4.99 LP – $6.99 Tape