27.

Melody Maker   3/22/75

  Alvin Lee is getting into self-sufficiency. Along with many fellow Britons, alarmed at the daily news, he is determined to make full use of the land. “Yes,” says Alvin peering through the windows of his mansion at rain swept acres, “we’ve increased the size of the vegetable garden, ready for the revolution. We’ve got broccoli, parsnips, peas, potatoes …” It must be wonderful to bathe hands in the soil and be one with nature. “Oh the gardener does it. I just watch it happen.”   Disappointing, but to be fair, Alvin has most of his time cut out in bringing rock and roll to the world, which leaves little opportunity for raking soil, barrowing muck or dividing rootstocks.  

  ABRUPT: and Alvin has been a busy man since the abrupt change in his musical career just under a year ago.  Mention Alvin to fellow musicians, and you’ll get a stock response; “Good Lord is Alvin STILL playing ‘I’m Going Home?’ The answer is ‘no’ TYA is behind him, and  Alvin, Guitarist and Pioneer has replaced Alvin,  Man In A Rut. It was not without opposition that Alvin took the gamble that led to the end of Ten Years After. He says, quite honestly , that in the final days, only money held the old band together, and of course his Management were not to keen on him throwing away what they may have regarded as a sound investment. 

  There was doubtless a certain amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth in the corridors of power, when Alvin  flung in his lot with the likes of Mel Collins, Tim Hinkley and Ian Wallace, leaving out in the cold Chick Churchill, Ric Lee and Leo Lyons. As the dust settles still, it is possible to perceive that while TYA are no more, and Alvin has severed some of his ties with Chrysalis, the guitarist is determined to broaden his horizons, and stay at the forefront of musical events.

  Alvin’s acres are situated in rolling countryside, not far from George Harrison’s palatial home. The latter is surrounded by lodge houses and high walls and looks not unlike one of those mid-Victorian establishments designed to bring 19^th century enlightenment to the insane.  

  ABODE: But Alvin’s pad has a friendly air of a gentleman farmers abode. And indeed it was such a place, when over a thousand acres fell within its domain. So important was its role in the community, that it served as an air raid warning station and water rate collection centre, until most of its land and assets were stripped away and finally a rock and roller from Nottingham took over where once Squires held sway.  The slight air of decay is heightened by the area of devastation that was a milking shed and indoor tennis court, which recently collapsed during a storm. “That’s what comes of living in big houses,” says Alvin phlegmatically. But what will future tenants make of the vast recording studio Lee has built in the Tudor barn, I wondered. Master Lee may have little inclination towards agriculture, but he is certainly not idle. He has just returned from the Americas, and a successful tour with his new band (known as Alvin Lee & Co), when we met in his lounge and discussed pertinent matters.  

  “I got back a week ago and we finished off the tour in Honolulu. We spent seven weeks on the road and it was very   interesting. First of all we played Europe and Scandinavia. We played one gig in Paris and just before Christmas, we played some dates in Germany. “Worried? No not really. The reaction in Germany told me we were onto the right thing, although the Scandinavian audiences were a bit strange. But I think that’s peculiar to Scandinavia. They’re not so in touch with world musical developments. I got the feeling they didn’t know what to make of us.  That was one place we suffered from not being like Ten Years After. “In Germany if felt more like we were doing   a show. At first it tended to be just a list of songs, y’know? It really came together in Germany, where we played at some American bases, and that made us feel optimistic about playing in the States. “I was worried there would be shouts for ‘I’m Going Home’  but there wasn’t a lot of that. In the first fifteen minutes we established that this was going to be a different band and audiences seemed rather stunned. We played mainly 5,000 seaters and a couple of big ones. The people came to listen and realised it wasn’t just a rock and roll extravaganza. The atmosphere was more intimate and controlled, without people rushing to the front of the stage.”  

  Did all the guys in the band enjoy the experience?  “Yep. There were eight of us stuck together for seven weeks, and we’d not worked together before. There were a couple of gigs that weren’t up to standard, but one thing I’ve learnt after eight years on the road, is not to get upset about good and bad gigs, because as long as the general standard is high, audiences won’t worry.   

  BUSINESS:  “In fact the audiences were great, and only on the business side, were some of the promoters worried.    Some people thought it wasn’t Alvin Lee without TYA---they thought it might be somebody else using the same  name! “We did some places I’d not played  before, like Knoxville Tennessee, and it was a good experience,  for the band got better and better. And what had been an experiment for me before Christmas, has now become my definite direction. I wasn’t sure until the tour, but I really got off on it.
 
I would have done ANYTHING to get out of the rut. “The vibe I got back was that we were playing to the people, rather than presenting a hypey, superstar bit, and a lot of people approved of that. A lot of silliness goes on in the world of groups, and it came across that we were taking the music seriously. “

A lot of people coming to see what we were up to, were turned on by the new stuff. They liked the percussion duel between Ian Wallace and our conga player, Brother James, and Mel Collins sax playing.  “One of the highlights of the trip to the States for me, was a session I did in Nashville with Earl Scruggs. It’s his 25^th anniversary with Columbia and they called me up to help out on a celebration album.                                                                          Alvin Lee and Ian Wallace

FIDDLE: “There was Charlie Daniels the fiddle player and guitarist and Reggie Young, who it turned out I’d heard on so many records. I’d always liked his solos and never knew who played them. He was on Bill Dogget’s ‘Honky Tonk’ and Billy Swan’s new LP.  “Let me see---Tony Joe White came down, and part of the Marshal Tucker Band. It really was a party. Everybody arrived very late, and I was all early and businesslike. I asked  Earl Scruggs what he wanted to play and he said: ‘Ah don’t rightly know!’ “But we did four tracks on one session, then I went off and did a gig, and came back for some more sessions, this time with Aretha Franklin’s keyboard player, and Willie Hall who was the drummer on the original ‘Shaft.’ He was steaming. “I don’t know  when the album’s coming out or what it’s called, but Bob Johnstone produced it. We got on so well I wanted to invite them all round to my place and make an album. We could call it ‘Nashville On Thames.’   “I also did a Bo Diddley session in New York, with Leslie West and myself on guitars, and Carmine Appice and Tim Bogert as the rhythm section. We did all the old ones like ‘Bo Diddley Is A Gunslinger.’ I just turned up and blew, and it was great. No, I couldn’t get any of the tapes I’m afraid! ”   

  HATE: Alvin admits that launching his new band was like starting again: “But we started on a good level, headlining at 6,000 seaters and I like working. Hate days off. I’d sooner be playing every night. The nice thing was that people accepted us and we didn’t have to play any old numbers at all. “With TYA they always shouted for the stuff they knew. The LP we did live from the Rainbow sold well in America, about 100,000  but it only sold 8,000 in England and I was disappointed about that. Perhaps if we had done a tour here, it might have helped. “We’re doing some dates now, not a major tour, but some universities. I’d sooner do that than concerts with all the teeny-bops and teddy-boys. We want to play to a listening audience. We’ll be working until the end of March and then it’ll be pretty loose. “It’s nice. There’s no pressures. We just blow and have a good time.”  

  Will there be another LP from the group? “Well there’s not another release planned until the Autumn. I want to do some new things and may not stick to the same line-up for recording. We’ve been leaning a lot towards jazz, under the influence of Mel and the bass player.  

  FREEDOM: “That’s just the way it worked out and it wasn’t intended. I believe in giving musicians freedom, although the business element believe I should dominate and come on strong. I just enjoy being a part of the band. It’s not really my music, but I’m adapting to their style. “It’s a very funky rhythm section, which isn’t exactly my style, but it’s taught me a lot of discipline. Ten Years After was one long raving solo, but with Mel blowing away, I and afford to lay back.  “I love his playing and he’s been getting great reviews. And Ian’s drumming is so dynamic. He’ll drop the level right down into another groove, and he’ll do it anytime, so you have to watch for the signal. A couple of times he’s left me wailing up there on my own! I’m adapting to it, and it’s good for me musically. “If Mel solos first and I follow, then I have to pull my licks together, because he’s phenomenal. He can play ten times faster than me, and with such light and shade.”

  Has TYA definitely broken up---officially? “It would appear so. I’ve not heard a word from anybody since last May. But I keep getting bills. It’s a shame ---it seems to have dwindled to nothing. We were never a great musical band as such, but it had energy. When the energy faded it left a successful shell, without any meat.  “I hear Leo is now managing Wessex Studios, and Ric has got an LP together, but I’ve not heard from any of them. Mind you, it had been like that for some years. We never spoke to each other except during the tours. If you have no mutual interests it’s got to suffer sooner or later. “Maybe we’ll get back one day, but the only thing that kept TYA together was money, and that’s not the right motivation. It had been like that for two years. We had been together for eight years. We nearly made it to ten.” 

28.

New Musical Express 4/5/75

THERE’S A WHOLE WORLD OF LICKS OUT THERE:   

 AS ALVIN LEE becomes musically more itinerant in the grand tradition of the Disillusioned Rock Star nonchalantly wandering in and out of projects, it seems his saga is becoming correspondingly less impressive. Even now, several years after what the hulky AL describes as “my first move away from neurotic rock” (when he recorded the album “On The Road To Freedom” with Mylon Le Fevre between appointments with Ten Years After) he is considering ceasing operations with the present band, Alvin Lee & Company. “As far as this band goes we only plan to work till the end of March, then it’s back to the studio. Back to the drawing board,” he explains. You might say Alvin lays it on the line in a sometimes humorous, often honest, and generally engaging way. The Most Boring Man In The West must surely be a reference to his guitar playing, and not his conversation. And just in case you’ve as much of an aversion to Alvin Lee Interviews as instalments of Crossroads we’d better fill in a few biographical details to bring you up to date. 

Musically speaking, Lee was born in the late 60’s and remained as the head of the Ten Years After household until 1973 when, due to spiritual disenchantment, he buggered off with the aforementioned Le Fevre. “It was the first time in four years I was coming out of the studios overjoyed with something I’d done.” He comments. “And it gave me the energy of my younger self. I realised I wasn’t really getting old, I was just getting in that rut, and if I got out of it and did things—it’d keep me going.” Obviously delighted with the experience and excitement he encountered once out of the traditional confines of a stable unit, he started to poke the neck of his Gibson 335 into alien areas. With Boz Burrell, Tim Hinkley, Mel Collins and Ian Wallace he formed a band called ‘The Gits’ “a funky kinda thing, not unlike the Average Whites”. When Boz split for Bad Company they disbanded, making way for other musicians to enter Lee’s life, such as Alan Spenner, Neil Hubbard and the Kokomo singers. Their Rainbow gig was recorded (“In Flight”) and filmed and marked the conceptual debut of Lee & Company.  Changes ensued: Wallace and Collins stayed but the rest of the band now consisted of Ronnie Leahy, Steve Thompson, and percussionist Brother James. Earlier this year they toured comparatively small theatres in America and more recently played British Universities.  

 From the States dates Lee came to two distinct conclusions; because the smaller theatres were “a strange environment” the security forces were totally able to control the audience and so prevent a suitable ambiance in the music. In fact, only six of their dates really impressed him. So next time round he intends to “strike a medium” between the low and high venues.  Secondly; the band wasn’t all it should be. “I think where it felt short—well, in some places it didn’t, it was great but elsewhere it was just a bit cold, a bit sessiony.” he remarks. “I get it too. If I’m playing and I turn round on stage and see everybody getting into the thing, but not getting off visibly, I’m not suddenly gonna get off and start leaping around, because I’d feel silly. “If I turn around and see, like Leo” (Lyons of TYA) “for example who’d always be thumpin’ an’ thrashin an’ sweatin’…..that kinda gives me a kick.  “So I wanna go in the direction of keeping the musical taste I’m getting into, but produce a bit more kick and a bit more balls. That’s what it needs. In this band I’ve felt that the climax comes too late and too quick.”  Alvin does not, however, lay the blame totally on his band. He mentions one problem that he still suffers from;  the reputation of being “a rock ‘n’ roll, boogie-woogie, rave up-type guitarist”. Consequently audience response comes on what he calls “a trite three chorder”, rather than on, say the modern jazz which had preceded it. “There again,” he says, defending his boogie-woogie image, “when I get out on stage and I feel that vibe I actually want to do it. If the audience wants to get rockin’, I dig playing like that. “It’s just that this band is almost too tasty to rock ‘n’ roll with effect. “It’s so tight,” he elaborates , “that it gets boring quicker than if your playing with somebody who’s feeling something, and maybe they….uh…over feel and go off. But you get these new changes and new things happening. “I’d really like to look for some fresh musicians.”  

 But what is Lee attempting to do with the Company bands? His attitude to do this particular project seems ambivalent. It appears he’s attempting to form a unit of which he could be a mere part, in a similar way to what Clapton did with the Dominos. Yet he still wants to remain the front man. "It really wasn’t meant to be,” he says emphatically, “but that’s the way it turned out. When you do the singing and the guitar playing you tend to be the front man rather than a musician.” And he adds that, at a recent jam session in Dingwalls with Carol Grimes and others, he particularly enjoyed standing by the speakers just playing guitar. “I think with the right people I could do that.” He continues, “Jimmy Page is just a guitarist,  but it’s his band, his direction, but he has Robert Plant dealing with the sexual image and the fronting, which is great, because that’s something which has always made me feel awkward, ya-know? “I really would like to be….I already think of myself as a guitarist. I don’t think of myself as a singer. I just kinda do that adequately enough. I’m not a phenomenal singer, I don’t have a voice that’s recognisable like say Rod Stewart.”  Of course, another consideration on this point is that Alvin Lee controls the purse strings, and so pays the guys a wage, which immediately creates something of a gulf between them. (And it’s also feasible that his ego prevents him from theoretically lowering himself to an equal status basis within the outfit).  “Unless it is a band of people that I could feel on a par with musically.” He explains “it couldn’t really be an equal situation, because as I say, if I go and do a tour at the moment as Alvin Lee & Company, people come see me and  what the Company is. It’s not as if the Company itself is drawing people in. “It could do, if I continued to work it, but I’m not going to get a band together and stick with it because that would become the same kind of trap as Ten Years After got into—and probably a lot quicker, because I’ve been through that scene.  

 “I enjoyed it,” he hastily asserts, “but all the bands that stay together a long while seem to go in that direction. It turns into A Job. Tours turn into a “How much do we get?” That’s the wrong motivation for going out to play music, just to make a few bucks. “I’m not against making bread, but I’d rather get something I’m proud to be with and then work out how to get some bread out of it. That seems more like the right way of going about it.”  

 ALTHOUGH Lee will retain those musicians from the present band “who’re really keen” he now intends to find some fresh faces on the English scene, and move into various musical styles, which may be reggae, blues or even jazz. Whatever turns him on. “What I intend to do is try different things out,” he says. “I’m looking for different musicians with different influences, ‘cause what I’ve found is, different musicians around me with different influences make me look for new styles. “Besides, I think there are good musicians in England. But the scene has got so poppy again. It’s gone round in a circle. There’s a lot of good musicians who resort to playing something really corny just to get something going.” He should know. “A lot of bands that you see backing up singers and duets on TV have got good musicians. It’s just that they’re stuck in a rut. “Everything’s an experiment. I don’t really feel anything that strongly urging to come out…except to try new directions. That’s the only real urge. “The most commercial thing for me to do would be to get a four-piece rock band.” He points out. “I mean, the most commercial thing for me to HAVE DONE when the TYA thing was DROOPING  would’ve been to get three more musicians, keep the name, and go out and rock ‘n’ roll. “But, as I say, my own head heeded to go in these other directions. “I don’t want to go out on the road for the sake of doing it, I want to have something going to take out and show the people. Which is what I’ve done with Company. “It’s been successful.” WITH ALVIN spieling so candidly it’d be remiss not to bring up the subject of TYA---remember. Of course what it’s not in vogue these days to announce the fact when a major band splits up. So, like the Moody Blues, TYA is “inactive”---only because nobody will say, Yes folks, we’ve split. Which of course, is something of an advantage to us, because---if ever the situation did occur---we won’t have to suffer an exhaustive campaign announcing a reformation. “It’s DEFINITELY FINISHED.” Says Lee, “because no one will say it’s finished. But as yet I don’t see any move to get it together. The only reason they or I would consider it boils down to the money again. “I’m sure everybody’d ring up and say, ‘Let’s do a tour and make a few thousand’, but nobody’s saying ‘I really want to play’.” Alvin considers the high point of TYA was when they played the Marquee. “We Kicked Shit. Sweat and grind.” he recalls, “I really used to get emotions in those days.” Even so he is reluctant to deride their music towards the end, and explains numbers such as “Goin Home” were musically good---“because we’d played them 8,000 times.” But their career followed the pattern of so many successful bands. Once they had financial stability their interest diversified, and touring became a monotonous process. Their motto, Lee remembers, was “Get on, get off, and go home.” And for the last two years it was a thoughtless process. “I could be up there playing what appeared to be an incredible solo to the majority of people.” says Alvin, “but in fact I was probably thinking about something else.” Like? “Looking round the audience and seeing who’s there and things. Checking out that scene,” he smirks, “was always one of the sidelines. Sometimes I’d just wander off totally. “It’s like when you’re driving a car, you’ll be thinking about something else, and then suddenly you’ll come back to driving, and you realise you’ve just driven through London, down the M4 and turned off, but you don’t remember a thing about it. “Well when you repeat yourself playing the same numbers you just play on automatic.” And the analogy he uses to explain exactly why he is now experimenting in music is as equally, er, illuminating. “It’s like an old tired marriage a lot of the time. Nothing gets you off more than a bit of fresh on the side. That’s really the basis of what I’m doing---just looking for that fresh excitement. Trying to renew the energy I had before. “It’s working. “As long as it’s good it can go in any direction, from blues, jazz. Rock, reggae, classical, musique concrete, to whatever. My gig is to make it good, and enjoy doing it. “There’s a whole new World of licks and tricks to experiment in.”

  Article written by TONY STEWART   

29.

From Rolling Stone Magazine 4/10/75

Alvin Lee  -   "In Flight"  (Columbia PG 33187 )

British blues has always been a workmanlike form, as much a job as a pleasure. Alvin Lee is smart enough to realize this, and having deserted his own limey blues band, Ten Years After, he has made In Flight in pursuit of a new image. Unfortunately, Lee’s problem isn’t easily wished away. He sinks into new restrictions quicker than he can soar away from the old ones. Ten Years After was never much of a group, although they made some interesting records, particularly Ssssh and Watt. The group was the sleeper surprise of Woodstock, and “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” and “I’m Going Home” were significant pre-heavy metal tours de farce for guitar. All of their exciting moments, though, had as much to do with stagecraft as music. Lee’s flashing smile was as important as the white heat of his guitar runs. Alvin Lee was fast, the epitome of the British speed demon guitarist, but his speed and his smile were intertwined forever.  

The one made him saleable, the other made him identifiable; I was never sure which was which, but we all know what too much speed does for the teeth. Still, without those alabaster incisors, Ten Years After might have lent new meaning to the concept of facelessness which dominates so much of the rest of British blues.  

For all its limits, Lee’s twin talents gave them a head start over the various Foghats, Savoy Browns and Mayalls. Lee has personally, if not charisma, and the sense of humour--not just fun, which is intimately tied to work— that ought to go with it. It is difficult  to imagine even such an inspired British bluesman  as Eric Clapton having the ironic self-perspective to tote a watermelon over his shoulder as he trudged off the Woodstock stage, in full view of 500,000 fans and half as many cameras. 

Lee is in flight, in deed as well as concept, on his new album. Fleeing that confining image, however, he seems desperate, uncertain of just what he’ll choose to replace it with. Consequently, In Flight is a kitchen-sink job; a live album, two records, with horns and a female chorus. The music can’t decide between rock and blues and half-assed mellow jazz. There isn’t a chance for any of the facets to shine long enough to give the record, or Alvin focus.   Lee’s best moves are as a rock & roller, even if his most coherent ones are still tied to his version of the blues. The most interesting track on the album, “Mystery Train,” fails utterly. After Elvis Presley’s and Junior Parker’s versions, “Mystery Train” wasn’t a song anymore at all; it was a pair of records, each defining the limits of one of its dual themes (sex and death). Lee has nothing to add to that except a pleasant, smoky voice. But even that voice is obscured by the awful chorus. The English have been trying for a decade to figure out what to do with the Stax concept—the way voices and horns are used in Memphis—without much luck.  Lee’s ideas aren’t much more useful than Joe Cocker’s. The chorus shouldn’t drown out the singer in an arrangement like this; it should add tension. Here the chorus elasticises everything, drawing it out to the point of boredom. It happens time and again—on “Slow Down,” “Money Honey,” which had the chance to be special, even Lee’s own best song “I’m Writing You A Letter.”

Surprisingly, Mel Collins’s sax and flute are handled with some taste, probably because they are not, as with most blues groups which resort to horns, bowled over by a blaring brass section. (I know of no great white rock record in which brass plays a dominant role.) But for all their limitations, the rock songs are still more effective than Lee’s blues, which for the most part are just as excessive in length  and velocity as those he played with Ten Years After. Only sax dipping in and out reminds that this is not a TYA record.  

With his usual irony, though, Lee redeems himself a little, simply by calling one of the songs “Every Blues You’ve Ever Heard.” He ought to be required to open his show with it as a sort of caveat emptor –and not he alone, but the whole sorry batch of Anglo blues mummies. Still, this isn’t as inauspicious a debut as I may have made it seem. Lee has broken free of the TYA image, certifying himself as a rock singer of some talent. The rockabilly cuts here move, and if it weren’t for the chorus, you could say they never get cute, as too much British pseudo-rockabilly does.

With a little reorganization, Lee might have a fine post-heavy band in the making.

by Dave Marsh, music critic for ‘Newsday’  

32.

Melody Maker  5/24/75

Ten Years After - “Goin’ Home!” (Chrysalis)

A compilation album of the first three years of Ten Years After’s existence. And a pretty neat selection of some of their best-known numbers, including, as the title suggests, the TYA classic “I’m Going Home” a live version from the Woodstock film.  

Alvin Lee has taken a bashing from some critics over his “speed-trip playing,” but he and TYA were undoubtedly worthy of the success that came their way in the late sixties and early seventies. Lee became one of the legendary guitar heroes and I always thought his playing could be tasteful at times as well as brash and violent as it is usually regarded. In judging Lee the critics often missed the point. The band were exciting to watch and it was this excitement, through flash playing that Lee tried to convey on record, especially on the “Undead” album, which was recorded live, and “Ssssh.”  

On this album we have: “Hear Me Calling,” “Going To Try,” “Love Like A Man,” “No Title,” “I Woke Up This Morning,” “Woodchoppers Ball,” and “ I’m Going Home.” “Love Like A Man” is the studio version and it is debatable whether the live number should have been included, although the studio one is much more polished and precise.

“I Woke Up This Morning” is an object lesson in what can be achieved without straying far from the basic blues theme. Lee’s playing is beautiful, with the rest of the band filling out the bottom. “Going Home,”  the closer, sums up the essential TYA in a nutshell. You can almost see Lee onstage snarling out the vocals and ripping into his axe, no quarter asked or given with the excitement rising as the audience lets its hair down.

But one of my favourites is “Hear Me Calling,” with Leo Lyons’ bass thudding out the riff and Lee soloing in a restrained fashion. An excellent album showcasing all that Ten Years After had to offer---and that was a hell of a lot.

By E.M. 

33.

Rolling Stone   8/13/75  

Alvin Lee’s Long Road to Freedom

London---Alvin Lee is on the road again, and this time he’s not going home. Inspired by a special London concert last March without Ten Years After behind him, Lee bid an indefinite good-bye to his colleagues of seven years. Ten Years After might someday work together again, he says, but the immediate future belongs to a new band called Alvin Lee and Company. They are now on a six-week U.S. tour, and Lee’s Rainbow Theatre concert has been released as an album, In Flight. “Well, Lee says, grinning in the corridor of his countryside home, a gold record for the Woodstock album hanging overhead, “I’m certainly not going to be playing “I’m Going Home.”  

In a sense Lee is home, playing the kind of music that earned him that first initial recognition. The new band creates a sense of déjà vu, all of the players going back to their roots. There’s bassist Steve Thompson and keyboard player Ronnie Leahy, former member of Stone the Crows, Maggie Bell’s starting ground. Drummer Ian Wallace and reed player Mel Collins are former members of King Crimson and have contributed to numerous albums. A percussionist and several backup singers complete the group.  

The rejuvenation of Alvin Lee as a musician started before the London concert with an album with Mylon LeFevre, On the Road to Freedom, the first step out of the musical prison TYA had become. “It got to feel like an old marriage. I started to get the seven-year itch. I wanted a band,” he says, “I didn’t want it to be Alvin Lee showing off his clever tricks, which is what was beginning to happen with TYA. It all became too mechanical.”

The machinelike atmosphere became oppressive during the band’s last American tour. “It got to the point where American tours were boring. It was too much like a job; the fun was gone. Everything ran too smoothly. It was just an endless cycle of tours and albums. On that last American tour it got so bad that each day I’d look forward to a different airline, a different colour scheme, a higher hotel than the night before.” TYA began to feel like a treadmill, just what Alvin wanted to escape through music. Before Woodstock, TYA was just another entertaining British blues band dabbling in jazz. After the infamous three-day festival the band—Alvin in particular—was elevated to superstar status, confined to a set pattern.

“Yeah,” Lee shrugs. “We were a different band before Woodstock. We’d play the old Fillmore and be able to just play. We had a respectful audiences then who would appreciate a jam or a swing. But after Woodstock,” he winces, “the audience got very noisy and only wanted to hear things like “I’m Going Home.” “I’ve always been much more  of a guitar picker but I began to feel forced into a position of being the epitome of a rock & roll guitarist.

Originally TYA wanted to make it without having to compromise to pop. It worked for a while but after five or six years the fun went out of it for me, a lot of the music went out of it. And, he smiles shyly, “all I wanted to be was a musician. With this new band I feel relaxed. I have enough freedom that I don’t feel pigeonholed anymore.

“Everyone thinks of the group as my solo thing but I think of it as a band. Everyone in the group is free, everyone is their own musician. It’s up to each individual what they play. “This band is just good fun. The excitement of not knowing what will happen next is great; it’s a welcome change. It really is like going back to the roots; feeling enjoyment in the music again is how TYA used to feel.”   

On their recent European trek, audiences shouted for the band to boogie, and to play TYA standards, but were  quickly pacified by the new music. Standing out front, Alvin Lee taps his foot gently and takes time finding the right notes. Gone are the bullet like barrages of lightning-fast solos, the archetypal superstar Grimaces , replaced by fluid playing and an anonymous grin. The material is strictly non-TYA.

“Even though the songs are mine, it’s the music of the band. I guide a lot of it but it’s still down to the group. “One might get the impression that this time around the guitarist does not dominate the proceedings. “If anything, Mel gets his freedom he steers the band toward a kind of nouveau jazz, bordering on the realms of John Coltrane, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock- type number and then something like Money Honey.  

That’s the kind of musical freedom I like: jazz, rock, blues, anything. “You adopt different attitudes when you Play different music. This band is more reserved, more disciplined, more tasteful. But the discipline is good. If everyone were to race off on their own solo it would be a mess. My solos are more tastefully conceived now,” he nods his head in agreement. “But I still get going in places. It’s just that I build up to it now. I don’t race off on a solo. I take my time.”  

While TYA remains in a state of permanent limbo, this band exists at the least through spring. On return from the American tour, they will record an album. But Lee is quick to add that there might be changes: possibly another album with Mylon, perhaps a tour.

Alvin Lee refuses to commit himself anymore.  

By Barbara Charone  

From October 11, 1975 – Sounds
By John Ingham – At Hookend Mannor

To visit Alvin Lee at home is seemingly to see a man living the perfect fantasy life – 40 room mansion, large gardens, recording studio, colour darkroom, and all the gadgets and toys that makes living in the Twentieth Century so much fun.
Waking up in the late afternoon, he had lain in bed watching “Abbott and Costello Go To Mars”. Now he was ensconced in the TV / Video room, a wood panelled room whose only centre of focus was a large television. Beside it stood a very sophisticated VCR and video camera. Alvin likes to make videotapes; he’s preserved several concerts for posterity.
We watched a cassette of Ali’s Manila Killer and then retired to the sound / film room, passing an enormous r/c glider lying in a window bay. Everywhere you looked rooms extended the spaces occasionally intersected by comfortable furnishings; but unlike Kane’s Xanadu, very comfortable.
This second media room is dominated by a Tannoy Malorcan in each corner, though Alvin dismisses quad. A dobro and guitar lean against a speaker, records range along one wall. An alcove holds a slide and 16mm film projector standing on top a bench stacked with cassettes of slides. A fire burns in the grate. In the middle of the room a clump of beanbags cushions in American and Russian flag covers await the body’s pleasure. It is here that Alvin writes most of his songs.

DISTRACTIONS:
But is it the perfect life after all? “It’s great to have everything you want, but in a way you’ve got more problems. You’ve got everything you always wanted and you think. “I should be in the best environment in the world.” You wake up in the morning and you’re not feeling too good, in some ways it’s worse, because you play pinball and then snooker, ride the bike around the garden, and you’re still feeling wrong. What I need to do then is work and make myself sit down, but sometimes there are too many distractions. That pinball machine – Christ!”
We should all have such problems. I’d been wanting to corner Alvin for a couple of months. He had told me in an interview that he doubted Ten Years After would ever reform, regardless and / or because of individual pursuits. He hadn’t even talked to them on the phone since the break up. A month later a TYA tour of America was announced. Something sounded amiss, something I wanted to get to the bottom of. But first… “Pump Iron”, the new album. Given a deadline, Alvin had sifted through the tapes that continually accumulate in his studio, either as glorified demos with himself on all instruments (his drumming is hilarious) or in sessions built from combinations of the familiar names on the back cover. Usually, lyrics were one verse and a chorus or less.

DEADLINE:
With things in reasonable shape, drummer Ian Wallace was called in for one of his spectacular overdub sessions, slotting himself into tracks that were otherwise complete. Later, Boz arrived to perform the same function on other tracks. It was finished at 10 pm the night before the deadline.
An eclectic album, it ranges the gamut from an electronic Sargasso Sea, wherein Alvin mixed down about 50 tracks of noises, bleeps and whirrs, to Alvin Lee and Co. taped live at New York’s Academy of Music, which prompted him to construct various songs across that side of the record as though they were being recorded in similar situations. Although this isn’t the projected “Chuck Berry album” Alvin’s been threatening us with, the same sentiments exist. “A lot of music now I find leaden and boring, overdone. Whereas a lot of the old rock and roll was really subtle—you used to think it was going bash bash but in fact it wasn’t. That was what I basically got tired of in Ten Years After, the whole format and attitude of overplay. It worked for the audience—if you hit them in the teeth hard enough they’re bound to notice you. I’ve gotten out of it but I don’t underestimate its effectiveness. There are so many tasty musicians who don’t get anywhere. If Ten Years After had been like that we’d probably have been appreciated, but no one would have said, “Cor, have you seen this lunatic who plays eight billion notes a minute?”
There—it was out. Is any Alvin Lee interview possible without mentioning TYA, or for that matter, Woodstock”? Unbidden, the magic names hove into view.
“Ten Years After grew into something I didn’t want—the heavy rock image thing, and we really tried to keep out of that. But it happened anyway through “Woodstock”, which was a complete accident, and it really changed a lot of people’s attitudes to what we were doing. Before then it didn’t seem so important, just go out there and have a good blow and get people off. Suddenly, it was really big gigs. Gotta play note for note. The fun seemed to disappear when the audience got to 12,000…15,000.

ACQUISITION:
“It wasn’t too important to me or I wouldn’t have given up doing it. I just really needed a break from that whole trip. It was a good one after the days of starving and in a van up and down the M1. Then the success and the acquisition of worldly goods—gotta do that one, finding out that’s not all it’s cracked up to be. This is one of the things that strikes me; you sit down and think—especially if you’re moving and progressing in what you’re doing, the band is successful –you think, “This is a good opportunity, what do you want to do with it?” And you work out a basic plot---get a good house with a studio, plenty of rooms. And then reality.
“You don’t wake up every day and say this is incredible, because you get used to it and things still go wrong and pipes burst. It’s all relative. I used to live from hand to mouth on six pounds a week and spend eight. It’s the same now except it’s in thousands. I won’t get into business at all. I hate it. Accountants saying you must save and invest in bonds and me saying bullshit. “The funny thing was I didn’t even want to make any money, particularly. My original motivation wasn’t to be a rock and roll star and be rich and famous, it was to be a musician, and it just went into that.”
Listening to all this in a mansion stuffed with the tools and toys Alvin finds essential to his existence was a bit weird, but since arguments based on the notion that “It’s easy for you to dismiss material wealth” seemed trivial, the subject wasn’t pursued. Rather, I tracked down Alvin’s solo projects, which usually start off as hobbies until he begins to think he could perhaps tailor them towards more productive and realistic projects.
FBI he first saw on “Magpie” one afternoon, where they announced that they had neither record company or manager. He contacted them, offered the use of his studio, and has been intimately involved ever since. A recording contract is currently being “lawyered over”, and Alvin plans on taking them with him on his next tour in February, 1976. Whether this will be in Britain has yet to be decided.
Concomitant with his love of video, Alvin is also supplying the soundtrack for a projected film on Atlantis by “2001” computer animation wizard Jack Knight, using (your best basso announcer voice, please) computerised animation equipment never before used in the history of motion pictures.

LAWYER’S MILL:
That is, he will be working on it but “it’s still in the lawyer’s mill, know what I mean? Dee, my business manager will ring when it’s all fixed and say, “Okay, go.” I’m quite proud of my system now. If someone calls up and asks if I want to do something I say sure, because I don’t have to worry about the wheeling and dealing, my business manager sorts it out. If it were to be a good film and do well, then somebody somewhere will make a lot of money out of it and therefore each share has to be worked out.
“I’ve been reading up on Atlantis…I think it’s best to interpret it—keep the mystery, because when you see what it actually was, it wasn’t that groovy. Wars like everybody else.” Do you believe in all that? “I don’t not believe. I very rarely make my mind up about anything because I change it so many times. I was once told my failing as a rock star was that I had nothing to say to people; that I’m not a preacher. But you can’t really help the world by telling them what you think.” Enough of this dilly-dallying ---it was time to take the bull by the horns. Alvin, a few months ago you told me you hadn’t even talked to your compatriots and the next thing….

WHY NOT?
“Ah, yes. I went to Los Angeles on August 14 to cut my album, still not sure whether the tour was going to come off because of a lot of business hassles…lawyers again.” One gets the impression Alvin doesn’t like lawyers. “So I went prepared to do it whether I got paid or not. I knew Leo (Lyons) would be there because he had come down one afternoon and talked about it and I said, “Yeah”. Why not? But the others were unknown quantities. So I flew to Birmingham, Alabama, on the 17th, the band arrived from England that evening and went straight to bed, and we met the next day for the first time in 14 months.
“We decided what numbers we wanted to play on the way to the gig, which was a racetrack. By the second number of our rehearsal it started raining and we ended up blocking out numbers in a trailer, with one amp. Went on that evening and did a great set. It was like turning the old switch on again. By the fourth night we were playing as well as we’ve played, but we were more enthusiastic than we had been for years.” Just like that? It seemed a bit prosaic. Weren’t financial aspects a prime motivation? “Yes and no. It was a prime motivation to get the band out. But I made a decision that I wanted to do it for fun rather than---well, we haven’t been paid for the tour, and we didn’t expect to because of all the lawyers. Business people…”
It was the question, why America? (as if we didn’t know) that revealed all. Due to the American recession, only safe, established bands were a guaranteed gate. Ergo, while it was a bad time for an Alvin Lee and Co. tour, it was good for a TYA tour. Manager Chris Wright performed the actual persuasions. As for future tours, Alvin reckons they’ll be very widely spaced, if at all.
Even on the road Alvin had kept it all in perspective. In Nashville earlier this year he had wandered through Earl Scrugg’s tenth anniversary album, rubbing shoulders with Bonnie Bramlett, Charlie Daniels, Tony Joe White, Linda Ronstadt and an army of other liggers. In Los Angeles, he had jammed with the Scrugg’s Revue, noting that when they were really cooking they’d look at each other and perhaps tap a foot.
Back near Music City he had been invited to the second annual Charlie Daniels jam-boree and festival, which showcased just about every Southern musician from the Allmans down. That Alvin was the first outsider to be invited onstage you may interpret as you wish.
It being such a fashionable subject, there seemed only one question left. Are you one of the exalted 90 percent taxed? “Not really. I don’t make a lot of money myself, it all gets used up before I get any. I’m staying by choice—I could live in Vienna and not be paid for doing a tour; I might as well live here and not get paid.”
 

35. 

New Musical Express 10/18/75   

Alvin Lee: Pump Iron  (Chrysalis)

Side one opens with “One More Chance” a plodding cement-like attempt at black funk bisected by a totally undistinguished solo by Lee. “Try To Be Righteous” is a limp-wristed reggae with extraneous acoustic guitars and redundant chord changes. Occasionally flat. “You Told Me” is “One More Chance” played backwards, while “Have Mercy” is a mid paced blues bursting at the seams with clichés. “Julian Rice” closes the first side with all the verve of a sloth on mandrax. Side two is similarly forgettable; Lee is apparently unable to pull out one single decent riff. The sidemen all Sound totally bored; they seem similarly incapable of providing anything of intrest. I really cannot fathom how Chrysalis allowed themselves the extravagance of releasing this album. “Pump Iron” is one of the most redundant albums I’ve ever heard. Pure tapwater.     

Pete Erskine  

Rolling Stone Magazine 11/75

Pump Iron  -  Alvin Lee Columbia PC 33796       

Since divesting himself of the other members of Ten Years After, Alvin Lee’s music, both here and on the previous In Flight, has taken on a stronger R & B feel and focused on his vocal abilities as much as his guitar. Pump Iron follows the same pattern as it’s predecessor –a solid upbeat –R & B meets Anglo-flash format with Lee backed by well-known friends (Boz Burrell, Ian Wallace, Mel Collins and others) who perform with restrained expertise. Lee still spins a few “Goin’ Home” riffs (“Burnt Fungus”) and even adds a love song (“The Darkest Night”) but most of this album is white, English and hard. Those who remember Lee only as the finale to the movie Woodstock may find the diversity of Pump Iron appealing.  

By Alan Niester