35. 

Ten Years After, History of the Band, Their Place in Music History:    

Depending on whether you like the film or not, there’s no doubt that Woodstock was a seminal rock movie. It featured a host of late 1960’s superstars including Jimi Hendrix, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Santana, Country Joe and the Fish, The Who, Sly and the Family Stone and many others who performed at the gigantic 1969 festival, the film is a valuable and interesting record of what was going on in the international rock scene at the time.  

For one British band, however, the film was to kick open the door to America. For Ten Years After, their featured, frenetic, twelve minute version of ‘Goin Home’ brought them immense attention from the media and also from the concert promoters as well. It was the prelude to an almost permanent touring schedule, during which it had the band in perpetual motion criss-crossing the USA throughout the 1970’s. However, Ten Years After’s roots lay deeply imbedded in the heartland of England.  

Alvin Lee, who was co-founder and focal centre of the band, was born in 1944 in Nottingham. He became interested in music at an early age, but soon dropped his first choice of the clarinet in favour of a guitar in 1957, when the first exciting sounds of blues and rock ‘n’ roll could be heard on the AFN (Allied Force Network) and Radio Luxembourg. He found out very quickly that other enthusiasts lived in Nottingham, and he soon joined two local bands the Square Caps and Jail Breakers, who were bashing out the Top 40 hits of the day with more passion and energy than skill. In 1961 he met up with bass player Leo Lyons, with whom he was to enjoy a long musical partnership that would last for the better part of four decades.  

The boys, still both  only teenagers, took off for Germany for a spell working at the famous Star Club, just a few weeks after the Beatles made their historic appearance there, and upon their return to Britain Alvin and Leo were determined to capitalise on their new experience.

They enlisted the services of Dave Quickmire on drums, and called themselves the Jaybirds, they took a deep breath and plunged themselves into the uncertain world of the fully professional music business. The line-up was to remain stable for four years, and the young trio built up a respectable local reputation as a dependable and often very exciting rock ‘n’ roll band.  

They frequently returned to Hamburg, which is well known to all, for its dubious pleasures and relatively high wages, and it was under these conditions that Alvin Lee began to establish himself as an extroverted guitar player. That line-up never recorded, and initially were hesitant about moving to London, the acknowledged centre of the British music scene.

By August 1965, Dave Quickmire had decided he’d had enough and quit the band, as they didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Nottingham had spawned several bands in the early 1960’s, one of them being Ricky Storm and the Storm Cats which had transmogrified into the Mansfields, which featured Stuart Lane on guitar, Mick Hodgkinson on bass and vocals, Keith Williams on guitar and vocals and Ric Lee on drums.

When Quickmire left, Alvin and Leo wasted no time in wheeling Ric into the Jaybirds, and for the next eighteen months, the powerful trio took their rock ‘n’ roll all over the East Midlands and onto the North of England.

However, it became obvious that if they were to move many more rungs up the ladder of success, like it or not, they had to move to London, where there could be found a huge concentration of record companies and publishers. Thus in 1966 the Jaybirds set off for the big city. They landed the job of providing the music for a London stage play called Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, which later turned into a hugely successful film starring the one and only Albert Finney. Southern Music, a Denmark Street song publisher, needed musicians to record demos, and the band willingly provided the simple backing required for dozens of potential hits. Through the Southern contract, they met the Ivy League, who out of the ashes of Carter Lewis and the Southerners, were formed to cash in on the Beach Boys / Flower Power era. John Shakespeare (Carter’s real name), James Lewis and Brian Pugh, all songwriters and session singers, decided to tap a rich vein in the shape of their close-harmony, high pitched vocal style (sounding like the “Four Seasons” in America). For a while, the Jaybirds toured as backing musicians with the Ivy League.

However, Alvin, Leo and Ric soon grew tired of the rather empty, shallow role they found themselves playing and decided to contact the powerful London agent and manager, Chris Wright. In retrospect, little could the Jaybirds or Wright have ever imagined just how successful the partnership would become, but the relationship started out modestly enough for sure.

By the middle of 1966, Alvin, Leo and Ric had decided that the name Jaybirds was beginning to sound distinctly dated and it certainly didn’t seem to match the band’s growing preference for hard-driving rhythm and blues. They searched around for a suitable change of name, and briefly worked as the Bluesyard (for one or two gigs) which sounded much more appropriate.  As that name didn’t last long, Alvin, Leo and Ric decided to honour the music era that they had all found so stimulating by calling themselves Ten Years After (ten years after the start of rock ‘n’ roll with Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry…also   (a name Leo Lyons read in the print media, is the official story, as to where the name came from, and it was perfect because the name (they all thought) didn’t tie them down to anything musically).  

At around the same time, they decided that the trio format, though exciting and ever dominated by Alvin’s increasingly flashy and impressive guitar playing, was musically limiting. They needed to expand the band’s sound and did this by adding Chick Churchill on keyboards in late 1966.  

Chris Wright’s management soon led them into the recording studio of Deram Records, which is a subsidiary of the British Decca record company. Their first album, simply titled TEN YEARS AFTER was released in 1967, and was followed in 1968 by the live  UNDEAD album, which was also on Deram. The band was by now falling into the routine which would set the pattern for eight busy and very successful years. Alvin for one loved to tour and play, as he always dominated the show with his extremely fast, note-on-top-of-note style. It is arguable that he often sacrificed feel and emotion in his playing for sheer speed and technique, as he has been called “Mr. Speed Fingers” and his playing said to be a case of “All Haste and No Taste” over the years, along with the title “The Fastest Guitar In The West”. All things being considered , it has been his Nordic good looks, adequate voice and his extrovert style that seemed to be the most appealing factor to the audiences all over Europe.  

The one concert and historic event that changed the course for Ten Years After forever, happened in August 1969 when they were invited to play at the “Woodstock” festival. Their song “Goin Home” proved to be one of the most potent rock anthems of the late 1960’s, although to be honest, they must have become very weary of playing it. As for the film “Woodstock”, it was a huge success in the United States, and the band’s appearance propelled them into super-stardom and made them high profile from that moment onwards. Life for them became almost literally one long never-ending tour. The band seemed to almost never be off the road in America, and the high earnings that were there to be made, kept Ten Years After firmly entrenched  in the country. Between all the extensive touring and their life on the road, the band regularly buried themselves in the recording studios and Ric, Leo, Alvin and Chick produced “STONEDHENGE” in 1969 and Ssssssh was released later in the same year, which was followed by “CRICKLEWOOD GREEN” released in April of 1970.   

The touring schedule was gruelling to say the least, although Alvin loved it, living only for the pleasure of life on the road. The band endlessly toured America, visiting and playing in virtually every major city in the entire USA during their eight year existence. They were a sure fire draw for any festival promoter and Alvin’s extravagant and explosive playing, including dragging numbers out to last half an hour at a time, could be seen at dozens of open-air concerts. More albums followed, including ‘WATT’ released in January of 1971, ‘Alvin Lee and Company’ released in 1972, and followed by ‘Rock And Roll Music To The World’ released later in the same year (recorded in France).

In September 1973, saw the release of TYA ‘Recorded Live’ which was their fifth album for Chrysalis. (The label was formed by their management team and played on the names of Chris Wright and Terry Ellis.)  

But the end was now in sight for the “Classic Ten Years After” line-up, and just a few months later, in March of 1974 the band called it a day, and folded.

Alvin felt, that the possibilities afforded by the line-up, by now nearly a decade old, were very limited. Constant touring had drained them of ideas, and the image of Alvin playing guitar a hundred miles an hour backed by Leo, Chick and Ric was becoming tarnished, so the boys decided to take the most honourable way out and quite while they were ahead of the game.

However, the lure of the dollar meant that the combination of  Lee, Churchill, Lyons and Lee was not quite so ready to lie down and die just yet.  

After a brief venture with Mel Collins on sax, Ian Wallace on drums, Steve Thompson on bass and keyboard player Ronnie Leahy to promote his “In Flight” L.P., Alvin called the boys in the band to do a final ‘final’ tour of the USA which took the band all over North America in 1975.

Leo, Ric and Chick, who were exhausted from over a decade of continually traipsing all over the world, moved out of the performing arena and into the rather more sedate side of the music world, involving themselves in various recording, publishing and producing ventures. 

For Alvin Lee, however, the lure of the road never lost its appeal, and  1976 saw a new band featuring Bryson Graham on drums, Tim Hinkley on keyboards (from the original Bo Street Runners) and Andy Pyle on bass. This line-up produced an album which never saw the light of day and folded.  

Undaunted, Alvin launched the aptly-named band Ten Years Later, which against all odds lasted over two years. The members consisted of workaholic Alvin, along with Tom Compton on drums and Mick Hawksworth on bass and the outfit produced two outstanding albums which were released on Polydor, ‘Rocket Fuel’ and ‘Ride On’.

By June 1980 Mick Hawksworth had left the group and was replaced by Micky Feat on bass and vocals and Steve Gould on guitar and vocals. This change of line-up also prompted another name change, which also seemed to finally acknowledge the fact that all of Alvin’s bands had only really existed  to provide a superficial backdrop to showcase his up-front, superstar image.

The Alvin Lee Band produced two more albums, ‘FREEFALL and RX5 in 1980 and 1981 respectively, though Alvin’s record sales were producing a poor showing, and his material was also very pale by comparison,  from his out-put with his years with Ten Years After, Alvin kept trying, but he also had trouble keeping musicians working for him, for wages.  

By November 1981 even the word “Band” had been dropped from the title, and so too had musicians Feat and Gould, to be replaced by the ex-Stones and John Mayall guitarist Mick Taylor, who was also joined by Fuzzy Samuels on bass, as both went along with Alvin on his endless touring schedule.  

Alvin Lee, will never be revered as R & B’s or R & R most subtle or emotional player by a long shot, but his head-down, straight-ahead approach to his beloved music has these days  found him a small but ineffective handful of followers. He is the epitome of the working musician for whom getting out and playing to live audiences is the most important part of the music business.

In an interview in England, with Paul Flame, Alvin said “I never want to stop being a working musician. I look at Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker and say to myself, “Yeah, they are still at it”…and that’s the life for me as well. Now I’ve decided that touring is the natural life for me…and I intend doing it when I’m forty, sixty, or eighty years old.”

By Grant Sherwood   

From The History Of Rock Magazine 69 – Called “Heavy Duty”  

1983-1985

High-Octane Rock
Written by David Sinclair   

From Alvin Lee and the Boys:

Formed in 1967, Ten Years After emerged as part of the late-Sixties British Blues Boom, becoming a big-selling album act and premier live attraction – particularly on the emergent American stadium circuit, before their break-up in 1974.

The star of their act was singer / guitarist Alvin Lee, probably the flashiest blues / rock guitarist of the lot.

Jaybirds Of A Feather:

Lee, born in Nottingham on 19 December 1944, grew up in a musical environment – both his parents played guitar. After taking lessons for a year, he joined his first local group at the age of 13. A couple of years later he paired up with bassist Leo Lyons, born 30 November 1944 and they played together in various line-ups. One of which took them to Hamburg in Germany, before meeting drummer Ric Lee, born 20 October 1945. The three of them formed the nucleus of a band called the Jaybirds. Chick Churchill, born 2 January 1946 was initially given jobs as road manager of this outfit, but soon began to make a more direct contribution as organist. 

In 1967 the group decided on a change of name to Ten Years After, and swiftly established a strong reputation in the London clubs- most notably at the Marquee, where they held down a residency. At this point, they met Chris Wright, who became their manager, and later, with Terry Ellis, formed Chrysalis Records.

With Wright’s help, they secured a contract with Decca Records who, perceiving the band’s underground as opposed to commercial appeal, assigned them to their new progressive label Deram and allowed them to release an album, “Ten Years After”, without the customary requirement of a hit single.

The album sold reasonably well and during the rest of the year Ten Years After played as many gigs as they possibly could, further establishing their grassroots following in Britain.  

General Lee:

In 1968, Deram released a second album, “Undead”, recorded live at London’s Klook’s Kleek club. American promoter Bill Graham, impressed with the album, telegrammed Chris Wright inviting Ten Years After to play at the prestigious Fillmore West, and the band departed for what was to be the first of numerous Stateside tours.

Although the two 1969 albums, “Stonedhenge” on which Lee’s guitar work was uncharacteristically subdued, and “Sssssh”, which was a heavier, more fully produced effort, established them in the British charts, it was “Undead” that conveyed most accurately what the band was about, high-energy, high-velocity performance rock, as raw and unsubtle as it comes.  

Despite the fact that Ric Lee, Leo Lyons and Chick Churchill were all extremely capable musicians, each having had more formal training than Alvin Lee, it was very much the guitarist show. Alvin Lee sang, wrote nearly all the songs and produced the albums. On stage he was always the centre of attention. A tall, well-built figure, with scowling face and thick blonde hair, he quickly became renowned for the incredible speed with which he played his familiar sticker festooned red Gibson 335. His guitar playing came to dominate proceedings to such an extent  that Chick Churchill would often leave his keyboards – which were drowned by the guitar – to stand on a stack at the back of the stage and clap his hands impotently in the air. For a while audiences loved Ten Years After’s show, particularly in America, but the critical response was less than favourable.

The situation crystallised with Ten Years After’s appearance at the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and subsequent inclusion in the film of the event, which became a worldwide box-office success in 1970.

“Woodstock”  featured the band storming, stomping and wailing their way through an Alvin Lee song called “I’m Going Home” – an extended shuffle / boogie 12-bar, that tended towards indulgence when taken out of context with the rest of the show. But the effect of that appearance was dramatic – the band was suddenly hoisted into a position of international superstar status.  

In Britain they were rewarded in June of 1970 with their only hit single, an edited version of “Love Like A Man”, but Lee didn’t care for the number and refused to play it on “Top Of The Pops”. Meanwhile “Cricklewood Green” 1970 and “Watt” 1971 both reached the Top five in the album charts.

Ironically, Woodstock also heralded the start of Ten Years After’s decline. “It was a big break, but it was the start of the end too”, said Alvin Lee. They found themselves in an artistic straight-jacket, hedged in on the one side by audiences demanding nothing but the formula of “I’m Going Home” and “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl”, and on the other by the critics who were lambasting their lack of finesse and paucity of imagination. Moreover, the band suffered from a work schedule that left them little time to draw a breath, let alone write new songs and develop in any new directions.

Alvin Lee commented: “ We just kept working and working and working…and the fun went out of it. We didn’t feel we were achieving anything particularly, it was just what I call the travelling jukebox syndrome. Get on stage, plug in, and away you go – do the same as you did last night.” It has been reliably documented that Ten Years After undertook as many as 28 American tours, as well as appearing all over Europe.

Bad Vibrations:

The band’s last new album, “Positive Vibrations” was released in the spring of 1974, but Ten Years After had already split, having played their last British gig at London’s Rainbow earlier that year. They did, however, undertake a final American tour in 1975, and got together briefly in the studio in early 1977, though no recordings were ever released from these sessions.

Alvin Lee embarked on a solo career with mixed results. He worked initially with Mylon LeFevre, producing the country-rock-flavoured “On The Road To Freedom” in 1973 and then set up a nine piece touring band – casting himself in a more “tasteful”, laid-back role. But his new image suited neither his audience nor himself, and it wasn’t too long before he was back in the heavy-rock fold.

In late 1977 he formed “Ten Years Later” in response to record company pressures, but after two lacklustre albums they split, and since then he has again worked solo, using a three piece “Alvin Lee Band” – with bassist Fuzzy Samuels and drummer Tom Compton – for touring.

Leo Lyons became a producer, working most notably on a trio of “UFO” albums, and eventually setting up a studio in Oxfordshire. Ric Lee did a spell with Stan Webb’s Chicken Shack before moving into management. While, Chick Churchill recorded a solo album, “You and Me” in 1973, before joining Chrysalis Publishing.

Perhaps Ten Years After failed to take a firm enough stand against the many pressures that boxed them in, and perhaps they should have established a stronger musical identity as a band, rather than as a vehicle for Lee’s greased-lightning guitar. But, whatever their detractors may say, they worked long and hard, and gave many an audience one hell of a buzz.

Alvin Lee – Twenty Years After The likes of Eddie Van Halen and Yngwie Malmsteen were still running around in nappies when Alvin Lee was the fastest guitar in the West. With his band – Ten Years After – Alvin captured the hopes of many aspiring string benders, and still continues to do so in the eighties, but he now performs under just his own name. His latest album, “Detroit Diesel”, is just about to be released in the UK having proved a big success in the USA. Bob Hewitt chatted with Alvin about his career and the new album.

The new album is my first one for about five years. I’ve had a long lay-off, because I found myself putting out records I didn’t like very much, mainly because of pressure from record companies to push another album out although I didn’t really have the songs! The previous album was called “Freefall”: it took about six months to come out, and then I found myself touring around the world. I would do a radio station and people would say, “tell me about the new album…” and I would say “Well, I like one of the tracks on it…” So I thought it had to stop; if I was putting out albums I didn’t like, how could I expect anyone else to like them? Basically, I’ve spent the time here in my own studio finding out new techniques and stuff like that. I’ve been doing gigs as well, plenty of them in Europe and the USA, but none in England. I’ve got a three piece working band, which sometimes goes to a four piece when the budget permits! I perform under my own name—not Ten Years After—and I have Alan Young on drums and Steve Gould on bass. Micky Feát played bass on the album, and he is in the occasional four piece outfit, because Steve can also play guitar, keyboards and sing…clever bloke! Basically, I’ve just carried on earning my living as a musician—that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. I’ve always avoided the “Rock Star” kind of image and have never gone in for gold lame´ suits and things like that! To be honest, I think it’s quite a privilege to be a working musician, and to make a living out of it. That’s what my heroes have done, like Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, they’ve played ´till they’re 90 or so. Really, that’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, I’m not into getting hit records and retiring at an early age—I’ve tried retiring…it’s boring.

Tell us a little about the new album “Detroit Diesel”.
Well I think it took me a long time to find out which direction I wanted to go in, having had five years off. I’d heard all the new Eddie Van Halens and things, so I thought ´How am I going to represent myself?´ So I got back to the basic roots, things I like, straight ahead rock ´n´ roll blues—I figured I should do what I do best. For people who don’t know what I do, it’s like re-introducing my own style, and it’s probably nearer the old Ten Years After format as far as energy goes, and I like the songs. There is a tendency these days for record companies to want pop songs and hit songs, they are always looking for singles. I’ve always been an album artiste really, and it takes a long time to get a good song and then play it the way you want to play it, and not lose out. Sometimes it can sound commercial and lose some of its ethnic feel and sometimes its ethnic and not very commercial! Now I think I’ve brought the two together. I’ve used computer drums and triggered synthesisers and samplers, those kind of gadgets—really it’s old rock with a new slant!

Most of the work had been done here in your own studio, hadn’t it?
Yes, they are all original demo’s. I kept the same piece of tape and changed bits here and there, overdubbed and built it up. It actually sounds like a live band, but it’s quite high tech. Who is on the album with you? There’s a drummer called Bryson Graham, Steve, Alan and Micky from my current band. Tim Hinkley plays some keyboards, and a guy called David Hubbard who is first class with synths. Jon Lord plays Hammond Organ and George Harrison plays slide guitar on a track called ´Talk Don’t Bother Me´. Leo Lyons from the old Ten Years After band plays bass on the title track, ´Detroit Diesel´, and we’ve got Joe Brown playing fiddle on another track with his wife Vicky on backing vocals! Boz Burrell plays bass on one track, in fact, we used to have a band called The Gits about the time Ten Years After was folding up which Boz and myself, Mel Collins on sax and Ian Wallace on drums. That evolved into the In-Flight Band which did the Live at the Rainbow Concert, but it went a little bit too funky and tasty for its time.

The techniques used in making your latest album must be a far cry from the old days, when you first recorded with Ten Years After?
I’ll say! The first two albums from Ten Years After were recorded live in the studio. It was only four track in those days, but even then I had started to get interested in studio work. After the second album, ´Undead´, we basically had our set `down´ so we started experimenting and trying overdubs—all very exciting stuff in those days. Now of course, it’s a more complicated version of that. I still like the straight ahead technique, because I sometimes think today’s technology is just designed to make things take longer, and help the studios make more money! There’s no doubt about it, if you’ve got the songs and you rehearse enough, you should be able to put the album down in a few days. We always used to—those first Ten Years After albums, two days and that was it! …but nowadays bands go to exotic locations in the West Indies, and it takes 6 months or longer! Oh yeah! Keyboard overdubs this year, guitars next year…Scotty Moore is one of my real heroes, and he did some great solos on the Elvis records but he doesn’t like all this overdubbing thing at all. He always went straight onto the master tape. I remember him saying to me `I don’t like those modern recording techniques—what I like to hear goes down, if it ain’t goin´ down, I don’t know what I’m doin´…´. If you’re really in control in the studio, then you can use the latest technology to the best results—whether it’s done in five minutes or whatever. I remember somebody asking if I wanted to play on a Bo Diddley album, and I thought `great!´. I went along to the studio and there was just an engineer who played the track and I played my solo. Later some friends said `What was it like to meet Bo Diddley then?´, but I never met him: I’d played on the album but never saw a soul! But I suppose that happens a lot now, you get bands recording who have never actually met each other!

What about a tour to promote `Detroit Diesel´?
It’s nearly sorted. I’ve got a few more three piece gigs in Austria and Yugoslavia, then I think it will be the four piece to play the stuff from the album. I want to do gigs in this country, but I’m so out of touch here I don’t know where to start to be honest! England tends to like fads and haircuts rather than music, and I’ve found that the music press are pretty trite and don’t really help anyone. I remember when Ten Years After first came out and we were doing the Marquee, people said `You’ve got to hear this great band!´ As soon as we had success, the same papers turned dead against us: they wrote about´ a bunch of big headed gits who play in America all the time´. They seem to enjoy putting you on a pedestal and then knocking you off! It’s a shame really, because I don’t think it reflects the audience’s view at all. It’s the view of a narrow minded minority—there’s always a strange faction here in England. I remember during the blues boom—because I was playing at that time—there were blues `purists´. If you did an Elmore James song and changed a note of the solo, they used to come up to you afterwards and tell you, you hadn’t played it `properly´. I used to really revolt against that, because you can play what you like as long as it sounded like a blues number. It’s funny you know, they all used to wear long leather jackets and stand around the front of the stage making notes! My musical style seems to have gone right around the houses, because I started out playing jazz and blues, then went into rock, then deeper into jazz and funk. I went off all the Ten Years After numbers—I even refused to play Goin´ Home for about a year! I’ve come back to it all now. I think it’s just a phase you go through, because a lot of artistes turn against the numbers they are famous for. I remember Hendrix used to dislike Hey Joe which used to baffle me, because I thought it was a great song, in fact, I do it in my set now and it goes down a bomb!

What happened to Ten Years After—was it just the natural demise of a band?
Well we were together for nearly eight years, which is a pretty good run! After about eleven albums I think we realised we had gone as far as we could. In fact, we overworked in those early years, because every band starting off wants to fill the date sheets—and we worked for six years solid: it was six months in the States, back here for a day off, over to Germany for two months, another day off, then Italy and so on… Suddenly you’re due in the studio for an album, so you think, `Better write some songs then!´. We used to write songs in the taxi on the way to the recording session! I think another reason for wrapping it up, was to settle down with our families.

So the last time you all played together was the Marquee Anniversary?
Yes that’s right, followed by the Reading Festival. It was great and I actually thought somebody would say it was good to see Ten Years After together again and suggest we do it again, but nobody seemed to notice, so I let it go.

You had quite a bit of chart success with your early singles…..
Yes, we were in the top five with `Love Like A Man´ and `Love To Change The World´ was pretty big as well. But that was almost a sideline, because they weren’t the strong numbers in the set. We had Goin´Home and Good Mornin´ Little Schoolgirl, they were the show stoppers at a live performance, but the singles were pulled off the album by the record company.

Talking about the early days, how did your musical career start?
Well, my father used to collect very ethnic blues records, like chain gang and work songs, so that was an early influence. Dad also played a bit on guitar, with my mother and sister, they had a country and western singing band—very small time, local church hall jobs! There was always a guitar lying around—we were a very musical family—but at the age of twelve I started playing the clarinet, although I’m never really sure why, because I didn’t like the thing! With the clarinet I started listening to Benny Goodman music, but I found I was hearing more from Charlie Christian than I was from Benny Goodman. To my parents´ horror, I swapped the clarinet for a guitar and spent a year learning jazz chords—vamping chords and listening to Barney Kessell and Django Reinhardt . Then the rock `n´ roll explosion hit England from America, and I think Chuck Berry was the one for me—in a way it was all the blues I was used to, melted into rock `n ´roll, so I could understand it. I started playing lead guitar and I didn’t think the jazz chords were much use at all but in fact they came in very useful later on. I never used to copy things note for note, but just get the basic feel, doing it my way, and I think that’s how my style developed. I was Nottingham born and bred and used to play in bands around that area—in fact, I played with my first band, Alan Upton and the Jailbreakers, when I was thirteen years old at the Sandiacre Palace Cinema! Then there was Vince Marshall and the Squarecaps. I used to play lead guitar with that, and I would watch `Oh Boy´ on the TV and see Joe Brown and Eddie Cochran. That was the first time I’d ever seen a Bigsby tremolo arm, so I went down to Dad’s shed to make one! I got this metal thing and stuck it on my guitar, went to the gig that night at the church hall. We were doing `Milk Cow Blues´. It got around to my big tremolo solo, I got hold of the arm, shook it and broke all six strings!!! Believe me there’s nothing more useless than a guitar with no strings—I just stood there and went `Argh´!. That first guitar was a Guyatone—Hank Marvin had one for a short while. Then I had a `Burns Tri Sonic´, which was an awful thing to play, but it had a good jazz sound on the front pickup. After that came a `Grimshaw´--the sort of poor man’s `Gibson´--which I traded for my first proper Gibson.

How were Ten Years After formed?
I was with a band called The Atomites. Leo (Lyons) was playing bass. He was the first bass player I met who was keen on Bill Black; in fact, Leo is one of the few players who can make an electric bass sound like a slap stand up. So I was Scotty Moore and he was Bill Black! We used to do `That’s Alright Momma´ and stuff like that. We changed the name from the Atomites to the JayMen, then to the JayCats and then the JayBirds! The JayBirds got to be quite well known in Nottingham in the early 60’s, and that basically was the Ten Years After line up that moved to London. But we still returned to do Saturday night gigs in Nottingham!

…so you more or less turned semi-pro?
Well yes, sort of. You see, I was just waiting to get out of school, because I was playing anyway and I was very lucky with my parents, because I was coming home from gigs at 1 am when I was only 14! I didn’t go into an ordinary job; I’ve been a full time musician since leaving school. At least it meant I could have a sleep-in in the mornings! My parents used to ask when I was going to get a proper job! The third time we went down to London, we got a job in the West End at The Prince Of Wales Theatre, so we were the band in the pub scene of `Saturday Night and Sunday Morning´. That was quite good, it meant regular money and enabled us to set up in London, but the play only ran for five weeks, so after that we ended up backing `The Ivy League on the cabaret circuit. The door really opened for us when John Mayall broke open the blues scene. We did a residency at the Marquee club when we were known as `The Bluesyard´, but we thought that name would tie us down too much to blues, so we changed it to Ten Years After. The Marquee gig led to the Windsor Festival and then the whole London club circuit.

We got a record deal by word of mouth really. The offer came through to our management for us to make an album—in fact, I think we were one of the first bands to make an album without making a single beforehand. At that time. The music was described as `underground´ and I quite liked that—the fact that you don’t have to dress up to go on stage was great! To be able to go on in `T´ shirt and jeans and tennis shoes—that was freedom! We used to wear these little leather things and try to look smart before, and I used to hate all that—although I was an Elvis fan, I would never have dared to wear a lame´ suit or anything like that!

How did your `superfast´ technique develop?
Basically it just came from the excitement of playing live—the adrenalin. I used to hear tapes of the band from the mixing desk after a show, and sometimes I couldn’t believe it was me playing! I really didn’t know I could play like that—Ten Years After was all about excitement and energy. I basically played guitar `from the hip´, an instinct or reaction if you like, because I’m not one for practicing, I’m a `jammer´. My attitude was to `go for it´, and on a good night I could get it. I sometimes didn’t know what I was doing and occasionally would mess it up, but I’d bluff my way through with conviction. It’s like the old story—if you play a horrible note, play it again and people will think you meant to do it! I think you improve when you make mistakes; if you play perfectly all the time, then you are playing too much within your boundaries, it’s time to push the boundaries and see how far you can get. All the work in a studio to do an album, that’s real work, but the fun part is going out on the road and playing live!

Talking of playing live, you did some `mega´gigs…
Woodstock was a particularly good memory for me. It needn’t have been, had it all gone to schedule, because we would have just flown in on the helicopter and then flown straight out again, but there was a thunderstorm just before we were due to go on stage, so we had about three hours to wait. I walked around the audience and around the lake, and really got into it all—fantastic! When the movie of Woodstock came out, about a year after the actual festival, Ten Years After really took off. It was our spot on the movie that accelerated the band up to the 20,000 seater gigs instead of the usual 5,000 seaters. There isn’t much satisfaction playing the big auditoriums though—you can’t hear anything, can’t see anything. You just see the security men, usually with cotton wool in their ears. That doesn’t really encourage you to play your best! To me, the Marquee is what gigs are all about; a thousand people crammed together with sweat dripping down the walls. It’s hot and the music is loud, and you can’t get away from it—that’s really what I like. The American clubs that I do are all like that. They’re slightly bigger than the Marquee, but it’s all back to the blues again and that’s how I cut my teeth.

Have you seen any artistes on your travels who have taken your attention…?
Well I like Mark Knopfler, his style is quite different and foreign to me, but I like that fingerpicking. That’s my hobby style really. I don’t think I could ever do it professionally. I think Gary Moore is probably the `hot boy´ right now, in fact, he came to a gig we did in Ireland on a school roof! I met him about a year ago and he told me he was in the audience in the playground. He was at that impressionable age—while I was watching Chuck Berry, Gary Moore was watching Alvin Lee! He’s a very fine and technical musician—he can play practically anything. It’s good to be a motivator you know. I sometimes hear someone playing my licks—the ones that have become a bit `trade-markish´--and that’s quite a nice buzz, makes you feel a bit like a teacher. And I think, as you get older, that is one of the best things you could possibly be, to pass on the things you know. Freddy King was one of my favourites—one of the original string benders! It’s a funny thing about string bending, because I started off like Charlie Christian with a 28 gauge wound third string—and there’s no bending them at all! And then I heard Freddy King and it was like a door being opened to me—all these new licks waiting. The same with Chuck Berry—playing solos on more than one note at a time—that was a breakthrough that kept me busy for about a year, exploring all the different combinations. The more you know, it kind of gets slower and slower—the less new things there are to pick up. The hammer-on with the right hand was probably the latest thing, but they’re getting fewer and farther between—I’m happy now to stumble across a new progression, maybe once a month or something.

But I notice on a couple of your guitars you have Kahler tremolo systems, and I don’t think we’ve ever seen you use one on stage.
That’s right. Actually I was a bit of purist before I got hung up on them, but I used one in the studio and I wanted to get the same effect live, so I put one on a stage guitar—just in case. But I’m a convert now—put Kahlers on everything, piano, saxophone drums…!!!

Have you done any session work with other artistes or friends?
Well, Gary Moore lives nearby and we’ve had a few jams—but nothing on tape yet. But it’s funny being, for want of a better word, a `legendary´ guitarist, I don’t get as much other work as I’d like. People tend to think ´Oh, he doesn’t need any work´ so they don’t ask me but, as a matter of fact, I’d love to do it. So I’m putting out a call in Guitarist Magazine—anyone who wants some session work, I’ll do it—and I won’t charge a fortune either!!!

And you have the advantage of owning your own studio…
I’ve been interested in studio technique since the very early days at Olympic—a sort of amateur engineer if you like; I really enjoy it. I get bands in here to do demos—and proper tracks as well, but I’m an amateur engineer because I’d hate for anyone to be relying on me. But occasionally, if I’m not under pressure, I can get really good sounds—but I can’t guarantee! I think having a background knowledge makes you a better recording musician, and it’s taken years because it is only recently that it’s all started coming together, logically. It’s always been a kind of mystery—and that’s what makes it so interesting. In the early studio days you used to go in to record, and they wouldn’t even let you hear it back! They would say `That was fine, now what else have you got…´ Having this place is great for experiments and ideas; you can just pick up your guitar, switch on and away you go—instead of losing ideas. Really, for a professional musician and a recording musician, it’s down to the songs and the creativity. Playing is fun and song writing is hard, actually creating music is hard. That’s where the work comes in and where the time is consumed. I’ve probably got about 500 hours of great jams on 16 track; I’ve had all sorts of great musicians down here, but we all play in E for half an hour or A for half an hour. It’s some of my favourite music, but you can’t do anything with it.

Do you try and escape from those common blue keys?
Well yeah, that’s the whole trick. It’s finding something that goes with E that isn’t A—but sounds as natural, that’s the hard thing. You have got to make it flowing and natural and not fall into the three chord trap. Basically I like 12 bar and I like three chords. The thing is to use four chords and that’s where the jazz and the funk got me out of that—an easy way out. I’m still trying to make basic rock `n´ roll sound like 12 bar with three chords—but not use those three chords! I’ve always found that, no matter what you do performance-wise in front of the general public, I’m always aware of what other musicians think. Sometimes there will be one guy in the front row and you can tell he’s a guitarist because his eyes are transfixed on your left hand! Suddenly I think I’d better watch it because this guy is watching me very closely—so I’d better come up with something good here…!

Presumably, when you do a gig nowadays, it’s obligatory to pull out some of the old favourites?
Well, I enjoy it. It’s always been obligatory and I revolted against it for a while. In fact, when I had the `In Flight´ album, I did a set that had no Ten Years After numbers in it at all—I thought I would have a change after 8 years of the same material, so I was playing funky and jazzy stuff with Mel Collins. But I remember going to see Jerry Lee Lewis in Birmingham and he did all country music—no Great Balls Of Fire or any of the well-known stuff and I was really upset. So, from that night on, I thought maybe people who came to see me would be disappointed if I didn’t do the favourites. From then on I’ve never had any reservations about playing them. I mean, if you’re making money, then you’ve got to give people what they like. It’s fine to be a musician but if the public are paying to see you they want entertaining, and you have to play what they want. Actually, that was quite a turn-around for me, because I was quite a reluctant entertainer for most of those Ten Years After years—I used to play a bit begrudgingly sometimes. I mean that happens; you get to the point where you walk on stage and everyone is cheering before you’ve even played a note. Some nights you would play pretty badly, in your own estimation, and nobody would seem to notice—other nights I would play really well and no one would seem to notice either! It’s a difficult pill to swallow: you begin to think `What am I really doing—just being a cardboard cut-out and going on stage to do these songs, like a juke-box´. I think that attitude comes from doing too much, because we used to work all the time and had hardly any time to write songs, so the set stayed pretty much the same for about five years! But I’m enjoying it now, because I’m not working to that intense level—I’ve actually enjoyed the last five years touring without an album—it’s been great. You don’t have all those interviews and all that circus thing to do, but the new album is out now so I think I’ve got to go out and work a bit more. But that’s good too, because you’ve got to stretch. I’ve actually found a lot more enjoyment in playing now that I’ve got back to the kind of gigs I like—and the kind of music. It’s just taken me this long to work it all out in my own head. I used to be out on the stage wondering what I was doing it for. Now I know what I’m doing it for, and that means a lot. When there are times that I get a bit rough on the road—and I love being on the road, but there are bound to be times when you think `What the hell am I doing this for?´ Really, you’ve got to be doing it for yourself because if you’re doing it for other people you start resenting it. If you’re doing it because your manager has made you, then you start not liking the manager, but I have a much more mature attitude nowadays. But getting back to the old numbers, they will all be in with the new set from the Detroit Diesel album—Goin`Home, Good Mornin´ Little Schoolgirl, and Help Me Baby. They are key numbers in the set, because you have to open with a strong number and then you can play a blues or back off a bit—Schoolgirl is always a lift to start things off. Love Like A Man is a very simple riff that goes down a bomb—I meet lots of people who tell me it’s the first thing they learnt to play on guitar. It’s easy to play, but when you play live it still works. I don’t know why it is, there is no secret in any particular combination of notes, it’s just certain notes together really click. I think you can get over-complex and play something that sounds good to us as musicians, but it goes right over the heads of the audience—it’s what pleases the ears that matters.

Well we are sitting here in your studio Alvin, and I see the room is full of guitars, so you are obviously something of a collector…
That’s right, and here is my famous 1958 Gibson 335 that I bought for £45 in Nottingham—best investment I ever made—even had a fitted case!

How did it come to be covered in so many stickers?
Well, they just got thrown on actually. But when I broke the neck at The Marquee, owing to the ceiling being so low, I sent it back to Gibson for repair and when it was returned, they had lacquered over all the stickers—so they couldn’t come off anyway!

You’ve done some work to the 335 yourself over the years…
Oh yes, I’m a keen dabbler! I’m always changing pickups and re-wiring. The Gibson has the original 1958 PAF humbuckers with the covers removed, and a Fender pickup in the middle to give a bit more top—it’s good for the studio—lots of cut and fizzytop. I used to buy Hofner and DeArmond pickups and mess about with those as well. The 335 is still my main guitar: I think it’s the size of the body—it fits me quite well. I love to play Strats but I prefer to play them sitting down for some reason. I enjoy Les Pauls, but they feel too small and heavy. I’m just used to the 335. I bought this old Strat from a girl in Texas, who took lessons for a week and then put the guitar in the attic, along with this lovely Fender tweed amp. The whole lot only cost 400 dollars; they didn’t seem to value old guitars so much then. The most I’ve ever paid is 1,400 dollars for this 1958 335, which was `lost´ at the Gibson factory and found later under a pile of old wood. It was cased, so it’s totally unmarked with the most beautiful blonde flamed top—just lost in the factory for twenty years! Dave Edmunds is after it actually… When we were touring the States, my guitar would be in the equipment truck, and I wanted one to play in the hotel room. So at the beginning of each tour, I would go into stores and try find interesting guitars—like this Gretsch Chet Atkins. It’s got a good acoustic sound as well, so I could play it in the hotel room without an amplifier—this was the days before Pignose amps!

When I got home to England, I would just hang them up and buy another one on the next tour and so on. I never really wanted or needed 40 or so guitars, it was just easier than taking them back once you had got an American guitar over to England. I’ve got about six 335’s, including a 12 string, and if I ever find a half decent red one, I’ll get it anyway and try and make it into a stage guitar. My original red 335 has done every gig with me, up until December of 1986, and then the Tokai company came along and measured everything to make an exact replica of it. To finish off I got Mark Willmott, who does my serious guitar work, to fit a Kahler and shave the neck a little. Tokai were going to put this model into production--`The Alvin Lee Model´ --but they have stopped the production of semi-solids at the moment, so it could be another rarity to hang on the wall.

Basically I’d like to get together with some company and get a model into production—I’ve never even had a spare stage guitar, I just take the one and change the strings before the set. If a string breaks, it’s a quick drum solo while I change it! I wanted a Fender six string bass, but ended up with this Rickenbacker which is quite rare and unusual. I’ve got a Wal bass which I like—I’m quite keen on playing bass now.

What about your onstage set up, what happens after the guitar?
Curly lead…!! I tried those radio transmitters once—for about an hour, until one of the crew came along and said `Where’s your lead? That’s not rock ´n´ roll´. I thought he was dead right, so I scrapped it. I had the radio, but I was still turning around and stepping over an imaginary lead anyway!! It didn’t sound the same as a lead though. You see my guitar is matched perfectly to this old 50 watt Marshall I’ve got; it’s ancient! In fact a guy came down here from Marshall –Mike his name was—and he said it was built before his time, he found a component in there he didn’t even know about! I don’t know about pre-amps and foot pedals. I think the answer is to get an amplifier input level that matches your guitar perfectly. I use the 50 watt Marshall full up—I mean people used to think we were loud because I used to use 10 Marshall cabinets one time—but I only had the one 50 watt amp. I liked the dispersion! I tried the 100 watt, but it was too `middley´ I prefer the 50, flat out—it’s great.

You’ve got a Roland guitar synth in the corner…
Yes, it’s a present from George Harrison. He got bored with it—and I got bored with it too. It’s fun. But it’s more of a toy unless you know particularly what you want to get out of it. Then I find you are not playing a guitar like a guitar—it’s easier to use a keyboard to get those sounds.

How did you manage in those early days when there was no such thing as light gauge strings?
Because of my early jazz leanings, I was quite late changing over. I just used a first string on the third or something like that to start with, but I’ve always liked heavy strings. The set I use now are 54, 44, 28, 15, 12, 9. I did a gig with Frank Zappa once and at the end we decided to have a little jam, so I, so I played bass and gave him my guitar—but he couldn’t play it! The action was up a bit and he likes it laying on the frets—one of the things I noticed about Gary Moore, he has a high action and heavy strings. I like a big heavy bass string to hit that with gusto.

What about the guitar you used for the Roger Chapman tracks?
It’s built by Mark Willmott, but we are still working on the shape—it’s not quite right just yet. Actually we need a name for it, so if any of your readers have a good idea let us know. It gives a great sound, and I used a Rockman for the tracks you heard—I think the Rockman covers most needs—clean and dirty. I’ve got some interesting little WEM Dominator amps—15 watt output with one 12´´ Celestion—sounds like a stack of Marshalls when you mike them up. For live work though, it’s the 335—curly lead and the Marshall—no effects!

We’ve got two gentlemen here in the studio who have been your assistants for how long?
Nineteen years! John Hembrow and Andy Jaworski. John is my tour manager and Andy is the sound man—they help they help with everything—guitars, amps, door hinges, car repairs! We’ve been all over the world together and we’re just off to Yugoslavia and Austria with the three piece, then hopefully when the album is released here, some UK dates. Who knows, we might link up in the Blue Bore Café one night on the way up to Newcastle! Just like the good old days… It’s funny, I don’t know where to play in England—like the Universities have probably never heard of me these days—same with the little clubs—it’s difficult.

Maybe it’s time to go out and educate the masses again—not Ten Years After but Twenty Years After?
Could be the case—yes!! I think that’s it in a nutshell. I’ve got to get out and about and be seen again—I can’t think of anything better to do anyway—it beats watching television, that’s for sure!

Article written by, Bob Hewitt

36.
 From RAW Magazine
 Issue from January 24 to February 6, 1990
 An interview where Alvin discusses playing at
 Woodstock and Jamming with Jimi Hendrix.

 Some years after Ten Years After called it a day,
 They're back again and perhaps surprisingly, being
 greeted with positive applause for their most recent
 record album called "About Time".
 Veteran guitar slinger Alvin Lee looks back, forward
 and sideways with our Sylvie Simmons who catches
 his bluesy drift.

      ANYONE FOR ALVIN LEE?

It's three in the morning, an ice-cold New York night, the bars are closed, the bottle's getting low, and there's a witch sitting on the hotel bed. Long black hair, wigged-out eyes and a nice line in cosmic witchie patter. We'd just been out on the street talking to Ten Years After in their tour bus, Carole the publicist, Paul the Rock writer and I, after their pile driver performance at The Ritz club. And the witch, figuring we knew the band, followed us upstairs and hid in the toilet. When she emerged, she made a speech: she was not only a witch but Ten Years After's biggest fan! She was baptised in the sweat flying from Alvin Lee's snake-fingered solos! Her boyfriend, who refused to come, actually is Alvin Lee, though temporarily living in a different, dark-haired American body so as not to confuse anybody. Ten Years After, she declared, had "changed her life".

Well it was a hell of a show, raw as a chill-blain in stilettos, equal parts virtuoso experience and unbridled energy .Funny business, all these ancient bands reforming at the end of the last decade, and such a large proportion of them playing worthy, seminal music. Ten Years After's' About Time', their first album since 1974's 'Positive Vibrations', is their best album since '69's 'Shhh'. Produced by Terry Manning of ZZ Top fame, RAW's Malcolm Dome reckoned it was the album the Top should have made after 'Eliminator', and I can't disagree.

15 years ago, after leading the British Blues Rock boom, after an amazing 28 tours of the States, Ten Years After dissolved. "We just stopped touring," explains Alvin Lee. "We never hated each other. Ever! When we packed it in we'd been eight years on the road and we just got disenchanted. In fact we started getting disenchanted after the "Wood stock" movie came out in "1970". A lot of people said that made Ten Years After, but in fact we were doing really good before then, playing 3,000 to 5,000 five thousand seat venues. When the movie came out, it was like the mega dome arenas and ice hockey stadiums. We did that for a few years, but we weren't enjoying it. We were originally an underground band, we started playing clubs like The Marquee, real good gigs. Those stadiums are totally wrong for music. You can't see the audience, you don't get the feel. The sound just echoes around those places, and we kind of lost heart. I don't even know who brought it up first, but someone said, I'm getting fed up with this' and everyone went, "Yeah, so am I". So the honest thing to do was call it a day."

Alvin, then embarked on a patchy solo career, the others gravitated towards more behind-the-scenes roles in the music industry; producing, publishing. They kept in touch saw each other four or five times a year for a drink and when someone suggested they give it another go after eight years, just for The Marquee's 25th anniversary celebrations, they said, "Okay". Weren't they worried that after eight years one of them might have completely lost it, that the band wouldn't work? "In retrospect," says Alvin, "maybe I should have thought that. But for some reason I thought it was going to be easy. We had two days rehearsal. We got together for five minutes, chatted a bit to feel things out, but when we actually started playing, the amazing thing was it sounded exactly like Ten Years After! By rights it should have sounded a bit different, but it was unmistakeably TYA." So why didn't they stick around and make an album back in 1983? "I thought somebody might pick up on us, but it was definitely the young boys' time then. It was all haircuts and baggy trousers, and we had long hair and tight trousers still! I don't know. No-one seemed to want us."

But when, in '88, it appeared that someone did, they jumped at the chance to reform, becoming one of the many veteran acts trotting the boards again. "I think part of that is the Stock, Aitken & Waterman formula-singles thing. It's getting so boring now. There's not the kind of music you can actually go and get excited about in a live situation. Some of the bands don't even play live, they use tapes on stage. That's dreadful. And other bands, the better bands, are just performing their albums on stage. "The thing, I think, with older bands is there's more jamming, more interplay. Ten Years After, Rolling Stones, you can see the concerts and hear the same numbers but they never sound quite the same, they're always changing, and it doesn't get boring. "We've always tried to make our albums sound like live gigs, whereas a lot of bands try to make their gigs sound like the albums. " Also, I think some of the younger kids today look back to that kind of 60's togetherness thing, the peace movement, the anti-establishment thing, and they're saying, 'I wish we could have something like that'. Something to pull them all together."

Something, I suppose, like Woodstock, the festival that made TY A US superstars. "Woodstock was an accident," says Alvin. "It was disorganised and that's what was great about it. It was never meant to be that big of a deal. It was declared a National Disaster Area wasn't it?" he laughs. "To me the star of Woodstock was the audience. "I've got a jumble of memories. The most vivid is the journey in, because we could only get within about ten miles of the site and no nearer, the roads were all jammed. So we bundled into an army helicopter with an open side and I had a safety harness on. I was dangling out of the helicopter over half-a-million people.
"Backstage, there was a lot of politics and bartering over who was going on before who. I didn't get involved in it. I went for a walk around the lake and joined in with the audience and saw it from the other side of the stage. It was great. No one knew who I was, but people were offering me food and drink being really friendly. There wasn't so much camaraderie backstage. There's been a "Maybe it was the age we all were, but there seemed a lot more ego problems in the "1960s" lot more of that kind of thing between different bands since Live Aid.
Like the "Guitar Speak" thing that I did" the Night Of The Guitars tour in 1988, starring Alvin Lee, Leslie West, Steve Howe and the rest, Alvin says, "that was a load of fun...and, guitarists are renowned for not getting along! "There were ten lead guitarists on the bill, and it was great. Maybe it was the age we all were, but there seemed a lot more ego problems in the 1960's."

So, what were the egos like when Alvin jammed on stage with Jimi Hendrix one legendary night in New York?! "He was so far out that I never even tried to compete with him! He was too far out for me to even comprehend. Like he was on his own channel and everyone else was on theirs. And he was a larger than-life guy as well with that kind of aura about him. I think he once said he was from Mars," he laughs, "and I thought maybe he was. "He's left-handed so he couldn't play my guitar, so he took Leo's bass and played it upside-down. But he wasn't playing bass. He started playing lead bass and taking over. It was so incredible, we actually just stopped and let him carry on, and he kind of went off into outer space. He took a guitar and went twenty steps further than I've ever heard it go."

And, so to the new album. Were you worried about the original TYA feel living on after so long? "No. But, there was a danger sticking with the roots that it would sound old-fashioned. I think Terry Manning helped a lot. He encouraged us to keep it simple. And, as for the ZZ Top comparisons: " A compliment indeed! I thought 'Eliminator' was a great album. In fact when I first heard "Gimme All Your Lovin" I was upset, because I thought, 'Why didn't I write that?" There's one track on our album called "Judgement Day" and the intro sounds just like ZZ, that Billy Gibbons guitar sound and the way he played it. I got to the end of the song and said to Terry , "That sounded like ZZ Top did it? You're going to get the blame for this as the producer!'."
Yeah. But, what the hell…