New Musical Express,
March 13,1971
Richard Green Flew To
Germany To Discover That Following Lay-Off
Ten
Years After Much Better:
A Voluntary lay off for a
quarter of a year has not done Ten Years After the
slightest bit of harm. If the three concerts of theirs
I witnessed at the weekend---one in Munich, two in
Dusseldorf--are anything to go by, the group is even
better than before, and they were good then...
Since a date in America in
mid-December, each member of the band has been "own
thinging" everywhere but on stage. The official
statement was that the group wanted to re-think its
policy and get a new act together. I was soon to find
that this just isn't true. After a tedious flight from
London where, having boarded the Lufthansa jet, all
the passengers then had to get off and be searched
because of a bomb scare, I was more than pleased to be
met at the airport by two models who drove me to the
hotel.
Alvin Lee was sitting in
the bar with manager Chris Wright and Leo Lyons.
"I hope you haven't come here expecting to hear
our new bag" he commented. "We were
misquoted, we didn't have the three months off to do a
new thing, I spent it getting everything that went on
before out of my head, I don't know what difference
you'll notice. " We can hear each other more now,
before we'd play our hits and then think 'right he's
going to play such and such now.' It got very
automatic, there was no spontaneity any more".
The concert was to have
begun in a Munich circus hall at 11:00 pm but at
quarter to twelve, Chris announced: "Someone's
stolen the stage!" It transpired that a famous 95
year-old clown had been appearing earlier that evening
and the hall staff wanted half a day to erect a stage,
but there was no time. Mick Abrahams group, Wommit,
wouldn't go on as "things are getting hairy down
there," so we drove through the snow-laden
streets to see for ourselves.
There were bad scenes at
the hall, with a massive crowd getting very uptight at
having been kept waiting for three hours.The group
decided to go on anyway. It says much for their appeal
that with the first chords of "Love Like A
Man" all was well.
Later on Ric Lee played
his amazing drum solo on "Hobbit" and
brought forth cheers from the formerly antagonistic
audience. By the next number, which included one of
Alvin's solos, the kids were on their feet cheering
and clapping for more and at the end of the number
there was an uprising of joy. Alvin went into
"I'm Going Home," with its rock and roll
snatches, and that did the trick, the battle was won!
Plans to go clubbing were
abandoned as the time was well after four in the
morning by the end of the act. On the way back through
the near-deserted streets to the hotel, Leo told
me: "We had to go on down there, even if it was
only to go on and talk to them to let them know we
were there. "You have certain responsibilities to
be aware of....if we hadn't gone on, people would have
been hurt on a riot.It's always better to go on, no
matter how late. Most of them seemed to think it was
our fault they had to wait three hours, there was no
one to explain to them."
We flew to Dusseldorf on
Saturday morning and found the Inter-continental Hotel
was all we had hoped for--splended opulence, good
food, comfortable rooms and friendly staff. In fact
several of the staff attended the concerts later and
were very complimentary the next morning.
The Dusseldorf dressing
room was as grand as the Munich one had been miniscule.
Suddenly the air was rent with the yell "Silence"
stopping the incessant chatter. This, it seems is
standard procedure when Alvin tunes up, because he
does so by listening acoustically to Leo's bass
through the end of the neck. Fifteen minutes to go
before the start of the show there was still no sign
of Wommit who,because of Mick's anti-flying phobia,
drive everywhere. They never got to Dusseldorf.
Ten Years Afterwent on early, Ric playing with
protective finger-stall since he had a wart removed.
His wife sat by the sound mixer, clapping each number.
As Ric went into "Hobbit" again Chick picked
up his drink and went to sit at the back of the huge
stage, his feet resting on a trunk.
"Coming On" was
followed by "Claptrap." during which Alvin
and Chick Churchill play conga drums, it's a new
number with loads of oomph
and went down extremely
well.
Alvin's announcement,
"this is I'm Going Home" was the signal for
everyone to stand up and stamp, a few getting on to
the stage. At this point the house lights went on and
remained glaring until the start of the next show.
There were the inevitable demon bootleggers with their
tape recorders and mikes on make-shift booms in the
sixth and seventh rows, and the equally inevitable
encore of "Sweet Little Sixteen" which
rocked in true fifties style.
Back in the dressing room.
I complimented drummer Ric on his solo and he replied:
"I don't like making solos too long, they get
boring unless you're Buddy Rich and I'm not! That's
why I don't like Ginger Baker, his solos are always
too long, they go on and on. "I liked it out
there tonight though, sometimes you can just go on and
play, tonight the spark was there".
Some bright idiot decided
to lead a communal singing of "Robin
Hood" because of my name being the same as the
film actor's, then Roadie John announced "I've
got five birds outside, can I bring them in? Not to be
outdone, Roadie Jack proclaimed: "I've got a
crate of beer here if anyone wants any."
While Chick, who had
blisters on his hands through not playing for so long
taped up his thumb, Leo spoke about the break in their
activities, "I live in the country I've got
horses so there was plenty for me to do," Leo
revealed, "I've spent a lot of time thinking
about what the group would like to do, whether to go
out doing a lot of concerts and taking the money or
record more, or what. "You start playing because
you enjoy it and don't give a darn about the audience
and after a time it becomes so you get your enjoyment
from your audience, it's like putting the cart before
the horse. Now it's getting back to the way it used to
be....We've gone way beyond what we ever hoped for, we
never thought we'd be this big, we thought we'd get
gigs and enough bread to pay the bills, after a time
you find yourself consciously trying to live up to
your reputation." About recording Leo says:
" We spend three weeks on an album and that's it,
it's over and done with" he confessed, "some
groups, even new ones take months over it, I think we
ought to take more time out for recording, we've done
six albums and about sixty thousand gigs, the trouble
is we're lazy......He didn't get a chance to finish as
Alvin yelled good naturedly across the room "who's
lazy? I'm not lazy."
Chick crept off to bed and
left the rest of us to find Lovers Club on our own.
Before the group drove off
to Frankfurt the following afternoon, we gathered in
the restaurant to catch up on the football results and
discuss of all things the Industrial Relations Bill
with which Chick is in full agreement. When the coach
arrived to cart them away, they finished their
orange juices and shook hands with me. "Try to
make it to Rome at the end of the tour, we'll need
someone to keep the lions at bay," cracked Chick
as he drove off
Alvin who is now sporting a
beard.
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TEN
YEARS AFTER
in
Düsseldorf, Germany
5.3.1972
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Photos
taken
by
Hans
Hübner
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TEN
YEARS AFTER in Düsseldorf Germany 1972
From Disc Magazine 9/23/72
DÜSSELDORF:
Day two in Ten Years After’s German tour. Having
flown in from Bremen, driven from the airport to
hotel; to backstage the long wait continues to get
onstage, and actually fulfil the purpose of the
whole exercise.
Until
you go on tour the word “wait” doesn’t
really mean too much-on the road it takes on a
whole new significance. You wait in airport
lounges, outside airports for the coach, in hotel
lobbies, in draughty backstage corridors or
backstage in a world of wires and harassed roadies.
Then after the gig you wait and wait until the
crowds clear and the band can escape safely.
The
arrival at the Essen gig from Düsseldorf was
nothing short of spectacular when the bus bearing
us all swished in to the stage door, all lights
blazing so that every kid outside the building
swarmed round leaving you to swim for your life
through a sea of people. But Ten Years After are
seasoned tourers and nothing seems to worry them;
after fifteen tours of America and still sane they
obviously can’t allow anything to.
We
arrive at the Essen Grugahalle as the band Stray
reach the end of a good set ( they’re on tour
with TYA). The bands five tons of equipment has
mostly been set up by their small army of roadies
who dance by the side of the stage at their more
ecstatic moments. The band is fairly wary of Essen
– last time they played there, a crowd of 3,000
outside the building, broke in through the windows
to see the gig for free and TYA had to foot the
glass bill. Already one of the crowd outside has
broken a window, but rumour has it he was
apprehended shortly after the heinous offence.
Part
one of the long dressing room vigil begins,
sitting around in a monastic cell of a room on
hard plastic chairs drinking beer and coke. Down
below the window, a
rousing sing-song is in progress by those
who refuse to pay to get in.
The
German audiences are currently on a big free gig
kick, and although the promoter lowered his
original ten marks a head to ten marks per couple
to entice the final few in, they remained
adamantly singing in perverse two part harmony
down below, handing out showers of Jesus Freaks
literature.
Back
in the dressing room Ric Lee—who by any normal
human standards should be throwing up his
phenomenally large supper, is reminiscing about
the two gigs the band did a great many years back
when Ric tied sparklers to his drumsticks and
Alvin played his guitar with one when the lights
were down. Although it was very effective in
practice, they couldn’t get them lit on the
night and were left to play in total darkness.
Alvin
is expecting Steve Ellis and American singer Mylon,
to join the tour tomorrow. He, Leo and Ian Wallace
have all been doing sessions with Mylon at Roger
Daltrey’s home
studio and hope to release the results as an album
sometime.
Ten
Years After’s next album is just out called
“Rock and Roll Music to the World.” It is
their first in almost a year and some tracks are
from their experimenting in the South of France
with the Rolling Stones mobile unit in February.
“We hired a house just to see if it would be
different from going to the studios everyday in
London. “This new album is more of a rock album
than any of the others, and we’ve tried to get a
much more live sound. It’s worried us in the
past that the albums have been very different from
the stage act and it’s taken us a long time to
work out why. “We used to use the stage
equipment in the studio but we found it was so
loud we had to turn it down so it wasn’t making
any distinction, it was too clean and clinical.
The secret is to have much smaller equipment
turned up full.
“The
last album was more songs and melodies. That was
because before that it was the Woodstock aftermath
that featured on “Going Home” and we thought
we’d get away from that for awhile just to show
we could play other stuff because a lot of people
just picked up on Woodstock. So we did a
structured album to show there was another side of
us and now we thought we’d go back to rock again.”
Recently
TYA came round to thinking they might do a single,
because the singles market seemed so much less
“poppy” than it used to, but when their record
company told them it had to be two minutes long,
Alvin told them to forget it. Another reason they
had steered clear of singles was that they were
frightened of a flash in the pan , non lasting
success. “The only time concerts are threatened
is when you get a hit record or are in a film or
you become the darling of the “Daily Mirror.”
I think Marc Bolan and David Bowie will realise it
sooner or later.
The
band do their 16th tour of America
shortly. They are still a dazzling success out
there and don’t seem to diminish at all. Even to the extent that Alvin was offered $3,000 to do a
toothpaste ad the last time he was there. The
offer he said was tempting, but the thought of
getting off the plane to be confronted by his own
giant image wasn’t.
The whole group has also been offered a
variety of awful film roles, one of the themes was
of an English rock band going to America in search
of Robert Johnson, getting busted and sent to jail.
Alvin is freed by a beautiful girl in a white
Cadillac, and when they turned down the script,
the guy re-wrote it and returned it nine months
later. “We’d do it if something good turned
up, but I’m still involved with making my own
movies and want to do one about my own environment.”
Meanwhile
back in the dressing room the roadies have finally
finished setting up and it is time to go on. Stray
had a bit of electrical trouble with their set,
and when TYA get on Alvin’s mike fails within
seconds. The audience still annoyed from waiting
an hour between groups, starts whistling and
shouting. More trouble as the lights fuse (dim)
the mikes and the circuit is clearly under
pressure. They do a quick “jam” to drown some
of the noise. Finally after shouting at the lights
people and a worried German called Manfred Lurch (who
had previously confided in the dressing room that
he saw falling trees and white rabbits dancing in
the road when ever he was tired ), the show got
underway.
The
band played a mixture of old things, stuff from
the new album, an Al Kooper number and ended with
Rock-n-Roll encores. As a band they’re playing
well together, these days better than when I last
saw them. The
empathy between Alvin, Ric and Leo nowadays seems
to be amazing especially with Alvin and Leo.
Unfortunately the organ just doesn’t feature
dominantly enough in most of the numbers and seems
rather superfluous. When Chick does do a more
featured solo such as “Standing At The
Station” he’s really good. Ric Lee’s drum
solo was a little too prolonged , especially with
the audience in its edgy mood.
But
honours have to go to Alvin and Leo for their
lovely intertwined
guitar work. Alvin’s crystal clear style
is still good although he does tend to shape each
number rather the same---soft start, crescendo,
climax, end. A heavy number
alternated with a lighter thing would
perhaps be a better substitute. Leo is getting
better and better as an inventive bass player.
By
the end of the show the audience is frenzied and
scaling the enormous crash barrier, there are
about three or four thousand in the hall. Someone
about three rows back has an arm in plaster but
nonetheless waves it ceaselessly. There are two
encores.
Then
another endless wait in the dressing-cell for the
crowds to disperse so we can escape to the hotel.
Then another wait at the hotel for food at 3 am
and the thought that the whole process is repeated
tomorrow and the next day and the next day…….
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