Alvin Lee
Alvin Lee
Alvin Leewas an English singer and guitarist, best known as the lead vocalist and lead guitarist of the blues rock band Ten Years After...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth19 December 1944
crying few huge paid saw similar song
He saw us play a few times in fact. I did this song called I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes, and Jimi loved it. He paid me a huge compliment when he told me that he was thinking of doing something similar himself!
adopt attitudes freedom music musical
That's the kind of musical freedom I like: jazz, rock, blues, anything. You adopt different attitudes when you play different music.
berry chuck country listened playing roll
My all-time favorite rock and roll players were Scotty Moore, Chuck Berry and Franny Beecher, and I listened to the country playing of Merle Travis.
freedom means
It's always been something I've been searching for - freedom. It's a very relative thing. It means different things to different people.
clubs great kinda middle rock string
We used to play the underground clubs like the UFO, and Middle Earth, and they were great because they would have on things like a poet, string quartets, and then a rock band! It was kinda cool!
both gig peace
We also did something called the Texas Peace Festival, which was actually a better gig both musically, and in the way it was organised.
record time
I write and record all the time; it's my hobby and my passion.
club fast guitarist john london marquee peter preferred saw seen strangely subtle turn volume
Strangely enough, I wasn't into fast guitarists. I preferred Peter Green's subtle touch. I saw him with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers at the Marquee Club in London and was very impressed. He was the only guitarist I've ever seen to turn the volume control on his guitar down during a solo.
albert barney bill blues country favorite john lee liked listened muddy player ralph three
My favorite country blues player was Big Bill Broonzy. City blues was Freddie King, but I liked them all - Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Ralph Willis, Lonnie Johnson, Brownie McGhee and the three Kings, B.B., Albert and Freddie. Jazz-wise, I listened to Django, Barney Kessel and Wes Montgomery.
began compromise epitome five forced fun guitar music position rock roll six worked
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.
came people ten until
It wasn't until the movie came out that it all changed for us. Some people say it was the start of Ten Years After, but in another way, it was the beginning of the end.
couple encourage healthy hear heard music radio recycling strongly time unless
I strongly encourage listening to the radio to hear something you haven't heard before. It's a very healthy thing to do. It's strange: unless you reload your iPods every couple of weeks, you're listening to and recycling the same music all of the time. I'm serious. Listen to your radio station.
change
Back in those days we thought we could change the world.