# New CD – 2024: Alvin Lee – Ten Years After – 1969 – Woodstock festival set – Videos, Photos

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2024/08/15/2024-alvin-lee-ten-years-after-1969-woodstock-festival-set-videos-photos/
- Published: 2024-08-15T00:04:37+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**Tonight at Max Yasgur’s farm, from out of the dark, smoldering landscape, hundreds
of thousands roared, clapped, screamed, yelled, and whistled their approval and 
gratitude.**

Alvin Lee and Ten Years After had played a stunning set and they loved it. Half 
a million were transformed from muddy misery and joined together to celebrate themselves,
a triumph, an enchanted generation whose legacy was no war memorial but a peace 
memorial, a beacon of hope.” Loraine Burgon, girlfriend of frontman Alvin Lee between
1963-1973, shares with us her track-by-track commentary of the set!

It has taken 55 years for an audio recording of the entire epic standalone performance
of Ten Years After at Woodstock to be released. Originally recorded on the evening
of 17th August 1969, the band’s live triumph is now preserved for posterity, newly
restored and featuring fresh mixes from the 2” multi track tapes.

The album is presented as a 2 x LP 180gm black or tie-dye colored vinyl in a gatefold
sleeve and a one-disc Digisleeve CD package. This eagerly anticipated release on
16th August marks a memorable and historic moment in blues and rock music. Extensive
informative liner notes by legendary England music journalist Chris Welch add context
and gravitas to the mix.

The 1969 New York festival was billed as “Three Days of Peace And Music” but it 
would subsequently take on a much greater significance by becoming a defining symbol
of the baby boomer generation. Woodstock is universally regarded as the most important
rock concert ever held, representing the so-called 1960s hippie counterculture of“
sex, drugs and rock and roll.”

Young people wanted a life that was very different to that of their parents and 
they were prepared to protest against inequality and conflicts such as Vietnam and
to support civil rights movements. Woodstock became the catalyst for escapism into
music and provided the opportunity to spread the message of unity, love and peace.

Welch sets the scene: “It was 8.15 and the rain had stopped. Alvin Lee strode on
stage clutching his beloved ‘Big Red’ Gibson guitar and launched into a blistering
performance alongside his band mates that would go down in rock history. Overnight
Ten Years After became one of the biggest bands in the world and their ‘Woodstock
moment’ would catapult the band onto the world stage.”

What follows is 75 minutes of some of the most authentic British electric blues/
rock ever recorded live, now available at long last for the world to enjoy. It is,
therefore, appropriate that someone who was at Woodstock and witnessed the whole
spectacle should write this review. Loraine Burgon was the girlfriend of TYA frontman
Alvin Lee between 1963-1973. Loraine’s observations are from her groundbreaking 
memoirs of her life with Alvin, Magical Highs.

Alvin approached the microphone and in a short, friendly greeting complimented the
crowd for coping with the storm. They opened with Willie Dixon’s “Spoonful,” the
classic blues New Yorkers already knew and loved. This got the audience’s attention,
its classic seven-note riff already familiar. With blistering speed in the solos,
it was a useful warm-up exercise for Alvin after hours of standing around in the
cold and damp.

The audience was also warmed up. Alvin and Leo next launched into the opening bars
of “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl,” an intense riffing blues by Sonny Boy Williamson
they had made their own. The instrumental opening, a repeated tight four-bar riff
with the guitar and bass played in harmony, revealed they were badly out-of-tune.
In the damp air, the tuning of both guitar and bass had slipped.

They should have been checked before going on and were far too out-of-tune to continue,
so the band had to stop. Alvin apologized briefly to the crowd who seemed quite 
happy. Many were New Yorkers who had already seen Alvin perform at the half dozen
Fillmore East gigs over the previous two years.

![](https://i0.wp.com/www.americanbluesscene.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/640px-
Alvin_Lee-e1425676477588.jpg?resize=640%2C360&ssl=1)

He and Leo went back to their amps either side of the drum riser. Alvin re-tuned
his guitar but Leo found himself in front of 500,000 people, out-of-tune and unable
to do anything about it. Alvin moved back center stage and again they let rip into“
Schoolgirl,” still out-of-tune with each other.

My God, what level of adrenaline was now surging through them. Unbelievably they
had to stop again and slip behind the Marshall stacks while Alvin tuned Leo’s bass
out of sight of a half-million stoned people. I remember it all so well because 
by this point my head was spinning. A problem like this had never happened before.

Alvin came back to the microphone, made an announcement that ended with him exclaiming,“
I wish I was dead!” and the two adrenalized guitarists tore back into “Good Morning
Little Schoolgirl.” The bizarre false starts added another layer of tension and 
as a result the music seemed even sweeter.

During “Schoolgirl” Alvin and Leo played head-to-head in solo, making it more like
a musical sparring match than a duet. The pent-up energy of the day and all the 
waiting around found its release at a locomotive pace. Leo, an extremely physical
bass player, thrashed his right hand and gyrated from the top of his head through
to his feet, as if assaulting his instrument would deliver more power to his playing.
Alvin spun lick upon lick of super speed webs of sound, he and his guitar somehow
merged. The guitar became an extension of his body through which his consciousness
was wailin’ and rockin’ effortlessly, directly communing with his muse.

As they were both right-handed players they were able to work face-to-face like 
this without collision, each pushing the other’s performance, sometimes barely inches
between their heads. Working hard, they began to sweat and in the chilling damp 
night air, steam rose from them like two horses galloping towards the finish line.
It was spellbinding, and if the wet crowd needed something to get up and boogie 
to, then Alvin, Leo, Ric and Chick gave them a musical rocket up their butts.

Towards the end of “Schoolgirl” Alvin broke a guitar string but on this stage at
this time there was no chance of changing it out front, so Ric’s energetic drum 
solo “The Hobbit” was added earlier than usual to give Alvin a chance to nip behind
the amps and replace the string.

“I Can’t Keep From Crying Sometimes,” the soulful blues written and first recorded
in 1928 by Blind Willie Johnson, came to Alvin’s attention on the Elektra compilation
What’s Shakin’, the only track from Al Kooper’s Blues Project. In Ten Years After’s
20-minute version, Alvin’s extended guitar solo had become one of his most creatively
structured showcases. It opens with light, jazz chord progressions, moving shapes
up and down the guitar neck, interjected with repetitive chord picking. Alvin’s 
vocals are soft, soulful and sweet, with heavier, angrier accents for lyrical emphasis,
the words minimal, repetitive. The verses give way to inventive jazzy guitar solos.

Particularly powerful was the de-tuning and re-tuning of the low E string, as the
high crescendo solo ends and the vocals return to complete their epic interpretation.
I had seen TYA play “I Can’t Keep From Crying Sometimes” many hundreds of times,
watching as it developed from a five-minute basic version into this superb 20-minute
classic. For me it was always exhilarating, totally engaging and transporting, physically
and emotionally, holding me in the present where nothing else existed at all. The
best recorded version I have come across is the full version live at the Isle of
Wight Festival of August 1970. I have never heard a more perfectly constructed guitar
solo. It is a pinnacle of its genre, true rock genius. If Beethoven – another Sagittarius–
had been an electric guitarist, he might have come up with this before Alvin.

“Help Me” by Willie Dixon and legendary Chess producer Ralph Bass was well known
as a blues classic from Sonny Boy Williamson’s rendition. I love this song. Alvin
was now center stage, playing a long wailing guitar solo, a stream of consciousness
vibe, building all the while into more repetitive, furiously fast guitar figures
dancing over the steady, sultry riff of the organ, bass and drums. Alvin would grab
a drumstick or the microphone stand to improvise a bottleneck, and slide up and 
down the neck of his guitar, the notes merging into a shredding, soaring crescendo.
At its climax Alvin was back at the microphone shouting the verse, insisting on 
his raunchy demands. “I don’t feel so sleepy, just feel like lying myself down.”

![](https://i0.wp.com/www.americanbluesscene.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/unnamed.
jpg?resize=640%2C541&ssl=1)

Then the volume drops right down again, with low slow insistence, menacing seduction:“
If you don’t help me baby, I gotta go out on the street and find someone else to
love.” Back up to high volume and the frantic desperate guitar, bass, organ, drums
thundering below the repeatedly screamed, ‘Help me…baby…. help me!’ In this number
Alvin and Ten Years After delivered themselves to the crowd with compelling contrasts
of light and dark, high and low volume.

“I’m Going Home… by helicopter,” was Alvin’s final introduction, announcing the 
encore that would become immortalized in Michael Wadleigh’s 1970 Woodstock movie,
but that was all to come. For me, “I’m Going Home” is the greatest, raunchiest love
song ever written. It’s a rock’n’roll love song, written by Alvin and a full-tilt
celebration of sensual expectation. Leo was told by soldiers that he met in US airports
returning from Vietnam that it was the song they played when they knew they were
coming home to their wives and girlfriends. Here at Woodstock it became Ten Year
After’s great boogie climax.

The intro features Alvin alone on guitar, a tight, six bars of runs and shapes, 
a high-key up-beat celebratory opening. Then the band and the vocals come in: “I’m
going home to see my baby,” the repeated refrain, the thrust of the lyric, the heart
of the song. This is pure rock’n’roll, with a solid driving uptempo rhythm designed
for swaying, sweating, stomping and clapping. Alvin’s rock’n’roll roots get an airing,
an aural montage of luminaries like Tommy Tucker, Duane Eddy, Bo Diddley, Chuck 
Berry, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis. “Dimples,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Mean Women
Blues,” “Whole Lotta Shakin’,” “Boom, Boom, Boom Boom.” This was Alvin returning
to his teens in Nottingham, when The Jaybirds were a cover band with a great repertoire
that got everyone up and dancing. To me this was the rock equivalent of action painting,
plucking riffs, lyrics, adding and mixing, creating a new masterpiece every night,
like Jackson Pollock dripping and splattering colours.

Eventually he takes down the volume to tease, holding everyone in the grip of his
lightning fingers. Leo slapping the bass, Ric’s minimal straight drum tempo, Chick
cheerleading, hand-clapping to bring the audience into the song, all support Alvin’s
moans, screams, and sultry vocals. I’m going hooooooome, baby, hoooome, child, home,
home, home.” Finally, and straight to the point, “Look out baby, I’m comin’ to get
you, one more time” and the whole band crashes back in at full-tilt volume. Alvin
was now the total rock’n’roller, riffing and hollering his heart out with Ric, Leo
and Chick driving the song along, giving every last drop of energy and adrenaline
they have left. Noisy, exuberant, relentless, a great rock‘n’roll finish, which 
always left the crowd hollering for more.

Tonight at Max Yasgur’s farm, from out of the dark, smoldering landscape, hundreds
of thousands roared, clapped, screamed, yelled, and whistled their approval and 
gratitude. Alvin Lee and Ten Years After had played a stunning set and they loved
it. Half a million were transformed from muddy misery and joined together to celebrate
themselves, a triumph, an enchanted generation whose legacy was no war memorial 
but a peace memorial, a beacon of hope. It was a perfect, magic night. As they finished
someone rolled a large green watermelon onto the stage. Alvin lifted it up onto 
his shoulder, a gift from the audience to the band.

Were we going home by helicopter? No, of course not. We were stranded for hours 
in the psychedelic fields before cars took us back to New York. I wandered with 
Alvin around the edges of the vast crowd and we joined small groups gathered ‘round
improvised bonfires. We found great warmth, friendliness and hospitality, a little
food, smiles, gentle conversation and cool congratulations. Overall the festival
was a simple sweet bliss of community and belonging, peace and love, and easy vibes.

Woodstock would remain the pinnacle of festivals because the states and towns of
America had seen what took place there and local laws were being passed to limit
the chances of it ever happening again. The hippies were now viewed as a political
threat to straight America, not merely colorful entertainment on the TV news.

**ALVIN LEE: Vocals, Guitar**

**LEO LYONS: Bass**

**RIC LEE: Drums**

**CHICK CHURCHILL: Organ, Piano**

![](https://i0.wp.com/www.americanbluesscene.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/tie-
dye-vinyl-3D-1024x682.jpg?resize=640%2C426&ssl=1)

### _Related_