A Conversation with Alvin Lee – HuffPost 9.13.12
Mike Ragogna: Hello Mr. Alvin Lee, guitar god from Ten Years After and your own solo career. You’ve got a new album, Still On the Road to Freedom, the title being a play off of one of your classic albums. But first, how’re you?
Alvin Lee: I’m fine. How are you?
MR: Dandy. And no, you’re not part of Canned Heat. (laughs)
AL: No, but that’s okay, they’re a great band. We used to play with them in the early sixties in Golden Gate Park, and they came to England and they were good buddies of mine.
MR: Right. Remember any of those old shows?
AL: I can remember Golden Gate Park because it was a free concert. It was really cool in the height of the sixties and all that. I went back to The Bear’s house one time and he had this great collection of ’78 records and we spent the whole evening listening to the John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, and Big Bill Broonzy and the likes. I really got along well with those guys. I stayed in touch with Fito the drummer. He is one of the best shuffle drummers in the business.
MR: Alvin, who are some of your heroes, the people who inspired you?
AL: I was really lucky, my dad was an early inspiration. He was an avid music collector of ethnic music. He had things like an album called Murderous Home, which was prison work songs. He also brought Bill Broonzy back to the house one time after he played a gig in Nottingham. Big Bill was a big influence on me. Once when I was 12 years old, I sold my clarinet and bought a guitar the next day. Big Bill, Ralph Lewis, Lonnie Johnson, Ledbelly, Muddy Waters, Brownie McGhee, Freddy King…I liked all those guys. I also liked the jazz side of Johnny Christian, Wes Montgomery, Barney Kessel, Django (Reinhardt). And, of course, rock ‘n’ roll. Scotty Moore is my big favorite. Chuck Berry. Also, a bit of country I used to listen to like Chet Atkins and Merle Travis. They were all influences. There are probably a lot of others, really. I’ve played a little classical, too. Segovia, as well. All around influences.
MR: When you’re playing live or recording new projects, do you ever find yourself whipping out a classical guitar or doing more jazz?
AL: I do little vignettes of it between the numbers. I play a little bit of “Cry Me A River” and country ho-down thing, like a Merle Travis kind of thing. I just kind of throw those in for fun. I don’t actually do any jazz songs as such in the sense that I keep nodding my head and playing intro bits like that. (laughs)
MR: Let’s talk about the new album, Still on the Road to Freedom. In order to have context, is it best to talk a tiny bit about the original, On the Road to Freedom?
AL: It’s not as much a sequel. It’s a new album. The word “freedom” came out of the one song. I wrote that one song, “Still on the Road to Freedom,” so that became the theme for the album, and then I thought it would be cool to have a cover that looks a bit like the original and let people know I’m still on the road to freedom. It’s always been something I’ve been searching for–freedom. It’s a very relative thing. It means different things to different people. Musical freedom has always been very strong for me, something to strive for, to be able to play the music you enjoy playing rather than playing music that other people want to hear, which I find rather shallow and unrewarding. So I make albums I like and I put them out and hope other people like them and that’s a kind of freedom in itself.
MR: Given you’re talking to me at KRUU, the Midwest’s only solar-powered radio station–had to throw that in–I especially like “Listen to Your Radio Station.” (laughs)
AL: Thought you might like that one. “It’s the coolest music across the nation, all good stuff and all for free, it must be cool if they’re playing me.” It’s something I have a feeling on. These days, lots of people have iPods and tend to be listening to their favorite music but it’s the same music over and over again. 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. One thing that does annoy me with radio stations, I hear something and think, “Oh this is good, who is this?” And I wait for the end of the record, they give the station ID and the time. I know that, but they don’t tell me who the artist is. I find that quite annoying.
MR: At our radio station, we do announce, plus you can see all of the titles online.
AL: God bless the digital age. Must be a cool radio station.
MR: Indeed, sir! Let’s get the story on “Song of the Red Rock Mountain,” like what inspired you to write it?
AL: I’m actually getting good feedback on that one. It’s off the wall. It’s not rock ‘n’ roll by any means; it has a Spanish flavor. Strangely enough, I was sitting in the studio waiting for my tech to come and I had to sort out some wiring or something, so I thought to test this new microphone. I stuck the microphone up, picked up my Martin guitar and, basically, it practically came out instantly. I got that little rhythm going and the very simple tune. “That was quite nice,” I thought. Then I thought maybe I’d go back to it and try to do it properly. I went back to it about twenty times and it never got better than that first time. It’s one of those magic moments.
MR: Where does your creativity come from?
AL: I don’t know. That’s the beauty of creativity. It comes from the ether. I like to think, sometimes, it’s like I haven’t written it, it’s more like I just reached up and grabbed it from somewhere. That song, “Song of the Red Rock Mountain,” is one of them. I recorded it and thought, “Where did that come from?”
MR: And there’s “Back in ’69.”
AL: “Back in ’69” was kind of a Bo Diddley rhythm I had that worked out with the band as a backing track. I wasn’t happy with the words, they were too ordinary. It was like, “My baby been done left me and left me waiting at the station.” So I looked through my book of poems and that actually was a poem I wrote just to fit the song perfectly, back in ’69.
MR: Now for those Ten Years After stories.
AL: It was great. The sixties were a great period. I love the early days of Ten Years After playing around the clubs in London. I remember we first came to America, it was about 1968. We visited Haight-Ashbury and everywhere. I was actually really into America. I loved James Dean and American cars and American music, so I was really thrilled to get there. Great memories up until, strangely enough… A lot of people say the Woodstock movie made Ten Years After. But actually, it was the beginning of the end for me because we stopped playing clubs like The Fillmore East and The Fillmore West, The Grande Ballroom and The Boston Tea Party, those really cool, kind of rock ‘n’ roll gigs with two or three-thousand people. After the movie came out–not after the concert but after the movie came out–suddenly, we were catapulted to Madison Square Garden, Sam Houston Coliseum and hockey arenas, the worst places to play in the world. They were just dreadful places to play. The fun came out of it for me there, and I realized I didn’t want to be a rock star, I wanted to be a working musician. So that’s one of the roads to freedom I took right there and then.
MR: Nicely said.
AL: At first, it was great. The band went for eight years, and it was a great band and I really enjoyed it. But there comes a time to move on and do other things.
MR: One other part of your history is that you were in The Jaybirds, of course. The Jaybirds were in that same circuit The Beatles were in.
AL: We played The Star Club in Hamburg. That was quite a trip. I just turned 17 years old and found myself in the land of sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, prostitutes, and gangsters. It was a crash course in rock ‘n’ roll, I’ll tell ya.
MR: Has much changed since then?
AL: In Hamburg? Well, a lot actually. They have different prostitutes and gangsters, but they’re all still there.
MR: Let’s get back to your solo career. You’ve had a few solo albums and some wonderful guests on those projects such as George Harrison. You guys were pals?
AL: Yes, George was a good friend. I was a very lucky guy. I knew him and I used to hang out with George quite a lot. We were very good after hours friends, you know. He would make serious music and I’d make serious music and when all those guys had gone home, we’d get together and just have fun playing nonsense and playing whatever we felt like. He had his studio all set up with all of this amazing gear and equipment. We’d go in and try to get it working and have a lot of fun. (laughs) George was a musician; he liked to play, just like anybody. So one time, I asked, “Any chance of a slide guitar on this song?” He said, “I’ll be right over.”
MR: Nice.
AL: Good man.
MR: One of your more beloved tracks is “The Bluest Blues,” that a popular reviewer called, “The most perfect blues song ever recorded.”
AL: That’s very nice. I kind of think B.B. King’s “The Thrill is Gone” is a little ahead of that, but I appreciate the gesture.
MR: There’s your project Alvin Lee in Tennessee from back in 2004. How did it come about?
AL: Scotty Moore and D.J. Fontana came out over to England. They were playing a launching of an album gig at Air Studios in London. They invited me to come down and have a jam, and I wasn’t going to miss that one because Scotty is the boy for me. I got up there, I did a rock ‘n’ roll medley, “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Rip it Up” and “Hound Dog.” It was just great. What particularly thilled me was D.J. Fontana playing behind me. I turned around and I said, “Let’s start with ‘Rip It Up,'” and they all sat there. And I said, “C’mon, ch-ch-ch-ch-ch…” D.J. said, “Oh, yeah!” and he started playing that intro. That’s because D.J. started it! It was great just hearing that music, those drum fills and those rhythms that I cut my teeth on all those years ago, and there I was playing with these guys. Afterwards, I said, “Any chance to get you guys in a studio to make an album together?” They said, “Yeah, love to.” So I shot off and started writing songs for that project.
MR: I think I have a sense of what the word “freedom” means to you. It’s the freedom to express yourself creatively, isn’t it.
AL: That’s right. Yes, that pretty much pours it in the bucket.
MR: Alvin, what information or advice might you have for new artists?
AL: New artists? Actually, these days, my advice is to throw away your PlayStation and pick up an instrument. I’m a bit of a PlayStation junkie myself, but had I had a PlayStation or a computer as a teenager, I probably would have never played guitar. If you put the time into playing an instrument that you put into playing on your PlayStation, you could be playing in a band within a year, and that, it seems to me, is a much better way to go.
MR: That’s wonderful advice. The same might be applied to spending time on Facebook?
AL: Yes, absolutely. And surfing the old net and all that. There are many things like that these days. I was lucky when I was younger. There were only records, that was it. Records and films were the only thing. Records were so big. You’d buy a record, you’d go home, you’d treasure it and play it again and again. It’s kind of a bit sad these days that it’s almost like a disposable thing. My advice is lock up your PlayStation and pick up your guitar.
MR: People seem to be moving from thing to thing so quickly, maybe searching for that instant gratification.
AL: Yeah, it’s getting faster and faster, isn’t it?
MR: Yeah, no savoring. Some last words on your new album. It basically was recorded with Pete Pritchard and Richard Newman.
AL: Yes, and I have Tim Hinkley on keyboards. He’s been with me for many years. He was on the original On Road to Freedom album and with me on my second In Flight album. He is one of my favorite keyboard players. He’s in Nashville now. He came over from Nashville to play on the album, which was pretty cool.
MR: The way you recorded Still on the Road to Freedom, was it you all playing together with just a little overdubbing later?
AL: Some of it was that. Some of it was just me and Richard on the drums. On some of the songs, I find it great just to play with the drummer because then you can change the chords as you go. You can stick in a chorus when you feel one is due and stuff like that. So I did quite a lot, just about half, with just the drums and me, and had Pete put the bass in afterwards. But some of the more rock-y ones, they were pretty much live.
MR: You’ll be touring, right?
AL: Yep. Hopefully. I’ll play anywhere that will have me. I won’t be doing any 10-week tours these days. I love to play, but I’m just not into that mad kind of traveling anymore. I’ve done a few million miles already.
MR: Alvin, you are a guitar hero to many, many people. Are you aware of that?
AL: Well, kind of. I don’t necessarily believe it. I’ve got my heroes and other people have their heroes. I consider myself a pretty cool guitarist but not really anything especially brilliant. But that’s not for me to say. If other people like it, that’s great, and I thank them very much.
MR: Beautifully said. Alvin, thank you so much for the time, this was special.
AL: Thank you very much, Mike, I enjoyed it. Keep on pumping those watts.
Transcribed by Brian O’Neal