Profile/Copyright © 1971, 2006 by Jim O’Donnell
It’s exactly a year ago this summer that the Woodstock movie made a teen idol out of Ten Years After guitarist Alvin Lee.
You may recall that the blonde, 26-year-old Englishman flashed his guitar neck under the camera lights so fast, it looked like a re-take of the Wilkinson Sword Blade TV commercial.
He improvised an 11-minute rendition of “I’m Goin’ Home” with such blazing velocity in the mid-August heat that he all but turned the Woodstock stage into a working toaster. When the lights came back on after the movie version, you expected the screen to look like burnt bread.
It was a supernova act, to be sure, so astounding a display that the guitarist managed to more than hold his own in a film that included, among others, Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townshend.
But what all that speed-fingering guitar-lashing on a movie screen did to Lee’s reputation was to recast him from a musician to a superhero.
Instead of being known by a considerable following as a free-form, hot-cooking lead-guitarist, he’s now perceived by millions as a superstar—with all the overseeing, overbearing arrogance that word implies.
Images, of course, never have enough regard for facts. The fact of the matter is that Alvin Lee, person, bears no resemblance to Alvin Lee, idol.
I once handed him an advertisement from a rock newspaper and told him that maybe he should look into it. The ad said: “Learn to play GUITAR the Chet Atkins Way! Complete Course $2.98, postpaid.”
According to stereotype, he was supposed to respond to me like an affronted cobra. In reality, the soft-spoken Nottingham native just laughed.
This disparity between what a performer is really like and what people think he or she is like presents a serious problem for reporters.
If you write about the individual behind the image, you will usually produce a picture of a pleasant, polite person who happens to have this one particular talent. In other words, a boring picture.
The alternative is to find the one particular talent and dramatize it. In the case of Alvin Lee, the talent would be that he’s one of the fastest guitar players who ever lived and can boogie something fantastic all night long.
The dramatizing might be to say that he all but turned the Woodstock stage into a working toaster, that you expected the screen to look like burnt bread, etc.
Every once in a while, unfortunately, a writer might even take the ever-so-slight liberty of dramatizing the interview segment, too.
The writer takes what the human-being-musician said and changes it so that it sounds like a self-centered teen idol. That serves to make your copy (and your interview subject’s temper) hotter.
I’ll show you what I mean. Here are portions of an interview I did with Alvin Lee. My questions are in bold and they’re followed by Lee’s actual answers. Then, in parenthesis, is what he was supposed to say.
And didn’t.
A couple of details before you start. This talk took place on Monday, August 9, in New York City. On the Friday before, Ten Years After had come off a three-month rest with a show at Gaelic Park in the Bronx. Also, they had recently come out with their new album, A Space in Time.
Q. “How’d you feel about your show at Gaelic Park the other night?”
A. “We had a lot of rough spots because it was the first live gig we had done in about three months.” (“You mean you couldn’t see we were freaking great?! Where were you sitting, man, on a Piccadilly Circus roller coaster in England? I mean, those slobs were starving for some real talent. Obviously. They hadn’t had any for three months.”)
Q. “How come you took three months off from touring and recording?”
A. “We were turning into a performing jukebox, really. We didn’t have time to get into new stuff and we were just repeating ourselves. A lot of the solos, instead of being jams, they were getting to be the same every night.” (“Charisma! That’s why we hid away. Best thing in the world for charisma is a good shot of anonymity. You become more mythical by being less human, or less humanly available, anyway. Simple stuff, really. Never fails—especially with a charisma like mine.)”
Q. “Did you try to do anything special with this new album?”
A. “We spent a lot more time on details, quality and such. We took a lot more trouble. We’ve done seven albums. I don’t think we’ve ever reached what we’re trying to do, but I know we’re getting nearer.” (“Hey, man, can’t you dig what I been layin’ down here, or what? I’m on that album. That, right there, in and of itself, makes it ‘special.’ You dig? I’m special. Very special. Ten Years After is special.”)
Q. “How’d you feel about your part in the Woodstock movie?”
A. “It’s the old celluloid thing. As soon as you get into the movies, then something else happens. People freak out and think ‘Film stars!’ And it’s not really what we’re about at all.” (“Ah, Woodstock! Thought you’d never ask! Stole the show I did, no matter what they say about those cats Hendrix and Sly. Must say I felt right at home up there on that big screen. Of course, in my guitar close-ups they sort of double the film speed, but, you know, that’s old show biz, right?”)
|
Q. “When years ago you first started doing your own kind of music, as opposed to whatever was popular at the time, did you have much trouble staying original?”
A. “We didn’t have any conviction about it. We were floundering. We were playing and often did think, ‘Perhaps we’re barking up the wrong tree.’ We knew enough to know that we were into something valid, musically, but there just didn’t seem to be any way of finding the market for it at the time.” (“Naaaaah. We knew we had it in the bag from the word go. Our break was bound to come. So we dug it all—the bummers, the uncertainties, the starving because we knew we’d hit. Ain’t hard to see we were right, either. [Laughter])”
Q. “Do you practice much?”
A. “You can always play a bit.” (“Much! I practice day and night, night and day. You heard about guys who didn’t quit practicin’ till their fingers bled? Well, I don’t quit until the freaking guitar strings bleed!”)
Q. “What’s it like in the middle of a stage during a Ten Years After concert?”
A. “You’re not out there thinking how cool it is or how groovy or anything. You’re just out there working, really. That’s all I ever do.” (“Like, you’re the center of the universe, man, the most beautiful thing in creation. I mean, did you see that little schoolgirl down front the other night? Did you see how I blew her head off by scowling at her all night? Ha! Very spaced-out experience.”)
Q. “How about audience riots when you’re playing? How do you feel onstage during something like that?"
A. “It’s just a nasty position to be in and it makes me sick that I can get into that position.” (“I dunno. Anything for a headline, I always say.”)
Q. “Any plans for changing your show?”
A. “What we’re hoping to do now is to try and turn on the young people that want to come to our concerts to what we believe in—you know, listening and picking out the subtleties of free-form expression, et cetera, rather than just dropping downers, drinking wine, and freaking out to rock ‘n’ roll.” (“Yeah, I’m gonna practice me scowlin’ more. I want these quacks to know that I’m tough, man. And cool. They ain’t the only ones, you know, who dig dropping downers, drinking wine, and freaking out to rock ‘n’ roll.”)
Q. “Did you once say that you would like to get rid of that part of your white heritage that seems to inhibit you?”
A. “It definitely inhibits you by being white. I’m not so inhibited now. I’ve worked it out a bit.” (“Never in me life uttered anything of the sort. Why, if I’m whatcha call ‘inhibited,’ than James Brown is whatcha call a ‘wallflower freak’.”)
Q. “Do you think rock ‘n’ roll will last forever?”
A. “Rock ‘n’ roll is just a beat to the music. That can’t die because it’s always there. If you only tap your foot to it, that’s the relevance.” (“It’ll last as long as I’m around, I’ll tell you that much. There’s money to be made in this business, and as long as I’m gettin’ mine, there’s gonna be rock ‘n’ roll.”)
Q. “Did you join Elvis Presley’s fan club? [Laughter]”
A. “Yeah, I did do that.” (“Man, you got your stuff inside out so bad! He joined my fan club, just the other day it was. One of those fan magazine tearouts comes in from some Hollywood studio where I guess he was working or something. With the $2 fee. I ignored it, of course. Don’t have time for that sort of crap.”)
Q. “What kind of mail does Ten Years After get?”
A. “Oh, we get some incredible letters. There are the Japanese letters—the humble type of letters they write from Japan, like, ‘Will you grace us with your presence?’ Then you get the American ones saying, ‘Hi! I’m stoned on THC and I’m listening to your record. Far out.’ Ramble, ramble. And then you get the English ones saying, ‘I’m very interested in modern music and I’d like to know a, b, c, d . . .’ And they’ll have a list of questions.” (“Mail? You mean that fan club garbage? Like I said, couldn’t bother meself with it.”)
Q. “One last question. You always save your highest powered numbers for the end. How come?”
A. “It’s the ideal climax. You can’t have subtle sex without an orgasm at the end.” (“It’s the ideal climax. You can’t have subtle sex without an orgasm at the end.”)
***
CD: Ten Years After, Live at the Fillmore East. Capitol, 2001.
Book: Herb Staehr, Alvin Lee & Ten Years After. Free Street Press, 2001.
Websites: http://www.tenyearsafter.com
http://www.alvinlee.com http://www.tenyearsafterhistory.citymax.com http://www.tenyearsafterinterview.com
|
