ES-335 ‘Big RED’
1963/’64
Alvin buys a Gibson ES -335 from a Nottingham music store for £45, including a fitted case
1967
By this time, Alvin had started experimenting with an extra pickup between the two PAFs
1968
The first and most iconic‘ ban the bomb’ sticker appears on the guitar’ s upper bout
1969
On Sunday 17 August, Ten Years After appear at Woodstock, their set having been delayed for a few hours due to a torrential rain storm
March 1970
Alvin replaces Big Red’ s Big s by with a TP-6 tail piece
May 1970
The mo vie of Woodstock is released in the UK, catapulting Ten Years After to fame and Alvin to guitar superstar dom
1972/’73
Big Red’ s neck is damaged on stage and returned to Gibson who replace sit and lacquers over the guitar’s stickers
1986
After years of good service, the guitar is officially retired from active duty
inside the 335’s f-hole on the upper bout (which would have borne the original serial identification) has been painted over in black at some time in the past, presumably to make the f-holes appear darker. The other telltale sign, Gibson’s original factory build number, which would have been visible through the lower bout’s f-hole, has been similarly obscured.
The guitar has been extensively modded, with a single-coil pickup fixed in between the original PAFs.
“I’m a keen dabbler,” Alvin told us. “I’m always changing pickups and rewiring. The Gibson has the original 1958 PAF humbuckers with covers removed, and a Fender pickup in the middle to give a bit more top – it’s good for the studio.”
The Fender pickup has its own volume rotary that Alvin used like a blend control to add a little single-coil top-end to the humbuckers. Despite trying various other guitars during his career, it was clear that the 335 was a firm favourite.
“The 335 is still my main guitar,” he said. “I think it’s the size of the body; it fits me quite well. I love to play Strats, but I prefer to play them sitting down for some reason. I enjoy Les Pauls, but they feel too small and heavy. I’m just used to the 335.”
The guitar today is weathered from many years on the road and countless gigs before its semi-retirement in 1986 when Tokai made Alvin a replica (although Big Red’s last gig has been recorded as being in 1992). The main reason he stopped using it was simply because it became too valuable – the story goes that someone offered Alvin half a million for it at one point.
Further evidence of Alvin’s dabbling is shown by the removal of the 335’s Bigsby, which happened post-Woodstock, sometime in 1970. It’s been replaced with a TP-6 tailpiece with fine tuners. The theory here is that it was either a tuning issue with the Bigsby that prompted the change, or that it simply broke during one of Alvin’s more frenetic onstage workouts – he was renowned for throwing guitars around on stage, which, on one occasion, led to the replacement neck. But perhaps its most distinguishing features are the stickers on its body, some of which have been in place since Woodstock.
“They just got thrown on, actually. But when I broke the neck at The Marquee, owing to the ceiling being so low, I sent it back to Gibson for repair and when it was returned they had lacquered over all the stickers – so they couldn’t come off.”
Before the neck break, the 335’s original neck had a fretboard with dot inlays; the replacement has block inlays and the serial number tells us that it was manufactured between 1970 and ’72.
There’s no doubt that Big Red’s most credible claim to fame is that 11-minute
The main reason that Alvin Lee stopped using Big Red was simply because it became too valuable
“Ten Years After went from playing to three to five people to 20,000 and up to 60,000 people a night”
sequence from the Woodstock movie. Ten Years After’s appearance might have catapulted them to fame beyond their collective imagination, but, on the night, things didn’t go exactly to plan.
ThREE dayS of pEacE, lovE &… Rain
“Woodstock was a particularly good memory for me,” Alvin told us, back in 1987. “It needn’t have been, had it all gone to schedule, because we would have just flown in on the helicopter and then flown straight out again, but there was a thunderstorm just before we were due to go on stage, so we had three hours to wait. I walked around the audience and around the lake, really got into it all – fantastic. When the movie of Woodstock came out, Ten Years After really took off. It was our spot on the movie that accelerated the band up to the 20,000-seater gigs instead of the usual 5,000-seaters.”
TYA’s bass player, Leo Lyons, takes up the story: “Nobody expected there to be that many people there,” he says. “But doing the festival, it was pretty much like many of the others we’d done. 50,000, 20,000, 100,000… it all looks pretty much the same. That one stood out on the day because it had turned into a disaster, with the rainstorm and not catering for that many people. I feel very lucky that we were there, because 50 years on, people still ask about it.”
At the time, the band was on its third American tour, criss-crossing the States. They had played at the Newport Jazz Festival, sharing the bill with acts such as Jethro Tull and Led Zeppelin, and the night before their appearance at Woodstock, they were in St Louis, Missouri with Nina Simone and Dizzy Gillespie.
“Then, the next day, at four o’clock in the morning, we were up to catch a 6am flight to New York and everybody’s going, ‘Oh, God. What are we in for now?’” Leo remembers. “When we got to New York City and we were met by the guy that was looking after us in America, he said, ‘It’s a disaster. The roads are closed and the festival is, like, half
a million people.’ So we drove as far as we could and then from there, that’s where we took the helicopter.”
The band were originally scheduled to appear in the afternoon, but the infamous rainstorm, catalogued in the movie, delayed Ten Years After’s performance until dusk. “The stage was flooded,” Leo continues. “There were cables running all the way across the stage, nothing like you get on a festival now with health and safety factors taken into account. In between the cables was water, so Alvin said, ‘If one of us dies, we’re going to sell a hell of a lot of records…’ If that had happened it would have pipped Altamont as a disaster, I guess.”
AFTER THE STORM
The 38-CD limited-edition that documents every note recorded during Woodstock details TYA’s hour-long set in full. We ran through the setlist with Leo: they opened with Spoonful, followed by three takes of Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl.
“Because of the rain and the humidity, we had to keep stopping. They’ve put them all out, a historical rather than artistic rendition,” says Leo.
Next was Hobbit, basically a drum solo: “Now, you may say, ‘Why are you playing a drum solo on a festival?’ but Alvin broke a string and we needed time to tune up.”
I Can’t Keep From Cryin’ Sometimes followed, then it was Help Me and finally I’m Going Home, which Alvin famously introduced as, “I’m Going Home… by helicopter.” But as Leo Lyons ruefully observes: “He was totally wrong, because after dark the helicopter stopped running.”
The band were unaware at the time that they were making music history, so we were curious as to Leo’s lasting impressions of the band’s Woodstock experience.
“I spent most of the time in the back of U-Haul truck hiding from the rain. I mean, I intended to get something to eat, but just after I got to the festival, Pete Townshend came over to me and said, ‘Don’t eat anything or drink anything because there’s so much acid going around.’ So we were just sitting there waiting to go on, waiting for the rain to stop, like a lot of people. Although we were fortunate to be sheltering in the back of a truck, not sitting there in the mud like the rest of the 500,000 people.
“It changed the music business forever, because up until that point, you had your pop acts and then you had what were then called the ‘underground’ acts. There wasn’t much money to be made out of underground acts at the time, but once that whole thing happened, record companies jumped on it. I mean, Ten Years After, for example, went from playing to three to five people to 20,000 people regularly and up to 50,000, 60,000 people a night. So you can see how big an effect it had on Ten Years After and the music business in general.”