TEN YEARS AFTER

As part of the British Invasion of hard rock blues groups, they were near the top.

When British blues rockers Ten Years After flew in to the Woodstock Festival by private helicopter on August 16, 1969 they weren’t unduly impressed by the 500,000-strong crowd marinating beneath the Catskill Mountains. “It was just another day,” TYA’s then frontman Alvin Lee told Classic Rock in 2012. “We’d already played huge festivals , and once the crowd reaches a certain size it makes no difference – the horizon just goes back further.”

Even so, nerves began to fray backstage as Lee and bandmates Leo Lyons, Ric Lee (no relation) and Chick Churchill realised they may have to go on in the middle of a storm. Sensing their discomfort, others on the bill such as Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker and Country Joe McDonald tried to wind them up. “Everybody was saying: ‘Tough luck – looks like you’re going to be electrocuted,’” Lee recalled. With typical downbeat Nottingham wit, he replied: “Yeah. And think how many records we’ll sell if I die.”

As part of the British Invasion of hard rock blues groups, Ten Years After were somewhere near the top. And although history dictates that they were never considered as cool as Cream, the Jeff Beck Group or Led Zeppelin, Alvin’s monikers (Captain Speed Fingers, The Fastest Guitar In The West) guaranteed him kudos.

Along with Joe Cocker’s histrionic take on With A Little Help From My Friends and Country Joe & The Fish’s anti-war singalong The “Fish” Cheer/I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag, Ten Years After’s frantic boogie through I’m Goin’ Home was one of the Woodstock Festival’s most iconic musical moments. When the film of the festival came out a year later, their showstopper catapulted the British blues band to instant mega-stardom in the US, even though the studio version had flopped when released as a single from the excellent Undead live album.

A year earlier, TYA were playing that number in little clubs like Klooks Kleek in West London. Now, Michael Wadleigh’s film (edited by Martin Scorsese) had their mugs on cinema screens worldwide, performing a boogie blues that rehashed every cliché in the book. It was a great time to be British in America. “There was competition because of Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, but there was room for everyone. It felt like we were taking over,” Lee recalled.

Ten Years After had been in the vanguard of the second (heavier) invasion of the US by British groups, touring relentlessly and rapidly reaching top-ofthe-bill status. “We had this thing – and looking back I’m a bit ashamed of it now – that we had to sting any band that went on after us,” Alvin recalled. “We used to go out of our way to blow them off and make them look bad.”

Although Ten Years After’s fortunes faded over the years, they deserve their place at the British Blues Explosion’s top table.

Killer Track: I’m Goin’ Home