The Isle of Wight Festival, created in 1968, reached its peak in 1970, when nearly 600,000 spectators gathered on this piece of land in the south of the United Kingdom. Fifty years later, Europe 1 looks back on the various concerts given for what was, one year after Woodstock, one of the last great hippie meetings. This Tuesday, the Ten Years After at the height of their glory.
A concert that electrifies the crowd
In 1970, the Ten Years After were phenomenal musicians celebrated around the world since their appearance at Woodstock a year earlier. Because that night, after a storm, it was cold, the spectators were transfixed. That changes when these four Englishmen appear as shaggy as they are wild. A powerhouse in each hand and ten minutes of furious boogie in the form of a tribute to the pioneers of blues and rock.
With the song I'm Going Home , the group will gain its place in extenso in the film-event of the festival. It changes the careers and lives of these guys from Nottingham forever. "This is the moment when we saw 14-year-old girls show up at our concerts with ice cream cones," their prodigy guitarist named Alvin Lee later amused. "I'll always wonder what would have happened to us if we hadn't been in the Woodstock movie," he would repeat often.
Thus, on Sunday August 30, 1970, Ten Years After reissues its breathtaking performance of Woodstock on the Isle of Wight, in particular with an old song, which dates from 1928, by bluesman Blind Willie Johnson, which was included in their first album: I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes.
Timid beginnings ...
A bit like the Who, Alvin Lee and his partners complete their triumph on their land, where it all began four years earlier, in 1966, when the group was formed. Ten Years After, a funny name in homage to Elvis Presley, idol of the guitarist, who had pierced ten years earlier, in 1956. We are then very far from the heavy blues or hard rock which will make the success of the quartet. With a repertoire of covers of standards, Ten Years After has been spanning bars and small concert halls in England and Germany for years under the Jaybirds name.
As early as 1962, we find him in the murky clubs of Hamburg to run the seal, just a few days after the return to the country of a then unknown group named The Beatles. The living conditions are degrading. Their neighbors are prostitutes, pimps or dealers, but at this harsh school, at the rate of several concerts a day, they will gain a cohesion and a virtuosity which will quickly amaze the followers. Ten Years After released their debut album in 1967: a fairly academic, jazz-tinged blues record that suffers when compared to the psychedelic explosion of the time, led by the Beatles ' Sergeant Pepper's .
... before the explosion on stage
It is on stage that the quartet will make the difference, from its first tour in the United States. Bill Graham, the legendary boss of the Fillmore, concert halls dedicated to rock, is looking for English groups to take over from Cream or Jimi Hendrix. Ten Years After is hired for a month and a half. Alvin Lee is revealed to be an awesome guitarist and showman alongside literally possessed bassist Leo Lyons who mistreats his strings while playing the dervishes. Behind, Ric Lee the drummer and Chuck Churchill the organist try to keep this drunken boat afloat. The public plebiscite these unknowns.
Much to Alvin Lee's surprise, “most Americans don't know anything about the blues.” We're taken for revolutionaries when we're just English people recycling their own heritage. ”Over the months, the records s 'followed, the sound becomes more radical, the success grows, until the planetary explosion of Woodstock. We must now capitalize and quickly. The album Cricklewood Green arrives in the spring of 1970. It is placed 4th in England, the best ranking of the group and him his biggest hit, Love Like a Man.
Alvin Lee, a star too bright ...
Much to the bitterness of the other members of the group, Alvin Lee draws all the lights on him, and the record company fully assumes it: she holds "her" star and does not want to let go. With his grumpy teenage face, Alvin Lee composes all the songs of the group. He is also the singer, but it is above all the "guitar hero", as they say at the time, who electrifies the crowds.
We then look for who Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck or Pete Townsend is the best guitarist. The Ten Years After soloist is clearly in the competition. He is given several nicknames: Captain Speedfingers in the USA, the fastest guitarist in the world in France. A double-edged sword for this introverted musician who will gradually withdraw into himself.
… Victim of his own success
In the midst of a whirlwind of glory, concerts and parties, Alvin Lee now goes up on stage with a ball in his stomach. He hates the gigantic rooms in which he must now perform. He no longer sees the public, just the zealous security services and barriers. He also has the feeling of having become a beast. "Even when I do anything with the guitar, they cheer me on," he laments.
Under these conditions, the end of the group is near. Alvin Lee hides behind the permanent marijuana smoke that now accompanies him. The other musicians hardly speak to him anymore. Fortunately, there is still the studio, where the guitarist has the feeling of being able to produce something other than the virtuoso number of the six-string that is claimed from him every evening. The albums that follow are inevitably more diluted, more experimental, but they still contain a few gems for lovers of the genre, like Convention Prevention , from Rock and Roll Music To the World , released in 1972.
The spirit of the group has flown
The swansong will take place two years later, with a final album, the badly named Positive Vibrations which is undoubtedly the least inspired of the group. Ten Years After will go their separate ways soon after. Alvin Lee already had his head elsewhere: a solo album and a duet with a gospel singer. He is then too happy to let go of the limelight to become a musician above all again and no longer be reduced to the speed of his solos.
Alvin Lee will remain torn between the recognition of a fervent public and the weariness of the clichés that he has dragged around all his life like balls. Not to mention the reformations of Ten Years After with or without him, which is still a shame. Alvin Lee died in 2013. The other three musicians are still alive and perform under the same name with a young guitarist. Their concert list extends until the summer of 2021, but aside from the nostalgia effect, the spirit of the group has flown a long time ago.
Find all the other episodes of our series "The Isle of Wight Festival, 50 years later":
> Episode 1: the last notes of Morrison's Doors
> Episode 2: Mighty Baby, talent without glory
> Episode 3: the unexpected concert of Brazilian exiles
> Episode 4: the Rory Gallagher revelation
> Episode 5: Tony Joe White's springboard
> Episode 6: Joni Mitchell's legendary concert