When Chuck Berry, Keith Richards, Bob Dylan, or Paul McCartney dies, it’s gonna be in the news for weeks. And rightly so. They are true icons of that wheezing American art form called Rock n Roll.
Alvin Lee died a couple of days ago, and that doesn’t deserve anywhere near the amount of attention from the wider public that greater luminaries will and have received. But I’m happy to see that he has gotten more notice than I would have otherwise expected. Here’s why.
My entire teen years were spent in the 1980s. I know others had different experiences, but for me this was an aesthetic and sexual disaster of major proportions.
And what’s worse, all I had to do was slightly turn my head to see remnants of the wide-lapeled sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll lifestyle that were worn like badges of honor by the friends’ older siblings.
But to turn thirteen in 1980? This meant you were destined for a Reaganesque decade of AIDS, Just Say No, shitty synth-pop, and the most horrid hair and clothing stylings every fashioned by humans.
No wonder I watched my VHS copy of Woodstock, which I’d bootlegged off a PBS pledge drive, ’til the spindles squeaked.
Ah, I would think to myself, that was the time to really live.
Of course nowadays I wanna throw what passes for hippies into a Mixed Martial Arts ring and watch their dreadlocks do the hokey pokey. But this was a long time ago and I was naught but an adolescent naif.
There were too many highlights from that film to recount here. Iconic moments were aplenty, from “Don’t eat the brown acid” to Jimi Hendrix’s “Star Spangled Banner.”
But one I always treasured to far less fanfare was Ten Years After’s rendition of “Going Home (By Helicopter),” featuring Lee’s blistering guitar work.
For a thirteen year old who’d just begun piano lessons, it was one of those moments that made you question what exactly you were doing with your life.
I ended up buying a few Ten Years After albums, and they were decidedly uneven. Their one big hit, “I’d Love to Change the World” really does still stand up today. Outstanding. But there was also a lot of uninspired schlock.
Maybe “uninspired” is the wrong word. It just always seemed like there were real limits to Lee’s creativity, both as a songwriter and a musician.
But very few people can be great much of the time, or even shoot 50-50 for that matter. To simply be great now and again is already a hell of an achievement.
Unsurprisingly, most of Lee’s career, good, bad, and otherwise, went by without much notice. The Woodstock footage and the one hit song are all that most people, even of that generation, might be hip to.
Though I would also site a little known double album called Ride On that Lee cut with his reconstituted band Ten Years Later in 1979. I bought it for $1 at Sounds Records in the Village way back when. It’s so far under the radar that Wikipedia has an empty link entry f
or it. But there’s some wonderful material on there, both live and from the studio.
By the standards of true greats, Alvin Lee didn’t accomplish that much, but he did a lot more than most of us, and that’s certainly worthy of a little recognition.
Let it rip, baby. Ride on.