Alvin Lee
I want to know you
I want to show you
I want you to grow
Inside of me
My tenure as a doper was very brief. I’m just not stable enough for drugs, my hold on reality is just that tenuous. But in my brief window of getting high, especially before sensimilla, when good dope was rare, occasionally you’d find some good bud, you’d pay $20 bucks for a lid instead of $15, and you’d end up with marijuana that would smack you in the head and almost paralyze you. And the only thing to do then was put on the headphones and listen to music. Something like Ten Years After’s “50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain.”
Once upon a time, before the advent of YouTube and Spotify, you could give the gift of music. A record album was de rigueur. And for Hanukkah 1969, my friend Ronnie gave me Ten Years After’s “Ssssh.”
I was disappointed. It was on Deram, a second-rate label. And it took me forever to get into it, despite Ronnie’s protestations that it was fantastic. He insisted on hearing “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” over and over again, and at this point, I consider Ten Years After’s version to be definitive.
And I came to like “Stoned Woman.”
But I never completely cottoned to “Ssssh.”
But I absolutely LOVED the follow-up, “Cricklewood Green”!
The definitive cut on “Cricklewood Green” is “Love Like A Man.” Its riff not quite as famous as that of “Smoke On The Water,” but just about as satisfying. “Love Like A Man” was an epic, nearly eight minutes long. Not made for the radio, but you at home. You put this on and the rest of the world disappeared. All your problems faded away.
That’s the power of a heavy riff.
And I loved “Cricklewood Green” so much that I went to see Ten Years After at the Fillmore East.
We had dinner at El Faro, my parents went to a play, and they deposited my friend Marc and I at the hallowed rock hall, where we had sixth row seats, the best I ever got.
Alvin Lee was RIGHT THERE! Playing that red semi-hollow Gibson, just like in the “Woodstock” movie.
Yes, “Woodstock” had been released just two months earlier.
But most people hadn’t seen it. Because it was platform released. Played in only the big cities until the summer. Mere months later, Ten Years After was one of the biggest bands in the land, because of their live rendition of “I’m Going Home,” in its nearly ten minute version. Check it out. It’ll make Justin and Britney and the rest of the poseurs look positively two-dimensional. Because it was live, and the band was POSSESSED! By the music. It was undeniable. That’s why it had to take up so much time in the film.
And when the show was over, and I’d like to tell you it was spectacular, but it was not, the band was not completely into it, they seemed to be saving it up for the late show, we met my parents at Ratner’s next door. Where I proceeded to puke all over the sink. My father said it was paella, the waiter didn’t believe him, he thought it was drugs.
Now the follow-up to “Cricklewood Green” was a dud. “Watt” was only memorable for being “stolen” by a guy in my dorm who signed his note ” Gnossos Pappadopoulis,” which meant nothing to me, thank god he returned it a few days later. No, that’s not exactly right, I knew who Gnossos Pappadopoulis was, he was the main character in Richard Farina’s “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me,” which we had to read in English 102, spring semester. That book inspired me, changed my life, back when books did that.
But then Ten Years After switched labels, they went to CBS and promptly had a hit, something they’d never managed before.
“I’d Love To Change The World” was undeniable.
But it was a different sound. Featuring acoustic guitars, it was mellower. It was as if Ten Years After had sold out, that they calculated this hit. And this rubbed me the wrong way. I didn’t buy the album, not after “Watt.”
But what was even stranger was that after that Ten Years After disappeared. Oh, they put out a few albums, but no one bought them. Alvin Lee teamed up with Mylon LeFevre, but got no traction there either.
Disco didn’t need to kill Ten Years After, a sinkhole got them. They were just GONE!
And that’s the way they stayed. Their material was never featured on classic rock radio, it was like they didn’t even exist.
But those of us who were there never forgot.
Not because of “Woodstock,” but because of “Cricklewood Green.”
How do I explain this?
Imagine there was a band. They weren’t especially good-looking. But they could play. And their ability to do this, especially the lead guitarist, got them traction and granted them a career.
That was Ten Years After.
That’s not today.
Maybe that’s Alabama Shakes. They’ve got that one cut that’s undeniable, “Hold On.” It’s no “I’m Coming Home,” but it’s good. But they’ve got no more and nobody else does either.
Not that Alvin Lee was a songwriting genius. But he hit a few out of the park. And when you do this, you’ve got a career.
Everything’s gone topsy-turvy. MTV made it so you had to be beautiful, so you had to know how to dance, and then the Internet made marketing more important than music. It’s like being pecked to death by ducks, all the wannabes forcing their music upon you.
But no one had to force “Love Like A Man” on anybody.
You just had to hear it and you wanted to hear it again, you needed to buy the record, you wanted to see the band live. It was solely about the music, image had nothing to do with it.
What’s the essence of “Love Like A Man”?
There’s that riff.
But focus on the bass, dancing under the track.
And the way the organ accompanies everything, lubricates the cut.
And then there’s the way the track goes up in the middle.
You don’t want to change “Love Like A Man,” you just want to get close to it.
But having said all that, my favorite track on “Cricklewood Green” is “50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain.”
I want to see you
I want to free you
I want to be you
Inside of me
Love me, 50,000 miles beneath my brain
Love me, 50,000 times and then again
It’s so INTIMATE!
And then it becomes so RAUCOUS!
How do we explain this to the younger generation?
Once upon a time we were not all connected. If you were lucky, you had a few friends, you had a few favorite bands. And whether alone or with buds, you went to basements, to holes to see your favorites, and what happened there was only for you. There were no iPhones, no cameras, the experience happened in front of your eyes and lived on in your brain.
That was it.
But oh was it special.
And Ten Years After had a place in the firmament. They were not one hit wonders, ignore the chart, that’s meaningless, especially in the early seventies, when AM radio was a joke, all the action was over on the FM band. But really, it was in your house. People owned Ten Years After records. This was no PSY, no Carly Rae Jepsen, this was a band, with a body of work, and a career.
And I still listen to this music today. Because we always go back to the classics, and “50,000 Mile Beneath My Brain” is one of mine. There was that night in my dorm room when I was too stoned to move and I played it over and over again, I remember it like yesterday.
And I owe it all to Ronnie.
Who passed away two decades ago.
Alvin Lee died today.
Some people are gonna say he played too fast. That that was his only skill.
But if you were there, you know it was much more than that.
Yes, his quickness got him noticed.
But his music made us remember him.
And I do.
“50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain”
