Ten Years After Premiere Their Complete 1969 Woodstock Festival Set

Alvin approached the microphone and in a short, friendly greeting complimented the crowd for coping with the storm.   They opened with Willie Dixon’s “Spoonful,” the classic blues New Yorkers already knew and loved. This got the audience’s attention, its classic seven-note riff already familiar. With blistering speed in the solos, it was a useful warm-up exercise for Alvin after hours of standing around in the cold and damp.

The audience was also warmed up. Alvin and Leo next launched into the opening bars of “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl,” an intense riffing blues by Sonny Boy Williamson they had made their own. The instrumental opening, a repeated tight four-bar riff with the guitar and bass played in harmony, revealed they were badly out-of-tune. In the damp air, the tuning of both guitar and bass had slipped. They should have been checked before going on and were far too out-of-tune to continue, so the band had to stop. Alvin apologized briefly to the crowd who seemed quite happy. Many were New Yorkers who had already seen Alvin perform at the half dozen Fillmore East gigs over the previous two years.

He and Leo went back to their amps either side of the drum riser. Alvin re-tuned his guitar but Leo found himself in front of 500,000 people, out-of-tune and unable to do anything about it. Alvin moved back center stage and again they let rip into “Schoolgirl,” still out-of-tune with each other. My God, what level of adrenaline was now surging through them. Unbelievably they had to stop again and slip behind the Marshall stacks while Alvin tuned Leo’s bass out of sight of a half-million stoned people. I remember it all so well because by this point my head was spinning. A problem like this had never happened before.

Alvin came back to the microphone, made an announcement that ended with him exclaiming, “I wish I was dead!” and the two adrenalized guitarists tore back into “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl.” The bizarre false starts added another layer of tension and as a result the music seemed even sweeter.

During “Schoolgirl” Alvin and Leo played head-to-head in solo, making it more like a musical sparring match than a duet. The pent-up energy of the day and all the waiting around found its release at a locomotive pace. Leo, an extremely physical bass player, thrashed his right hand and gyrated from the top of his head through to his feet, as if assaulting his instrument would deliver more power to his playing. Alvin spun lick upon lick of super speed webs of sound, he and his guitar somehow merged. The guitar became an extension of his body through which his consciousness was wailin’ and rockin’ effortlessly, directly communing with his muse.

As they were both right-handed players they were able to work face-to-face like this without collision, each pushing the other’s performance, sometimes barely inches between their heads. Working hard, they began to sweat and in the chilling damp night air, steam rose from them like two horses galloping towards the finish line. It was spellbinding, and if the wet crowd needed something to get up and boogie to, then Alvin, Leo, Ric and Chick gave them a musical rocket up their butts.

Towards the end of “Schoolgirl” Alvin broke a guitar string but on this stage at this time there was no chance of changing it out front, so Ric’s energetic drum solo “The Hobbit” was added earlier than usual to give Alvin a chance to nip behind the amps and replace the string.

“I Can’t Keep From Crying Sometimes,” the soulful blues written and first recorded in 1928 by Blind Willie Johnson, came to Alvin’s attention on the Elektra compilation What’s Shakin’, the only track from Al Kooper’s Blues Project. In Ten Years After’s 20-minute version, Alvin’s extended guitar solo had become one of his most creatively structured showcases. It opens with light, jazz chord progressions, moving shapes up and down the guitar neck, interjected with repetitive chord picking. Alvin’s vocals are soft, soulful and sweet, with heavier, angrier accents for lyrical emphasis, the words minimal, repetitive. The verses give way to inventive jazzy guitar solos.

Particularly powerful was the de-tuning and re-tuning of the low E string, as the high crescendo solo ends and the vocals return to complete their epic interpretation. I had seen TYA play “I Can’t Keep From Crying Sometimes” many hundreds of times, watching as it developed from a five-minute basic version into this superb 20-minute classic. For me it was always exhilarating, totally engaging and transporting, physically and emotionally, holding me in the present where nothing else existed at all. The best recorded version I have come across is the full version live at the Isle of Wight Festival of August 1970. I have never heard a more perfectly constructed guitar solo. It is a pinnacle of its genre, true rock genius. If Beethoven – another Sagittarius – had been an electric guitarist, he might have come up with this before Alvin.

“Help Me” by Willie Dixon and legendary Chess producer Ralph Bass was well known as a blues classic from Sonny Boy Williamson’s rendition. I love this song. Alvin was now center stage, playing a long wailing guitar solo, a stream of consciousness vibe, building all the while into more repetitive, furiously fast guitar figures dancing over the steady, sultry riff of the organ, bass and drums. Alvin would grab a drumstick or the microphone stand to improvise a bottleneck, and slide up and down the neck of his guitar, the notes merging into a shredding, soaring crescendo. At its climax Alvin was back at the microphone shouting the verse, insisting on his raunchy demands. “I don’t feel so sleepy, just feel like lying myself down.”

Then the volume drops right down again, with low slow insistence, menacing seduction: “If you don’t help me baby, I gotta go out on the street and find someone else to love.” Back up to high volume and the frantic desperate guitar, bass, organ, drums thundering below the repeatedly screamed, ‘Help me…baby…. help me!’ In this number Alvin and Ten Years After delivered themselves to the crowd with compelling contrasts of light and dark, high and low volume.

“I’m Going Home… by helicopter,” was Alvin’s final introduction, announcing the encore that would become immortalized in Michael Wadleigh’s 1970 Woodstock movie, but that was all to come. For me, “I’m Going Home” is the greatest, raunchiest love song ever written. It’s a rock’n’roll love song, written by Alvin and a full-tilt celebration of sensual expectation. Leo was told by soldiers that he met in US airports returning from Vietnam that it was the song they played when they knew they were coming home to their wives and girlfriends. Here at Woodstock it became Ten Year After’s great boogie climax.

The intro features Alvin alone on guitar, a tight, six bars of runs and shapes, a high-key up-beat celebratory opening. Then the band and the vocals come in: “I’m going home to see my baby,” the repeated refrain, the thrust of the lyric, the heart of the song. This is pure rock’n’roll, with a solid driving uptempo rhythm designed for swaying, sweating, stomping and clapping. Alvin’s rock’n’roll roots get an airing, an aural montage of luminaries like Tommy Tucker, Duane Eddy, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis. “Dimples,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Mean Women Blues,” “Whole Lotta Shakin’,” “Boom, Boom, Boom Boom.” This was Alvin returning to his teens in Nottingham, when The Jaybirds were a cover band with a great repertoire that got everyone up and dancing. To me this was the rock equivalent of action painting, plucking riffs, lyrics, adding and mixing, creating a new masterpiece every night, like Jackson Pollock dripping and splattering colours.

Eventually he takes down the volume to tease, holding everyone in the grip of his lightning fingers. Leo slapping the bass, Ric’s minimal straight drum tempo, Chick cheerleading, hand-clapping to bring the audience into the song, all support Alvin’s moans, screams, and sultry vocals. I’m going hooooooome, baby, hoooome, child, home, home, home.” Finally, and straight to the point, “Look out baby, I’m comin’ to get you, one more time” and the whole band crashes back in at full-tilt volume. Alvin was now the total rock’n’roller, riffing and hollering his heart out with Ric, Leo and Chick driving the song along, giving every last drop of energy and adrenaline they have left. Noisy, exuberant, relentless, a great rock‘n’roll finish, which always left the crowd hollering for more.

Tonight at Max Yasgur’s farm, from out of the dark, smoldering landscape, hundreds of thousands roared, clapped, screamed, yelled, and whistled their approval and gratitude. Alvin Lee and Ten Years After had played a stunning set and they loved it. Half a million were transformed from muddy misery and joined together to celebrate themselves, a triumph, an enchanted generation whose legacy was no war memorial but a peace memorial, a beacon of hope. It was a perfect, magic night. As they finished someone rolled a large green watermelon onto the stage. Alvin lifted it up onto his shoulder, a gift from the audience to the band.

Were we going home by helicopter? No, of course not. We were stranded for hours in the psychedelic fields before cars took us back to New York. I wandered with Alvin around the edges of the vast crowd and we joined small groups gathered ‘round improvised bonfires. We found great warmth, friendliness and hospitality, a little food, smiles, gentle conversation and cool congratulations. Overall the festival was a simple sweet bliss of community and belonging, peace and love, and easy vibes.

Woodstock would remain the pinnacle of festivals because the states and towns of America had seen what took place there and local laws were being passed to limit the chances of it ever happening again. The hippies were now viewed as a political threat to straight America, not merely colorful entertainment on the TV news.