I just read recently that he sang for President Woodrow Wilson at The White House. His brother Morgan Kingston, also a former miner, was a professional operatic tenor and Columbia recording artiste. My grandfather was an accomplished singer and brass band player. Most of the men in the family were coal miners but there was a love for music in the family. He was killed in action in 1944 when I was only nine months old. The World was at war and my father was away serving in the army. Leo Lyons: I was born 1943 in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire in the heart of the East Midlands coalfields, United Kingdom. To begin with, when and where were you born and was music a big part of your life in Lyons household? I am always biased towards live albums though, and to fully enjoy Ten Years After, my personal playlist has three of their live recordings – Undead and Live at the Fillmore East but also 1983’s Live from the Marquee Club, London.Ten Years After | Leo Lyons | Interview Leo Lyons is a legendary Ten Years After bassist. Stonedhenge (1969), Cricklewood Green (1970), A Space in Time (1971)… are all great albums with a sound that is remarkable on the original recordings from an era when studio technology was still quite primitive. Ten Years After’s studio albums are equally enjoyable. The same performance includes a nearly 11-minute completely absorbing tune called The Hobbit led by drummer Ric Lee. On the same Live at the Fillmore East album, they do versions of the recently deceased Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen and Roll Over Beethoven, rendering them with the trademark guitar virtuoso of Lee. Yes, I know it could seem a bit disturbing those lines but that was what Ten Years After was, irreverent, and even a bit nonsensical when it came to the lyrics department in their own compositions, but it is their music and Lee’s superlative guitar work that should give them a status of immortality. I don’t recall the original version (or subsequent covers by anyone) to include a verse that goes: “I won’t bore you, yeah Baby, I won’t bore you all night long/ Yes, I do Baby, I want to ball you/ I want to ball you all night long/ Tell your mama and your papa/ Baby, baby, doing nothing wrong, child/ I’m doing nothing wrong, yeah.” In Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, a blues standard first recorded in the 1930s by the harmonica player, Sonny Boy Williamson, Lee takes the lyrics and gives it a ribald twist. But the covers all have the distinctive Ten Years After touch – Alvin Lee’s scorching breakneck-speed lead riffs, of course, but also little touches to the lyrics. As in many of their performances, that album has originals as well as covers. The band’s line-up then – the two Lees on guitar and drums, along with Chick Churchill on organ and Leo Lyons on bass – was their best and Undead is an album worth a dive into.Īfter Woodstock brought fame for them in the US, they released a few more live albums, including the stellar Live at the Fillmore East 1970. ![]() Besides plying their own compositions, they played a few standards, including a unique version of George Gershwin’s Summertime that segues into a tune titled Shantung Cabbage, composed by drummer Ric Lee (no relation to Alvin). The band members were in their early-to-mid 20s, the sound is raw, but the music is amazing. The year before the band played their set at Woodstock on August 17, 1969, sandwiched between Country Joe & the Fish and The Band, Ten Years After released Undead, a live recording from a performance in a small London club. ![]() There are eight great studio albums by them to check out all released between 19 and at least four live ones that are even better. That’s a pity also because there is no dearth of albums to explore the sound of Ten Years After. It’s a pity though that Lee has remained an underrated guitar player and Ten Years After, a group that isn’t the instant go-to band that it should be for anyone interested in the blues-rock genre. The YouTube video mentioned above has garnered nearly eight million views and Lee’s lead lines in that nearly 12-minute song have, for many rock guitarists, become a sort of Holy Grail.
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