Ten Years After
Album: Live At Reading '83
Label: Talking Elephant
Tracks: 8
Website: http://ten-years-after.co.uk/band.htm

Having been born a decade too late and in the wrong continent, I was not one of the "beautiful people" who attended Woodstock. To compensate, throughout the 1970's, whenever I had saved up enough 50 pence pieces from my paper round, I'd go to Hastings Pier on a Saturday night to see a band. Back then, Hastings Pier attracted some really big names, but the band that most impressed me, was Ten Years After. I didn't get to see them at Woodstock, so they came to see me, instead! Just the once, sadly, but they still blew me away.

Even today, I can still recall Leo Lyons, on bass, headbanging throughout the entire gig, but it was Alvin Lee's guitar playing that was so stunning. It wasn't just that he was a brilliant guitar player - he had so many inventive ways of playing it, such as beating the strings with drumsticks, or using his harmonica as a slide.

Sadly, Ten years After split up in 1975. I spent the 1980's concentrating on career and family, and forgot about my aspirations to be a hippy, so I wasn't aware, until now that the band had reformed. They had often played at the Marquee club, so in 1983, when the Marquee were celebrating their 25th anniversary, Ten Years After were pursuaded to play again during a two day celebration.

That led on to them playing at the Reading Festival that same year.

Ticket price, for the three days, including camping was £15.95. Ten Years After played on the Sunday, billed as an 'added attraction'. The BBC were on hand to record the set, and it was aired on Radio 1's "The Friday Rock Show" hosted by Tommy Vance.

"Live at Reading 1983" has already been released as a CD previously, but had gone out of print, and so it has just been re-issued. Which to me is fantastic, because otherwise I might never have known about it.

They started their set with Alvin Lee's Blues Rock classic, "Love Like A Man", a track characterised by a phenomenal riff. The second track, a cover, is probably one that wouldn't be written in today's enlightened times - "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, another storming Blues Rock song. The slide guitar at the start was played by moving the guitar fret board back and forth across Alvin's microphone stand.

This is followed, as its name suggests, ("Blues in C"), by a pure blues track, with some beautiful keyboard playing from Chick Churchill. The fourth song on their set list was another cover. The song was originally called "Susie Q", but Suzi Quatro renamed it "Suzi Q" when she covereed it. On "Live At Reading '83", the track has been called "Suzie Q". As far as I can tell, this was the only time that Ten Years After played this track, and as Suzi Quatro was one of the artists who played at Reading that year, I kind of wonder whether they played it as a tribute to her.

I'm never a big fan of the drum solo, but I have to admit that as the genre goes, Ric Lee's "The Hobbit" is one of the best, not least because it is only around three minutes long. There's some excellent stereo effects on the track, probably added in post production, by the BBC.

My favourite track on the album is "I Can't Keep From Cryin' Sometimes", much less rocky and more jazzy than the others. Again Alvin Lee shows his inventiveness with technique. There's a break where he plays using open strings, changing from one note to another by tightening or losening the machine heads.

The final track, with more than a passing tribute to Elvis Presley, is Rock 'n' Roll. At Woodstock they played an eleven minute version and entitled it "I'm Going Home - By Helicopter". At Reading, it reverted to the original title, "I'm Going Home".

I absolutely loved listening to this album. It made me feel young again. I was transported back to the 1970s and back to the end of the pier at Hastings. Yes, if you were at Woodstock, or wanted to be at Woodstock, or if you were at Reading, or the Marquee, or wanted to be at Reading or the marquee, then this is the album for you. If none of those apply, but you just happen to like Blues, Blues Rock, or listening to a band at the peak of their career, then this too is an album for you.

Although Alvin Lee is no longer with us, Chick Churchill and Ric Lee are still touring as Ten Years After, though rarely in the UK. I note with sadness that they were due to play a gig in Germany later this year with Johnny Winter - another Woodstock veteran, though now, he too is no longer with us.

There are plenty of youtube clips of the band with Alvin Lee, but I have no way of knowing if any of them are authorised, and I would hate to promote a video that had been pirated against the artists' wishes. The one I've selected is linked via Ten Years After's website, so I'm sure they are happy with it.

Pete Bradley