Front man Alvin Lee led an assortment of virtuoso musicians in Ten Years After, which included guitarist Chick Churchill, drummer Rick Lee, and bassist Leo Lyons. Prior to the band’s formation several core members were in a group called Ivan Jay and the Jaycats. The band after several name and line up changes would morph into Ten Years After. The group would later assume the name Jaybirds and then Ivan Jay and the Jaymen.
They became very popular locally but branched off to London in 1966 to play with the Ivy League. This same year they completed their official lineup with the addition of keyboardist Chick Churchill. The band altered their name two more times before settling on Ten Yeats After. They changed it to Blues Trip upon signing Chris Wright as their manager and to Blues Yard during their show at the Marquee Club.
In 1967 they entered in a recording contract with a subsidiary of Decca called Deram and released their self-titled debut. The album featured 4 cover songs, two of those being Willie Dixon compositions “Spoonful” and “Help Me”. Though the release did not receive enthusiastic reviews, it created awareness of their presence and gave them a chance to showcase their potential.
Their second album “Undead” more than made up for the insecure start set by their previous release. “Undead” was recorded live in an intimate jazz club in London called Klooks Kleek. It flaunted the band’s deep understanding of blues and boogie music, paying a particular amount of attention to jump blues. The album contained only 5 tracks; however, they were considerably more lengthy than the standard pop song. The shortest track which was the Gershwin cover “Summertime” clocked in at 5:44 and the band original “I May Be Wrong, But I Won’t Be Wrong Always” took up 9:49 worth of space on the album. It was the track “I’m Going Home”, which threw Ten Years After into commercial stardom. The single became a hit in both the US and UK and boosted album sales significantly.
The band amped up the production of albums within the next 2 years, yielding 4 studio releases during this time frame. “Stonedhenge” came out in 1969 and consisted of mostly original tracks with the exception of the 59 second rendition of the folk traditional “Three Blind Mice”. “Ssssh” was also released that year and rose to No. 20 on the Billboard 200 and No. 4 on the UK charts.
The band’s follow up “Criklewood Green” received glowing reviews and entered the Billboard 200 at No.14. The album was released in 1970 as was “Watt”, which was another album consisting of entirely original material apart from the closing track “Sweet Little Sixteen” written by Chuck Berry.
The band fulfilled their contract with Deram after the release of Watt and released their next album “A Space in Time” through Columbia. The band departed from their improvisational psychedelic blues style and went into a more coherent pop direction. Though this approach worked initially, it’s success did not cross over to their 1974 album “Positive Vibration”. After this release the group decided to call it quits.
The band reformed approximately 10 years after their break up, performing at the Reading Festival. The concert was recorded and released on CD as “The Friday Rock Show Sessions”. The group took yet another break but got back together in 1988 to play a few concerts and record the album “About Time”, which was released in 1989. Ten Years After did not release another album until 2004s “About Time”, which was followed in 2008 by “Evolution”; however, both recordings did not feature principal songwriter Alvin Lee.
One of the most successful bands to ever come out of Nottingham, Ten Years After are typical of the kind of blues rock success stories that emerged from the late sixties and early seventies; whilst they never enjoyed the kind of longevity that, if anything, has gone on to define many of their peers, they at least knew what it was to take the charts by storm during the relatively brief time that the original lineup was together, with a career that spanned eight years to begin with. They turned out a hugely impressive eight albums in eight years between 1966 and 1974, with all of them charting on the UK top forty and on the Billboard rundown in the United States, too; there’s no question that they enjoyed genuine Transatlantic success. After a one-off reunion at the Reading festival in 1983, a lineup that closely resembled the original one reformed to tour in 1988, releasing a new album, About Time, the following year. That lineup underwent a dramatic reshuffle earlier this year, perhaps prompted by the death of Alvin Lee last year; Leo Lyons and Joe Gooch left the band, and have been replaced accordingly as the group continue to line up new dates.
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