Alvin Lee's goin' home...
 

daaannngg



Alvin Lee Is Going Home: 'Ten Years After' Guitarist Dies : The Two-Way : NPR

Guitarist Alvin Lee, whose incendiary performance with the British band Ten Years After was one of the highlights of the 1969 Woodstock festival, has died.

A bit of "I'd Love to Change the World"

He was 68. Lee's website says he "passed away early this morning [Wednesday] after unforeseen complications following a routine surgical procedure." An assistant to his daughter also confirmed the news to NPR.

His band's biggest hit — "I'd Love to Change the World" — came a couple years after Woodstock. We'll embed a clip from that.

But for those of us of a certain age who wished they could play a guitar well, it's Lee's furious fretting on "I'm Going Home" — famously memorialized in the Woodstock movie — for which he'll be most remembered. Some have called it "guitar excess." This blogger can tell you that many, many teenage guys thought it was great.

Guitar Aficionado put it this way in a piece published last year:

"For a full-on blues-rocking experience, there's no beating Ten Years After's adrenaline-fueled reading of 'I'm Going Home.' The performance, an intense nod to vintage blues and '50s rock and roll, featured the lightning-fast fretwork of Ten Years After frontman Alvin Lee. 'The solo on the movie sounds pretty rough to me these days,' Lee told Guitar Aficionado late last week. 'But it had the energy, and that was what Ten Years After were all about at the time.' "

If you haven't heard "I'm Going Home" in a while, click here.

According to the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, a good source for Woodstock history, Ten Years After's set on Aug. 17, 1969, came right after the performance by Country Joe and the Fish and right before The Band.

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I've been a huge fan of him and Ten Years After. RIP.

Damn! Sound track not as good, but woodstock footage can be seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW5M5xljdCI

Yeah, that actually the first thing that I blurted out when I saw this thread.

Let the sky fall. Let the earth shake.

RIP, Alvin Lee. One of the greatest.

That sucks! RIP

Glad I got a chance to catch him and his "ten years later" tour.

One of the greats!

"Captain Speedfingers" - he was something to watch play & hear - one of my favourites.
Another one gone too soon.
RIP

my dog's named Alvin.

Dont know who he was.

I just recorded the Woodstock event on DirecTV the other day...I pushed Fast Forward to his performance...uncanny.
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I can't find any details of what specifically caused his death...but, Damn!

dislike. Dude was a monster on guitar.

Bon voyage Alvin. Thanks for the great music at just the right time.

Shame, that guy could really play, one of the first albums I ever purchased was A Space in Time, used my paper route money

Space in Time, best album ever, my all time fav. RIP Alvin

Never get tired of " I'd love to change the World".

Wow! :(

We lost a LEGEND! Rest In Peace Alvin - and thank you for all the good times and superb tunes!

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How are the rest of the Chipmunks dealing with this?

RIP Alvin. Great "driving" music!

That's kinda what I thought; I'm not old enough to know who this guy was.