In The Style Of Alvin Lee
By Miguel Ángel Ariza
1969. Woodstock. A guy
named Alvin Lee climbs up on stage with his band Ten Years After and a Gibson
ES-335 modified with a single coil pickup between his two PAFs on the stage
of the most iconic concert in the history of humanity to give 400,000 people a
Rock and Roll lesson in passion and devilish technique. A year later, in 1970,
the film of that festival, specifically the more than nine minute long version
of I’m Going Home that is included in
it, elevates him to the category of world rock star and lands him the 'Fastest
Guitarist on the Planet' medal.
This British guitarist,
completely self-educated and mainly jazz-oriented, did not really like the fact
that he was given this label because he knew that this medal belonged not to
him but to people from whom he had learned his trade, like Django Reinhardt. What he did not learn from
his beloved jazz guitarists was the fury and the visceral way of approaching
Rock and Roll, with touches or, rather, chords that were somewhat jazzy but far
from the finesse of swing or manouche music; and, as the years passed, those
chords became harder and heavier. It is in that music where we can listen to
the incredible tones of what was his guitar for almost all his life, the
aforementioned 'Big Red'; but we say
almost because Alvin was another
victim of a problem that we do not stop mentioning every so often in this
section and that is that he realized that this piece of wood with strings,
completely 'beat up' over the years, had been revalued to such an extent that
he no longer dared to take it out again in his final years of touring for fear
of losing a million. There you have another piece of history of Rock and Roll
stored in a case, this time by its owner, due to the crazy market of collecting
and ‘vintage speculation’.
Anyway, it was not all
bad news for Lee since the exact replica that Gibson put on sale (the Gibson Custom Alvin Lee Big Red)
honoring him was a much better guitar and had, according to his own words,
better woods and pickups. Vintage 0 - Custom Shop 1.
Another of the myths that fell in his
later years was the origin of the great tone of his records. In his later years
not only did he not use vintage stuff when playing live (although he always
used Marshall heads and speakers
throughout his career without a pedal in the chain), but in the studio he added
to the confusion of the collector since he did not hide his preference to
record with Line 6 POD or directly
through his computer card and Amplitube
software. Vintage 0 - New technologies 1.
It seems incredible but
that's the way it is. The majority of nostalgics spend their lives looking for
the equipment that our idols used while many of them flee from it...
What is also incredible is that this titan of the
guitar died in the small Spanish town of Estepona two years almost exactly to
the date after Gary Moore died in
that same town. The obligatory question therefore for Guitars Exchange is: But what the devil happens to guitar legends in
Estepona? Eric, Jimmy, Peter, Jeff...
do not even think about stepping in Estepona in winter!