![]() ![]() Often I’d play on a backing track and never meet the artiste. I don’t recall all the records and radio broadcasts I’ve played on. We returned home several times as failures only to return again with different line ups eventually downsizing to a three piece for reasons of economy.Īs well pursuing our band project Alvin and I started playing sessions together and separately. The Jaybirds moved to London in 1961 to seek fame and fortune but it was not an instant success. In the early sixties you worked as a session musician and toured as a sideman with many acts. We changed our name to ‘The Jaycats’ and later ‘the Jaybirds’ I was asked if I’d like to join the band and I did. ‘The Phantoms’ were a hobby band and played gigs just for fun, usually relatives weddings, but on one show I was spotted by the manager of ‘The Atomites’, a popular local band who were intending to turn professional and move to London. My guitar teacher Frank was disappointed and said that it was wasting my talent. I knew bass was the instrument I wanted to play. I eventually raised some money by selling my bicycle and bought a Hofner Senator bass guitar on Hire Purchase (deferred payment). At first I played bass lines on an electrified Dobro guitar belonging to my guitar teacher. They needed a bass player and they invited me to join them. ![]() He introduced me to some of his other pupils who had a band called ‘Paul Dennis And The Phantoms’. When I finally got a guitar I started lessons with local teacher Frank Wooley. One of the earliest bands you were part of were The Phantoms and a bit later The Atomites. There was a banjo that once belonged to my Grandfather and I started playing that. I desperately wanted a guitar but could not afford to buy one. Like a lot of my contemporaries I loved the Skiffle Music craze that swept the UK in the 1950’s. The sound blew me away and I tried several times to make a cigar box guitar with no success. That was the first time I heard a guitar played. I never knew either of them but I remember, as a very young child, listening to my Great Uncle’s records on a wind up gramophone.įor some reason amongst the record collection were 78’s of Lead Belly and Jimmy Rogers. 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? But it was director Michael Wadleigh's 1970 Woodstock documentary, and its intense closeups of Lee's feverish vocals and guitar playing, that sparked the band's worldwide success.Ten Years After | Leo Lyons | Interview Leo Lyons is a legendary Ten Years After bassist. The song was on the band's second album, 1968's live Undead. Lee's blues-rock band, Ten Years After, delivered a gripping 11-minute performance of I'm Going Home at the 1969 Woodstock festival, an inarguable highlight even against marquee acts Jimi Hendrix and The Who. The world has lost a truly great and gifted musician." The statement from his family said, "We have lost a wonderful and much loved father and companion. His website reports that Lee "passed away early this morning after unforeseen complications following a routine surgical procedure." British guitar great Alvin Lee, who rose to global fame with a fiery performance at Woodstock, died Wednesday at age 68. Lee was set to play in Paris with Johnny Winter next month.His last album%2C %27Still on the Road to Freedom%2C%27 was released in August.The British guitar great died after routine surgery. ![]()
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