I'd Love to Change the World - Alvin Lee & Ten Years After

Thank you, my friend SGT (Join to see) for posting one of my favorite Ten Years After songs "I'd Love to Change the World"
"I'd Love To Change The World" written by Alvin Lee born as Graham Alvin Barnes
Lyrics
"Everywhere is freaks and hairies, dykes and fairies
Tell me where is sanity?
Tax the rich, feed the poor, 'til there are no rich no more
I'd love to change the world - but I don't know what to do
So I'll leave it up to you

Population - keeps on breeding, nation bleeding,
Still more feeding economy
Life is funny, skies are sunny, bees make honey
Who needs money? Monopoly!
I'd love to change the world - but I don't know what to do
So I'll leave it up to you... Oh yeah

World pollution, there's no solution, institution, electrocution
Just black and white, rich or poor, them and us
We'll stop the war!
I'd love to change the world - but I don't know what to do
So I'll leave it up to you... It's called luck"

Ten Years After = Alvin Lee = Rockspective Documentary
Alvin explains his music roots and discusses the beginnings & end of Ten Years After
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXDeSuJYHzU

Images:
1. Lee in 1974 playing his Gibson ES-335 ('Big Red')
2. Alvin Lee, the guitarist of Ten Years After, performing in Amsterdam in 1972. He played with the band, which broke up and reassembled, until 2003.
3. Alvin Lee with his wife Evi Lee
4. Alvin Lee holding his daughter Jasmin Lee


Biographies:
1.Obituary nytimes.com/2013/03/07/arts/music/alvin-lee-guitarist-of-ten-years-after-dies-at-68.html
2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Lee

1. Obituary [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/arts/music/alvin-lee-guitarist-of-ten-years-after-dies-at-68.html]
Alvin Lee, British Blues-Rock Guitarist, Dies at 68 By William Yardley
March 6, 2013
Alvin Lee, whose fire-fingered guitar playing drove the British blues-rock band Ten Years After to stardom in the 1960s and early ’70s, died on Wednesday in Spain. He was 68.
He died “after unforeseen complications following a routine surgical procedure,” according to a brief post by family members on his Web site. His manager, Ron Rainey, said that Mr. Lee had been living in southern Spain for some time.
Mr. Lee was not as well known as other emerging British guitar stars of the era, including Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and perhaps even Albert Lee, with whom he was occasionally confused (and with whom he once recorded alongside Jerry Lee Lewis). But he was among the nimblest when it came to musicianship.
On his Gibson ES-335 Mr. Lee could shift instantly from speedy single-string leads to rhythmic riffs while doing his best to sing like his American blues heroes. He grew up listening to his father’s Big Bill Broonzy and Lonnie Johnson records in Nottingham, England.

Ten Years After attracted a following during its first tour of the United States, in 1968, and the band would tour the country many more times through the early ’70s, known less for hit songs than for extended jams.
“The strange thing was we had gone to what I considered to be the home of the blues, but they’d never heard of most of them, and I couldn’t believe it — ‘Big Bill who?’ ” Mr. Lee recalled in a 2003 interview with Classic Rock magazine. “We were recycling American music and they were calling it the English sound.”

Images
The live album “Undead,” released in 1968, captured the tight sound and feel of the band’s shows in smaller performance spaces, and its success helped put the band on bigger stages. Ten Years After played at the Woodstock festival in August 1969, and its climactic song, a version of the band’s signature blues vamp, “I’m Going Home,” was included in both the movie “Woodstock” and the accompanying album.

More successful tours and albums followed, including “Cricklewood Green” and “Watt.” Then, during a break in 1971 intended to provide time for musical exploration, Mr. Lee wrote the band’s only Top 40 hit, “I’d Love to Change the World.” The song’s more commercial sound was a departure, and Mr. Lee later said he was not sure it had been a wise one.

“I hated it because it was a hit,” he said in 2003. “By then I was rebelling, and I never played it live. To me it was a pop song.”

By the mid-’70s Ten Years After had disbanded and Mr. Lee was pursuing other genres. He even recorded an album, “On the Road to Freedom,” with a gospel singer, Mylon LeFevre, accompanied by George Harrison, Ron Wood, Steve Winwood and other big names. By the end of the decade he was touring as a solo act and at one point put together a band he called Ten Years Later.

Ten Years After regrouped in 1983 and Mr. Lee played with the band off and on until 2003. After that, it continued to tour and record with a new guitarist, Joe Gooch.

Alvin Lee was born on Dec. 19, 1944, in Nottingham, and began playing guitar at age 13. Two years later he was performing with the bassist Leo Lyons, and by the 1960s they were playing in a band called the Jaybirds in small clubs in England and Germany. The band changed its name to Ten Years After in 1967.

The name was a homage to the emergence of Elvis Presley about a decade earlier. In 2004 Mr. Lee recorded a solo album, “In Tennessee,” with the guitarist Scotty Moore and the drummer D. J. Fontana, who had both worked with Presley in his early years. Mr. Lee’s most recent album, “Still on the Road to Freedom,” came out in the fall.

Survivors include his wife, Evi, and his daughter, Jasmin"

2. Background from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Lee]
Alvin Lee (born Graham Anthony Barnes; 19 December 1944 – 6 March 2013) was an English singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He is best known as the lead vocalist and lead guitarist of the blues rock band Ten Years After

Early life
He was born in Nottingham[1] and attended the Margaret Glen-Bott School in Wollaton. He began playing guitar at the age of 13. In 1960, Lee along with Leo Lyons formed the core of the band Ten Years After. He was influenced by his parents' collection of jazz and blues records, but it was the advent of rock and roll that sparked his interest.

Career
Lee's performance at the Woodstock Festival was captured on film in the documentary of the event, and his 'lightning-fast' playing[2] helped catapult him to stardom.[3] Soon the band was playing arenas and stadiums around the globe. The film brought Lee's music to a worldwide audience, although he later lamented that he missed the lost freedom and spiritual dedication with his earlier public.[4]
Lee was named "the Fastest guitarist in the West", and considered a precursor to shred-style playing that would develop in the 1980s.[5]
Ten Years After had success, releasing ten albums together, but by 1973, Lee was feeling limited by the band's style. Moving to Columbia Records had resulted in a radio hit song, "I'd Love to Change the World", but Lee preferred blues-rock to the pop to which the label steered them. He left the group after their second Columbia LP. With American Christian rock pioneer Mylon LeFevre, along with guests George Harrison, Steve Winwood, Ronnie Wood and Mick Fleetwood, he recorded and released On the Road to Freedom, an acclaimed album that was at the forefront of country rock. Also in 1973 he sat in on the Jerry Lee Lewis double album The Session...Recorded in London with Great Artists recorded in London featuring many other guest stars including Albert Lee, Peter Frampton and Rory Gallagher. A year later, in response to a dare, Lee formed Alvin Lee & Company to play a show at the Rainbow in London and released it as a double live album, In Flight. Various members of the band continued on with Lee for his next two albums, Pump Iron! and Let It Rock. In late 1975, he played guitar for a couple of tracks on Bo Diddley's The 20th Anniversary of Rock 'n' Roll all-star album. He finished out the 1970s with an outfit called "Ten Years Later", with Tom Compton on drums and Mick Hawksworth on bass, which released two albums, Rocket Fuel (1978) and Ride On (1979), and toured extensively throughout Europe and the United States.

The 1980s brought another change in Lee's direction, with two albums that were collaborations with Rare Bird's Steve Gould, and a tour with the former John Mayall and Rolling Stones' guitarist Mick Taylor joining his band.
Lee's overall musical output includes more than twenty albums, including 1987's Detroit Diesel, 1989's About Time, recorded in Memphis with producer Terry Manning, and the back to back 1990s collections of Zoom and Nineteen Ninety-Four (US title I Hear You Rockin' ). Guest artists on both albums included George Harrison.
In Tennessee, recorded with Scotty Moore and D. J. Fontana, was released in 2004. Lee's last album, Still on the Road to Freedom, was released in September 2012.

Death
Lee died on 6 March 2013 in Spain.[6] He died from "unforeseen complications following a routine surgical procedure" to correct an atrial arrhythmia.[7][8][9][10] He was 68. His former bandmates lamented his death. Leo Lyons called him "the closest thing I had to a brother", while Ric Lee (no relation) said "I don't think it's even sunk in yet as to the reality of his passing". Billboard highlighted such landmark performances as "I'm Going Home" from the Woodstock festival and his 1971 hit single "I'd Love to Change the World".[11]

1. "Alvin Lee, rock guitarist in the band Ten Years After, dies at 68". BBC News. 6 March 2013.
2. "Cricklewood Green – Ten Years After : Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards". AllMusic. Retrieved 3 July 2013.
3. Tobler, John (1992). NME Rock 'N' Roll Years (1st ed.). London: Reed International Books Ltd. p. 201. ISBN 0-600-57602-7. CN 5585.
4. Woodstock: Three Days That Rocked the World. New York: Sterling Publishing Co. 2009. p. 193. ISBN 978-1-4027-6623-7.
5. Pete Brown, Harvey P. Newquist (1997). Legends of Rock Guitar: The Essential Reference of Rock's Greatest Guitarists. Milwaukee WI: Hal Leonard Corp. p. 197. ISBN 0-7935-4042-9.
6. "Guitarist Alvin Lee of Ten Years After dies at 68". CBS News. 6 March 2013.
7. "Alvin Lee's Cause Of Death Revealed By Family". Wizbang Pop. 5 October 2013.
8. Rob Power (6 March 2013). "Ten Years After's Alvin Lee dies". MusicRadar.
9. "Ten Years After Singer And Guitarist Alvin Lee Dies Aged 68". Stereoboard UK.
10. "Alvin Lee von Ten Years After verstorben". Retrieved 6 March 2013.
11. Schneider, Marc. "Alvin Lee of Ten Years After Dead at 68". Billboard Magazine. Retrieved 6 March 2013.
12. "Alvin Lee Chart History". Billboard. Retrieved 12 March 2019.
13. "Alvin Lee Chart History". Billboard. Retrieved 12 March 2019.
14. "Alvin Lee Chart History". Billboard. Retrieved 12 March 2019.

FYI Maj Robert Thornton SFC (Join to see) SGT Steve McFarland MSG Andrew White Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. CWO3 (Join to see) PO1 William "Chip" Nagel LTC Greg Henning SGT Gregory Lawritson COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarterSPC Matthew LambSSG Robert "Rob" Wentworth Col Carl Whicker SPC Margaret HigginsPO2 Roger LafarletteSPC Nancy Greene SP5 Jeannie Carle TSgt David L.

Great music share.

WOW!
Such a loss of an Awesome Musician.
I saw ‘Ten Years After’ at Duke University in 1971. ‘YES’ was the opening act & ‘blew away’ the audience!
‘Ten Years After’ played ‘I’m going home’ and we actually‘boos’ off stage!
‘Yes’ returned & Rocked the Auditorium fir another hour!
Definitely an Historical Concert!
Still remember ‘hitch-hiking’ from Raleigh NC to Durham NC fir this concert.
Thank You SGT David Reynolds for another Awesome Share!