A very short blog today.
You know that you are getting old, OAP conditions like strokes notwithstanding, when your 'heroes' start dying of comparatively old age. I learnt today that two of the best guitarists of their generation died this month; Alvin Lee and Peter Banks.
Alvin will be best remembered for 'Ten Years After', who I saw back in '69 or '70 at the Albert Hall supported by Blodwyn Pig* and Stone the Crows**, and who is forever immortalised with the blistering, foot-stomping rendition of "Goin' Home" in Pennebaker's film of Woodstock. A man with a prodigious right hand technique that the years did not diminish.
Peter Banks was the original guitarist with Yes, before Steve Howe, and I well remember him, seemingly dwarfed by a whopping Gibson ES335, stepping forward on stage for the delicate solos in Yes' version of Stephen Stills' 'I see you'. Remarkably good footage for the time is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXaPKDd7oGQ&feature=youtu.be
* Blodwyn Pig was Mick Abrahams' band after he left Jethro Tull and was, surprisingly for the time, a straight ahead blues rock outfit of drums, bass, guitar and..........Jack Lancaster's saxaphone.
** Stone the Crows with the incomparable Maggie Bell on vocals (think Bonnie Raitt crossed with early Bonnie Tyler). Tragicaly, the band's guitarist, Les Harvey, was electrocuted on stage in '72 by a badly earthed mike stand.
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