Hunter’s voice, his playfully androgynous pronunciation, his singing style – half talking, half singing, Dylan like, but still so English, he charges the song until it almost bursts of anticipation, and then, perfectly timed, the band crashes in for that huge, blasting chorus that sends you spinning “from the Liverpool docks to the Hollywood Bowlin”, landing on your hands and knees on the title stanza, sung perfectly naked as the piano tip toes down the stairs for a hit of the harder stuff, Sabai Inn Pattaya and then wham! And the sleeve certainly looked the part. It became a smash hit, not a come-back as they had never actually arrived, but a fantastic breakthrough. But rumor had it that “Mott” was gonna be the one. The long, staccato piano introduction to “All The Way From Memphis” clears the space for incoming drama. The accompanying album was a more uneven effort. The group had decided to call it a day when David Bowie came to the rescue, giving them “All The Young Dudes” and a taste for really ugly clothes.

There was a ballad and a hymn and onomatopoeic words like “Whizz” and “Honaloochie”. The original sleeve triggered expectations, it signaled that the band you had followed through frustrating years of obstacles and wasted opportunities finally and mysteriously had made it, they were camping at Mytikas, the peak of Mount Olympus. I opened the gatefold, I closed it, I read the song titles as if they were coded language for initiates. And Ian Hunter had a hand in writing all the tracks except one. On the recent CD-edition the lavish sleeve-design was replaced by a cheapo, cheapo photo of the group just standing there looking rather confused. But it is not, Yani Hotel it’s long gone. I remember studying every tiny little detail of the sleeve as the bus took me home. This record sleeve should have been iconic. I was damned sure that I loved the album long before it landed on my turntable.

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Ten Years After formed in 1968. Released 8 charting albums over the following six years. What time off they did have from touring, not only the United States but also Europe, saw them whisked into a studio to record a new album to keep their record company happy. Alvin Lee was the focal point of the group, playing lead guitar, singing, writing all the songs and doing most of the media. The band recorded the material in September and the album was released in December, just in time for Christmas, and it probably stands out as their landmark work. They shot to fame after performing their standard bearer song, “I’m Going Home” on the 1969 film “Woodstock”, becoming one of the biggest bands in the world as well as perhaps the hardest working. They were almost constantly on tour in America where demand for their live shows was staggering. It’s a wonder how the band kept going for such a long time. “Watt”, released in 1970, was their fifth album and was released in the same year as their previous offering “Cricklewood Green”.

“She Lies In The Morning” is a loose structured rocker allowing the band plenty of scope to show off their talents. At the midpoint of the song Alvin Lee proudly shows off his Jazz influences with some very fluid guitar work before Chick Churchill joins in on piano. The next humbly short ditty is “The Band With No Name”, a nice little composition that could have come straight from a spaghetti western movie. Give the world a bit of a taste of what Ten Years After were all about. All the studio effects the band can find are brought out and put to use in an orgy of rock music, with a beautifully played dream sequence in the middle. The band then get their funk out and rip through “I Say Yeah” with plenty of extravagant use of the voice box and the wah wah pedals to keep the interest levels up and this song has very good dynamics. The final track comes from Ten Years After’s encore at the Isle of Wight festival that year, a sizzling version of Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen”, which leaves the listener and the band breathless. “Gonna Run” creeps up on you and then smothers and gathers you up along the way. It also shows quite clearly why Alvin Lee was considered the fastest guitarist in the west. In contrast the next two songs allow the band to really stretch out.

The opener “I’m Coming On” is a compulsive rocker, with the band flexing their collective musical muscle: Alvin Lee takes on a smooth killer solo while his bandmates power in behind him. But rock’n’roll soon comes and takes back control, with Alvin Lee plainly enjoying himself with some scat singing at the end. Ten Years After were never afraid to use the tricks of the studio and the sound is overlapped with echo, but the solo is played straight down the middle and serves to whet the appetite. This is followed by a longer workout in “My Baby Left Me” (I would have thought with their work schedule they would have hardly missed who was coming and going!) Starting off at a slow grinding speed, the gears are quickly worked through until the band are up and running at full speed, pausing only to draw breathe at the vocals. The plaintive ballad “Think About the Times” follows this with the piano leading the first verse and chorus and accompanied by some neat work from the rhythm section.