In 1967 four young musicians from Nottinghamshire, England formed Ten Years After. Alvin Lee, Chick Churchill, Ric Lee & Leo Lyons became one of the most explosive quartets on the world stage and cemented themselves as one of the biggest bands in Rock n Roll history.
The beginning of their meteoric rise to fame can be pinpointed to their performance at The Woodstock Music and Arts Festival in August 1969.
Their now legendary encore “I’m Going Home” was captured on film and became one of the centre pieces of the subsequent Academy Award winning documentary. It exposed their unique combination of Jazz, Blues and Rock to a large audience who were blown away by the intensity of the band’s performance.
The band scored eight Top 40 albums on the UK Albums Chart and twelve multi million selling albums on the US Billboard 200 between 1967 and 1974.
It is estimated that during this period they were performing to in excess of 75,000 new fans a week. Almost four million people a year.
The band broke up in 1974 after their final Columbia album Positive Vibrations and reunited again in 1983 to play the Reading Festival.
In 1988 they reformed once again and recorded the album About Time with producer Terry Manning in Memphis but again went their separate ways.
In 1994 they came together for a final time to play in Brazil.
During the post 1994 hiatus Ric Lee, Chick Churchill and Leo Lyons reformed and toured with various different guitarists and singers under the Ten Years After name and in 2013 Leo Lyons left the band.
On 6 March 2013, to the great shock and surprise of the remaining founder members, Alvin Lee died from complications during a routine medical procedure. He was 68 years old.
In 2014 founder members Ric Lee and Chick Churchill (wanting to keep the memory of the band alive and pay tribute to the legendary albums they made with Alvin Lee over the years) put Ten Years After back together with a new lineup.
This new and exciting lineup features British Bass icon Colin Hodgkinson (Backdoor, Peter Green, Alexis Corner, Spencer Davis, Chris Rea, John Lord) and multi British Blues Award winning guitarist and singer Marcus Bonfanti (Van Morrison, Ginger Baker, Ronnie Wood).
This new lineup has been touring extensively since 2013 with over 150 shows under their belt and have received rave reviews from all corners of the world as they continue to produce the high energy of a vintage Ten Years After show 50 years down the line.
To tie in with the bands 50th anniversary in 2017, Ten Years After have recorded a studio album of original material “A Sting In The Tale” due for worldwide release in September and are touring throughout the year to promote both the anniversary and new release.