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 Albert
Lee was
born on December 21, 1943, in Herefordshire,
England. He grew up in Blackheath, London, where his
father played English pub music on piano and
accordion. At seven, Albert took up piano and
studied formally for two years, delving into the
classics, learning pop tunes, and coming to love
rock and roll in part through the music of Jerry Lee
Lewis.
In about 1958
he got his hands on his first guitar, a Hofner
President acoustic arch-top. Taking an immediate
liking to Buddy Holly And The Crickets, he learned
all he could from their records. For a time the
acoustic guitar served its purpose, but soon Albert
longed for an electric:
"My first real
guitar was a Grazioso which was the forerunner of
the Hofner Futurama. I paid £85 second hand for it,
so it was really expensive...but I always used to
wish that I'd bought a Fender instead."
Due to an insatiable
craving for American country, rock and roll, and
rhythm and blues, Albert diligently studied
recordings by Jimmy Bryant, Gene Vincent And The
Blue Caps (featuring Cliff Gallup on lead guitar),
the Louvin Brothers, Ricky Nelson (James Burton on
lead), and especially the Everly Brothers. An
important milestone was guitarist Hank Garland's
masterwork Jazz Winds from a New Direction,
the 1960 LP that shattered the barriers between jazz
and country.
"Of the other guitarists on the scene at the time,
the ones that impressed me most were colin Green
(who made his name with Georgie Fame), Bob Steel
(who went to Paris to join Vince Taylor), and Mickey
King (who was in Cliff Bennett's Rebel Rousers but
also had a day job in a music shop called Lew Davis
on Charing Cross Road...you'd walk in there and he'd
say "Hey, I've just worked out James Burton's latest
solo", and he'd rattle off this great solo. He was
excellent - and also the first guy I saw who played
with his fingers as well as a pick...that opened up
a whole new world to me), and Harvey Hinsley (who
was the first really inventive player I saw, back in
early '60. He was doing Cliff Gallup stuff, but the
number which knocked me out was 'Goofin Around', an
instrumental recorded by Bill Haley's Comets)."
Albert quit school in
Christmas of 1959 (only 16) when his band turned
pro:
"We got a job touring Scotland
with stars from Larry Parnes' stable - but after two
tours (Dickie Pride and Sally Kelly), I jacked it
in. We each got £20 for 12 days - but we had to pay
our own hotel bills out of that. Even so, I still
saved enough money to put a deposit on an amp when I
got back! That would have been Jan '60...my first
taste of the road."
Various day jobs followed but
it wasn't until 1961 that his luck turned when he
was approached by Bob Xavier to join his band.
"By 1961, I'd been through
various day jobs (including making blueprints,
working in a laundry, and paint spraying) but still
hankered after being able to earn enough playing in
a group...and I was in Selmers one day (helping a
friend choose a Les Paul Junior, which he then used
to lend to me) when I ran into this bloke called Bob
Xavier, who asked me to join his band. So I wore a
variety of open necked silky shirts and worked
American airbases and London clubs for over a year.
"Bob Xavier was West Indian,
and the band was modelled on Emile Ford and the
Checkmates. Most other groups around town were still
doing rock'n'roll, but we were into Drifters/Brook
Benton sort of stuff...but in summer '62 Xavier left
and we became the house band at the 2Is [paid 18 bob
a night].
"We'd play in the cofee bar 5
or 6 nights a week - backing whoever wandered onto
the stage...and at weekends we would go out of town
doing one-nighters backing Vince Eager, Keith Kelly
and Jackie Lynton (who were all managed by Tom
Littlewood - owner of the 2Is at the time).
Albert's first record was cut
when he was with The Jury backing Jackie Lynton on
All Of Me/I'd Steal (Piccadilly 7n35064 – sept
62...just on the A-side, produced by Les Reed).
"Trying to make it as a rock
musician was a very haphazard business in the early
sixties - and it was pretty dangerous too...you
could get caught up in all manner of things. I was
lucky because I could always go home to my parents -
it was just a question of hopping onto the tube. I
often wonder if I'd ever have become a professional
musician if I'd been living somewhere like Cornwall,
because I wasn't the sort to move into some sleazy
digs and endure all that suff...even though I was
soon spending a lot of time living in small
cupboards adjoining unsavoury clubs spread around
Germany!
"We [The Nightsounds] went to
Hamburg for three weeks playing the Top Ten Club -
the same time as The Beatles were playing The Star
Club. It was my first trip abroad...in the day when
every musician had to pay his dues in Hamburg -
nightly, dusk to dawn.
"Towards
the end of 1962 I joined Don Adams' band and went to
Germany again - in a little A35 van. It was that
really cruel winter, and there was no heater in the
van; we had to huddle round a little tiny Primus
stove in the back! Bloody hell, we almost froze to
death - and almost wrote ourselves off when we
turned it over on the ice! It was the usual thing -
pumping out Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Eddie
Cochran and Little Richard for 6 hours a night, 7
days a week - I was glad to come home again after
that one...but the weird thing was, I flew straight
back out there to play with this German band Mike
Warner and the Echolettes for 3 months.
"Neil
Christian provided a few months of stability, paying
me £15 a week whether we worked or not, which was
pretty good. It was going out to clubs all over
England in this old ambulance he used as a gig
wagon. The 'Stones had come along by then and it
wasn't cool to wear matching uniforms anymore. The
rage was a grey shirt with rounded collars and a
knitted tie, and you had to comb your hair forward
like The Beatles - but I didn't go for all
that...I've always been about 10 years behind
everybody else in fashion. Anyway, for some strange
reason I quit Neil and went back to Germany to play
in Mike Warner's band again, which turned out to be
a foolish move - he dumped us and it took me ages to
scrape up my fare home. Then I was hanging around
town again until I got a gig with Mike Hurst
[replacing Jimmy Page] and went on a package tour
with Gene Pitney and Billy J. Kramer and the
Dakotas."
Albert again
replaced Jimmy Page in Neil Christian's band The
Crusaders and was replaced by Ritchie Blackmore when
in 1964 he joined Chris Farlowe And The
Thunderbirds, a seminal R&B/rock and roll band that
was somehow overlooked in the U.S. during the
British Invasion of the mid-60s. He recorded and
toured with Farlowe for four years during this
period.
"In May 1964,
I joined Chris Farlowe and I stayed with him four
years. I thought it was a great band - the best in
Britain at what we did...but we never got much in
the way of recognition or public acclaim. It was
very frustrating; we'd support bands like The
Animals, who were terribly ragged in comparison,
with very little feeling or finesse - and they'd go
down a storm while we got a smattering of applause
from the few punters who weren't in the bar. I've
got tapes of some of our gigs and they still stand
up - some of our stuff was killer! Farlowe was a
dynamite singer! But there was practically no crowd
reaction. We worked solidly for years...tours, one
nighters, all nighters, doubles, trips to Germany
and Scandinavia - we went all over the place, but we
never cracked it beyond a certain level.
"By the end of
'67, Farlowe had decided to revamp the band - so it
was him backed by a trio, with Pete Solley (aka Pete
Shelley & Pete Sheridan) playing bass pedals as well
as the usual stuff on his organ...but by this time I
was getting a bit bored with r&b and the way the
rock scene was going. Everyone was into huge
Marshall stacks and maximum power, and that sort of
thing held no appeal for me."
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