Lessons from a professional piano teacher bored him. But while this instilled a talent for improvisation, attempts by his parents to provide him with formal musical training failed. His father played the piano and the family gathered around it to sing and make up songs. Growing up in the Blackheath area, Lee’s Romany roots bequeathed an inherent musicality. It took a while before his parents bought him a guitar, though a cheap Spanish affair with gut strings, which he immediately switched for steel ones. “There were lots of skiffle groups around at the time, and me and my mates would get together and play.” Once you figured it out, you could easily play those tunes,” he continues. “I was about 13 and Lonnie’s music was really simple three-chord stuff. But I was really excited by this new sound. I listened to it and enjoyed it, and I even ended up touring with Guy much later. Prior to that the only pop you heard on the radio in England was Guy Mitchell and Doris Day. Then he did Rock Island Line, which gave him a hit in the UK – and the US – and that started it all off. It proved to be an interesting part of the show. He was playing banjo in Chris Barber’s band and performend a little acoustic set in the middle, with Barber on double bass. He was a big fan of Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. Indeed, his early guitar influence was Lonnie Donegan: “Without Lonnie there wouldn’t have been skiffle in the UK. If there’s one superannuated style of music that evades revivalist appeal, it’s this one. ![]() They are likely to span the genres, because though Lee is happy to be called a country-rocker, his versatility has enabled him to embrace rockabilly, blues, jazz and soft rock, and even a flirtation with folk from which he quickly recoiled.īut first came skiffle. It’s anyone’s guess on who might turn up on stage, such is the esteem in which he is held by his fellow professionals. Lee’s anniversary concert in March at the 900-seater Cadogan Hall in London was already being announced as sold out last August, with ticket holders promised the spectacle of seeing him with “a host of stars”. There are better-known guitarists than me who don’t pick the instrument up until shortly before they go on tour, and expect to get straight back to where they were.” The longest time I’ve been away from my guitar is about two weeks. My good fortune is that I never stopped working. I feel I’m pretty much at the top of my game – which doesn’t happen to that many musicians of my age. ![]() Touch wood, my ability hasn’t started to diminish. “It hasn’t changed that much, I’ve just gotten better at it. “When I listen to the way I sounded in the 60s, I think my style was pretty much formulated then,” he reflects. ![]() He’s a craftsman, seldom flashy but often brilliant, and strikingly consistent. He’s probably all these things, but another picture emerges from our talk, of a guy who simply knows his proper worth, has stuck to his musical guns, and doesn’t get distracted by the fripperies of stardom. Mr Lee seems to be the favourite guitarist of everyone in the rock business, not least Eric Clapton himself, but his profile stays relatively low beyond it, and it’s customary to depict him as an easygoing, freewheeling character, happy out of the limelight, and exceptionally modest. It’s just that I blew my hearing out years ago, after five years with Clapton, standing next to his amp.” ![]() I can’t run or do all the things I used to, but I’m not overweight or gasping. “The only birthdays I ever liked were when I was 18, or 25 when the car insurance went down. He certainly doesn’t care much for being reminded of his birthday as we ponder the fact over a mug of tea. And, despite the fact that Albert was 70 last December and his locks are now grey, he still has the wiry presence and enthusiasm of a youngster. His manner is shy, but friendly, the sort of bloke you could imagine as a fun mate. “Sorry about that,” he says, looking a bit dazed when the door finally opens, confiding that they’d all had “a bit of a night” the evening before. Pressing the doorbell to interview Albert Lee, who’s staying mid-tour at fellow Hogan’s Heroes member Peter Baron’s darkly imposing Victorian house in Willesden, there’s an unnervingly long silence until our guitar hero’s silhouette appears against the frosted glass pane, battling with the lock.
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