54 Quotes by Alvin Lee

It wasn't very satisfying playing the big arenas, but it was good as far as a paycheck. But the sound was terrible, especially in hockey arenas - the sound would go on for 30 seconds after we quit playing.

My father was always playing this ethnic blues stuff around the house, and both my parents played. Then one day my father brought home Big Bill Broonzy, and there he was sitting in our living room playing, and blues was in my heart from the time I was 12 years old.

My solos are more tastefully conceived now. But I still get going in places. It's just that I build up to it now. I don't race off on a solo. I take my time.

Strangely enough, through all those school years I decided at 13 or 14 I was going to be a musician and so school was just something to get out of the way, a waste of time and not to bother with it.

That's the beauty of creativity. It comes from the ether. I like to think, sometimes, it's like I haven't written it, it's more like I just reached up and grabbed it from somewhere. That song, 'Song of the Red Rock Mountain,' is one of them. I recorded it and thought, 'Where did that come from?'

We started playing ice hockey arenas and baseball stadiums which was not as good as the underground circuit. I didn't enjoy it as much.

I lost a big part of me. That's what inspired me to take our music outside.

We're definitely pushing for everyone to do the band full-time, ... But right now, we're just trying to set everything in order, and I'm trying to do it so we have a big record out and have the bookings and the following to support us.

We wanted to make something that represented what we were actually doing, ... The first album was OK, but that was almost three and a half years ago, and we more or less did that on our own. But with Arhoolie, we were able to go into a bigger studio -- it was a lot more professional -- and we did the whole recording in one day, because we already knew what we were going to do. And we had a good engineer that had a nice system, and he let us feel free to do what we do, and I think that's the best way to record a group of guys like us.