Remembering ALVIN LEE on his birthday (video)

#alvinlee #tenyearsafter #rockfile
Alvin Lee (born Graham Anthony Barnes; 19 December 1944 – 6 March 2013) was an English singer and guitarist, best known as the lead vocalist and lead guitarist of the blues rock band Ten Years After.

Lee's performance at the Woodstock Festival was captured on film in the documentary of the event, and his 'lightning-fast' playing helped catapult him to stardom. Soon the band was playing arenas and stadiums around the globe. The film brought Lee's music to a worldwide audience, although he later lamented that he missed the lost freedom and spiritual dedication with his earlier public.

Lee was named "the Fastest guitarist in the West", and considered a precursor to shred-style playing that would develop in the 1980s.

Ten Years After had success, releasing ten albums together, but by 1973, Lee was feeling limited by the band's style. Moving to Columbia Records had resulted in a radio hit song, "I'd Love To Change the World", but Lee preferred blues-rock to the pop to which the label steered them. He left the group after their second Columbia LP. With American Christian rock pioneer Mylon LeFevre, along with guests George Harrison, Steve Winwood, Ronnie Wood and Mick Fleetwood, he recorded and released On the Road to Freedom, an acclaimed album that was at the forefront of country rock. Also in 1973 he sat in on the Jerry Lee Lewis double album The Session...Recorded in London with Great Artists recorded in London featuring many other guest stars including Albert Lee, Peter Frampton and Rory Gallagher. A year later, in response to a dare, Lee formed Alvin Lee & Company to play a show at the Rainbow in London and released it as a double live album, In Flight. Various members of the band continued on with Lee for his next two albums, Pump Iron! and Let It Rock. In late 1975, he played guitar for a couple of tracks on Bo Diddley's The 20th Anniversary of Rock 'n' Roll all-star album. He finished out the 1970s with an outfit called "Ten Years Later", with Tom Compton on drums and Mick Hawksworth on bass, which released two albums, Rocket Fuel (1978) and Ride On (1979), and toured extensively throughout Europe and the United States.

The 1980s brought another change in Lee's direction, with two albums that were collaborations with Rare Bird's Steve Gould, and a tour with the former John Mayall and Rolling Stones' guitarist Mick Taylor joining his band.

Lee's overall musical output includes more than twenty albums, including 1987's Detroit Diesel, 1989's About Time, recorded in Memphis with producer Terry Manning, and the back to back 1990s collections of Zoom and Nineteen Ninety-Four (US title I Hear You Rockin' ). Guest artists on both albums included George Harrison.

In Tennessee, recorded with Scotty Moore and D. J. Fontana, was released in 2004. Lee's last album, Still on the Road to Freedom, was released in September 2012.

source: wikipedia

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Happy Birthday ELLIOT EASTON (video)

#ellioteaston #thecars #rockfile

Elliot Easton (born Elliot Steinberg, December 18, 1953,  in Brooklyn, New York) is an American musician. He played lead guitar and sings backing vocals for The Cars. His guitar solos are an integral part of the band's hit singles. He studied music at the Berklee College of Music. He plays guitar left-handed. Upon the collapse of The Cars in 1988, Easton played in bands such as The New Cars and the roots rock group Creedence Clearwater Revisited. He has also played in songs by newer artists such as the power pop band the Click Five, whose guitarist Joe Guese referred to him as "the Boston connection".

source: wikipedia

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Happy Birthday KEITH RICHARDS (video)

#keithrichards #therollingstones #rockfile

Keith Richards (born 18 December 1943) is an English musician, singer, songwriter and founding member of the English rock band The Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone magazine credited Richards for "rock's greatest single body of riffs" on guitar and ranked him 10 on its list of 100 best guitarists. Fourteen songs Richards wrote with the Rolling Stones' lead vocalist Mick Jagger are listed among Rolling Stone magazine's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time".

source: wikipedia

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Happy Birthday MIKE MILLS (video)

#mikemills #rem #hindulovegods #rockfile

Michael Edward "Mike" Mills (born December 17, 1958) is an American multi-instrumentalist and composer who was a founding member of the alternative rock group R.E.M.. Though known primarily as a bass guitarist, backing vocalist, and pianist, his musical repertoire includes also keyboards, guitar, and percussion instruments. He contributed to a majority of the band's musical compositions.

Mills is credited with being the chief composer behind many of R.E.M.'s songs, including "Nightswimming", "Find the River", "At My Most Beautiful", "Why Not Smile", "Let Me In", "Wendell Gee", "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville", "Beat a Drum", "Be Mine" and "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?". In particular, R.E.M.'s 2004 album Around the Sun was heavily shaped by Mills' piano and keyboard contributions. Mills is also responsible for the prominent backing vocal and harmony parts found within the band's back catalogue, with his vocal contributions arguably being most noticeable on 1986's Lifes Rich Pageant and 2008's Accelerate. In addition to providing backing melodies, he has also sung lead vocals on the songs "Texarkana", "Near Wild Heaven", The Clique cover "Superman" and The Troggs cover "Love is All Around".

source: wikipedia

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Happy Birthday JEFF "SKUNK" BAXTER (video)

#jeffskunkbaxter #steelydan #doobiebrothers #rockfile

Jeffrey Allen "Jeff Skunk" Baxter (born December 13, 1948) is an American guitarist, known for his stints in the rock bands Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers during the 1970s and Spirit in the 1980s. More recently, he has been working as a defense consultant and chairs a Congressional Advisory Board on missile defense. He was born in Washington, D.C..

While working at Manny's Music Shop in Manhattan in 1966, Baxter met guitarist Jimi Hendrix, who was just beginning his career as a frontman. For a short period during that year, Baxter was the bassist in a Hendrix-led band called Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, along with fellow Manny's employee Randy California. Baxter also worked as a guitar tech and amplifier repairman at Jack's Drum Shop on Boylston Street in Boston.

Baxter first reached a wide rock audience in 1968 as a member of the psychedelic rock band Ultimate Spinach. Baxter joined the band for their third and final album, titled III. After leaving the band, he played with the Holy Modal Rounders and backed singer Buzzy Linhart.

After the breakup of Ultimate Spinach, Baxter relocated to Los Angeles, California, finding work as a session guitarist. In 1972 he became a founding member of the band Steely Dan, along with guitarist Denny Dias, guitarist-bassist Walter Becker, keyboardist Donald Fagen, drummer Jim Hodder and vocalist David Palmer (and session player Elliott Randall on various tracks). Becker and Fagen were employed at the time as staff songwriters for ABC Records, and they formed the band as a vehicle to promote their songs.

Baxter appeared with Steely Dan on their first three albums, Can't Buy a Thrill in 1972, Countdown to Ecstasy in 1973, and Pretzel Logic in 1974.

While finishing work on Pretzel Logic, Baxter became aware of Becker and Fagen's intentions to retire Steely Dan from touring, and to work almost exclusively with session players in the future. With that in mind, Baxter left the band in 1974 to join The Doobie Brothers, who at the time were touring in support of their fourth album What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits. As a session man, he had contributed pedal steel guitar on Vices as well as "South City Midnight Lady" on its predecessor, The Captain and Me. Baxter's first album as a full member of the group was 1975's Stampede. Baxter contributed an acoustic interlude entitled "Precis," significant turns on slide and pedal steel guitar, and the guitar solo for the hit single "Take Me In Your Arms (Rock Me A Little While)".

While preparing to tour in support of Stampede, Doobie Brothers founder Tom Johnston was hospitalized with a stomach ailment. To fill in for Johnston on vocals, Baxter suggested bringing in singer-keyboardist Michael McDonald, with whom Baxter had worked in Steely Dan. With Johnston still convalescing, McDonald soon was invited to join the band full-time. McDonald's vocal and songwriting contributions, as well as Baxter's jazzier guitar style, marked a new direction for the band. They went on to continued success with the 1976 album Takin' It to the Streets, 1977's Livin' on the Fault Line, and particularly 1978's Minute by Minute, which spent five weeks as the #1 album in the U.S. and spawned several hit singles; Baxter's work on the album includes a noted performance at the end of "How Do the Fools Survive?".

In early 1979, Baxter and co-founding drummer John Hartman left the band.

Baxter has continued working as a session guitarist for a diverse group of artists, including Willy DeVille, Bryan Adams, Hoyt Axton, Eric Clapton, Gene Clark, Sheryl Crow, Freddie Hubbard, Tim Weisberg, Joni Mitchell, Ricky Nelson, Dolly Parton, Carly Simon, Ringo Starr, Gene Simmons, Rod Stewart, Barbra Streisand, and Donna Summer. He has worked as a touring musician with Elton John, Linda Ronstadt and Billy Vera and the Beaters. In 1990, Baxter joined John Entwistle, Joe Walsh, Keith Emerson and Simon Phillips in a supergroup called The Best. The group released a live performance video in Japan before disbanding. He also produced two albums for the hard rock band Nazareth, Carl Wilson, Livingston Taylor, The Ventures, and Nils Lofgren. He also appeared in the film Blues Brothers 2000 and can be heard on the cast album. He was producer on a Bob Welch album in 1982, "Eye Contact". In 1994 Baxter performed on the video game Tuneland. In 1991 Baxter also produced a documentary video titled 'Guitar' (Warner Brothers VHS and LaserDisc) where he travels the world and interviews respected guitarists he admires.

He continues accepting studio work; his most recent such work involved tribute albums to Pink Floyd and Aerosmith. In 2012, he appeared on keyboardist Brian Auger's Language of the Heart, and The Beach Boys' That's Why God Made the Radio. He also occasionally plays in The Coalition of the Willing, a band comprising Andras Simonyi, Hungarian Ambassador to the United States; Alexander Vershbow, US Ambassador to South Korea; Daniel B. Poneman, formerly of the United States National Security Council and now the Obama Administration's Deputy Secretary of Energy; and Lincoln Bloomfield, former United States Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs. On June 19, 2007, Baxter jammed with former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow's band Beats Workin' at the Congressional Picnic held on the South Lawn of the White House.

source: wikipedia

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