{"id":493612,"date":"2026-02-27T12:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T12:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/493612\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T12:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T12:28:11","slug":"im-going-home-by-ten-years-after-the-story-behind-the-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/493612\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m Going Home by Ten Years After: the story behind the song"},"content":{"rendered":"

History tends to reduce 1969\u2019s Woodstock festival to a core set of signifiers. Take your pick from a kaftan-wearing Richie Havens barking out Freedom, The Who<\/a> laying waste Summertime Blues, a \u201cscared shitless\u201d CSNY<\/a>, Sly & The Family Stone grooving through the early hours, Country Joe McDonald leading The Fish Cheer, or Jimi Hendrix<\/a> reclaiming The Star-Spangled Banner for hippies everywhere.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s Ten Years After<\/a>, the Midlands four-piece who arrived at Max Yasgur\u2019s farm as a hard-grafting blues-rock combo and left as international superstars. Their lift-off point came on the final evening of the event, when they closed their show with a titanic version of I\u2019m Going Home, a rock\u2019n\u2019roll epic that simmered and boiled over 11 grandstanding minutes. At its centre was Alvin Lee, whose finger-blurring fretwork earned him the unofficial status of the fastest guitarist alive.<\/p>\n

It was a moment captured in all its glory in Michael Wadleigh\u2019s Woodstock movie, released the following year. \u201cIt put us on the world stage,\u201d says drummer Ric Lee (no relation to Alvin, who died in 2013). \u201cWe managed six songs at Woodstock, but I\u2019m Going Home endorsed us, because of the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Ten\n<\/p>\n

Ten Years After in the late 1960s (Image credit: Jorgen Angel\/Redferns)<\/p>\n

Almost immediately, TYA found themselves on a succession of high-profile US and European tours, lasting well into the 70s. \u201cBefore Woodstock we were playing to three-to-four thousand a night,\u201d recalls keyboardist Chick Churchill. \u201cBut afterwards we suddenly started playing to crowds of fifteen-to-twenty thousand.\u201d<\/p>\n

We were playing Scandinavia with the original Fleetwood Mac. And every night they were blowing us off stage.<\/p>\n

Ric Lee<\/p>\n

I\u2019m Going Home had arrived out of necessity. Touring Europe in the spring of 1968, TYA found themselves in need of a showstopper. \u201cWe were playing Scandinavia with the original Fleetwood Mac: Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie,\u201d explains Lee. \u201cIt was a double-header tour but we were going on after them. And every night they were blowing us off stage, because they were doing Shake Your Moneymaker. It was hard work for us, because they\u2019d gone down such a storm.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlvin didn\u2019t exactly get miffed,\u201d continues Lee, \u201cbut he said: \u2018Oh Christ, we\u2019ve got to do something. We can\u2019t have this.\u2019 So one day he organised an afternoon rehearsal, which was totally unheard of. He played me this riff and I started to do a shuffle behind it. We did it again at the next soundcheck, then we put it in the set. It wasn\u2019t quite Shake Your Moneymaker, but we honed it and eventually it took off.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Ten\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Archive Photos\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Less than a fortnight later, on May 14, I\u2019m Going Home was recorded at Klooks Kleek, the Railway Hotel in West Hampstead\u2019s tiny venue, for the live album Undead. Just shy of six-and-a-half minutes, this rendition would be dwarfed by its Woodstock variant, yet the song still packs the same raw heat. Ric Lee and bassist Leo Lyons cook up a frenzied backing, Chick Churchill bubbles out an organ run and Alvin Lee roars away on guitar, heroically switching between lead and rhythm. At one point, things slow to a crawling whisper, before suddenly rushing outwards into an explosive climax.<\/p>\n

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Released in August \u201968, Undead (their second album) exudes a sticky urgency that was a direct result of where it was made. \u201cKlooks Kleek was the upstairs room of a pub,\u201d says Lee. \u201cThere were two rooms \u2013 the one we played in, then a bar to the right \u2013 and it was absolutely jam-packed. Legally, it held about a hundred and twenty people, but there must\u2019ve been over two hundred there that night. It was bloody hot.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Decca studio was right next door. Roy Thomas Baker [pre-Queen] was the engineer and he ran the wires over the roof from a desk to the studio. Roy was a real innovator, he thought outside the box.\u201d<\/p>\n

I’m Going Home (Live “Undead” Single-Edit Version) – YouTube
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Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

The circumstances of Undead\u2019s release carried logic. TYA were already busy recording a new studio LP, but an invitation from US promoter Bill Graham, who wanted them to play his newly-opened venue in San Francisco, the Fillmore West, sent the band\u2019s label into overdrive.<\/p>\n

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Before Woodstock we were playing to 3000 people a night. Afterwards we suddenly started playing to crowds of 20,000.<\/p>\n

Chick Churchill<\/p>\n

\u201cThe album we were working on, which turned out to be Stonedhenge, wasn\u2019t anywhere near finished when Bill asked us to go out there,\u201d Lee explains. \u201cAnd the first one [1967\u2019s Ten Years After] hadn\u2019t really met with any interest, apart from specialist people. So we did Undead in a hurry, so that we\u2019d have it out as we were touring the States.\u201d The chosen lead-off single in America was, naturally, I\u2019m Going Home.<\/p>\n

The band played a number of festivals over the next 12 months, most notably Newport Jazz and Seattle Pop. But Woodstock, in August, was the watershed. \u201cWe played in St. Louis the night before with Nina Simone, which was a strange kind of bill,\u201d Churchill remembers. \u201cThen we flew to New York and were driven upstate to a hotel near to the festival site, where all the bands congregated. We had no idea there were that many people there until we flew over the crowd in a helicopter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was an unbelievable sight,\u201d says Lee. \u201cCrosby, Stills and Young \u2013 I believe Nash went in another way \u2013 shoved us aside and grabbed the helicopter before us, so we caught the next one. We flew in \u2013 me, my first wife and a medic, who warned us of this potential hepatitis outbreak: \u2018Don\u2019t eat anything unless it\u2019s cooked and don\u2019t drink anything unless it\u2019s sealed.\u2019 And then a storm caused the power to go out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were some very strong winds that almost blew the stage down,\u201d Churchill remembers, \u201cso it was just getting dark when we were finally able to get on.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think Alvin enjoyed all the attention afterwards. As soon as he walked out on the street he was recognisable. But Woodstock is probably the reason why we\u2019re still working. Without it we\u2019d probably have gone into the tides of history. A wave would\u2019ve broken on the shore and nobody would remember us. I\u2019m glad it worked out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally published in Classic Rock issue 245 (January 2018)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"History tends to reduce 1969\u2019s Woodstock festival to a core set of signifiers. Take your pick from a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":["post-493612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}