“I've always played what I wanted to play and fortunately for me, I've always played with artists whose music I liked, so I really fitted in at the time,” Albert Lee tells Guitar Player. The country guitar legend has performed and recorded with artists such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Eric Clapton and Bill Wyman, to name but a few. He even participated in the supergroup Biff Baby’s All-Stars, featuring Eddie Van Halen, Steve Lukather and Steve Morse.
But one legendary act he played with remains a career highlight: the Everly Brothers.
“I did a long stint with them,” explains Lee. “During the ’70s they'd broken up and weren’t speaking to each other, so I got to know Don really well. He was playing at a local bar once a week with some old friends, and that turned into a regular thing and it was great fun.
“By that time, I was doing the occasional session in Los Angeles too, and because I didn't have an acoustic guitar with me, I used to borrow one or two of his guitars to take to the sessions. He was fine with it and would say, ‘Take this one, it's amazing.’ He then gave me one of his own Gibson J-200s and it's one of my treasured possessions now.”
Guitar Player asked Lee to look back on five of his memorable moments playing with rock’s finest artists.
Eric Clapton
“I was working on a session for a week with an artist called Marc Benno and at the end of the week, Eric's manager said that Eric had just done a tour without a second guitarist and so, how did I fancy going out with him? I thought, ‘Well, that's great, yes.’
“At the time I was just about to get my first real album released, so I don't know if I did a good thing or a bad thing, but I dropped the promotion of my new record and went out with Eric and it was great fun because we were all friends from the ’60s. I think he liked having me around and it worked really well because our styles are so different. I've heard most of the guys who played with him tried to sound like him, but I didn’t, I just did what I do. And likewise, he did the same thing, too.
“I was with him for five years, and during that period he fired his whole band twice, but I managed to survive. He was very happy for me to do a song or two during the show, he’d say, ‘Go on, Albert,’ and he’d go and sit behind the amp and have his brandy and lemonade and a cigarette. He was really enthused to have me around at that time. Then after five years he decided that I wasn't wanted anymore. I have to say that we're still good friends and since then, I've done most of the Crossroads concerts.”
Ritchie Blackmore
“I did an album with Jon Lord called Gemini Suite [in 1971] and Ritchie, because of his moods, decided he didn't want to do it, so Jon thought, Well, I'll get somebody else to do it. And it was good fun. Ritchie and I knew each other as he used to be with the Outlaws, an English country band that wore Western shirts and played instrumentals and also backed [English rock and roll singer] Mike Berry for a while in the ’60s.
“Ritchie and I played in this studio band called Green Bullfrog with producer Derek Lawrence who was friends with all the guys in that band. Derek had a lot of free studio time and told me, ‘Come tomorrow and we'll put down some tracks, with any songs you want to do,’ and that's how that all came about. He did have some kind of record deal, but rather than having to deal with the contracts for all those different record companies, he decided to give us nicknames. You can tell who's who, though.
“Ritchie did a few sessions with different people in the early years and he did a lot of sessions with [English record producer] Joe Meek, who was getting some very commercial sounds that people weren't getting at that time. Ritchie has always been really friendly with me and has always said nice things about me in articles.”
Jerry Lee Lewis
“I've always been a big fan of Jerry Lee Lewis. There was a period in the early ’70s when American record companies were getting records done in London with well-known British names, so we did a record [The Session, 1973] for Mercury Records and there were lots of artists on it. It was a lot of fun. Jerry always lived up to his reputation as ‘the Killer’ back then. He liked what I was doing and compared with some of the guitar players who were on it, I guess my sound was more to his liking, because of his country background.
“There was this one time at Wembley Arena in London and I was playing with Duane Eddy and I just happened to be walking down the hallway when Jerry's roadies called out to me: ‘Come down and say hello to Jerry.’ I was a bit nervous but I went in and said hello. His manager then pulled me aside and said, ‘Jerry’s guitar players have been drinking all day. Do you want to get up and play with Jerry?’ Of course, I said yes. Little Richard was on the show as well and he'd already done his set. They had agreed that Jerry would close the show so I was up there playing with Jerry and it was discussed that for the encore Little Richard would come on, and it all got pretty wild.”
The Crickets
“I'd always been a huge Buddy Holly fan. I was at a record launch party for my band Heads Hands & Feet and Ric Grech was there and we got to talking over a drink. I had missed Buddy when he and the Crickets came over to England for the first time. Ric said that the Crickets were coming over that weekend and that I better come along. Glen Hardin, the piano player, wasn't going to be able to make it in time because he was finishing up a tour with Elvis Presley, so they asked me to fill in.
“We had a little rehearsal a few days later and it was a lot of fun. We did the first gig at the Speakeasy in London, the late-night drinking establishment. It went really well, and at the end of the night Jerry Allison said, ‘Do you want to do the whole tour?’ So, I did.
“They shared lots of stories with me about touring America back then. It was quite difficult, driving overnight and hardly getting any sleep. Some of them were bus tours and other times they were in a van or a big car with a lot of instruments. And the buses weren’t like nowadays, with bunks and whatever; these were old-school buses, so you’d travel overnight sitting up.
“Then that February day, the heating had broken down on the bus and it was miserable. Buddy decided he couldn’t face it one more night, so he decided to rent a plane, a four-seater for him and his band. But Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper were really putting pressure on the guys, saying, ‘Oh God, I'd really like to get off that bus for a day,’ and we all know the rest of what happened. The weather was bad and the pilot was only about 21 and not really familiar with using flight instruments for night flying.”
Eddie Van Halen
“[The supergroup] Biff Baby’s All-Stars was actually started by Sterling Ball, Ernie Ball’s son. When I was with Heads Hands & Feet, Ernie and his son came along to our gig because they'd heard ‘Country Boy’ on the radio and they wanted to see this English band playing country music.
“I got really friendly with the family and I started to play local gigs with Sterling, who then put a band together and it developed from there. We did a lot of gigs.
“There was this one gig we did on a weekend during the NAMM show. By that time the Balls had gotten really friendly with Eddie Van Halen, Steve Lukather and Steve Morse, and we all played this show together. Eddie didn't want to play ‘Country Boy.’ He told me, ‘No, I don’t want to play on that’ because his style was so different from country, but I said, ‘You just do what you do with the tapping bit,’ and he did and he loved it.”
