I have Ritchie Blackmore to thank for turning me into a fan of Albert Lee. Immodest, prickly and mischievous, Ritchie told me in 1971 that the only two guitarists who could play better than him were Jimi Hendrix and Albert. I wasn’t sure whether or not to believe him but I’d seen Ritchie practising scales and arpeggios, with and without a plectrum, backstage at a Deep Purple gig and deduced he was professionally trained and knew what he was talking about, so I made a point of checking out Head Hands & Feet, the band for whom Albert played in those days, for myself.
Suitably impressed – an understatement really – I interviewed Albert twice for MM later that year, once for one of those guitar supplements when he talked about his technique and the guitars he preferred, and again in 1975 when he was a member of Emmylou Harris’ Hot Band, having taken over the role occupied by James Burton who’d gone off to back Elvis in Vegas. By now I’d realised that what Burton was to the US, Albert was to the UK, the foremost player in the country rock and rockabilly idiom.
Albert went on to play in one of Eric Clapton’s stage groups and put the band together that backed The Everly Brothers when they reformed in 1983. He also showed up for the recording I attended of a live LP by Chas & Dave (Chas Hodges was a member of HH&F) at Abbey Road’s Studio 2 which had been turned into a pub for the occasion and, if I remember rightly, Eric showed up to jam along too. Since then Albert has made many distinguished guest appearances, notably at the Concert For George (Harrison) at the Royal Albert Hall in 2002, and led his own bands, one of which was called Hogan’s Heroes and recorded a gig at the New Morning club in Paris that was released in 2007 as a 2-CD package I nowadays play a lot.
A few years ago, Albert gave a master class in nearby Guildford, sponsored by Andertons Music, the city’s guitar shop, at which he demonstrated his skills on the signature red Ernie Ball Music Man guitar that he uses these days, having long ago abandoned the 1950s Telecaster that he played for years.
Which brings me to last night at the Borough Hall in Godalming where Albert performed as the leader of a quartet alongside brothers Ali (keyboards) and Iain Petrie (bass) and Tim Hilsden (drums). Well, he’s still an absolute wizard on guitar but there’s something strangely disturbing about seeing him play in a hall that held around 300 people – there’s wasn’t an empty seat in the house but that’s not the point – for which tickets cost just £30 a pop. It may be that Godalming was amongst the smallest venues on his current UK tour but that doesn’t alter my view that a musician of Albert’s stature and pedigree ought to be on a much bigger stage with tickets a good deal pricier.
Much of the show featured tracks from Albert’s 2024 album Lay It Down, with which I am unfamiliar, and elsewhere, as expected, he demonstrated excellent taste, drawing from a well of songwriters like Gram Parsons, Carl Perkins, John Stewart, Jimmy Webb and Richard Thompson. His playing remains extraordinary, all those runs and licks that defy analysis as he zips up and down his fretboard, pulling off and hammering on, often playing what I might call mini-chords, a combination of strings, usually the top two or three, picked simultaneously. He conjures up a gorgeously full tone, especially on the lower strings, fresh and, at times, very sharp, very crisp, very deep. What’s more he makes it look effortless and, as ever, comes across as the humblest of men, giving keyboard player Ali plenty of opportunity to shine and even sounding a bit sheepish when he name-drops.
“I was at this party at David Geffen’s house,” he began before performing ‘Highwayman’, a long-time feature of Albert’s repertoire. “I was to talking to Jackson Browne, whose girlfriend at the time was Joni, and Jimmy Webb. We decided the party was dull and headed off to Jimmy’s house in the hills where had two grand pianos, nine-foot long, in his living room. Jimmy played a song, then Jackson, then Joni and then they tuned to me. Crikey! I honestly didn’t know what to play.” It was at moments like this that made me think Albert, and not some parvenu playing a stadium tonight, was our real rock royalty.
Albert played piano on this lovely, slightly otherworldly, Jimmy Webb song about reincarnation, but was soon back on guitar for a furious ‘Tear Stained Letter’ that preceded the final song in the set, ‘Country Boy’, the signature song he wrote with Tony Colton and Ray Smith of HH&F that in 1983 was a hit for Ricky Skaggs. It featured the hottest licks of the night and brought the house down, in fact, but Albert returned for a couple of encores: a moving rendition of Glen Campbell’s ‘A Better Place’ and, to send us on our way, an all-out rave up on Jimmy Burnett’s ‘Tear It Up’.
The only flaw in an otherwise impeccable show was the sound balance. The drums were on the loud side and at times threatened to drown out Albert’s guitar which, after all, was what we had come to hear. Perhaps in a larger venue there would have been on-stage monitors and a mixing desk out front.
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The photo above was taken by my friend Jeremy Hamerton whose mobile phone is superior to my own (and who owns 27 guitars).
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