Magical Highs: Alvin Lee & Me, by Loraine Burgon
Published by Spenwood Books – Out Now
Loraine Burgon, author of Mystical Highs was Alvin Lee’s partner from the age of 17 to 27 – that’s old flexi-fingers himself of the British Blues rock band Ten Years After. This is her memoir of life with Lee during the heyday of British Blues rock bands from 1963 to 1973 when she had a ringside seat.
‘British Pop for Newport’ reads the Melody Maker headline on the front cover (1969); a lead photograph of Peter Green (Fleetwood Mac) and an inset shot of Alvin Lee accompanying the piece. “British, blues-based bands are heading for America, reads the opening strapline”.
You’re already en route to the Woodstock festival. It’s hot and humid (threatening one humdinger of a storm). Last night your boyfriend, your childhood sweetheart, your fellow traveller, played at the Newport Jazz Festival with his band. “Jeff Beck, Jethro Tull, Blood Sweat & Tears and Led Zeppelin were also on the bill” (p. 170). Rock bands weren’t welcome again after that. No one cared. It’s 1969 and this girl from Nottingham is on route to Woodstock.
The freeway is closed. The plan is to drive bands to the Holiday Inn, helicopter them to the concert site and back again immediately.
“And no old ladies,” says the security guy.
No girlfriends or wives, or mothers or even granny. “No old ladies,”. (p. 172)
What a disaster for Burgon, not the part about being referred to as the old lady at just 23 and perhaps preferable to her than the label of ‘the girlfriend’ which sounds more temporary and featured in all the photo captions. It’s a catastrophe for Burgon because she is a massive music fan and culture vulture. She knows her tribe is out there.
Did she get in? No spoilers here but go to page 173. Other quick references? Her relationship with Krissie Wood, p. 147, the naked lesbians in a bed media myth, and subsequent court case, 318-239: “Your honour, cocaine is a stimulant. These ladies are supposed to have sniffed around eight different places in the house and a couple of hours later, when this raid took place, they were sound asleep.”
All the chapters are brief with titles that sometimes read like a cryptic crossword clue: Confusion, Death, New Direction; A Roof Falls, On the Road to Freedom. The above quote is from the chapter ‘Old McDonald’s Snorting Habits’. The choice of the memoir genre, rather than a biography, is a good one because this gave her a tight framework for writing. Each chapter focuses on significant cultural events, famous concerts and festivals, London living, the band’s worldwide travel, and Rod Stewart in his underpants… presented chronologically with a resolution chapter, ‘And After All That’.
In a sense, Burgon is not the main character of her own memoir, it’s Alvin Lee and Ten Years After, although that’s not to say she’s defining her happiness or value by her relationship with a man. It’s a rock’n’roll story that they started together, moving to London when he was in the Jaybirds, negotiating the world and all its wonders for the next decade, no day the same. Back then being the girlfriend of a rock star, the girl with no name, was the golden ticket. You weren’t a groupie sitting at home playing the Carpenter’s Superstar on repeat. And not everybody gets to watch a band grow from grassroots to worldwide status, with staff that think they’re family, and the compulsory ‘house in the country’ (where it all goes wrong). This is the feeling that Burgon wants to get across here, the sheer thrill of surfing the wave, her love of live music. There are minimal conversations about the isolation and loneliness, the STDs that Lee brought home, only to cure just in time to go on tour again.
It’s not going to make the New Yorker’s creative nonfiction Top 50 of all-time list, but it respects the creative nonfiction format, stitching in facts and detail, such as historical context, names of people and places. She’s gone back and elaborated on what the music sounded like; she’s explained details, like TYA’s Chrysalis story; and sometimes what Alvin said to her thirty years later when they communicated via email.
On the sidelines, Burgon was the passive girlfriend, cheering on ‘her man’, but it seems to this reader that every next step (into the unknown) is an adventure and privilege for her. Yet Alvin is always wondering what’s expected of him. They cut a dash in the ’60s style of the day, but could he move successfully from interpretative prog rock covers of Blues to original songwriting? It was going to take more than a perm.
~
Words by Ngaire Ruth. You can follow her on Instagram. Check out her personal website. Read her collection of memoirs as short stories, personal essays and archive music journalism, and a sample extract of her book in progress: Taking Control: Manifesto of a Girl Journalist in the 90s on Substack
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