(Reuters) - British blues-rock guitarist Alvin Lee, who was best known for his performance with rock band Ten Years After at Woodstock in 1969, died on Wednesday at age 68, his family said.
"With great sadness we have to announce that Alvin unexpectedly passed away early this morning after unforeseen complications following a routine surgical procedure," the family said in a statement on the singer's official website.
They did not say what sort of procedure Lee underwent or where the musician died.
Lee and Ten Years After rose to international prominence after a much-lauded performance at the 1969 Woodstock music festival in New York state.
The band's song "I'm Going Home," which featured Lee's singing and extended guitar solos, opened the band to bigger audiences after it was included in the documentary "Woodstock" in 1970.
Ten Years After's biggest hits followed Woodstock, including "Love Like a Man" in 1970 and "I'd Love to Change the World" in 1971.
Lee formed Ten Years After in 1966 but left the band in 1973 to focus on a solo career only to reform the group in 1988.
In a 1975 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Lee lamented how after the Woodstock performance audiences wanted more rock-driven songs from the band.
"We had respectful audiences then who would appreciate a jam or a swing," Lee said. "But after Woodstock, the audience got very noisy and only wanted to hear things like 'I'm Going Home.'"
He added: "I've always been much more of a guitar picker but I began to feel forced into a position of being the epitome of a rock and roll guitarist."
Ten Years After released 11 studio albums between 1966 and 2008. Lee put out 14 solo albums, the most recent was "Still on the Road to Freedom" in 2012.
(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Eric Beech)
Blog List
-
Kaley Cuoco Shows Off Fit Physique In Skin-Revealing Yoga Outfit - By Suzy Byrne Kaley Cuoco leaving yoga class in L.A. on Monday. (X17online.com)Kaley Cuoco gave new meaning to hot yoga on Monday when she emerged from cla...
11 years ago
Pageviews
Popular Posts
-
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Arnold Schwarzenegger is going back to his bodybuilding roots. The action movie star turned politician will become g...
-
CANNES, France (AP) Associated Press journalists open their notebooks at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. UNCOMFORTABLE MOMENTS FOR ACTRESS AS...
-
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius, known as the "Blade Runner", was planning a future wit...
-
Steve Ballmer Windows Phones A decade or so ago, Apple ( AAPL ) was the company that had to work its tail off trying to get dev...
-
1. PHLIP Ages 4-up Overall rating: 4.1 out of 5 stars Why we like it: PHLIP is a spatial relations puzzle where yo...
-
PRESTON, Minn. (AP) A Minnesota mother and her 18-year-old son are accused of stealing nearly $5,000 in frozen gopher feet and selling them ...
-
By Alistair Barr SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc said on Monday it had acquired Liquavista NV from Samsung Electronics Co to help...
-
NEW YORK (AP) Relatives of a missing New York City woman who disappeared during a vacation to Turkey, her first trip outside the U.S., are h...
-
(Reuters) - The California wildlife sanctuary where an African lion attacked and killed a 24-year-old intern last week will reopen to the pu...
-
An advanced member of the largest group of dinosaurs ever to walk the Earth still had a relatively puny brain, researchers say. The scientis...