Leo Lyons achieved success as the bass player for blues-rock band Ten Years After before moving into record production and professional songwriting in Nashville. Through most of his career, Leo has mainly been a one-bass guy, but his hands aren’t the only ones to have played his road-worn 1962 Jazz Bass. Leo takes us back to the beginning.
“I went for guitar lessons when I was 11 and my teacher introduced me to a couple of his other pupils. They had one of those bands that rehearsed twice a week and gigged twice a year. There were four guitar players and a drummer and they needed someone to play the bass, so I started playing the bass lines on the low strings on my guitar.
“I really took to it, so I sold my bicycle and my guitar and bought a Höfner bass on hire purchase. There weren’t many bass guitars around in those days and the only one in my hometown in Mansfield was the one I got. I played that until I found a 1960 Precision in Jennings on Charing Cross Road.
“It came with me to Germany when we began playing the Star-Club in 1962. A bassist in the other house band had a Jazz Bass and I preferred the narrow neck and the chrome parts, but I couldn’t afford one. In late 1962 we were back in England playing a gig in Norfolk and the guy in the support band was playing a Jazz Bass.
“We got talking and I asked if he wanted to sell it or do a swap. He told me he wasn’t really a bass player and had bought the bass from a music teacher just so he could get the gig. We agreed to swap instruments and I gave him £15 on top.
“That guy was Ian Hunter who went on to form Mott The Hoople, and the last time I saw him he offered to return the £15 in exchange for a commission for every gig I’ve done with it. He actually still owns my 1960 Precision.”
Precious Hard Work
Leo acquired his Jazz Bass the same year it was made, and he confirms it was almost like new: “It came from the second run of Jazz Basses that Fender made. The earliest ones had volume controls with dual concentric tone controls, but mine has two volumes and a separate tone control. It was from that changeover period in 1962.”
One glance at the bass and it’s clear to see it’s had a lot of use, as Leo explains: “I used to clean it after every gig and put it into a velvet bag before I put it back in the case. I was very precious with it, but the varnish eventually got worn down and I made an indentation in the wood that you can probably see in the photographs.
“It did a lot of work and was used on stages where history was made. I didn’t tour with several basses; I just took my Jazz Bass. If I broke a string, somebody would talk to the audience or the band would simply carry on playing without me while I put on a new one. It has been on all the records I’ve done, too.”
Studio Stories
By the time Ten Years After came off the road in the mid-’70s, Leo had already started producing. The band’s label, Chrysalis Records, had just bought Wessex Studios and asked Leo to supervise the refurbishment and manage the facility.
During his production career, Leo’s Jazz Bass was always on hand and proved popular with other musicians.
“I produced three records with UFO, and Pete Way always played my bass,” Leo says. “He had that old Gibson Thunderbird that looked really good hanging low at the hip, but it sounded like crap. It was the same with the Magnum records I did.”
Quite a few famous bands used Wessex Studios, including Queen, but Leo’s stint lasted for little more than a year. “Chrysalis wanted Ten Years After to go back on tour,” he says, “so I had to give up the job. After that, I bought a Neve desk and built my own studio, which I ran as a commercial facility.”
When Jimi first came to London, Chas Chandler was looking after him and I met them down the pub
However, one of Leo’s earliest recording studio experiences was in 1960 when a nascent Ten Years After, then called The Jaybirds, signed a deal with the legendary Joe Meek.
Leo remembers: “Joe was very eccentric, but he wasn’t too bad with us and he was very innovative. He had an 8ft-square room with a couple of tape recorders and he would bounce tracks between them. The floor was always covered with pieces of edited tape. He would DI the bass, the piano had drawing pins pressed into the hammers, and the echo chamber was the bathroom.”
Jimi Jams
Leo’s bass has also been played by Jimi Hendrix. “In the late ’60s we were all doing the same gigs and hanging around together,” Leo explains. “It was the time when the headline act only gave you half the PA power, you couldn’t use lights and you had to set up in front of the other band’s equipment. Everybody was a musician, we all mucked in together and we all knew each other.
“When Jimi first came to London, Chas Chandler was looking after him and I met them down the pub. I knew Chas and he asked if I’d be interested in joining Jimi’s band. They were offering good money, maybe £40 per week, but Alvin and I had put so much time into Ten Years After that I didn’t want to do it.
“We hung around a few times and used to play in The Cromwellian Club, where lots of musicians would come to jam. Jimi also played my bass in New York at The Scene, and on another occasion Mitch Mitchell came up to jam.”
Taking Woodstock
Ten Years After’s Woodstock performance in ’69 has long since passed into legendary status, but Leo recalls how, at the time, it seemed anything but.
“Nobody expected the gig to be that big,” he says. “There were lots of festivals during that period and we were on the road with Nina Simone and Dizzy Gillespie as part of the Newport Jazz Festival tour.
Before Woodstock we were playing to crowds of 3,000 in the US, and within a few years we were drawing 50,000
“We had played Missouri the night before and when we arrived in New York to travel up to Woodstock, we learned it was total chaos and the roads were blocked.
“We checked into a Holiday Inn nearby and flew into the gig, and that’s when I saw how many people were there and what it was like. There was rain and mud slides, and the stage was covered in cables and wires with water running between them. The audience was great, but when we came off stage we hadn’t eaten for 24 hours and the helicopters had stopped flying.
“By the time we got back to New York they had given away my hotel room and I had to sleep on a table in a conference room. It felt like just another gig, but people soon began asking about it – and after the movie came out things went supersonic. Before Woodstock we were playing to crowds of 3,000 in the US, and within a few years we were drawing 50,000.”
Power Struggles
Leo has used some very cool amps over the years, including a few that were seldom used for bass. “Alvin and I started out with a Vox AC15 each and our rhythm guitarist had an AC10,” he says. “Then I started using valve hi-fi amps like Leaks and Quads with a 12-inch speaker in an old TV cabinet before I went on to 18-inch speakers and enclosures that I built myself powered by 25- and 50-watt stereo amps.
“My friend, who played bass for Shane Fenton and the Fentones, had a deal with Jennings Musical Instruments [Industries], so he had Jet Harris’s AC30 Super Twin. I bought that when he emigrated to America and I used it until Watkins started providing us with gear.
“I stopped using Watkins amps when we began touring America because we couldn’t get Watkins gear over there. That’s when we changed over to Marshall amps and I stuck with them through most of my Ten Years After career. I was using two 100-watt heads with 16 12-inch speakers. I’ve also used Acoustic, Fender, Ampeg and Genz Benz over the years, but recently I’ve gone back to Watkins.”
All That Jazz
Despite having used his Jazz Bass almost exclusively, Leo has still acquired 26 basses along the way, including a quintessential pawn-shop find courtesy of Billy Gibbons.
“That was when we were playing in Houston, Texas,” he tells us, “and I got on well with the guys in the other band, which included Billy. We had a few days off, so I went back to Houston to hang out with them and Billy took me to a pawn shop where they had a 1955 Precision in the window. I really liked it, so I bought it, but I’ve only played it live once at The Isle Of Wight Festival and I recently gave it to my son.
“I also own a replica of my original Jazz Bass that was made by Barry Moorhouse at The Bass Centre in London. It’s his Leo Lyons signature ‘Woodstock Bass’ and I’ve been gigging it almost exclusively with my band Hundred Seventy Split because it looks and sounds almost exactly the same.”
“The original just became too valuable to take on the road and when I did sneak it out, the crew guys would start to feel uncomfortable. I couldn’t leave it on stage and I’d have to take it out of the van every night and keep it in my hotel room. I’m not a collector; I’m a musician who believes instruments are meant to be played. That’s why I am considering selling my Jazz Bass if I get the right offer for it.
“Everything about the bass is original besides one potentiometer, and it has been refretted. I’ve owned quite a few Fender basses, but this Jazz Bass is unique and whenever I use it on a record I do wonder why I bothered to buy all the others.
“It’s a historic artefact that has been on countless records and even appeared in the Eurovision Song Contest when I lent it to a friend. I’m 81 now and I’m thinking, ‘What are my boys going to do with it when I’m gone?’ If I sold it now, I’d probably be doing them a favour.”
- This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.
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