Stonedhenge is the second studio album, and third album overall, by English blues rock band Ten Years After, released in February 1969 by Deram Records. It was recorded with producer Mike Vernon at London's Decca Studios in September 1968.
Believing that the group's live album Undead (1968) had already perfectly captured their talents, frontman and guitarist Alvin Lee conceived Stonedhenge as a change in direction. A psychedelic blues album, it expands the group's boogie rock sound into more experimental territory, incorporating jazz, progressive pop and musique concrète styles, with deployment of studio effects, stereo panning and tape manipulation. Influences on the recording included Tod Dockstader and Canned Heat. Although largely written by Lee, the record also feature solo pieces from all four band members. The title alludes to marijuana and the ancient monument Stonehenge, the latter of which is illustrated on the psychedelic album cover.
On release, Stonedhenge was the band's biggest album yet, reaching number six on the British charts and number 61 in the United States. Music critics have discussed the album's variety and the band's performances. The album set the group up for a heavy year of touring and performances at numerous American festivals, including a famous appearance at Woodstock. Stonedhenge has been re-released several times, including with bonus tracks in 2002.
Background and recording After forming in 1965, Ten Years After were distinguished from hardcore blues groups in Britain by mixing the genre with rock and roll and jazz, and were part of the burgeoning progressive music scene. The group's debut album Ten Years After (1967) was largely ignored, although it essayed the group's "raw, jazzy approach to the blues", and their popularity only began to blossom via months of fatiguing club work. Having believed the record did not capture their live sound, the group followed it with the live album Undead (1968), recorded at a small club in London. According to Colin Larkin, the album "spread the word" that frontman Alvin Lee was "not only an outstanding guitarist, but the fastest by a mile." It was their first record to chart in the United Kingdom and United States.
Lee was so pleased with Undead, considering it to have captured the group's sound perfectly, that he conceived Stonedhenge as a radical change in direction. He recalled: "I was so happy with [Undead]. When I first heard it I thought, what are we going to do next? After that my attitude was, 'Let's go into the studio and experiment, because we've already made the ultimate album'." Ten Years After recorded Stonedhenge at Decca Studios in West Hampstead between 3–15 September 1968, working with producer Mike Vernon and engineers Roy Baker and Martin Smith. Vernon had acquired British blues pedigree, having worked with Eric Clapton and Fleetwood Mac. Baker is also credited for the "special sound effect" on "No Title", while Smith is credited for providing the "train effect" on "Speed Kills". Alvin Lee's credits include "Chinese fans" ("Skooby-Oobly-Doobob"), clog stamping ("Hear Me Calling"), and a "steel on steel effect" ("No Title"). The musician recalled that there were "[p]ipes and stuff like that all over the place" during the recording, and described the process as being defined by "not particularly what we wanted to do, but the way we did what we happened to do".
Composition
Stonedhenge features seven songs written by Alvin Lee, along with a song each from bass guitarist Leo Lyons, keyboardist Chick Churchill and drummer Ric Lee. According to Beat Instrumental, it is a more of an experimental album than the group's earlier work, deploying "a lot of trickery and studio effects combined with fairly untypical Ten Years After material". According to critic Hal Horowitz, the group experimented to expand their basic boogie rock sound, working with Vernon to steer into "a more jazz- and blues-oriented direction" without losing their "basic concept", while Melody Maker said that although there are still traces of blues, the record also heavily incorporates jazz and progressive pop material, resulting in an album that is hard to classify. Author Eric vd Luft wrote that although it is as "mostly bluesy" as the group's earlier albums, it "rocked a bit harder". The album has been described as 'progressive blues' and the group's sole example of a psychedelic blues album, while author Robert Santelli wrote that, as with the band's other 1960s records, it is a jazz-rock album with "a blues core."
Alvin Lee wrote that the album was frequently "very experimental" as he was into his "musique concrète phase", noting the strong influence of avant-garde/industrial composer Tod Dockstader on the record. He added: "It was still very underground at that point, and we were making music for that audience – for ourselves, really, because we were that audience too." Lyons agreed that the album was an attempt to experiment, adding: "Stereo records had just begun to appear on the scene and we tried to do something different." Another influence was the group's tour mates Canned Heat, who were also expanding beyond their boogie rock sound in the period. According to Horowitz, Alvin minimised his fleeting guitar playing, "preferring to work his style into a more organic fusion", and noted that "A Sad Song" has no speedy guitar solos. According to critic Allen Evans, Alvin's vocals "range from the gutbucket to faraway, Oriental sadness, with lead guitar playing to match." The group and Vernon also experimented with primitive stereo panning and tape manipulation.
The record is varied in content, spanning rockers and low-key, moody material, and features four short solo pieces for each member alone on their instrument. The swinging "Woman Trouble" evidences the group's more jazz- and blues-inflected sound, while "Skoobly-Oobly-Doobob" features scat singing. "Hear Me Calling" reveals the influence of Canned Heat, and has been dubbed the album's stand-out track. "Three Blind Mice" is an adaptation of the nursery rhyme, performed as a one-minute drum solo by Ric Lee. According to David Hepworth, the track was included so that Ric "could share in the royalties for allegedly songwriting". The eight-minute "No Title" creates a moody atmosphere for the first half until Alvin plays a "terse, loud extension on its main riff", setting up a ghostly organ solo from Churchill. According to OffBeat Magazine writer Brett Milano, the song "showed how imaginative blues-rock could get", writing that its "structure—beginning as near silence, with instruments being added until it turns to a harsh electronic wail—isn’t far from the studio art that the likes of Brian Eno would popularize later on." "Speed Kills", the closing song, returns the group to a more familiar, rocking sound, although it features a "surprise ending".
Title and artwork
The title Stonedhenge, described as a "not-so-subtle" choice, alludes to marijuana and the prehistoric monument Stonehenge in Wiltshire. The site had become linked with popular music in the 1960s, as various Paganisms and New Age beliefs increased in popularity with the nascent counterculture. According to author Thomas E. Harkins, "it was the album's title, as much as anything, that would endear the group to the American counterculture." Correlating the music and the site, journalist Rory O'Connor says that Stonedhenge "seemed to be an attempt at tuning in cosmic vibrations, perhaps because [Alvin] Lee has a feeling for the strange atmosphere that the ancient Druid ruins at Stonehenge reportedly has hanging round it. Hence the name of the LP."
The artwork, described by Harkins as psychedelic in style, was one of the earliest album covers to depict Stonehenge. The foldout sleeve features an illustration of the stone circle's surviving northeast sector, with a stylised mid-summer sun rising through the stones, while the landscape around the monument is described by Timothy Darvill as being "covered in Beardsley-esque beats and people." Richie Havens, who played at Woodstock in 1969 alongside Ten Years After, also depicted the stone circle on the sleeve of his album Stonehenge (1970), and both sleeves have been described as doing "much to further popularise the site within the hippie movement." Stonedhenge also pre-empted Hawkwind's frequent use of the site on their sleeves.
In 1985, archaeologist Christopher Chippindale borrowed the title Stonedhenge for his review of that year's ill-fated summer solstice celebrations at the stone circle and the Battle of the Beanfield. In 1999, Adam Sweeting of The Guardian described the album title as "uncannily far-seeing", due to the emergence of an academic theory that Stonehenge was designed as a venue for worshippers to enter "shamanistic trances" to "travel through time and space to visit their ancestral spirits."
Release and promotion
Stonedhenge was released on 7 February 1969 by Deram Records. The record was advertised on the front of Billboard in January 1969, referring to the group as "exciting, different, and wild!" A single, "A Sad Song", was also released in Japan. The group's touring helped both Undead and Stonedhenge sell steadily, although Stonedhenge outsold the former. The album reached number six on the UK Albums Chart, becoming their first top ten album, and stayed at the position for three weeks. In the US, where Deram was a subsidiary of London Records, the album reached number 61 on the Billboard Top LPs chart, becoming their first album to reach the top 100. The album was one of many London releases at the time that combined for the label's strongest ever sales, and it joined other successful albums by the Moody Blues, John Mayall and Savoy Brown in helping London succeed in what Billboard called "the hard rock derby". In 1993, Andy Smart of Evening Post wrote that the album "sold millions".
Music critic Hugh Fielder wrote that Stonedhenge "set up Ten Years After for a momentous year." The release of the album coincided with the band beginning to regularly play in the US, and the record's strong sales won the group an invite to play at the Woodstock festival in New York in August 1969. According to The Daily Telegraph, the group's "energy and good-natured performance generated a strong audience response". According to Rough Guides writer Chris Coe, the inclusion of their performance of "I'm Going Home" in the companion film Woodstock (1970) catapulted the band to "superstar status". Alongside Woodstock, Ten Years After played five other festivals that summer, including the Seattle Pop Festival, Texas International Pop Festival and the Newport Jazz Festival (in the only year that rock bands were allowed on the bill). The group's touring of the US, and their "direct, prolonged contact" with the country's music scene, influenced their subsequent album, Ssssh (September 1969).
Critical reception
Contemporary reviews