Ric Lee doesn’t just have stories, he has history. The co-founder and drummer of Ten Years After has seen rock ‘n’ roll crawl from its 1950s infancy into a psychedelic explosion, and he’s lived to write it down in From Headstocks to Woodstock, his new autobiography.
The title alone sums it up: a coal miner’s kid from Mansfield who ends up playing one of the most mythic festivals in history. “It’s a proud thing,” Lee says, reflecting on Ten Years After’s enduring anthem, “I’d Love to Change the World.” “That song’s never really faded away. It says the same thing today as it did when it first came out — about how we try to live together but don’t quite know how.”
Lee laughs when I tell him the track feels like it was written for every generation that followed. “Yeah, it’s still relevant — and that’s both a compliment and a tragedy, isn’t it?”
But it’s Woodstock that lingers most in his memory. “It did what it said on the tin,” he says. “A festival of love, peace, and music. Five hundred thousand people together, and only one fight — and even that wasn’t serious.” The band’s set was nearly derailed when the guitars refused to stay in tune, forcing them to start “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” four times. “The patience was incredible,” he remembers. “No booing, no yelling. Just understanding. It proved people could live together, even in mud and chaos.”
That sense of humanity stuck with him — perhaps because its opposite followed so quickly. “The Isle of Wight was the dark side,” he says bluntly. “Kids breaking fences, promoters setting dogs on them. I was backstage with Keith Moon having a great time, but the overall feeling was nasty. The opposite of Woodstock.”
Lee’s recollections don’t stop at the festivals but stretch into the foundations of rock itself. He talks about showing a young John Bonham a few triplet patterns backstage in Birmingham. “He saw me playing those on the left hand and said, ‘How are you doing that?’” Lee laughs. “So I showed him. Later he transposed it onto the bass drum. That was Bonzo. He’d take anything and make it heavier.”
Ten Years After was a product of evolution as much as inspiration. They started with the DNA of Chuck Berry and Little Richard, but American tours with the Grateful Dead and Canned Heat would change everything. “We thought we knew how to jam,” Lee admits, “and then we saw the Dead play for two hours straight. We realized we knew nothing.”
He says Canned Heat helped them develop that loose, bluesy confidence — what Lee calls “the boogie.” “We took that idea home to England. We started playing songs differently every night. The crowd noticed. Suddenly, we weren’t just a band that played songs — we were a band that played with songs.”
That sense of spontaneity still drives Ten Years After’s live shows today. “We’ve played ‘Love Like a Man’ for decades, but I couldn’t tell you what the solo’s going to sound like until we’re in it,” Lee says. “I wait for Marcus and Colin to start a groove. Once I know what they’re doing, I can sit in and twist it. It’s never the same twice.”
Lee’s tone is part mischief, part philosophy. For someone who spent his youth on the frontlines of rock’s loudest moments, his reflections carry the calm of someone who’s seen the cycle enough times to stop being surprised by it. He was there when rock discovered improvisation, when festivals tried peace, and when the dream started cracking around the edges.
Now, at 77, he’s content to tell the story — honestly, unsentimentally, and with a drummer’s rhythm. “Woodstock showed people could live together,” he says. “And then we forgot. Maybe we’ll remember again someday.”
The book ends with that same wistfulness. A quiet acknowledgment that the promises of the ’60s are still dangling somewhere out there. “We’ve got a long way to go,” he says. “But at least we know what it’s supposed to look like.”
From Headstocks to Woodstock is available now. Ten Years After are currently working on new music, and, as Lee puts it, “still chasing that perfect groove — the one you never quite catch.”
Listen to the interview above and then revisit a classic below.
