Symmetry
There is a symmetry in the release of Lee’s final
album Still On The Road to Freedom last
year – sad to state after his death yesterday – in how its title echoes that of
his first solo release of 1973 On The
Road to Freedom, and the fact that the final track Love Like a Man 2 is a reprise of the Ten Years After classic from
the band’s 1970 album Cricklewood Green.
Forty years after that initial solo album, this is a work
that continues the thoughtful boogie and blues of Lee’s highly respected
career, and as a solo artist the music was always more expansive than just
blistering solos, not that those solos are unwelcome nor missing entirely.
Indeed, opener Still On The Road to
Freedom contains riffs that highlight Lee’s continued skill and speed,
though it is masterful rather than blistering. Lee’s signature vocal is also very
evident for example on chugging blues and fourth track Save My Stuff, graced with a short and simple acoustic solo, and instrumental
focus given over to harmonica. There’s rock’n’roll in the jaunty I’m a Lucky Man and lively electric
guitar throughout. Sixth Walk On, Walk
Tall is a simple acoustic folk number, and that simplicity characterises
the confident comfort of the whole, with no need to grandstand. Eighth Song of the Red Rock Mountains is an
acoustic instrumental and it is beautiful, again simply realised but perfectly
so.
There’s a wittily ironic reflection on the past with tenth
track Back In ‘69, commenting on the
hippie ideal compared with its lineage through to today [one imagines it
observing on the most extreme and obnoxious example of someone like Ted Nugent]
and again there is some brief but welcome guitar virtuosity. All the tracks are
relatively brisk, as with penultimate Rock
You, a funky number that could have happily grooved the listener for some
time but simply teases at 1.35. It does, however, set us up for closer Love Like a Man 2 at nearly seven
minutes, the longest track on the album. We finish on again a simple and
familiar riff with the guitar work at times deceptively complex and skilled
because it is there in the back and through the mix rather than foregrounded at
volume. That is perhaps the finest example of Lee’s comfort with his talent and
life as a musician, sadly ended too soon. There is a closing hidden track too
on this album, which seems to empathise with that observation, a gentle and
pretty acoustic solo that delights but is over very quickly. One thing we can
say of Lee’s career is that he packed much of considerable value and worth into
those 40 years, both critically and we can assume personally with a loving
family who have observed on his death ‘We have lost a wonderful and much loved
father and companion, the world has lost a truly great and gifted musician.’
