Chick Churchill Pg. 2

  The 1970s (continued)

After the release of the double album Recorded Live, Ten Years After stepped away from the road for several months so the individual musicians could pursue their own projects. Chick used the opportunity to record his first and only solo album of the decade, You and Me. The project allowed him to move beyond his supporting role in Ten Years After and brought together an impressive group of musicians, including Martin Barre, Cozy Powell, Roger Hodgson, Rick Davies, Bernie Marsden, Gary Pickford-Hopkins, Leo Lyons, and Ric Lee.

You and Me demonstrated just how much musical territory Chick could cover when given a record of his own. Piano, organ, synthesizer, and Mellotron all became part of the album's sound, and he even contributed vocals. Rather than trying to reproduce Ten Years After without Alvin Lee, Chick used the album to explore ideas that would have had little room within the band's established format.

Ten Years After regrouped and released Positive Vibrations in 1974, but the years of constant touring and recording had taken their toll. After several years near the top of the international concert circuit, the original group stopped working together regularly, bringing the first major chapter of Chick's career to a close.

When Alvin Lee moved firmly into his solo career, Chick took an entirely different route. In 1976, he became a professional manager at Chrysalis Music, working behind the scenes at the company associated with Ten Years After's longtime management. The following year, he left Chrysalis and formed Whitsett Churchill Music Publishing with Tim Whitsett. The company concentrated on publishing and promoting artists from the American South, giving Chick a new career within the music business that did not require him to be standing behind a keyboard every night.

Chick also moved into artist management, working with the group The News and helping secure them a recording agreement with Polydor Records. It was a quieter existence than the whirlwind surrounding Ten Years After, but it demonstrated that his understanding of the music business extended well beyond performing.

By the end of the 1970s, Chick Churchill had experienced both extremes of the music industry. He had performed before enormous festival crowds, toured the world repeatedly, recorded some of Ten Years After's most successful music, and made an ambitious solo album of his own. When that chapter ended, he successfully reinvented himself behind the scenes, beginning a period of his life far removed from the international rock stages that had defined the first half of the decade.

The 1980s

The 1980s began quietly for Chick Churchill as he continued working largely behind the scenes in the music business. After years of constant recording and touring with Ten Years After, the change of pace allowed him to concentrate on publishing and management while remaining connected to the industry that had shaped most of his adult life.

That quieter period ended in 1983 when the original Ten Years After lineup of Chick, Alvin Lee, Leo Lyons, and Ric Lee reunited as part of the Marquee Club's 25th anniversary celebrations. What began as a limited reunion quickly expanded to include major European festival appearances in Belgium and Switzerland, followed by a performance at the Reading Festival, where Ten Years After appeared during the weekend that also included Thin Lizzy's final British concert.

The reunion demonstrated that the musical chemistry between the four musicians had survived their years apart. Although they did not immediately return to full-time activity, occasional performances kept the possibility of a more substantial reunion alive.

By 1988, that possibility became reality. The original lineup reunited again for European festivals and a tour of Germany. This time the experience rekindled their enthusiasm sufficiently to take the next step and record together for the first time since Positive Vibrations fourteen years earlier.

The resulting album, About Time, was recorded at Ardent Studios in Memphis with producer Terry Manning and released in 1989. For Chick, it represented a genuine return to recording and performing with the musicians with whom he had experienced the extraordinary rise of Ten Years After more than two decades earlier. His keyboards once again supplied an essential layer beneath Alvin's guitar, while the familiar rhythm section of Leo and Ric restored the chemistry of the classic lineup.

About Time did not restore Ten Years After to the commercial heights of the Woodstock era, nor was that really necessary. More importantly, it demonstrated that the reunion could be something more substantial than nostalgia. The four musicians had rediscovered their ability to work together and opened the door to another extended period of touring.

By the close of the 1980s, Chick Churchill had completed an unexpected circle. After spending much of the previous decade building a successful life away from performing, he found himself once again behind the keyboards with Ten Years After, beginning a second chapter with the band that would continue well beyond the reunion that started it.

The 1990s

The 1990s were a relatively quiet decade for Chick Churchill, particularly compared with the relentless pace of Ten Years After's early career. The release of About Time at the end of the previous decade had reunited the original lineup, and that renewed activity carried into 1990 with concerts in Britain, Europe, and the United States.

The reunion included Ten Years After's first major British appearance since the 1970s when the band played London's Hammersmith Odeon in January 1990. For Chick, returning to the stage alongside Alvin Lee, Leo Lyons, and Ric Lee demonstrated that the musical chemistry developed more than two decades earlier had survived their long periods apart.

Unlike the band's first period of success, however, the reunion did not develop into another cycle of constant albums and touring. After the About Time activity subsided, the four musicians once again concentrated largely on their individual lives and interests, coming together only occasionally rather than attempting to recreate the exhausting schedule of their younger years.

One notable reminder of their past arrived in 1995 with the release of the concert film documenting Ten Years After's appearance at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. Twenty-five years after the performance itself, the film offered audiences another opportunity to see the classic lineup during one of the band's most successful periods.

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