Along with a decade-plus with the Everly Brothers, Albert Lee has toured in Eric Clapton and Emmylou Harris’s bands, while maintaining a longtime solo career.
There’s a classic video clip on Youtube of guitarist Albert Lee in the studio around 1978 with two of his admirers, Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds. Lee comes up with a typically dazzling solo for their album, after which Lowe can only stare at him slack jawed. Finally Lowe deadpans, “I see you’ve read our guitar manual.”
“The Everly Brothers used to make the same joke onstage,” Lee said by phone this week. “I’d play my solo, do a big high-speed thing, and Don would say, ‘He learned all that from the Everly Brothers Big Note Guitar Book’.” But Lee’s lofty status among his fellow musicians is no joke. Along with a decade-plus with the Everlys, he has toured in Eric Clapton and Emmylou Harris’s bands, while maintaining a longtime solo career. Monday’’s show at City Winery is a continued celebration of his 80th birthday, which happened just before Christmas.
“The nice, special thing about it is that I’m still around,” he said.
