The 1969 Woodstock festival produced some of rock’s most iconic guitar moments: Richie Havens strumming his beat-up open-tuned Guild D-40 acoustic as he improvised “Freedom.” Pete Townshend taking his Gibson SG to Abbie Hoffman’s head after the political activist interrupted the Who’s set. And Jimi Hendrix playing “The Star Spangled Banner” on a white Fender Stratocaster.
Among those standouts performances is Ten Years After’s Alvin Lee leading the group through “I’m Going Home” while playing the heavily stickered and modified Gibson ES-335 he called Big Red. The instrument would go on to become one of the most recognizable and prized electric guitars in rock history, and is currently under lock and key in the possession of his daughter Jasmin.
The guitar’s legend began in 1963 when Lee purchased it for £45 with a fitted case from Jack Brentnall’s, a musical instrument store in his hometown of Nottingham, England. By the time Big Red made its live debut a few years later, Lee had already begun modifying the instrument. The first distinctive change was the addition of a Fender single-coil pickup in the middle position, between the guitar’s two PAF humbuckers, giving it a brighter, sharper tone when needed.
“I now have a Gibson which sounds like a Tele just when I want it to,” Lee explained in an August 1975 interview with International Musician & Recording World.
At the same time, he began covering the instrument with stickers: peace signs, psychedelic decals, astrological imagery and the logo of the Ten Years After Music Lovers Society. By the time Lee walked onstage at Woodstock, Big Red already looked unlike any other Gibson in rock.
“Dad was always tinkering with the guitar doing stuff with it,” Jasmin tells Guitar Player. “In early 1970, he took the Bigsby off and replaced it with a TP-6 tailpiece with fine tuners. And because of that, he put more stickers on it.”
Ironically, the guitar’s appearance was permanently frozen in time by accident. During a 1972 show at London’s Marquee Club, Lee threw the guitar in the air and smashed the neck against the venue’s low ceiling.
“He used to throw it around quite a lot onstage,” Jasmin says. “Unfortunately on this particular night he threw it up and broke the dot-inlaid neck right off the guitar.”
Lee sent Big Red to Gibson for repairs. When it returned, the original neck had been replaced with a block-inlay version, and all the stickers had been lacquered over.
“The stickers became part of the guitar,” Jasmin says. “He couldn’t take any off or change them.”
Gibson’s unsolicited preservation act ultimately helped turn Big Red into an artifact of classic rock history. It also obscured the guitar’s date of manufacture. Lee referred to it as a 1958 model, but without the original neck, it’s impossible to know.
Lee continued using the guitar throughout the 1970s and into the ’80s, but as its value climbed he gradually retired it from the stage. By 1992, insurance costs forced him to place it in storage altogether.
Years later, Gibson attempted to produce a signature replica, resulting in a painstaking Woodstock 50th-anniversary re-creation in 2019.
“Gibson actually worked quite closely with Dad on this guitar,” Jasmin says. “They sent him quite a few prototypes, but he was like, ‘Nope, nope, that’s not right.’”
Today, the original Big Red remains secured in storage while its replicas hang at Dean St. Studios in London. The Lee family hopes the original instrument will eventually find a new owner who understands both its musical significance and the decades of history embedded in every scratch, modification and sticker sealed beneath its lacquer finish.
