Ten Years After — Ssssh [2025 Deluxe Edition]

Something clicked in 1969. Signature albums from signature bands kept tumbling into record shops. It was a time of great awakening—and even greater listening.

Ten Years After, the fearsome British blues-rock foursome, released their enduring masterpiece in September of that year: the three-dimensional audio realm of Ssssh that signaled, over its 34 minutes, blues was more than alive and well—and ferocious—in London town. In doing so, this, their third studio effort, marked a return to form after February’s aptly-named Stonedhenge experimented with avant-garde alchemy to make songs. Just a quick skim between the setlists reveals the differences in albums. For one thing, the restless and raunchy “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” alone squashed Stoned ditties like “Skoobly-Oobly-Doobob” or the jazzy “Woman Trouble” under its overwhelming mass and gravitas.

Blues ran rampant once more.

Obviously, the intervening nine months or so between recording sessions did the band a world of good. Rewards got reaped in elevated songwriting, meticulous production, nuanced dynamics, acoustic-electric textures, and sonic depth, both expansive and stratified. The songs and the sound had well matured since their self-titled debut of 1967, with its Chicago-by-way-of-Soho blues bluster. Creative momentum was kicking into high gear: Ssssh then snowballed into Cricklewood Green (1970) into Watt (1970) into A Space in Time (1971), whose lead single, “I’d Love to Change the World,” served as the earworm entry-point for many in the U.S.

With a pair of LPs to show for the year, Ten Years After was on a major roll. Underscoring that was the resounding buzz generated from their performance at Woodstock that summer; inclusion in the subsequent 1970 film, Woodstock, as well as its soundtrack LP, burned the band into widespread consciousness.

Around them, a lot was also happening in 1969. That October, Zoso and the Golden God shed a whole lotta love way down inside Led Zeppelin II, shortly after Led Zeppelin first raised the curtain in January. The Rolling Stones were just a shot away from getting what they needed out of Let It Bleed. Iron Butterfly was having a psychedelic Ball. Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul went hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic. Miles Davis steered jazz In a Silent Way. Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma led a lysergic space mission, setting the controls for the heart of the sun. But David Bowie was just as sky-high, sitting in a tin can far above the world, on his second studio album named David Bowie. And—SURPRISE!—Steppenwolf showed up At Your Birthday Party.

The year wasn’t yet over, though. While Bob Dylan crooned under a Nashville Skyline and the King sent a postcard From Elvis in Memphis, Traffic had reached their Last Exit with Dave Mason as a member. What about B.B. King? He was Completely Well, despite the thrill being gone. Johnny Cash? Locked down At San Quentin. The Doors were stoned immaculate on, of all things, brass and strings during The Soft Parade, whereas the Velvet Underground’s self-titled record was content to linger on pale blue eyes. Cream waved Goodbye. But Humble Pie, the Allman Brothers Band, Mott the Hoople, King Crimson, Can, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Free, and Blind Faith (Clapton’s post-Cream venture) were all just waving hello for the first time.

Not a single one of them, however, entertained the thought of going Ssssh. Certainly not at a deafening time when Marshall stacks began consuming stage and studio space with their towering silhouettes. The title’s simple ask for quiet ran contradictory to the band’s impulsive reflex for decibels. So much so, in fact, that Ssssh actually plays on an inside joke about the competing loudness between the guitar of frontman Alvin Lee and Leo Lyons’ bass.

So, fear not: Right from the jump, you’re slugged by “Bad Scene,” the opening punch that works on an alternating frenzy-calm-frenzy cycle. Although you cannot see them doing so, rest assured that Lyons is actively convulsing in time to the blitzkrieg tempo set by pianist Chick Churchill  and drummer Ric Lee (no relation), while Alvin coolly lives up to his title as Captain Speed Fingers. That is, until the four of them hit a passing patch of quicksand to stall them ever so momentarily before the sequence of manic-panic to sludge-trudge repeats again. Psychologically, though, it’s blues. With acid on his tongue, Lee barks out a laundry list of grievances: “You ruin my day, you ruin my night, you ruin everything I do.” The combination makes for a dramatic entrance to an album that keeps awakening synapses throughout its course.

The whiplash—but not the angst—immediately melts away into “Two Time Mama,” some stripped country blues, whose chorus about being double-crossed gets ghosted by vocal-like bottlenecking. “The Stomp” is a talking blues yanked along firmly by a straight-up, open-ended John Lee Hooker boogie. And the aforementioned “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” makes its classic inquiry—“Can I go home with you?”—with similar sexual interest as when Sonny Boy Williamson I and his harmonica first asked in 1937. Except, here, the question takes the form of a behemoth, throttled by Leo’s agitated, machinegunned basslines. A third of the way in, Alvin shouts out before grabbing the reins and leading them off into a heated jam until, eventually, the signature fist-against-the-door riff returns to smack them back to reality to close out the song.

Besides a shout, a grunt is also a good index of performance intensity. And the toking “Stoned Woman” sports both. That bass, forever serving as the album’s ballast and bouncer, clears the path for Lee and Churchill, now frothing away on organ, to surge from hotspot to hotspot while making sure to repeatedly swirl around the central, chorus-mimicking riff.

As for Ssssh’s request for hush, “If You Should Love Me” honors that. Well, at least in its opening 20 or so seconds. But once Lee’s guitar starts imitating a fiercely buzzing wasp, the song never calms back down. It is the ballad “I Don’t Know That You Don’t Know My Name,” however, that truly adheres to shushed standards. An acoustic guitar’s jangle, working hand-in-hand with the majestically galloping piano, makes for the album’s didn’t-see-that-coming moment: two minutes of perfectly beautiful tranquility wafting out from a group known for their rock scorch. But soon enough, blissful dreaming transforms into wretched fury.

Because the wrath from “I Woke Up This Morning,” the slowly clobbering, deep-blue closer, follows shortly thereafter. As no surprise, blues had always been the band’s bedrock. In their startup days during the mid-1960s, the name Blues Trip, then Blues Yard, was road-tested before Ten Years After got locked in. Its ambiguity was deemed better bait to draw in curious—and broader—audiences. But that name didn’t change their music’s favorite color. So much so, in fact, that for all the plundering of the blues catalogue Lee did from time to time, he also made sure to replenish the stockpile with his own originals. “I Woke Up This Morning” is yet another such contribution.

It’s a classic case of being silently, secretly ditched overnight. The narrator’s grieving heart howls. In solidarity, Lee’s signature 1958 cherry Gibson ES-335—readily identified as “Big Red” by its decals of peace signs, the Woodstock dove, and grass—goes through anxious conniptions, ratcheting up into hysterics. The anguish spreads, locking down everyone else into a hard, angered throb. Both piano and organ are part of that rage.

Think that lashing blues is impressive? Stick around for the glorious night in ’69 when Ten Years After conquered Finland. The Deluxe Ssssh unveils the live proof.

Chrysalis Records has been admirably optimizing the band’s classic catalogue, which includes beefing-up their early albums (A Space in Time recently celebrated a 50th Anniversary Edition) as well as issuing archival performances (last year, the full Woodstock 1969 set arrived). In 2021, a definitive 10-CD boxset, 1967-1974, landed.

Now, it’s Ssssh’s turn to shine and stretch beyond the original eight cuts. Its 2025 Deluxe Edition sprawls over three CDs—two of which house previously unreleased material. The 1969 mix remains untouched and intact for staunch diehards. The second disc sports a brand-new, vibrant stereo mix to enhance the sonic experience, right down to those studio effects teasing the brain during the transitions between tracks. Like the creature cries panning from right to left in your ears during “Bad Scene” as well as the stunning ray-gun shootout that flares up right before “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” crashes in. Both mixes stem from the original multi-track master tapes. Both open into gorgeous, warm, spacious landscapes.

And that shellacking given to Helsinki’s Kulttuuritalo Hall on a December evening consumes the third disc, in excelsis.

Lattie Murrell (Photo by Axel Kustner)

Their hourlong set cracks opens with “Spoonful.” What was born in 1929 as Charley Patton’s “A Spoonful Blues” and souped up in 1960 by Willie Dixon for Howlin’ Wolf as, simply, “Spoonful” had become all the rage. The song’s familiar head-first lurch played out in the hands of an obscure, crusty, gutbucket hypnotizer from the backcountry of Tennessee (Lattie Murrell) to Nuggets-grade garage rockers (The Shadows of Knight) to ultra-cool soulmen (Booker T. & the M.G.’s) to the embryonic Allman Brothers Band (Duane and Gregg’s Allman Joys) to, of course, Cream. By 1969, even Wolf had circled back—reluctantly—for a controversial revision, as part of the pseudo-psychedelicized, hate-it-or-love-it The Howlin’ Wolf Album. Famously, his personal strong reaction got plastered on the front jacket.

In the hands of Ten Years After, “Spoonful” reigned as a real boneshaker. Heavy and massive, the ode to obsession lumbers on quaking giant steps taken by Lyons’ bass. In contrast is the speedy, springy and swinging “I May Be Wrong, But I Won’t Be Wrong Always.” Bouts of singing bookend its long straightaway down which “the fastest guitarist in the West” guns it like a lightning-quick T-Bone Walker in jeans and a T-shirt. The 11 minutes serve as much as a soapbox for Alvin’s creative capacity for flying as for Ric’s physical endurance at bashing. On the other hand, “The Hobbit” is pure jam—drums only. And “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” makes a concussive return visit ahead of “No Title,” gradually revealed to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The extended fuse withholds power until burning down to the explosion which includes a huge organ solo—huge in both dramatic magnitude and sonic girth—rumbling atop the roll of tom-tom thunder.

All of that was only the tip of the iceberg.

“I Can’t Keep From Crying Sometimes” rules as the drop-jaw showstopper. The grand ta-da! moment. An odyssey that runs just a wee shy of 20 minutes and houses an exploratory midsection that keeps opening into different instrumental phases, colored by different moods, and furnished with different departure points for Lee’s most dynamic fretwork. Early on, the hyper-extended solo surfs freely over the extra-thick rhythm. Seven minutes in, the wild ride turns all the wilder. Boundaries start falling by the wayside. Sounds, rather than notes, take over for a spell. Then, back to roaring. In a sign of the times, Cream receives a brief, gracious nod by way of alluding to “Sunshine of Your Love”; Jimi Hendrix receives his salute by a similarly teasing hint at his “Foxey Lady.” By the 10:40 mark, a significant pivot sends Lee down a dark path. Incredibly low-slung riffing feeds into a dense, strident march. Intensity rises and rises until the vortex ultimately peaks upon already dizzyingly high peaks. And, just like that, the fever breaks as the four of them emerge out from the tip-top to glide back into the song’s calm, melodic waves of teary melancholy majesty.

Ssssh—now revitalized and reborn as a Deluxe model—stacks up a heap of immersive headphone defiance, 1969 vintage. Because, after all, Ten Years After clearly wasn’t built for ‘hush now’ serenity.

Label: Chrysalis Records

Release Date: 10/31/25

Label website: Chrysalis Records.com

Reviewed by Dennis Rozanski