Cult Musicians by Robert Dimery

Author:Robert Dimery
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: White Lion Publishing
Published: 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

ARTHUR LEE (1945–2006)

WEST COAST WUNDERKIND

Love were the 1960s’ great might-have-beens, artistic peers of The Byrds and The Doors but never achieving their due success. That was partly down to the refusal of their leader, Arthur Lee, to tour or jump through promotional hoops; he even nixed Love’s invite to the pivotal Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. Then again, if not for Lee, we wouldn’t be talking about Love at all.

In 1965, Lee’s folk-rock group The Grass Roots metamorphosed into Love. Working Los Angeles clubs around Sunset Strip, the racially mixed group evolved into a formidable live act. Adding a tougher R&B edge to a ringing, Byrdsian sound, they became the first band to sign to the fabled Elektra Records. But it was only on their second album, Da Capo (1966), that Lee’s songwriting talents flowered, on the blistering proto-punk ‘7 and 7 Is’ (a US no.33, their highest placing), jazz-inflected ‘Stephanie Knows Who’ and the baroque pop of ‘She Comes in Colors’.

By 1967, drugs (heroin, acid) and in-fighting were fracturing the band, making that year’s Forever Changes – Lee’s masterpiece – all the more remarkable. Love were never hippies and the album offers a caustic perspective on flower-power optimism, incorporating complex arrangements, shifting time signatures and a sonic palette ranging from garage punk to show tunes. The surface sparkle of ‘Live and Let Live’ and ‘The Red Telephone’ belied their brooding lyrics. Lee was reportedly fixated on mortality at the time, stating that the album was intended as ‘my last words to this life… It’s like death in there’. Its best-known track, the gorgeous, mariachi-inflected ‘Alone Again Or’, was actually written by bandmate Bryan MacLean, whose compositions Lee largely sidelined. Unaccountably, the set only scraped to no.152 Stateside, although in Britain it rose to a respectable no.24.

Post-Forever Changes, the band rapidly splintered. Lee resurrected Love with replacement musicians, but never approached such heights again. In the 1970s, he more or less abandoned music, becoming more isolated and erratic and occasionally serving time in jail; in the mid-1990s, he was imprisoned for the alleged negligent discharge of a gun (the charge was overturned in 2001). Thankfully, the following year he was on tour again, fronting a new Love (featuring members of Baby Lemonade) to play Forever Changes in its entirety. He enjoyed two more years of belated acclaim before the leukaemia that was eventually to take his life brought his performance days to an end.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.