Love

Among the best bands of the West Coast and psychedelic rock scenes, Love were the band of the brilliant Arthur Lee. Involved in the music world from a young age, by the mid-Sixties Lee had already notched up his first small successes as a songwriter and producer in Los Angeles. At 18 he took part in an album by the Lags and wrote "My Diary", a song performed by Rosa Lee Brooks and featuring the riffs of a then little-known guitarist, Jimi Hendrix. With the rise of the folk-rock movement in 1965, he was inspired to fuse the sound of the Byrds with that of the Rolling Stones, hitting on the perfect recipe for his creation: Love. Under his guidance the band became hugely popular in the clubs of Los Angeles and were signed by Elektra for their self-titled debut album (1966). Lee became the focal point as songwriter, though rhythm guitarist Bryan MacLean carved out a substantial share of the songwriting, even stealing the show with his cover of "Hey Joe". The other cover on the record is an excellent arrangement of "My Little Red Book" by Burt Bacharach, delivered in an almost proto-punk key. The band's uniqueness comes through clearly in the album's many ballads: "A Message To Pretty", "Mushroom Clouds", which offers a perfect picture of Lee's political mindset, and especially "Signed DC", presumably a tribute to Love's first drummer, Don Conka, by then in the grip of addiction. Bryan MacLean's contribution is the elegant "Softly To Me", which reveals a personal songwriting style that would culminate in what is perhaps Love's best-known song: "Alone Again Or", from "Forever Changes".

Across the seven tracks that make up the second album, "Da Capo" (1967), the watchword is a psychedelia impossible to pin down, often fired up by jazz or acid-blues structures (certain sections of the long jam on "Revelation", "Stephanie Knows") or even baroque touches with harpsichord and flute ("She Comes in Colors"). The most successful single, "7 And 7 Is", is instead still firmly in proto-punk territory, showing just how unique and eclectic the band was, equally capable of delicate arrangements and raucous digressions.

The true masterpiece arrives with the third album, "Forever Changes", released in 1967 in the middle of the Summer of Love, almost as if it were clear their moment had come. Despite this, themes of loneliness run through almost every track, from the dark "A House Is Not A Motel" to the unsettling, Barrett-esque lyricism of "The Red Telephone". Arthur Lee was, after all, an alien figure: a black musician (like guitarist John Echols) attuned to the delicate political and cultural climate of the time, part of a predominantly white music scene and clearly exhausted by all that flower-power optimism. The musical arrangements, blending folk, classical, R&B and psychedelic rock, almost pave the way for progressive rock, capturing the paranoia of the era like nothing else released at the time. As if it were all part of one long suite, each track blends into the next thanks to arrangements built to carry the listener along until they're disoriented in a labyrinth of sound.

Recorded live in the studio over more than 60 hours of work, "Forever Changes" stands as one of the high points of California psychedelia, though it was destined to mark the end of Love's classic lineup. The fourth album, "Four Sail", came out with a reshuffled line-up, a fate also suffered by their music on the double albums "Out Here" (1969) and "False Start" (1970), which gradually shifted toward a less psychedelic, more rock-oriented sound. Still worth noting is Lee's solo coda ("Vindicator", 1971), which followed an album recorded alongside Jimi Hendrix that was never released: "False Start", however, does include "The Everlasting First", a track by Love that gives us a glimpse of what that unreleased duo might have sounded like.

In 1969 two more albums were released, "Four Sail" (Elektra) and "Out Here" (Blue Thumb). In 1972 Arthur Lee recorded a solo album, "Vindicator" (A&M Records), along with another with Jimi Hendrix that would never be released. Also in 1972 came an anthology covering the 1965-68 period, "Love Revisited". Love then reunited in 1974 to release one final album, "Reel To Real".

Arthur Lee, during the 70s and 90s, would continue to play live and record albums with various lineups called Love or Arthur Lee and Love; in 1992 he released "Arthur Lee And Love (New Rose)".

But love sometimes isn't enough: the Love saga would in fact prove to be a genuine curse. Bryan MacLean died in 1998, a year after releasing his album "Ifyoubelievein", while Arthur Lee left us in the summer of 2006, after spending several years in prison for firearms possession. In 2014, the album "Black Beauty", recorded back in 1973, was finally released.

Today the only survivor is drummer Michael Stuart, who has since settled into a new life as a photographer.

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