As good as the debut is, it's really with the next two albums that Love really left its mark. The first of these, Da Capo, was released in 1967, and includes their only top-40 hit, "7 & 7 Is", a rollicking rollercoaster ride of punk rock. The single peaked at #33, but the album stalled at #80; hurt most likely by a stubborn refusal to tour.
Da Capo, released in 1967, has an almost perfect A-side. A full-blown psychedelic album, Lee's songwriting had matured and flowered; "She Comes In Colors" is a lush, flute-driven electric fantasy, "Stephanie Knows Who" veers into jazz territory, the multi-part "The Castle" includes a Spanish guitar, McLean's "Orange Skies" is built around the melody line of the guitar solo from the Bryds' "The Bells Of Rhymney". The only thing that mars this otherwise excellent album is "Revelation", the 19-minute suite that takes up side B.
The band. however, was already beginning to dissipate. It was the height of the Summer Of Love, and drug problems rendered the band so useless that Elektra decided to record the next album with sessionmen backing Lee and Maclean; the tearful band was told to take a hike. Two tracks for the next album were completed with session players before the band was able to get a grip and perform properly in the studio. When they did, they came up with one of the greatest albums of the late 60's, Forever Changes.
Constantly chosen by the music press as one of the greatest albums of all time, Forever Changes barely made a ripple in the U.S., peaking at #154 on the charts in 1968; it put in a somewhat better showing in England. This album stands as Lee's crowning achievement, a visionary mix of styles featuring Lee's trembling voice, bizarre psychedelic poetry in the lyrics, shimmering, delicate guitar work, hints of flamenco and jazz, showtune influence, and dark orchestral passages. Maclean contributes to classics of his own, including the signature quasi-flamenco "Alone Again Or". Lee comes up with classics like the folk-rockish "A House Is Not A Motel", the Stones-ey "Bummer In The Summer", the paranoid "The Red Telephone", an anti-war suite "Live And Let Live", and the complex "The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This". It's psychedelic, but not in the same way as the hippie bands or the British bands; it has a delicate, understated, flowing quality to it that renders all of their disparate experiments into an apparantly seamless whole. It still makes for fresh listening today.
Article comments
1 - Jon Sobel
Great informative mini-history of a band I knew very little about, thanks!
2 - Eric Olsen
super job uao, love the is feature (no pun intended) - very frustrating band Love, greatness and a lot of filler. Teh reissues a few years back reminded me how overproduced much of it was. "Alone Again Or" and "7 and 7 Is" are two of my favorite songs, period. I love the Damned's version of "AAO" also
3 - Vern Halen
I used to hear rumours that Lee cut an entire album eith Hendrix, but it was all tied up in red tape. Anybody know if there's anything to this juicy tidbit?
4 - HW Saxton
Vern, I don't know too much about this
but I'll offer what I know.On Love's LP
"False Start", Jimi H. was supposed to
appear on several cuts.His(Jimi Hendrix)
playing CAN be heard on the Love tune:
"Everlasting First". But because of many
contractual and/or other legal reasons
his(JH's)contributions were either just
rerecorded over or just completely mixed
out of the session entirely.Why? is any
one's guess.But its most definitely both
Jimi and Arthur playing on "Everlasting
First".The LP is on Blue Thumb Records
and ended up being released in 1971. It
is not too hard to find if you don't
mind digging around in dusty old used
record stores(MY favorite hobby)and the
likes. It's not their best work but it
shows a pleasant and new direction for
Arthur and the band.I wish that I could
offer more info but that's all I got for
you. Hope it helps.
HW Saxton
5 - Evan
From: Black Gold - The Lost Archives of Jimi Hendrix
The Arthur Lee and Love False Start Session
"Although Hendrix is credited with playing on "Everlasting First," there is still more unreleased material from this session, as Lee revealed in a BBC radio interview on July 4, 1980. "We did a long jam as well as we did 'Everlasting First,'" Lee said. "We did about three versions of that. We did 'Ezy Ryder'... and a couple of other things." Crawdaddy magazine (June 1970) reported that 'Ezy Ryder' was once planned as a 1970 Love single on the Blue Thumb label, but was canceled.
I asked Lee what had become of these "lost" tapes. "The last I've seen of the audiotapes was when I gave the master reels to Bob Krasnow, who was then president of Blue Thumb Records," Lee responded. "I asked him to hold them for me and I never got them back. He was the one who was all jazzed about Jimi and I being together." Lee added that he had hoped to start a new band with Hendrix at the time.
STATUS: The 1970 Lee-Hendrix jams remain unreleased. False Start was released in December 1970 on LP (BTS 22) and later on compact disc (MCAD-22029). At one time, it was rumored that Hendrix played guitar on "Slick Dick" and "Ride That Vibration," two additional tracks from False Start, but the guitarist is Love band member Gary Rowles. Black Beauty, a bootleg of Love studio recordings, erroneously identified Hendrix as the lead guitarist."
----------------------------------------
Date: March 17
Event: False Start Recording Sessions
Performer(s): Jimi Hendrix, Love
Song(s): Unknown
Location: Olympic Studios, London, England
In 1970, Arthur Lee asked Hendrix to be guest artist on the Love album False Start. During my interview with Lee in 1992, he stated that the recording session was videotaped: "Someone just told me that the session was videotaped, and they have seen the tape."
STATUS: Missing. So far, no videotape of this recording session has surfaced."
6 - Shark
Great stuff, thanks for the work you put into this.
PS: Forever Changes was great.
7 - Vern Halen
Thanks, everyone. Maybe the great lost whatever will show up one day.....
8 - Tron
If you ask me, Four Sail has aged better than Forever Changes and is the superior album... But, someone decided that Forever Changes was THE Love album (because it has strings?), and all the critics fall in line. Even De Capo is better, imho...
9 - bertolotti
expecting rain - bob dylan