Love (band)

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Love
Love on the cover of their eponymous debut
Love on the cover of their eponymous debut
Background information
Origin Los Angeles, California, USA
Genre(s) Rock and Roll
Folk-Rock
Psychedelic Rock
Psych-Folk
Years active 1966 - 1973, sporadically thereafter
Label(s) Elektra Records
Members
Arthur Lee
Bryan Maclean
Johnny Echols
Ken Forssi
Michael Stuart

Love was an American rock group of the late 1960s and early 1970s. They were led by singer, songwriter and guitarist Arthur Lee and the group's second songwriter, guitarist Bryan MacLean. One of the first racially diverse American pop bands, their music reflected a remarkable array of influences, combining elements of rock and roll, garage rock, folk, showtunes and psychedelia. The band's critical reputation far exceeds the limited commercial success they experienced: their 1967 album Forever Changes is consistently cited by critics as one of the outstanding albums in the history of rock music.

Contents

[edit] 1963-1966

Lee, who'd lived in Los Angeles since the age of five, had been recording since 1963 with his bands the LAGs and Lee's American Four. He'd also produced a single, "My Diary", for Rosa Lee Brooks in 1964 which included Jimi Hendrix on guitar. A garage-outfit, The Sons Of Adam, which included future Love drummer Michael Stuart, also recorded a Lee composition, "Feathered Fish". However, after viewing a Byrds performance, Lee determined to join the newly-minted folk-rock sound of the Byrds to his primarily R'n'B style. Soon after, he formed The Grass Roots with guitarist John Echols (another Memphis native), bassist Johnny Fleckenstein, and drummer Don Conka. Byrds roadie Bryan Maclean joined the band just before they changed their name to Love, spurred by the release of a single by another outfit called The Grass Roots.

Love started playing the L.A. clubs in April, 1965 and rapidly became perhaps the city's hippest unit. Already they were playing extended numbers such as "Revelation" (originally titled "John Lee Hooker") and getting the attention of such luminaries as the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds. The band lived communally in a house once owned by horror actor Bela Lugosi, and their first two albums included photos shot in the garden of that house. They were also alienating the press with their cryptically uncooperative approach and this may have been partly responsible for their failure to achieve the commercial impact many had predicted for them.

[edit] 1966-1967

Signed to the Elektra Records label, the band scored a minor hit single in 1966 with their version of Burt Bacharach's "My Little Red Book". In the meantime, Lee (who had a svengali-ish relationship with the group) had dismissed Conka and Fleckenstein, replacing them with Alban "Snoopy" Pfisterer and Ken Forssi (from a post-"Wipeout" version of The Surfaris). Their debut album, Love, was released in May 1966, and sounded decidedly Byrds-ish but with an added garage element. Highlights included the elegiac "Signed D.C" (reputedly about Conka's drug habit) and Maclean's "Softly To Me". The album sold moderately well and reached #57 on the album charts.

In August, 1966, the apocalyptic single, "7 and 7 Is", hit #33 and proved to be their commercial peak. Two more members were added around this time, Tjay Cantrelli (aka John Barberis) on woodwinds, and Michael Stuart on drums. Pfisterer, never a confident drummer, switched to harpsichord.

Their musical reputation largely rests on two albums issued in 1967, Da Capo and Forever Changes. Da Capo, released in January of that year, included proto-punk rockers like "Stephanie Knows Who" and "7 and 7 Is" (their second hit single), melodic songs such as "¡Que Vida!" and "She Comes in Colors". Gone were the Byrds influences and jangly guitars, replaced by melodically airy and elusive art-songs with predominantly jazz and classical influences. Some critics have derided it as a one-side album, with the six meticulously-constructed songs on Side One contrasting markedly with the lack of focus displayed on the flip-side, which was devoted entirely to the rambling, unfocused, 19 minute "Revelation". Cantrelli and Pfisterer soon quit the band, leaving it as a more manageable five-piece once again.

Forever Changes, released in November 1967, is an integrated suite of songs using acoustic guitars, strings and horns. Recorded while the band was falling apart with various abuses, it shows little evidence of this. Producer Bruce Botnick originally planned to record the entire album with session musicians backing Lee and Maclean but after two tracks had been recorded in this way the rest of the band were stung into producing the discipline required to complete the rest of the album in only 64 hours. The result is uncategorizable, with an eerie mix of sweetness and menace. David Angel's orchestration remains a benchmark in rock music. Writer Richard Meltzer, in his The Aesthetics of Rock, comments on Love's "orchestral moves", "post-doper word contraction cuteness" and Lee's vocal style that serves as a "reaffirmation of Johnny Mathis". Forever Changes included one modest hit single, the MacLean-written "Alone Again Or", while "You Set the Scene" would go on to receive airplay from some progressive rock radio stations. By this stage, Love were far more popular in the UK, where the album reached #24, than in their home-country, the record there only making a lowly #154.

[edit] 1968-2006

The Forever Changes line up of Love would only manage to stay together for one further single: 1968's "Your Mind and We Belong Together" b/w "Laughing Stock", which did not chart. Soon after the relase of the single, Maclean, suffering from heroin addiction, left the band, as did all the other members save for Lee. Echols and Forssi ventured into crime, committing a series of holdups, and served time in San Quentin.

Lee, meanwhile, assembled a new Love line-up which continued to record into the early 1970s in a style very different to the "classic" lineup of the band. The new version of Love included Jay Donnellan on guitars, Frank Fayad on bass, and George Suranovich on drums, as well as Lee on guitars and lead vocals. This line-up released two albums, both in 1969: Four Sail and Out Here. Darren Theacker replaced Suranovich on some Four Sail tracks, and also on a 1970 UK tour.

Gary Rowles replaced Donnellan for the 1970 album False Start, which also featured an appearance on guitar by Jimi Hendrix. However, commercial success was minimal for the new version of Love, and the group dissolved by 1971, with Lee establishing a solo career.

Lee revived the Love name in 1974, with yet another completely new line-up of musicians. This line-up recorded the final Love studio album, 1974's Reel to Real. Thereafter, until the end of the 1970s, Lee toured with various Love line-ups, at times reuniting with original Love member Bryan McLean.

Love was largely dormant throughout the 1980s. In 1992, Lee emerged with yet another Love line-up, and the band was now billed as Arthur Lee and Love. Then, after spending six years in prison in the 1990s due to gun offences, Arthur Lee began to play Love's classic songs in concert with a new band, Love with Arthur Lee, which included original lead guitarist Johnny Echols as well as members of the band Baby Lemonade. This reformed group toured for several years, frequently performing Forever Changes in its entirety. However, in August 2005, the band fractured: Echols and Baby Lemonade split from Lee, citing his alcohol abuse and chronic unreliability; the group renamed itself The Love Band. Lee partisans charged Echols and Baby Lemonade with a power play designed to gain control of the Love catalogue and further their careers, and further claimed that Love without Arthur Lee was a contradiction in terms.

Ken Forssi died in Tallahassee, Florida, on January 10, 1998, from a brain tumor, aged 54. Bryan MacLean died in Los Angeles of a sudden massive heart attack on December 25, 1998, while having dinner with a young fan who was researching a book about the band. He was 52. Arthur Lee died in Memphis, Tenn., on August 3, 2006, of complications from leukemia. He was 61 years old.

[edit] Discography

[edit] Studio albums

[edit] Live albums

[edit] Compilations

  • 1995: Love Story 1966-1972 - compilation
  • 2003: The Best of Love - compilation

[edit] Singles

  • March 1966: "My Little Red Book"/A Message To Pretty"
  • July 1966: "7 and 7 Is" b/w "No. Fourteen"
  • December 1966: "She Comes In Colors"/"Orange Skies"
  • March 1967: "Que Vida"/"Hey Joe"
  • December 1967: "Alone Again Or"/"A House Is Not A Motel"
  • June 1968: "Your Mind and We Belong Together" b/w "Laughing Stock"
  • 1994: "Girl on Fire" b/w "Midnight Sun"

[edit] Other

  • 1992: Arthur Lee and Love

[edit] External links

  • in french [1]
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