LOVE featuring Arthur Lee
Review by the Newcastle Opera House - 29 August 2002

www.newcastleoperahouse.org

He's different! It's always difficult to sell tickets for a show in August with everyone in holiday mode, but we did for Arthur Lee. After only a month on sale, he pulled a very large and very partisan crowd.

The faithful were well rewarded for their patience, many had waited 35 years to see him. Ever the showman, he didn't let anyone down, quite the reverse. With lots of grit, strength and enough talent to make a thousand boy bands, Arthur sang his way through his impressive back catalogue. 

Titles included, Little Red Book, Orange Skies,  

The band, (Baby Lemonade) were tremendous, Dave Chapple played bass, Mike Rendle was on lead guitar, Rusty Squeezebox was on rhythm guitar and David Green on drums, all of them spot-on!

History

Arthur Lee was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1944. He moved to LA in the sixties and formed a variety of bands such as The VIPS and Arthur Lee & The LAGs. The VIPS consisted of Lee on Hammond organ, Nooney Rickett on vocals/guitar, Gary Rowles on lead guitar, Frank Fayad on bass and George Suranovich on drums. This line-up is a significant one as it was to be the neucleus of Love mkII. Update: In a recent email Gary Rowles, maintains that the aforementioned band never existed and that he himself never played with Arthur Lee until 1969, during the "Four Sail" sessions. Gary says that himself, Fayad and Suranovich were hired when Nooney Ricketts' band folded sometime in 1968. Thanks for the information Gary and I hope this will serve to see that this historical inaccuracy is cleared up! In 1965, a Lee composition called 'My Diary' was recorded by Rosa Lee Brooks.

The song featured the guitar talents of the then unknown Jimi Hendrix. A friendship was formed between Lee and Hendrix and it culminated in the latter's blistering guitar workout on Love's False Start album. In LA, Lee met up with former high school friend John Echols and they decided to form a band. Ex-Byrds roadie Bryan Maclean joined on vocals/guitar, ex-Surfari Ken Forssi joined on bass and the lineup was complete with the addition of Don Conka on drums. The band called themselves The Grassroots and they were a popular live attraction. The name was short lived however, as another group with an identical one appeared with a single in the charts. The name was changed to Love and in 1966 they became the first rock group to be signed to the Elektra label.

The Albums
The first album, though certainly not Love's magnum opus, was a startling debut by a band with a knack for merging pop/folk/punk and r&b. The cover in itself was quite revolutionary for it clearly depicted a racially mixed band. By this stage, Conka had been ousted in favour of Swedish-born Alban 'Snoopy' Pfisterer. The reason for Conka's dismissal can be gleaned from a listen to one of the album's standout tracks, Signed D.C.. The song is written in the first person and is a lament for the junkie's plight. With lyrical phrases such as, "...I've pierced my skin again Lord..." and , "...I've got one foot in the graveyard...", there is little doubt in the ear of the listener as to what Lee is singing about! That the initials D.C refer to departed drummer Don Conka is obvious and therein lies the reason for his sacking. 

Interesting really upon the consideration that by 1967, Lee, Echols and Forssi were hopelessly addicted to this same drug themselves! The album also featured a version of the folk song, 'Hey Joe', which was later to be recorded by the Byrds and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. The album's single was a throbbing, aggressive version of a Burt Bacharach song called 'My Little Red Book' and it provided the band with their first American hit, peaking at #52. The album also featured a beautiful minor key composition penned by Bryan Maclean called 'Softly to Me'. Maclean was never as prolific as Lee, but his few outings were always of a high standard. As Maclean himself said recently, "...what you hear on that first album is just an enervated, attenuated version of what we were like live, it didn't have the distortion or the energy or the impact".

Da Capo was an absolute triumph and it showed that the band was certainly not afraid to take risks. In 1970, Lee remarked to future Patti Smith guitarist Lenny Kaye, "...I was born in Da Capo". Released in early '67, it was to peak at #80 in the US charts and this was the band's highest ever album chart placing in America. To fill out the band's sound, Lee brought in Tjay Cantrelli on sax & flute and he moved Snoopy to keyboards. Michael Stuart from the Sons of Adam was given the drum stool and the band was now ready. 

The album itself only contained seven tracks because the whole of side two was taken up by one track called, "Revelation", which clocked in at a staggering 19 minutes! Side one possessed some of the finest songs of the rock genre, including the awesome, '7&7 is', which predated punk rock by a decade. This song was to provide the band with their only Top 50 US hit and its venomous sound still resonates today in alternative rock. 

Other tracks on side one displayed the tuneful trills of Cantrelli's flute and they served to inspire the flute-dominated sound that was later heard in the work of British acts such as Traffic and Jethro Tull. Lee-penned tracks such as 'The Castle' and 'Que Vida' showed the increased maturity of Lee's songwriting, both in terms of musical structure and of lyrical diversity. The classic 'Stephanie Knows Who' was later covered by the Move and this again showed what an influence Love had on cutting edge British acts. Indeed, it is significant to note that the group was always better appreciated in Britain and that a huge fan of the band was none other than pre-Zeppelin, Robert Plant. With Da Capo under their belts, Love started recording what was to become Forever Changes.

By this stage, Cantrelli and Snoopy had left and so the group was now a five-piece. The production duties for Forever Changes were to be undertaken by Neil Young then of fellow LA band, Buffalo Springfield, but for reasons never fully explained the idea was aborted. Instead, Lee took over production duties and the result was breathtaking. Opening with the Bryan Maclean classic, 'Alone Again Or' (later covered by the Damned), the album erupts with mellifluous horns backed by a seamless rhythm section. Following this is the psychedelic classic, 'A House is not a Motel'. This sinister, compressed performance explodes into a furious guitar freakout between Lee and Echols and the overall tone is unrelenting and penetrating. The album jumps from mellow to heavy, but all the way through is the acidic wit of Arthur Lee. 

His lyrics display puns, double entendres and an all-pervading sense of urban decay. Subscription to the hippie dream he certainly did not pay! The sound of the album was unique and although Lee still objects to David Angel's plush orchestration, it no doubt adds to the juxtapositional flavour of much of the material. Forever Changes was critically lauded on both sides of the Atlantic yet its sales did not show this. In the US its highest charting was #154, but was well received in Britain, where it reached #24.
Many have wondered why Love never achieved the level of success their talents so obviously deserved and the answer is perhaps twofold. 

Firstly, with Elektra's signing of the Doors and their almost overnight success, the small independent label put the majority of their funds behind the promotion of said band. This meant that albums such as Forever Changes were destined to swan dive without the necessary promotional drive of the record company. Secondly, unlike the Doors, Love were reluctant to tour as they were more interested in rehearsing and recording. Their reluctance to tour is confirmed by a comment of Jim Morrison's, "...I don't think they were willing to travel and go through all the games and numbers that you have to". Arthur Lee's reply to such a comment is that he didn't want 'to eat shit'. Whatever the case, Lee declined an invitation to appear at the now legendary Monterey Pop Festival in June, 1967. 

They seldom went interstate, let alone overseas, and they steadfastly refused to do an endless stream of one-nighters. Therefore, without maximum record company promotion and with further reluctance to tour regularly, Love were destined not to achieve the recognition that their stable mates attained. At this stage, they were frequently referred to as 'hate' by many of their colleagues, due probably to their anti-social stance and their choice of the decidedly non-hippie drug, heroin. This lack of acceptance both by the musical community and the record-buying public, was also experienced by New York's Velvet Underground, who like Love had also fought with the Fillmore's Bill Graham over their 'attitude'. With the abovementioned problems besetting Love, it came as no surprise to many that by the autumn of 1967, Love had ceased to exist. Maclean was first to jump ship and was soon followed by Forssi, Echols and Stuart. This had happened at a time when Lee had been found close to death in a bathtub (from a heroin overdose) but had been saved by friends who were 'paramedic types'.

Group Disbands: The New Love
Arthur Lee was left with the name and by 1969 a new Love album was released. A post Forever Changes single was released in '68 called Your Mind & We Belong Together. Though there is some confusion as to who exactly plays on the sides, it seems to be undoubtedly the Lee, Maclean,  Forssi,  Echols & Stuart lineup. The A Side was an eclectic work, filled with melodic tangents and acoustic interludes. Just when the listener feels that they have heard all of the song's passages, the tempo slows to a pulsating throb and some blistering, eardrum-slicing guitar enters and brings the song to its eventual conclusion. The B (Laughing Stock) side is a rollicking, joyous rocker with infectious Diddleyesque rhythms and ingenious tempo changes. What gives it the Lee stamp is that the ending is shambolic and downright bizarre. Not the usual practice for a proposed single outing surely!

In 1969, the new lineup consisting of Lee along with George Suranovich (drums), Jay Donellan (guitar), and Frank Fayad (bass), released the final Elektra album called 'Four Sail'. While it is considered by many to be an uneven work, it certainly has some sublime moments. Perhaps the reason for some of its uneveness can be understood with the consideration that Lee originally titled the album 'Love For Sale'. This title indicates the kind of pressure that was being applied to Lee to come up with an album that would shift as many units as possible. One of the album's highlights is the track 'August'. Only Arthur Lee could manage to fuse progressive rock noodlings with a fine melody. Another standout is the song 'Good Times'. Its a jazzy thing with a breathy Lee vocal that soon erupts into a full-tilt rave-up with a visceral bass that threatens to destroy your speaker's woofers! The album fared much better than its predecessor , reaching #102 in the US album charts.

Four months later a new album was released, this time on the Blue Thumb label. It was a patchy affair and mainly consisted of outtakes recorded during previous album sessions. In 1970, False Start was released. This album is perhaps most famous for the guitar work of Jimi Hendrix on the opening song, 'The Everlasting First'. The song opens in a raucous manner, punctuated by the unadulterated screams of Hendrix's guitar. It soon fades into the plaintive, almost gospel vocal delivery of Lee. Another great moment is the live track 'Standout', which really shows what a dynamic band the British audiences must have witnessed on Love's 1970 tour. Jay Donellan by this stage had been replaced by Gary Rowles.

In 1972, Lee released a solo album called Vindicator. It received scant attention and vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. In '75 the final love album was issued called Reel to Real. It had some moments of note but generally it was a far cry from the man who had written so many memorable songs. Little was heard from Lee until '78 when he reunited with Bryan Maclean for a series of shows. In 1992, Lee again surfaced with an album which served to send his message to a new generation of fans. In may of 1996, Lee embarked upon a tour of Europe with American indie band Baby Lemonade as Love. From all reports the tour was a great success with Lee in fine form and he was apparently happy with the exemplary backing of Baby Lemonade, insisting that they were "Love when they play with me". Indeed it seemed that a well deserved Arthur Lee renaissance was upon us until Lee became a victim of LA's controversial 'Three Strikes' law. 

Lee was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment for firing a pistol in the air! Apparently Lee fired the gun during an argument with neighbours who were complaining about the noise he was making in his apartment. It seems that Lee had been convicted on drugs-related charges twice prior to this conviction. The problem with the entire premise of this conviction is that it later transpired that Lee's manager, Doug Thomas, had fired the gun, not Lee. Despite the fact that Thomas presented this evidence both at the initial trial and at subsequent appeals, the powers that be ordained that such evidence was extraneous and that Lee was a 'menace to society'. Thankfully, there was to be a happy ending with Lee finally being released in December of 2001.

This Biography Was Researched And Written By Paul Brown