Love & Forever Changes

I first heard of Love when I was in college my freshman year. I found a book at a used bookstore on campus called The Rock Encyclopedia or some such, and I read it constantly for months, learning about bands, albums - rock history in general. Under L was an entry for a band called Love, and it described their third album, Forever Changes, as a minor masterpiece. I special ordered it.

Forever Changes blew my mind. It was a soft sort of record, folkie, with strings and horns all over it, yet it rocked out, and the lyrics were amazing - obtuse and ambiguous, yet evocative and somehow I knew they meant something important. I transferred the record to a cassette and proceeded to wear out both the vinyl and the tape. I listened to this record everyday for a year at least.

They were a strange band. In 1966 they were mixed race, which was unheard of, and the lead singer, Arthur Lee, rather than playing R&B, was writing folk music and sang like (gasp!) a white guy. They released maybe 3 or 4 albums, most of the band was ravaged by drug abuse and dropped out of sight. Brian McLean (the guy holding the guitar in the picture), who wrote their biggest hit "Alone Again Or," eventually kicked his heroin habit after discovering religion. He probably would have gone on to be a major talent had he not screwed himself up so badly. Arthur Lee succumbed to peer pressure and abandoned his folk roots and adopted a style that was somewhat more in keeping with what musicians of color were expected to do but it didn't work out well. He did some time in jail and spent the remainder of his life playing the music of Love, and especially the songs on Forever Changes.

I've always thought this album was one of the greatest rock albums ever made, and in recent years it has gotten its due: Rolling Stone Magazine ranks it #40 in its list of the 500 all time greatest recordings. It sits with Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, Pet Sounds and Axis: Bold as Love as being a high point of the psychedelic rock movement of the 1960's. There's not a bad note on it, as it skitters from ballads to rockers, from fuzzy solos to flamenco guitar parts, to strings and what sounds like a Mariachi horn section. The recording is clean and not burdened by acoustic artifacts of the time, like too much reverb and echo. Arthur Lee has a weeping, plaintive voice that at times snarls. He even turns in one performance that sounds like proto-rap.

It's a fantastic record.