Love is one of the biggest hidden gems in the classic rock canon. Having always enjoyed a fair share of critical praise but never with the sales numbers to back it up, singer-songwriter Arthur Lee and crew played the music they felt and were disarmingly honest songwriters and among the heaviest in the 60's (definitely the heaviest in LA). Love got the short shrift in their day for the same reason the Kinks did with the Beatles and Stones, for being more oblique with the structure of songs and how they are sung/played/mixed/performed live, etc. They, like the Kinks, played songs that not everybody got but those who did we're blown away. The Doors and the Byrds are much more popular, historically, yet both those bands, plus the Stones and Hendrix all dug Love. Hendrix even tried to record an album with Lee.
Arthur Lee was an enigma, a black peace-and-love hippie, but one who should have been celebrated for having a mixed race rock band like Sly and the Family Stone were. He was too hard for most white people (basically the second hardest to Black Sabbath in the whole era, "7 and 7 is..." can be considered the first punk song) and too folky for most black people. He made the topic of race irrelevant, he only preached that we love one another (which was not the case with him and his band members who had drug fueled spats regularly before being disbanded and reformed several times). Lee curiously refused to play the Monterey Pop festival the year Hendrix burned his guitar, the Who smashed shit and Otis Redding owned like no other.
When I first heard Forever Changes, I had no expectations going in besides it being psychedelic and folky with an orchestra somewhere in the mix. "Alone Again Or" is one of their more famous songs and that's because people have heard so much about this album and it's the first song, or they saw Wes Anderson's feature debut Bottle Rocket, but suffice it to say it drew me into the bands sound.
In the liner notes to the CD there's an essay saying the album reflected every part of Los Angeles in the 60's with every culture represented equally, which I thought was awesome. I love music that transcends and relates to all of us and Love's songs hit you on every level.
Forever Changes is bottom-to-top, front-to-back brilliance, but it's the only one of theirs that is regarded as classic, which may be true but the others have songs that can hold their worth with anything out of the classic era whether it be the Beatles, Zeppelin, or fucks like Steely Dan and Foreigner and the largely worthless "second tier" of classic rock.
Love are different, they're one of my favorite rock bands ever up there with The Velvet Underground, The Ramones, The Rolling Stones, etc because they're not only great writers but great composers/arrangers. Their dynamics are best experienced live, as the newer live material that they performed right before Arthur Lee's death in 2006 is just as good a the album with totally different musicians- because the arrangements are all still cutting edge and unique, Lee's words still prescient. This is their concert in Glastonbury, with the fat crowd they deserve digging every minute of it.
Check out ALL this bands work, every album is packed full of amazing words and music, but definitely get Forever Changes, it may just blow your mind irrevocably like it has mine. Oh yeah, and this s one of those bands like X and Yes and Television that is hard to google, so look up the words "Love Forever Changes" in wherever you're looking.
Bonus video (cuz it's dope and check the drummer):
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