High Moon Records Hits A Home Run With Its Reissue Of Love's 'Reel To Real'

I finally got around to picking up the reissue of Love's 1974 album 'Reel To Real.' Back in 2007 I wrote about how I thought the album deserved to be listened to again with fresh ears. Freed from the burden of unreasonable expectations, it is a very strong album, among the best Lee released post 'Forever Changes.' Eight years later it's finally been reissued by High Moon Records, the same label that gave Love's 'Black Beauty' its first legitimate release back in 2012. 'Black Beauty' began Lee's journey back to his R&B roots and 'Reel To Real' completes it.

I'm happy to report that High Moon has finally given 'Reel To Real' the treatment it deserves. The sound quality of the CD (mastered by Dan Hersch and Bill Inglot) is fantastic (I can't speak to the LP, which I haven't heard). There are fabulous liner notes by David Fricke that draw on interviews with Lee's former bandmates, as well as the Bill Oakes, the executive who signed Love to RSO Records (turns out he was hoping for something more like 'Forever Changes' as well). Best of all, the twelve bonus tracks included on the CD are fantastic. There are four previously unheard, fully produced outtakes written by Arthur Lee that are a genuine revelation. These alone make this release a must-purchase item for any Arthur Lee fan. There's also some alternate mixes that are arguably superior to the ones that appeared on the album and a studio rehearsal of the 'Forever Changes' outtake "Wonder People (I Do Wonder)."

I'm really pleased that this much misunderstood chapter in Arthur Lee's career is getting the fresh look it's long deserved. High Moon's work on this reissue is absolutely unassailable. Highly recommended.

Love's Reel To Real Finally To Be Reissued By High Moon Records

High Moon Records recently announced they will be reissuing Love's 1974 album Reel To Real on LP, CD and Digital Download with 11 bonus tracks.

Real To Real did not sell well on initial release, has never been reissued on CD, and has been out-of-print since for decades. For many years Reel To Real was held in disrepute by clueless music critics who could never forgive Arthur Lee for moving on from Forever Changes. It even made one authoritative "worst albums ever" list. But there has been a critical re-evaluation of it in recent years. I wrote about my rediscovery of of the album, and my realization that it was actually really good back in 2007.

Real To Real is not Arthur Lee's finest hour, but it's a terrific, soulful album that could have been a commercially successful new direction for Lee and his cohorts if things had unfolded a little differently. High Moon does fantastic work, and this will be well worth purchasing for any Love/Arthur Lee fan. My original goal for this blog was to raise the profile of music I thought had been unjustly overlooked, so I'm always happy to see one of the releases I championed reissued, especially when done with such obvious care and respect.

Dan Hersch On Mastering Love's Long Lost Black Beauty

Love's Black Beauty lineup. Photo by Herbert Worthington III.

As I mentioned previously, I was extremely impressed with the recent High Moon Records issue of Love's Black Beauty, a previously unreleased Love album recorded for Buffalo Records in 1973. It's a strong set of songs from Arthur Lee, a great artist whose 70s output was frustratingly uneven, that remained officially unreleased until earlier this year.

Music aside, I was impressed by how good the record sounds, especially after learning the audio had been sourced from an acetate. I have heard releases transcribed from acetates before and typically it is not hard to tell the audio came from a less than ideal source. Curious to know more, I had a conversation with mastering engineer Dan Hersch of d2 mastering on the restoration process that went into the album's release.

Dan is one of the most respected mastering engineers in the music business. If, like me, you have a sizable CD collection, you will likely find Dan's name in the credits of hundreds of your favorite CDs. He is particularly known for the work he did in conjunction with Bill Inglot on many of the high-quality Rhino Records CD reissues in the 80s and 90s.

Me: What is an acetate?

Dan: I started out mastering in a vinyl disc cutting studio. We would cut an acetate, or a reference lacquer, which is the same cellulose nitrate material that, ultimately, the  master would be cut upon. The difference is that the reference lacquer would be a twelve inch disc (the master is larger) for an LP, so that the artist or producer could take it home, put it on their turntable, give it a listen, and then make the changes they wanted or  just give it the thumbs up. We'd then cut the master lacquer which would then go to the pressing plant where they would make the metal parts and then ultimately stamp out the records for the consumer.

So the reference acetate was the original reference medium for artists and producers. The acetate that came to Diane Lee, Arthur Lee's widow, was one that belonged to Arthur,  that he had come back from the mastering studio with back in the day and then had found its way onto a record shelf in someone's apartment, and had been played repeatedly.

The rule of thumb used to be after a period of time, because this lacquer material was soft, the sound would change a bit over time. Obviously being played repeatedly would not be good, and dirt and dust could get embedded in it.  I own some lightly played reference lacquers that were cut 30 years ago that still sound pretty darned good to me, but generally speaking, acetates aren't usually as hardy as an actual pressing.

Unfortunately the tapes [for Black Beauty] have gone missing, whether they're with someone or unrecoverable, or whatever. The only thing left from the Black Beauty assembled album was this acetate or reference lacquer.

Album cover for Black Beauty. Photo by Herbert Worthington III.

Me: From what I understand there were actually three acetates that were located. Did you handle them yourself or did someone else do the analog-to-digital conversion?

Dan: I don't know if you're familiar with Bill Inglot, he's a reissue producer who worked at Rhino for a long time. Bill has a very good record cleaner in his production studio, and he did the initial transfer of the acetate to digital files. Originally all I received was a reference audio CD-R of that transfer that sounded to me like someone  had tried to do a quick and dirty denoising. I think the original intent was just for Diane Lee to listen to the acetate and  try to find a label that would be interested in releasing it.

So I got that reference CD. It sounded kind of swirly, it just sounded a little weird, so I asked them to send me over the original files. I got the original files of the acetate, and, in comparing the raw transfer and the first CDR I heard, I could sort of hear the process of what they had done in an attempt to minimize the noise and to make it a better listening experience. But they had totally changed the stereo image, and had done a few things that I felt were inaccurate and unrealistic sonically.

Arthur Lee. Photo by Herbert Worthington III.

Me: When you take noise out, it's easy to take music with it, isn't it?

Dan: Absolutely, but I think in this case, there was some damage in the left channel of the acetate, and rather than attempt to deal with the damage, they just took the right channel and then put the mono signal through some stereo effect device to bring the stereo back. So in my mind it was not how I would do it, and it wasn't something I wanted to perpetuate. And again, I don't believe the person who originally worked on this had the intention of releasing it like that. I think it was just a quick and dirty job to get Diane a reference disc. So I thought it best to get back to the original transfer and figure out another way to present the material.

Me: Was the original file hi-res digital? ["Hi-res" denotes digital audio with greater bit depth and higher sampling frequency than the 16 bit/44.1 kHz CD standard.]

Dan: I can’t recall. Probably 24 bit, maybe 48khz or 96khz. The source was obviously pretty low-fi.

Me: What did those raw files sound like? How noisy were they?

Dan: There were some scrapes that were kind of bad. Ticks and pops are pretty easy to deal with, but when you have long duration scraping noises, those cause the most noticeable effect when you try to process them because you have to deal with a larger sample. Ticks and pops are usually fine. It's inner groove distortion, scraping, things that take a few frames of information that are hard to process. But I'm never sure what the de-noising and de-crackling software is going to do. Sometimes I'll send a sample through and I'll think it's going to be a problem, and it will come back totally clean. And then sometimes something I think will be simple doesn’t work out. Then it’s back to the drawing board with a different approach to the problem.

Me: What was your approach to dealing with that noise?

Dan: A little bit of background…in the remastering business you run into all types of labels and all types of budgets, and the budget dictates how much work you can do. Some labels aren't willing to spend the money or the time to do that. And then you have to budget your time and say "we'll do the best we can." But High Moon was very interested in trying to do the best they could. They didn't mind spending a little money on this. They never said to me "can you do this for x amount of dollars." So that allowed me to do a lot of hand de-clicking and really get in and spend some time with each song. That's really what it takes. It takes time.  As an engineer there's only so much you can do when you're on a tight budget. But High Moon allowed me to do whatever was necessary to do the best job possible. The song that starts the second side, "Beep Beep," has a lot of dead air and little quiet parts in the arrangement which can really expose the noise of the storage medium. It was quite a battle. I think when you listen to "Beep Beep" maybe you can still hear that it was an acetate source, but you're not totally smacked in the face with it.

The nosier more raucous tracks, it's easier for the noise to be masked. But it's always better to go in and manually deal with that stuff rather than just hitting a button that says "de-crackle." Not to overly toot their horn, but High Moon was really willing to spend the time and money to really do a high quality job. They've shown that with their vinyl pressing and by having Doug Sax cut it. They also went with the heavier vinyl. I know they did a lot of test pressings, they even switched pressing plants a couple times so that they could really put out a high quality product.

Me: You can see and hear the care that went into this on every level, the stock of paper they used for the cover, all the photographs from the period they included in the booklet, it's clear they didn't hold anything back.

Dan: Hopefully consumers will respond positively and encourage High Moon to continue doing things in this manner. Hopefully, more labels will follow suit.

Me: It helps to do research. You can't assume a newly remastered title is going to sound better than previous issues.

Dan: That’s true. Sometimes you are buying a copy of something previously released with a bonus track added or something. Perhaps knowing whether the remastering was done from the original tapes would be helpful to the consumer.  I've seen labels do releases on the same artist over and over again. When I first started doing CDs in the early 80s, we would receive an EQ'd copy of the (vinyl) master to use as our source for the CD. That  vinyl EQ really didn't hold up with the new possibilities of CD. But they (the labels) really didn't want to go back to the original master tape. The fear was somehow the original “mastering” was being undone: "this is what the artist had approved, this is what the producer had approved, this is what we're putting out." I think that's what really hurt early CDs, the consumer was getting vinyl cutting EQ'd copies, just digitized. We hadn’t had the opportunity to go back to the master tape and really take advantage of what they did in the recording studio.

A lot of times the first time an album got reissued on CD it was from a copy like that. And then the second time around, maybe they got the original master tapes and hopefully they got a guy like Bill Inglot or Andrew Sandoval, someone who really understands the recording process and really understands the original intent of the artist, who would get the original vinyl pressing vinyl to compare, make sure speeds are right, make sure levels are right, make sure the sound is in the spirit of the original vinyl. And then the reissues were done correctly.

As the same albums are released again and again with new marketing gimmicks, consumers really need to look sharp before buying. As is true with any product, “new and improved” isn’t always the case.

So when you have a label like High Moon that comes to me and says "sorry all we have is an acetate, can you make something good from it?" And you tell them, "it's gonna take me a week, and maybe I can," and they don't blink and say, "Fine, do it,” then the consumer is going to benefit. That allowed me to make something listenable.

Unfortunately, sometimes tapes go missing. Sometimes someone gets sticky fingers, or things get thrown away. There are some very famous bands where, once stuff got digitized in the 80s, they discarded all their original analog tapes. It's hard to imagine, but at the time a lot of people thought "now it's perfect" we don't need this old, crappy analog tape anymore.

I know George [High Moon owner] searched high and low for where those Black Beauty tapes might be, but unfortunately they couldn't be located.

Photo by Herbert Worthington III.

If you haven't picked it up already, Black Beauty is an essential purchase for any Love or Arthur Lee fan. Dan's observations about High Moon are spot on. It is obvious that a lot of love [no pun intended] and care went into this release. For those of you who don't have a turntable, there is a CD release coming from High Moon, although no release date has been announced as of yet.

Love - Black Beauty Sampler

The more I listen to the newly recovered Love album Black Beauty, the more I like it. High Moon Records has a sampler of all ten songs up on Soundcloud.

Love - Black Beauty Finally Available

Black Beauty, a long lost album by Arthur Lee and Love has finally been released by High Moon Records. Recorded in 1973 for the fledgling Buffalo Records label and intended to either be Lee's second solo album, or a new Love album with a new lineup, Black Beauty went unreleased at the time due to Buffalo Records' failure to launch.

The album features a very talented line up of musicians, some of the best Lee would work with in his long, checkered career, including guitarist Melvan Whittington, Robert Rozelle (bass), and Joe Blocker (drums). The album may have been named "Black Beauty" because, for the first time in his career, Lee was working exclusively with other African-American musicians (then again for all I know it's an amphetamine reference). He would utilize a similar lineup to record Reel To Real for RSO Records in 1975, an album that I have long argued has been unfairly maligned.

Black Beauty represents something of a midway point between the studied Hendrixisms of his 1972 solo album Vindicator and the more soulful groove of Reel To Real. Arthur sounds focused and engaged and happy to be working with such talented musicians. Lee does not attain the heights here that he did on Forever Changes (but then you knew that already), but it's nevertheless a worthy addition to any Arthur Lee fan's collection.

This release has been snake bitten since it failed to appear in 1973. The original master tapes could not be located and the audio had to be reconstructed (brilliantly I might add) from the best surviving acetate by Dan Hersch. Additionally, High Moon's release has been delayed a number of times. The album received a lot of positive press two years ago when promo copies were distributed to various media outlets. It was announced at the time that the album would be released on June 7, 2011, but it is only now available on LP (with the CD version yet to be released). Hopefully, the delay does not cause Black Beauty to fall through the cracks once again.

Despite the delays, High Moon did a great job with this release. The cover art looks fantastic, the LP is well-pressed and comes with an informative 28 page book that features many photographs from the period by Herbert Worthington. High Moon also included a download card for a 320kps MP3 version of the album. The first 5,000 copies are numbered. The music is some of the best Lee recorded post-Forever Changes. The only real misstep is the faux-Caribbean number "Beep Beep," which just doesn't work. The rest is soulful hard-rock that points in a direction that could have been commercially successful for Lee in the 70s if he could only have kept his act together. 

I know this is not really a review, the bottom line is that if you are fan of Arthur Lee/Love this is a worthwhile release, and if you are not a fan you should pick up a copy of Forever Changes and become one.

Love Lost (and Found)

I came across some exciting news for fans of Arthur Lee and Love. Sundazed is releasing a previously unissued Love album from 1971:

Sonic archaeology! In a move that defies rational belief, SUNDAZED has unearthed an unissued 1971 album by revered Los Angeles rock band Arthur Lee & Love, languishing in the Columbia Records tape vault.

I assume this is the album that Lee recorded for CBS--tentatively titled Dear You--after his deal with Blue Thumb expired. While I was aware of the existence of this album, I have never heard it, and am not aware of the tapes ever circulating in traders circles (although I am not really up on these things). Either way, this is a major find, and I'm glad this material will finally see the light of day through Sundazed.

But [think of a Ronco infomercial here] that's not all you get! According to Sundazed:

And that's not all! We've also uncovered a marvelous batch of acoustic demos for the ‘71 album, featuring just the magical voice of Arthur Lee and his acoustic guitar. It's a thrilling twin-discovery of ultra-important material that no one knew existed.

As a precursor to the release of this breath-taking Arthur Lee and Love material (to be called Love Lost), we've created a 7” single of two knockout tracks from the demo sides. “Love Jumped Through My Window” is cut from the same fine cloth as every heart-stopping Love track you've ever heard. And the flipside, “Sad Song,” — in alternate take form here — will appear only on seven-inch vinyl. The Love maestro is in superlative voice on both of these exquisite unheard sides.

These two songs eventually appeared on Lee's 1972 solo debut, Vindicator. From the short 30 second clips Sundazed has made available these acoustic demos sound far better than the over-cooked hard rock of Vindicator, so this looks to be a very promising release. The single will be released August 25, and is available for pre-order from Sundazed now.

I don't have any information beyond that this at this point, but I have made an inquiry with Sundazed and will keep you updated as details emerge.

In other Lee/Love news, I noticed that a label called Friday Music has reissued a couple of Lee collectors items. The first is the Arthur Lee album that was first issued by Rhino back in the 80s that I reviewed a while back. The other is an album called Love Live featuring material Lee recorded with Bryan Maclean in 1978 (Rhino originally issued that one as a picture disc).

Free Love! This Week Only!

Rock's Back Pages is a subscription service that archives a huge amount rock music interviews and criticism that are unavailable elsewhere. This week they have made some articles on Love and Arthur Lee available for free.

Lenny Kaye makes a valiant attempt to interview Arthur Lee, while Lee sets the record for saying "trip" the most times in one interview (Jazz & Pop, 1970):

LK: Have you always desired to be put in the role of leader?

AL: Leader? Well, it's like I don't know what you mean by leader. You have to explain what a leader is and I can tell you if I want to be one or if I think I'm on that trip.

LK: Well, how you related to the people in the group. When you sat down at a practice to arrange to do a song, were you the one who used to take the initiative?

AL: Right, I'm the leader. I was the leader.

John Tobler talks to Jerry Hopkins about what it was like to manage Love during their early days (ZigZag, 1973):

The troubles started almost immediately; every time a record company executive came down, someone in the band wouldn't show up – even though we took great pains to explain the importance of their all being there. We were getting nowhere fast; all we were doing was running out of record companies who were getting fed up having their time wasted by unknown groups who didn't even turn up to play.... it was just a waste of time for everybody concerned.

Max Bell reports on yet another new version of Love's 1975 tour of England with George Suranovich back behind the drums and John Sterling on guitar (NME, 1975):

At this Lyceum gig audiences were really on the ball, but the rest of Love's tour lies in tattered shreds – quarter full halls and dance band status allegations. Apparently as some kind of snub to their record company, they only did one genuinely new number, the Curtis flavoured "Who Are You," Lee hitting exact high notes; a voice of our time, his, and in perfect trim. There's a tremendous presence too, making it virtually impossible to shift one's gaze.

Jon Savage digs Rhino's 2001 Forever Changes reissue (Mojo, 2001):

Nearly 34 years after its recording, Forever Changes remains a key, perhaps the key '60s album: a perfect fusion of form and function that both defines and elegantly steps out of its time. Its ambition and scope make it representative of the principal cultural and perceptual challenge of the hippie period (Does life have to be like this?) that remains powerful because it has never been adequately addressed.

Paul Lester talks to Arthur Lee about putting his life back together after getting out of prison (The Guardian, 2002):

Now he just wants to get on with his life. "I don't intend to get into any trouble. Breaking any law is the furthest thing from my mind." Suddenly, he brightens. "Speaking of that, do you know where I can get some weed?"

Love Reissues

I also wanted to mention a bit of news on the Love reissue front. First the bad news: the limited edition Hip-O Blue Thumb Recordings box I reviewed last year has gone out-of-print. Used copies are currently changing hands for reasonable prices (for now). If you think you want this, I advise you to act quickly. However, if you're not interested in the live bonus CD included with the box, you might consider the fact Collector's Choice has reissued the two Blue Thumb studio albums, Out Here and False Start. Additionally, Arthur Lee's solo album, Vindicator, has been reissued by Britian's BGO Records, so it is once again possible to hear this recording without paying insane prices.

Finally, on April 22, Rhino will release a two disc "Collector's Edition" of Forever Changes, which will include a full-length "alternate mix" of the 1967 classic. It's hard to know what to think about that. The value of such a set will depend very much on just how interesting and/or different the "alternate mix" is, but I will never complain about any of Love's music being reissued. I also hear rumors of a Rhino box set, but don't know any details.

In the meantime, I am still waiting for a proper reissue of Reel To Real. Collector's Choice, are you listening?

Though out-of-print on CD, The Blue Thumb Recordings is now available for download from iTunes at a budget price.

Gary McFarland - Soft Samba

Gary McFarland sold a ton of records with the mix of bossa nova, Beatles songs and easy listening found on his 1964 album Soft Samba. Jazz purists have yet to forgive him for it. At the risk of being forever banished from the fraternity of music snobs, I have to say I absolutely love this album. It would be a shame for Soft Samba to be remembered as nothing more than "bachelor pad" kitsch (although it will serve quite nicely in that capacity if that is what you are looking for).

In addition to having a notable influence on Jobim himself (who plays guitar on several tracks), I strongly suspect the album had an impact on Arthur Lee and Brian MacLean of Love as they sought to expanded their sonic palette on Da Capo and Forever Changes. Listen to the last thirty seconds of "Orange Skies," and see if you can convince yourself that MacLean and Lee had never heard McFarland's distinctive vocalese and were unfamiliar with his inventive arrangements of popular songs.

Additionally, McFarland deserves much credit for recognizing the melodic sophistication that lay at the heart of the Beatles appeal while many of his contemporaries were dismissing the Fab Four as teenie-bopper garbage.

And how many albums have had a cocktail named after them?

Soft Samba Cocktail

Pour two ounces of dry (fino) Spanish Sherry over two ice cubes in an old fashioned glass. Add half and ounce of tropical fruit juice or pineapple juice. Add a dash of Angostura Bitters.
(Courtesy Spanish Sherry Institute)

Love - Blue Thumb Recordings Review on Pitchfork

Pitchfork has a review of the Love Blue Thumb Recordings box set up today. It's a good review and worth a read.

Love - The Blue Thumb Recordings (Review)

I got my package from Hip-O Select yesterday that included the Love Blue Thumb Recordings 3 CD set. Kudos to Hip-O Select for releasing this material, and for the fast shipping. First the good news: the sound quality is very good. Producer Bill Levenson and mastering engineer Suha Gur did not make any attempt to re-write history. For better or worse, Out Here and False Start sound pretty much like the original LPs, which in my opinion is a good thing. Hip-O got the most important part of the project right--the sound.

I do have a couple of complaints though. First, $40 + $8 shipping makes this a fairly expensive purchase, and the packaging could have been more deluxe. I had hoped the CDs would be housed in slipcase replicas of the original LPs, but instead they are packaged in a very plain tri-fold digipak, with a rather skimpy jewel case insert. The liner notes by Dave Thompson are short, do not go into much depth, and contain a couple obvious inaccuracies. Please keep in mind I know nothing about the realities of how to make a profit off music in an era of declining sales, so my complaints, though minor, are likely churlish.

Of course the music is what's really important. Disc one features the double LP Out Here in its entirety. I've already told you what I think about the music on Out Here: it's frustratingly uneven. That said, it's nice to have the convenience of a "skip" button when listening to it, so I'm happy to have a copy on CD.

Disc two features False Start, Love's second and final Blue Thumb LP. For this album Lee assembled yet another new Love lineup. Gary Rowles replaced lead guitarist Jay Donnellan, and Noony Ricket was added on rhythm guitar and sometimes rather prominent backing vocals. Frank Fayad (bass) and George Suranovich (drums) stuck around from the previous incarnation of the band.

False Start is best-known for the Jimi Hendrix guitar solo that graces the lead off track, "The Everlasting First," which partly obscures the fact that the album finds Lee moving away from heavy (white) psychedelic rock and toward an embrace of (black) soul music. That transition would not be complete until Reel To Real, but Lee lets his blackness come "shining through" on soulful tracks such as "Keep On Shining," "Flying," "Anytime," and "Feel Daddy Feel Good."

Unlike the spotty Out Here, False Start is a consistently good record. It is also much shorter, clocking in at less than 30 minutes. It's an enjoyable listen from start to finish. A single live track "Stand Out" originally featured on Out Here, and recorded at a February 1970 UK gig, suggests that Love Mach 2.5 was one heck of a live act.

Which brings me to the final disc of this package; a live CD featuring previously unreleased material recorded on the same 1970 UK tour. Considering how excellent the live version of "Stand Out" featured on False Start is, I found the live disc mildly disappointing. Although I have no evidence for this beyond what my ears tell me, listening to the newly uncovered live material suggests that the False Start version of "Stand Out" was subjected to some rather extensive studio sweetening. First of all, there is the matter of Lee's voice: there is clearly a different, less reverberant, acoustic surrounding his voice on "Stand Out" than on the material on the live disc (some of which was recorded at the same February 27 show). Also, something sounds mildly off about Lee's voice on the newly uncovered live material, it sounds like he had a tooth pulled or something. The False Start version of “Stand Out” also features some rather polished backing vocals that are entirely absent from the live recordings featured on Disc three of this set. Make of that what you will.

The quirk to Lee's voice is mildly distracting, but the band sounds good throughout. It's interesting to hear some of the material from Forever Changes and Da Capo played by this band, although it is fairly obvious they were much more at home playing the less subtle, heavier material like "August," "Good Times" and "Singing Cowboy." The final track, a much more efficient version of "Love Is More Than Words Or Better Late Than Never" than the eleven-plus minute version featured on Out Here, really shows what this band was capable of live.

Despite the fact that I was mildly disappointed with this set, it's still an excellent addition to any Love fan's collection, particularly if you do not already own the two featured studio LPs already. Whether the live material from 1970 is enough to justify purchase for the true fanatic is not for me to decide. I have no regrets.

Love - The Blue Thumb Recordings

For you Love fanatics with more money than sense, Hip-O Select has released a 3 CD box, Love: The Blue Thumb Recordings (mine is on order). The box includes Out Here and False Start, the two studio albums Arthur Lee and Love recorded for Blue Thumb records, plus a live disc that contains a previously unreleased 1970 UK live gig. Word on the street is that Bill Levenson and Suha Gur did a great remastering job.

This is my first order from Hip-O Select, a division of Universal Music Group that suspiciously resembles Warner Music Group's Rhino Handmade. I'll let you know what I think of the sound quality and packaging when I get my copy. I also ordered the "lost" Funkadelic album, By Way Of The Drum, since I'm paying for shipping already and because it looks interesting.

Love - Four Sail & Out Here Revisited

Four Sail and Out Here were the first two "Love" albums to appear after the original line up disintegrated. When Brian MacLean expressed his outrage that Arthur Lee would release music made by a different band under the Love moniker, Jimi Hendrix reportedly angrily responded "Arthur Lee is Love!" Hendrix may or may not have been right about that, but it would certainly be the case henceforth.

The music on Four Sail and Out Here was recorded at a makeshift studio with equipment rented by Lee, and featured a new band (Jay Donnellan on guitar, George Suranovich on drums and Frank Fayad on bass). Love may have still been in debt to Elektra for recording costs associated with Da Capo and Forever Changes at that point, so Lee was keen to keep control of the recording costs himself. Additionally, Lee had been looking for a way to get out of his contract with Elektra since before Da Capo was recorded.

Exactly what happened is murky. By most accounts all of the material for the two albums was recorded at the same time for a proposed double LP for Lee's new label, Blue Thumb. Brian MacLean may have already left the band by this point, but Lee apparently never told the others that they had been fired, nor did he tell Elektra about his new contract. Both labels seem to have been out-of-the-loop on the band's personnel situation as well, although Elektra may have offered MacLean the chance to record a solo album.

When Elektra got word of what Lee was up to, they took their pick of the newly-recorded songs for the last LP owed to them under Lee's previous contract, and released Four Sail. But Blue Thumb wanted music from the classic Love line-up, and convinced Lee to make another go of it with the Forever Changes-era line-up, minus MacLean. That plan fell apart after Johnny Echols and Ken Forssi (by Lee's contention) pawned their rented equipment for drug money. Meanwhile, Blue Thumb was stuck with the leftovers from the Four Sail sessions and released the material as the double LP, Out Here, although it is possible some of the material featured on that album was recorded at a later point.

If all this sounds confusing, it's probably because it was a bitter and confusing time for all involved. Former Love drummer Michael Stuart describes the deteriorating situation from his own perspective in his memoir of the period, Pegasus Carousel. Stuart blames many of the problems on Lee's dictatorial tendencies and reluctance to accept gigs, a practice that left the other members of the band with too much time to indulge in their less-than-healthy habits. For his part, Lee tended to pin the blame on the worsening drug addiction among all members of the band, often claiming he was the only member of the band not hooked on heroin (though he was also known to claim that he nearly died from an O.D. around this time himself). Whatever account you choose to accept, one thing is certain--heavy use of hard drugs contributed enormously to the band's break up.

Four Sail probably never got an entirely fair shake due to the lingering bitterness over the break up of the original band. But Four Sail has many defenders today--check out the sincere and passionate defenses of the album on Amazon.com, and on Love message boards. Stereophile critic Michael Fremer has also written an insightful revisionist review of the album.
Personally, I was initially disappointed when I first heard Four Sail. The album struck me as less eclectic than the work of the original band. Love, Da Capo and Forever Changes all sounded fresh to me when I first heard them in the late eighties. The music on the first three albums seemed both of its time, yet somehow outside of time as well. Four Sail did not strike me in the same way--for better or worse it sounded very much like a product of its times. Four Sail sounded too similar to a lot of other "heavy" psychedelic rock from the period (Cream, Hendrix, Traffic, The Allman Brothers, etc.) to really impress me at the time. Whereas I admired "7 & 7 Is" as an obvious inspiration for punk rock, Four Sail stuck me as the kind of music I understood punk rock to be a reaction against. I thought the album was okay, but I never really got into it.

In retrospect, I think the revisionist defenders of the album largely have it right. From the opening psychedelic riffing on "August" to the gentle, emotional closer "Always See Your Face," the songwriting is of very high quality, and the musicianship is excellent (new guitarist Jay Donnellan is especially impressive). And if the music sounds a little more like other popular music from the period than previous efforts, so what? It's still mostly good stuff.

A personal favorite from the album is "Your Friend And Mine - Neil's Song," a bitter homage to Love roadie Neil Rappaport who had died of a heroin overdose upon returning from the band's ill-fated 1968 East Coast tour in support of Forever Changes. This is no maudlin "Candle In The Wind" type tribute. Lee thinks back on the good times he shared with his buddy while simultaneously expressing anger at him for being so stupid as to let his habit kill him ("They took all your money, now look what they're doin' for you -- chump!"). But even in his righteous anger Lee sees a reflection of his own imperfect self in Rappaport ("all we are is two of kind"). At the same time Lee seems to be expressing some latent anger at Rappaport for introducing him to hard drugs. The sentiment isn't pretty, but it's an honest expression of the mix of emotions a person might feel when a friend passes away too soon.

Four Sail is available as an import CD with bonus tracks, and on 180 gram vinyl from Sundazed. Both are worthwhile additions to any Love fan's collection.

Out Here impressed me far less than Four Sail when I first heard it, and that remains the case to this day. It wasn't until I heard six of the album's better tracks isolated on Rhino's 1995 anthology, Love Story, that I recognized that some of the material on Out Here is actually killer. It's easy to understand why: the album is packed with filler that represents the worst kind of 60s rock excess, including that most maligned of all conventions, the extended drum solo.

The album starts out okay with "I'll Pray For You" but deteriorates quickly with "Abolony" (a country rocker in which Lee rhymes "Abolony" with "baloney"). This is followed by a "heavy" remake of the first album's "Signed D.C." This track reminds me of the scene in Spinal Tap where the band breaks into an atrocious heavy-metal version of "Gimi Some Money," a song that had earlier been heard in a much more charming Merseybeat arrangement. Except this isn't funny. The temptation to lift the needle a couple minutes into this abomination in order to check out side two is strong, which would be a shame because you would skip the outstanding ballad "Listen To My Song."

Side two starts with the hard-rocking "Stand Out," a song that expresses Lee's emerging racial consciousness, a trend that would eventually lead to his full-on embrace of soul music with Reel To Real. Then comes "Discharged" one of the worst "protest" songs I have ever heard. This is the kind of crap that helped motivate the so-called "silent majority" to elect Richard Nixon President. Then comes "Doggone" with its seemingly endless drum solo (ironically, in an edited version "Doggone" is a pretty good song).

The rest of the album follows a similar pattern; the outstanding "I Still Wonder" is followed by the interminable psychedelic jamming of "Love Is More Than Words or Better Late Than Never," and the lovely "Willow Willow" is followed by "Instra-Mental," an instrumental track that would have been better named "Out-Take."

The good stuff on Out Here is very good, in a few cases even better than the best tracks on Four Sail. I'd go so far as to say "Willow Willow" and "I Still Wonder" are among the best songs Lee ever wrote (were it not for the fact that Jay Donnellan wrote "I Still Wonder"). But the album is ultimately brought down by the low quality of its filler. It strikes me that this is exactly the kind of album you don't want to release as your first on a new label. I imagine this album made it very difficult for Blue Thumb's A&R people to work up much enthusiasm for their new act, especially since they thought they were signing a different band. Lee could have made a much better case for his new band with a single album and some judicious use of a fader. Out Here is yet another example of Lee's tendency toward career self-sabotage. It presents both some of the best and worst trends in popular music as the 60s faded into the 70s.

Out Here is currently out-of-print, although key tracks are available on the compilations Love Story 1966-1972 and Out There. Honestly, those compilations--which omit the worst of the filler--are a much better way to hear the material. Mercifully edited versions of "Doggone" and "Love Is More Than Words" can be heard on the out-of-print Studio/Live. Here are a couple tracks that aren't on any compilation--it's basically some of the stuff that should have been cut to make Out Here a single album. "I'm Down" is easily the best track not to have been anthologized. I include "Discharged" only to remind us of the wrong way to criticize an unjust war.

I'm Down [now available from Hip-O Select]
Discharged [now available from Hip-O Select]

Arthur Lee's New Love (left to right):
Frank Fayad, George Suranovich, Jay Donnellan, Arthurly

Love - The Forever Changes Concert

When Arthur Lee was released from jail in 2001, having served 6 years of his 12-year sentence, he became serious about touring for the first time in his career. Baby Lemonade was still ready, willing and able to back him, and he toured more during the last 5 years of his life than he had during the rest of his career combined.

All this activity culminated with The Forever Changes Concert, available on CD and DVD from Snapper Music. The band is extremely tight, and the horns and strings integrate with the rest of the music nicely. Unfortunately, Lee's voice was no longer the supple instrument it once was, and his vocals lack the delicacy heard on the 1967 recordings.

A few of the songs take on new meaning in this context. Lee obviously references his own plight when he expands the "freedom" section at the end of "The Red Telephone," and the song's refrain "They're locking them up today, they're throwing away the key, I wonder who it will be tomorrow you or me?" sounds less like the result of drug-induced paranoia in the age of Guantanamo Bay and the Bush administration's post 9/11 assault on civil liberties. These concerts were a great triumph for Lee personally, but obviously they will never replace or supplant the original recording.

The following is an excerpt from a simultaneously hilarious and sad interview with Lee printed in The New Music Express and conducted by Jack White of the White Stripes:

JW: How do you want to be perceived right now?

AL: I think I'm the best of them all. I think Mick Jagger stinks. Brian Wilson stinks too. They just don't have that punch. Don't get me wrong: Mick Jagger was a great influence in my life. He was a free spirit. But now he just doesn't have his noggin on straight. You have to protect your noggin.

JW: Love's influence is very important but it's never written as such. What is Love's place in musical history to you?

AL: [Ignoring question completely.] Mick and Brian Wilson should give it up. They should go home and take care of their kids. The Beatle guy too. Paul McCarthy (sic). He should pack it up. He's there singing "yesterdayyyy." Yesterday? I'm talking about right now! I've seen their shows recently and they stink. They're wasting people's time and money now. The people that come and see me play get their money's worth and they get an education, too. I've still got it and I'm 57 years old. I creep into people's hearts and their minds. And once I've got your mind, your mind's on my mind…and your mind and we belong together.

It's hard to know where to start analyzing behavior like this. (Maybe it's better not to, but I can't resist.) I think the proper psychoanalytic term for this sort of behavior is "projection." Despite the fact that he was surrounded by a group of young musicians that idolized him, and was basking in the much-deserved adulation of his fans, Lee obviously remained a deeply unhappy man. Lee's extraordinary level of bluster exposes his own deepest fears more clearly than a frank admission of them ever could. This is clearly the behavior of a man who is terrified that his old music doesn't measure up to that of other rock legends, and most of all is afraid that he has nothing new to say.

It's simply astounding that he would criticize Paul McCartney (or "McCarthy" as he calls him) for continuing to perform "Yesterday" while doing an interview in support of a tour in which he was performing a 35-year-old album in its entirety. Later in the interview he takes Jagger to task for not getting his underwear sweaty enough on stage. Whatever else I might want to say about McCartney and Jagger's post-peak careers, the last thing I would accuse McCartney of is a reluctance to try new things, and the last thing I would accuse Jagger of is not working hard enough on stage. Reading this, it's easy to understand why Lee eventually alienated his new band, just as he had alienated all those who had played with him before.

At the ripe old age of 21, Lee was convinced he was going to die and Forever Changes would be his last words on earth. There is a bittersweet irony to the fact that nearly 40 years later he turned out to be right.

[click on image for full interview]

Love - Girl On Fire (with Baby Lemonade)

After having been nearly silent for over a decade Arthur Lee started making a halting comeback in the early 90s. In 1992 he released the album Arthur Lee and Love (aka Five String Serenade) on the French New Rose label. He started gigging with various indie-rock conglomerations, featuring members of Das Damen, Uncle Wiggly and others, and played his first shows in New York City and England in over 20 years. The shows were reportedly very uneven in quality, and stories of near-schizophrenic behavior spread among the indie-rock pick-up bands he rarely rehearsed with.

Arthur Lee was back, but it wasn't clear how much music he had left in him. "Five String Serenade" was a wonderful song, and Mazzy Star's cover of it actually made him some money for the first time in a long time. But the rest of the album featured some of the worst music ever recorded by a high-profile 60s rocker (and yes, that includes Starship and Eric Burdon). "You're The Prettiest Song" sounds like "The Lady In Red" only sappier, and that's one of the better tracks. And how did the man who once limited Brian McLean to one song per album allow something as awful as Keith Farrish's "The Watcher" to slip onto one of his albums? Taken as a whole, the album is shockingly bad.

All of which makes this 1994 single all the more interesting. Sometime around 1993 Lee hooked up with the L.A. band Baby Lemonade, gigged with them regularly, and in essence they became his new version of Love. Unlike some of the pick-up bands Lee had been playing with, Baby Lemonade was talented and professional, and the music sounded well rehearsed and organized. It no doubt helped that this much younger group of musicians worshiped Lee enough to put up with him.

"Girl On Fire" is the closest thing to punk Lee had recorded since "7 & 7 Is," and "Midnight Sun" sounds like Hendrix-era Love, only better. Most surprisingly, in 1994 Lee's voice was still a remarkably supple instrument. Lee had finally found a group of musicians who understood him, were sympathetic to his vision, and apparently capable of instilling some discipline in him (or at least the appearance of it).

But all was not as well as it might have seemed. It wasn't clear if Lee's songwriting chops were coming back or not. "Midnight Sun" actually dated back to the lost album Lee recorded with Hendrix in 1970. And "Girl On Fire" recalls "7 & 7 Is" a little too closely to be of any real consequence. Worse, Lee would soon be repeating the lyrics to the song ("I don't want to set that girl on fire, I just want to put a flame in her heart") to a judge after he was arrested in 1995 for allegedly trying to torch a former girlfriend's apartment. This was quickly followed by another arrest on a weapons charge that got him sentenced to 12 years in prison under California's "three strikes" law. Most people figured that was where the story would end...but of course it wasn't.

This single probably sums up Lee's frustrating mix of talent and penchant for self-destruction as well as anything in his catalog.

Arthur Lee - Self Titled (1981 Rhino Records)

Arthur Lee, released in 1981 by Rhino Records, is Arthur Lee's second solo album, or possibly his fourth if you count the unreleased Black Beauty (1973) and More Changes (1977), or his eighth if you consider everything after Forever Changes to be solo Lee. Whatever it is, it isn't very good.

It had been seven years since Lee had released his last album, 1974's under-rated Reel To Real, and it would be another eleven years before he would release anything else. Seven of the songs were intended for More Changes, and another five are unique to this album. All of it sounds half-baked.

Lee is featured with various musicians, some of whom had been featured in previous editions of Love (George Suranovich, Sherwood Akuna) as well as some newcomers (Velvert Turner, Joe Blocker, John Sterling). While all involved are decent musicians, the bands sound under-rehearsed, and the tracks under-produced. A little more effort on Lee's part would have gone a long way toward making this a better album.

The most puzzling thing here is the remake of "7 & 7 Is." This is a song that reputedly took the original Love upwards of 60 takes to get right due to Lee's perfectionism, but here it sounds as if it was re-recorded in a single take without rehearsal. It is almost as if Lee's intention is to tarnish his legacy. I don't generally go in for armchair psychoanalysis, but it would be easy to interpret this as an act of self-loathing.

Neverthless, there are some decent songs here. We now know that "I Do Wonder" had been an outtake from the Forever Changes sessions, so it's no surprise that it is the strongest song here. This take from 1977 with John Sterling, George Suranovich and Kim Kesterson, sounds much rougher than the string and horn laden Forever Changes outtake. "Stay Away From Evil" sounds like Lee's warning to himself, which--as he confides in the liner notes--is exactly what it is.

There is also some genuinely awful stuff here as well. The lead off track, "One" is a sad rip off of Bob Marley's "One Love" that takes Marley's simple, heartfelt sentiment and transforms it into something merely simple-minded. Like a lot of people between 1974 and 1981 Lee had clearly discovered reggae music, which can also be heard on "One And One" and his covers of The Bobbettes' "Mr. Lee" and Jimmy Cliff's "Many Rivers To Cross." When Lee sings he's been "licked, washed up for years,” he sounds like he means it, and it lends a certain poignancy to the song. But rather than make me forget Jimmy Cliff's version, Lee's rendition sent me searching for my copy of The Harder They Come. The reggae influence is a direction that might have been promising if Lee had only applied himself, but the lack of rehearsal/production really hurts this material.

In a nutshell this is Arthur Lee circa 1981, still talented, but extremely lazy and ultimately frustrating. Dave DiMartino's 1981 Creem interview with Lee just before this album was released is essential reading for anyone interested in Lee's career.

Arthur Lee - Vindicator

I want to continue with a re-assessment of each of Arthur Lee/Love's post-Forever Changes albums. Conventional wisdom dictates that after the original Love's breakup Lee's career was characterized by progressively diminishing artistic returns. Sales figures and what remains in print would tend to bear that assessment out. But my re-examination of 1974's Reel To Real suggested to me that such opinions are based at least in part upon misplaced critical expectations. I suspect Lee's fans and critics were wishing so hard for another Forever Changes each time out that they never listened to the new albums on their own terms.

Today I want to take a second look at Arthur Lee's first solo album, Vindicator. This album, released by A&M in 1972, came on the heels of a failed CBS/Columbia deal. It was also the first of Lee's albums not to chart. As Wayne Robins noted in his largely positive November 1972 review of Vindicator for Creem magazine:

"There's an overwhelming obsession with death on Vindicator, with explicit lyrical references in at least half the songs."

Indeed, the specter of death hangs over the album, and not solely because of the sometimes-morbid lyrical content. Early in his career Lee was often accused of mimicking Mick Jagger ("A black man trying to sound like a white man, trying to sound like a black man.") Here he sounds like a black man trying to sound like a dead black man: Jimi Hendrix. So strong is the Hendrix influence on Vindicator that it sounds like the sonic equivalent of necrophilia, and whatever the album's strengths, I have a hard time listening past that.

The cover art is very much worth examining in light of the Hendrix influence. As Robins notes:

"Arthur Lee is very much involved in the Sly-Hendrix equation, which states that black rock 'n' rollers working for the white masses tend to self-destruct. The proof of the pudding here is the cover. Lee, head shaved, carrying broom and janitor's suit, slapping palms with himself, in blonde wig, carrying an electric guitar, looking over his shoulder."

It's clear that Lee is making some kind of statement here about his position as a black man operating in a white man's music world. I suspect he's describing the options he felt were open to him, and the stereotypes society allowed him to occupy. Either present himself as an outrageous "super spade" in the mold of Sly Stone or Hendrix, or fall into the anonymity of menial labor. There is no small irony in the fact that Lee would be earning his living as a house painter within four years of this album's release.

I don't consider this among Lee's stronger post-Forever Changes releases, but it has its moments, especially if you can listen past the huge the Hendrix influence. This is probably Lee's hardest rocking release, and it lacks the subtlety of his better albums. "Love Jumped Through My Window" and "Busted Feet" are two of the better songs, although the Hendrix influence is perhaps strongest on "Busted Feet." It's not a bad album by any means, but it didn't grab me the way Reel To Real did.

Love - Reel To Real Again

I don't usually post on the same album twice, but I wanted to follow up briefly on my previous post about Love's 1974 album, Reel To Real. In that post I focused mostly on my own initial negative reaction to the album and how differently I reacted to it upon hearing it again. Some of the questions that this album raises for me are central to what I think I am trying to accomplish with this blog in general: Why do we like certain kinds of music and not others, and why do our preferences change over time? Why do certain albums achieve "classic" status and remain in print for years, while others are discarded and forgotten almost immediately? Is there anything worth recovering in the things we have discarded? How does music affect our memory of the past, and how does our memory of the past affect the way we listen to music? Of course none of these questions have definitive answers, I see them as merely jumping off points for discussion.

In writing my original post I had to consider the possibility that my judgment might be clouded by the fact that I paid a lot of money to obtain the album. I think on the whole I assessed it as honestly as I could, and I stand by that assessment completely. I have been listening to the album regularly for the past couple of weeks. I've enjoyed it, and so have my wife and son. While I do not believe that Reel To Real is a consistently great album like Forever Changes, I do think it is pretty good with some excellent tracks. It is also far, far better than its critical reputation suggests. It sounds like what could have been an exciting, and potentially commercially successful, direction for Arthur Lee. Unfortunately that was not to be; the album tanked commercially and within two years of its release he was earning his living painting houses with his father-in-law. It would be six years before he released another album, and he would never again record for a major label.

So just how bad is Reel To Real's critical reputation? In short, to the extent that it is not forgotten completely, very bad. Colin Larkin, editor of The Encyclopedia of Popular Music lists Reel To Real as one of the 80 or so worst albums of all time, in the company of The Country Side of Pat Boone, Merry Christmas With The Smurfs, Telly Savalas' Telly, a Milli Vanilli remix album, and LaToya Jackson's From Nashville To You. Of course Colin Larkin has as much a right to his opinion as I do to mine, but I would strongly argue that the album does not belong in company like that, and that the negative critical reactions to the album are colored by preconceptions about what a Love album is supposed to sound like and not by the music itself.

Love - Reel To Real: Lost Classic or Bummer In The Summer?

Reel To Real might be easier to understand if thought of as Arthur Lee's third solo album (after Vindicator and the never-released Black Beauty) rather than as a Love album. Certainly it has little in common with Love's best-known work, Forever Changes, or their final Elektra album, Four Sail. It does share some common ground with the Hendrix-like hard-rock of Vindicator, but rather than psychedelia or hard-rock, Reel To Real is predominantly soul music, harkening back to Arthur Lee's earliest work with The American Four and LAG.

Reel to Real is easily the rarest album released under the Love moniker, selling few copies upon its initial release on RSO in 1974, and never having been released on CD. I first heard this album back when I was in high school and my friend Peter picked it up in the "bargain bin" at the Annapolis Record Exchange. It seemed like a major score . . . until we actually heard it. This wasn't Love! This was more like disco! I think we both concluded that by 1974 Arthur Lee was a sad drug casualty who had completely lost his way musically.

Peter later sold his copy, but after reading about Guy's initial bum reaction to Forever Changes, I found myself getting curious about Reel To Real again. Was it really as bad as I remembered all those years ago, or had I simply approached the album with the wrong set of preconceptions? So when a still-sealed copy popped up on eBay, I bid on it. Then I was outbid, so I bid again. And again. And again.

So the 46 dollar and 33 cent (including shipping) question is: was it worth it? Well, I paid more for it than I should have, but listening to Reel To Real with fresh ears in 2007, I think it is mostly terrific. The easiest way to describe the album is as a cross between the Hendrix-inspired hard-rock Lee aspired to post-Forever Changes and the greasy soul music of Lee's Memphis birthplace.

No matter what you think of the music, it's undeniable that Lee assembled a crack band--in terms of technique, perhaps the best of his career--the band is tight. "Time Is Like A River," "Good Old Fashion Dream," and "Who Are You?" are genuinely funky with soulful vocals by Lee. "Which Witch Is Which" and a cover of William DeVaughn's "Be Thankful For What You Got" sound a bit like Cadet-era Terry Callier, and "Busted Feet" is a compelling amalgam of Hendrix and Memphis Soul.

And while the fact that Lee recycled three songs from previous releases may suggest creative exhaustion, "Everybody's Gotta Live" and "Busted Feet" sound better the second time around. Sure, the album is not perfect; I could have lived without the remake of "Singing Cowboy," and the "We got the power, we're gonna make it right on" sloganeering of "With A Little Energy" sounds overly facile even without considering that it comes from the man who brought the world "A House Is Not A Motel" and "Bummer In The Summer." But the band locks into a solid groove and Lee sells the positive message with a genuinely enthusiastic performance.

So my revised verdict is that Reel To Real is one of Arthur Lee's strongest post-Forever Changes releases. It is a far better album than I remembered. In 2007 Reel To Real sounds more like an artistic re-birth for Arthur Lee than the last gasp of a spent creative force. Had the album met a better fate commercially it might have provided a blueprint for bringing Lee's music to a broader audience during the 1970s. (Now if someone could just explain the cover art to me.)

If you approach this music without the baggage of this being a Love album, I think you might dig it.

Funky Denim Wonderland: In 1974 Arthur Lee had one of the best bands of his career, but the music never found an audience.

Forever Changes - My Take

Guy's post on Forever Changes got me thinking about my own history with the album, so much so that I decided to write my own post on it. I was a junior in High School when I first learned about Forever Changes from a well-worn copy of The New Rolling Stone Record Guide. In his five-star review of the album, Dave Marsh described Forever Changes as an "indescribably essential…soundtrack to an LSD movie." That sounded like something I should hear.

Unlike Guy, I didn't feel let down when I initially heard the album, but that could be because I was predisposed to like it by all the positive press I had read in advance. Also, I was already a fan of neo-psychedelic acts like Echo and the Bunnymen, The Teardrop Explodes, Robyn Hitchcock, and others on whom Forever Changes had been a catalyzing influence, so I had some context in which to understand the album.

That is not to say that everything about Forever Changes went down easily for me. I had been at least partly indoctrinated into the ideology of punk rock, and had developed a healthy distrust of anything that came out of the sixties. It struck me as vaguely pathetic that so many of my peers listened to nothing but "classic rock" while ignoring the indie rock bands I was devoted to. But I reserved my most severe judgments for those 60s rock acts that had the audacity to stick around into the 80s in order to tell the kids how much cooler everything was back in the 60s. I vividly remember once wiping a giant booger on a Starship CD at a record store, and justifying my obnoxious behavior by saying "anyone who buys that crap gets what they deserve." I was quite the young charmer.

Tracking down a copy of Forever Changes wasn't as easy as it should have been. None of the record stores in my area stocked it. I found a copy of Rhino's Best Of Love compilation at Tower Records in Washington D.C., and later an Elektra repressing of Forever Changes by special order. The first two Love albums were much harder to track down, but eventually I found servicable used copies of them as well.

Forever Changes had a huge effect on me. I spent hours transcribing the lyrics, then studying and attempting to interpret them much in the way I was being taught to interpret poems in my English Literature classes. The novel construction of the songs floored me. I was especially impressed with the way Lee used the anticipated but absent last word of a rhyming couplet to begin a subsequent line in "Maybe The People Would Be The Times Or Between Clark And Hilldale" and the double tracking of contradictory lyrics on the "The Red Telephone." Despite lyrics like "the snot has caked against my pants, it has turned into crystal," it was clear to me that there was more than a bunch of drugged out, hippy nonsense going on here.

The syrupy strings and the mariachi flavored horns that wouldn't have sounded out of place on Whipped Cream and Other Delights didn't phase me (although it did freak me out a little bit when I heard Johnny Mathis on the radio and thought it was a lost Forever Changes outtake). I probably figured the easy-listening influence was subversive or ironic, or something. The thought that maybe Herb Alpert's music was cooler than I was willing to admit didn't cross my mind at the time.

I eagerly re-purchased the album when it was first released on CD in the late 80s. I looked forward to hearing the album's lush string arrangements in "master-tape quality" on a medium that would provide "perfect sound forever." Now that was a disappointment! The CD had a loud 10 kHz "buzz" throughout the entire program that made it unlistenable. When I asked the record store owner what was wrong with the CD he told me that the buzz was a flaw on the master tapes, only you couldn't hear it on LP because the medium wasn't "resolving" enough. Even at 18 I wasn't going to fall for that. Fortunately Rhino did a much better job with their recent expanded, remastered edition, and the Sundazed vinyl re-issue is nearly the equal of an original LP pressing. Either is a very good way to experience the album.

Forever Changes is the quintessential "lost classic," never mind that it has been rediscovered enough times that it probably should be awarded gold record status. Its musical influence has been huge, even if no one ever created anything quite like it again.

But setting aside questions of musical influence, Lee's career would have a profound effect on future generations of musicians in a way that is rarely acknowledged. Elektra president Jac Holzman once famously said of Lee:

"Arthur was, and perhaps still is, one of the smartest, most intelligent, and finest musicians I have ever met in my entire career of making records. As large as his talent, however, was his penchant for isolation and not doing what was necessary to bring his music to the audience. His isolation cost him a career. Which was a shame, because he was one of the few geniuses I have met—in all of rock 'n' rolldom."

Thus, Lee's career became the model for any number of indie-rockers who mistakenly believe that sabotaging one's career and reluctance (or inability) to cultivate a mass audience is proof of musical genius. Fortunately, Lee left behind some great music as legacy.