Strange Brew√ Fresh Insights on Rock Music | Edition 04 of November 17 2006
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M i c h a e l W a d d a c o r ‘ s πStrange Brew Fresh insights on rock music | Edition 04 of November 17 2006 Bummer in the summer Arthur Lee takes his final trip One of the great visionaries and artists of the West Coast psychedelic era has taken his final trip at the age of 61. Singer, songwriter and guitarist Arthur Lee passed away in August 2006 after battling leukaemia. Despite his erratic career and what appear to be the many personal demons he carried in his later years, many of us will continue to cherish the memory of Arthur Lee as the inspirational visionary and talented leader of the earlier incarnations of his Los Angeles- based band, Love. Above all, many of us will continue to eulogise Lee‘s finest hour œ the album that changed how many of us felt about rock music: Forever Changes. Most rock critics and die-hard fans advocate Love‘s Forever Changes as being a true desert-island album œ one of the great albums featured in our personal Top 200 lists. One is tempted to draw parallels between Lee and two other key figures of the psychedelic era: the late Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd (see edition one of Strange Brew) and Roky Erikson of The Thirteenth Floor Elevators. All three were seen as leading lights of the Arthur Lee (above) – the founder, guiding comparatively short-lived psychedelic era between 1965 and 1969, and all three are best remembered light and principal singer and songwriter of for a short period of creative and influential highs. All the late psychedelic-era band, Love, died on three, too, had their demons œ and were regarded to August 3 2006 after a brief battle with acute have been acid casualties in some form. myeloid leukaemia at the Methodist University Hospital in his native city of Interestingly, Lee inspired and influenced many of his Memphis, Tennessee, in the USA. Lee’s contemporaries, with Barrett and Led Zeppelin‘s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page being among his many erratic and sometimes-brilliant career peaked fans. in 1968 with the international release of Love’s third and best album, Forever An enigmatic artist Changes, which remains one of the most celebrated cult albums of the rock era. Arthur Lee is remembered as a strange, eccentric, aloof and complex loner, according to many of his Michael Waddacor pays tribute to a talented, music-industry peers and journalists. He walked and but troubled troubadour of the great West dressed like the Master of Cool; he could be jolly, Coast psychedelic era. relaxed and generous; he could be difficult, unpredictable, hard-headed, secretive and enigmatic; Strange Brew 04 ° The Arthur Lee edition ° 2006-11-17 ° 1 he drank a lot of alcohol, consumed a lot of drugs late keyboardist, Billy Preston, a friend of The and did not nurture conventional material aspirations Beatles), Lee befriended John Echols. In 1963, they and tastes. Lee claims he had an adventurous love formed the first of several Lee-led bands, Arthur Lee affair with drugs, mostly marijuana and LSD, and and the LAGs, a Booker T and the MGs-styled once asserted proudly to have taken LSD every day instrumental band featuring Lee on organ, future possible until some time in 1972 or 1973. Love stalwart, John Echols, on guitar, Allan Talbert on saxophone and Roland Davis on drums. The LAGs He adored The Byrds, The Beatles, James Brown, recorded and released a single, The Ninth Wave. Jimi Hendrix and The Doors, among other influential artists of his time. On the earlier Love albums, Lee ……………………………………………………………………………………… wrote and recorded some of the finest and most original lyrics of his time, yet he could talk the Arthur Lee met and first recorded with Jimi nonsensical ramblings of an inarticulate stoner. He Hendrix in 1965. The two later discussed could be a charming interviewee, but, mostly, is remembered as a hostile and unspecific interview forming a band with Steve Winwood. subject. ……………………………………………………………………………………… In some respects, Lee reminds one of a fewer other Around this time, before forming Love, Lee earned darker, more aloof and enigmatic West Coast rock some mild repute as a budding songwriter with musicians who seemed to avoid the limelight and surfing-inspired songs like White Caps and Ski Surfin‘ follow their own muse. Here, Neil Young, Brian Sanctuary. One of his earlier songs, My Diary, Wilson and Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) spring recorded by the American R&B singer, Rosa Lee to mind. Former Love bandmate, Bryan Maclean, Brooks, featured Jimi Hendrix on guitar. Some rock believed Lee was mildly agoraphobic and deeply historians think this may have been Hendrix‘s first troubled by childhood issues, which were never studio recording. At the time, 1965, Hendrix was part publicised or discussed openly. of the Isley Brothers‘ backing group. Lee and Hendrix became friends and towards the end of the 1960s, When Love travelled from Los Angeles (LA) to when Lee was in London, he and the great guitarist perform in San Francisco at the height of their glory talked seriously about forming a group, Band Aid, days, Lee was prone to hole himself up in his hotel with singer and multi-instrumentalist, Steve Winwood room when the band was not performing, while (ex-Traffic and Blind Faith), and the great African Maclean and the rest of the band would be out percussionist, Remi Kabaka (ex-Ginger Baker‘s Air exploring San Francisco‘s hip scene. His excessive Force). drug-taking is said to have been part of his determination to keep himself isolated from the Information on Lee‘s pre-Love career is scant, but, humdrum world of everyday people œ and the weight according to the Wikipedia online encyclopaedia, Lee of the world (a theme explored further on in also wrote I‘ve Been Tryin‘ for Little Ray and conjunction with the review of Forever Changes recorded his song, Luci Baines, with his new band, album on page five). The American Four. He also wrote an album song for Ronnie and the Pomona Casuals, which featured Lee Back in LA, the early Love shared a mansion on on lead vocals. Lookout Mountain. Nicknamed —The Castle“, this homestead once belonged to Béla Lugosi, the Hungarian-born American actor best remembered for The genesis of Love starring in the lead role of the 1931 film, Dracula. Despite being a spacious home, Lee made a point of After The LAGs and The American Four, Lee formed living in the attic room, which was accessible by The Grass Roots in 1965, which became Love. The ladder. first incarnation comprised Bryan Maclean (guitars and vocals œ and a former roadie for The Byrds), The earlier years John Echols (lead guitar œ and another Memphis native), Ken Forssi (bass œ formerly with The Arthur Lee was born Arthur Taylor Porter on March 7 Surfaris) and Don Conkra (drums). Conkra was 1945 at Memphis, Tennessee in the USA and later ousted before long and replaced with the Swiss-born referred to himself as the —first so-called black drummer, Alban —Snoopy“ Pfisterer. The band was hippie“. An only child, he moved to LA at the age of soon obliged to change their name from The Grass five with his schoolteacher mother. His father once Roots on hearing that another American band had was referred to as a —struggling trumpeter“. After this name: the pop group signed to Dunhill Records settling in LA‘s Crenshaw-Adams district, Arthur‘s and best remembered for its classic 1967 hit, Let‘s mother married another man, Clinton Lee, from Live for Today. whom Arthur acquired his surname. The young Arthur Lee was a loner and an introvert, and not Love made their live debut at LA‘s Brave New World academically inclined. diner in the northern-hemisphere spring of 1965. Here, the band started building a small cult following It was here in LA that Arthur Lee developed his with their idiosyncratic sound that drew some of its passionate interests in a wide variety of musical inspiration from the jangly folk-rock sound, as genres, including blues, R&B, soul, folk and rock. At typified by The Byrds, fused with some mischievous LA‘s Dorsey High School (also the high school of the garage-band punk attitude, as well as the mid-1960s Strange Brew 04 ° The Arthur Lee edition ° 2006-11-17 ° 2 sounds of The British Invasion groups and the soul Sunset Sound Recorders studios over seven and R&B tones of Atlantic-Motown-Stax soulsters like scattered, but intense recording sessions during James Brown. By now, Lee and, to a lesser extent, June, August and September 1967. This would prove Maclean had amassed enough original songs to to be Love‘s masterpiece œ and the one for which consider the possibility of recording their first Love they will be best remembered for decades to come. album. Despite the critical acclaim that greeted Forever The fledgling West Coast folk label owned by Jac Changes on both sides of the Atlantic, Lee decided Holzman, Elektra Records, signed Love in 1965 as its that his band could not cut it any more, so Echols, first rock act and recording sessions began for the Maclean and company were dismissed and a new band‘s eponymous debut album. Produced by Jac line-up formed. Their sacking, sadly, signalled the Holzman and Mark Abramson, ove would become first death knell for the spirit of Love œ and one of the watershed albums of 1966, along with The subsequent incarnations of the band would not even Beatles‘ Revolver, The Rolling Stones‘ Aftermath, The come close to emulating the songs and the sounds Beach Boys‘ Pet Sounds, Bob Dylan‘s Blonde on that shaped Forever Changes.