In 1967, the biggest band in southern California wasn't the Doors, or the Byrds, or any of the other bands most people know about from the period. The biggest band was Love, and they had released two albums with one minor hit, "My Little Red Book". Love had two big problems which kept the band from wider notoriety. The first was that they made "too much" money in LA to tour nationally. Any national tour, with the incumbent costs, would have lost money for Love. A second problem was an unstable group of musicians. Nine people had played on the two albums, and while there was a core led by Arthur Lee and Bryan MacLean, other members came and went.
Desperation Takes Hold
According to Jim DeRogatis' chronology, by early 1967 Lee and MacLean had written songs for Love's third album, and had sent demos to Bruce Botnick, a staff producer for Elektra records. Botnick and label head Jac Holzman didn't think the musicians were up to the material, so they assembled session musicians to back up Lee and MacLean. This arrangement quickly produced "Andmoreagain" and "The Daily Planet".
The rest of the core band, Johnny Echols on lead guitar, Ken Forssi on bass, and Michael Stuart on drums, quicly cleaned up and came into the studio to work on the rest of the album. The result, Forever Changes , is one of the great lost classics of 20th century music.
The lead track, "Alone Again Or", is a haunting piece of music that captures the time period perfectly. The song begins with a quiet guitar line, almost flamenco in its intricacy. The vocal comes in, and under it the instruments build to a climax under the line "and I will sleep alone again tonight my love". Then it breaks down to the original lonely guitar. The song contains a trumpet solo (which has strangely enough been used in two commercials since 1995), and a linear style quite unlike the usual verse/chorus pattern. The second song, "A House Is Not A Motel", contains the prophetic line "The news today will be the movies of tomorrow".
The album ends with "You Set The Scene", which is actually a three part suite. The song is tied together with themes of alienation and death, and closely parallels another song from the same period, "A Day In The Life" by the Beatles.
The Aftermath
Due to Love's reluctance to tour nationwide, along with the intricate orchestral arrangements of most of the songs, the album never got the attention it would have gotten if the band had a "national" name and reputation. It reached #154 in the US, and #30 in Britain, according to Billboard magazine. The original lineup broke up after recording one more single, and Lee hired various musicuians under the name "Love".
Lee served time in jail in the middle and late 1990's, but when he got out he found musicians, most from the band Baby Lemonade, to back him. In 2003 he launched a tour recreating the entire Forever Changes album with a small orchestra. The same lineup sans orchestra toured with the Zombies in 2004, and Johnny Echols came out of retirement to join the band. Forever Changes has been re-released several times, most recently as a Legacy Edition two CD set in 2008.
MacLean died in 1998, Lee in 2006.
Forever Changes is consistently cited as one of the greatest albums of the 1960's, and frequently makes top 30 lists for best albums of all time. It's worth a listen by anyone who wants to know what it felt like to live in the late 1960's.
Donald Marchand - Currently, I am a teacher. I teach Social Studues at a small school in southern Maryland. But I think I've been a lot more in my life. ...
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