Forever Arthur Lee, 1945-2006
By Aaron Goldstein (08/10/06)
I am glad that I had a chance to immerse myself in the music of Arthur Lee before he died in Memphis on August 3rd of acute myeloid leukemia at the age of 61.
Years ago there was a Corn Flakes commercial whose tag line read, “Taste it again for the first time.” When I lived in Ottawa, the oldies station that I listened to had a variation on that slogan, “Songs you listen to again for the first time.” There was a kernel of truth in this piece of marketing. Though I have listened to rock n roll music from the 1960s and 1970s for as long as I can remember for those of us born in the 1970s, 1980s and even the 1990s get our exposure to Motown, the Bee Gees, the Four Seasons and Carole King through these oldies radio stations. They perform a valuable public service.
As much as I enjoy listening to oldies stations like anything else they have their limitations. There are certain artists from that era one will never hear on an oldies format. Particularly artists who were more album rather than singles oriented or just didn’t make music that fit easily into a two or three minute format. I would drop dead if I ever heard Tim Buckley, Nick Drake, Spirit, Fever Tree or Laura Nyro played on an oldies station. Let me add one more musical act to that list – Love.
It is fitting that the late 1960s should produce a rock group named Love. I had heard of the group in passing when I would read about some of the other musicians mentioned earlier but never really took note of them. That is until recently. In late June to be precise.
I was re-reading parts of Patrick Humphries’ biography of Nick Drake when I came across Love. Their 1968 album Forever Changes was amongst the albums Drake listened to while attending Cambridge. I’m not sure what prompted me to do so but I realized that I was curious about this group and decided to do some research on the matter.
I discovered that Love’s spiritual force was Arthur Lee. A black man who was enamored of folk and psychedelic music. Now black folk musicians are nothing new going down the line from Leadbelly through Odetta to Richie Havens. But psychedelia was uncharted territory for black musicians. But Arthur Lee not only paved the way he built the international highway even inspiring Syd Barrett, the recently deceased founder of Pink Floyd. Love was also rock n roll’s first integrated band giving strength to the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Sly and the Family Stone and Pacific Gas & Electric to erase the musical color line.
It was around this time that I discovered the website www.youtube.com. Although the site principally serves as a vehicle for people to upload their home videos it has also become a repository of long forgotten music videos and television appearances by the pioneers of rock n’ roll. Love was no exception. There are a couple of clips of Love performing for Dick Clark. Whether it was on American Bandstand or on Where The Action Is isn’t clear. What is clear is that Love could perform a hard driving, stripped down almost proto-punk version of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Little Red Book” and then turn in a gentle Byrds inspired “A Message to Pretty”.
But the clip that resonated with me the most was a promotional film Love shot for a song called “Your Mind and We Belong Together”. Shot near Lee’s home in late 1967 or early 1968, the song is four and a half minutes of poignancy, upheaval and volatility that like most of Love’s music would never make it onto the radio. Consider the first and final verse:
I’d like to understand just why
I feel like I have been through hell
BUT you tell me I haven’t even started yet
To live here you’ve got to give more than you get
That I know but they said it’s all right
I’m lockin’ my heart in the closet
I don’t need anyone, oh no no no
You find me behind the door
And all of the far out faces
From long ago, I can’t erase this
Not long after the film for “Your Mind and We Belong Together” was made, Lee fired the other members of Love and despite other incarnations of Love and solo projects Lee would remain in musical obscurity until the 1990s.
Lee wrote some pretty dark stuff. Just dark enough to move me to take out my notebook and start writing poetry again. Since I began listening to Love I have composed seven poems. The first of these poems is called “Short of Belonging”:
How was it that you were lost
In the land you discovered
The bridge you were the first to cross
Has the skin of an unknown lover
Once possessing the vision
To see flowers beneath the crust
You could not permit the incision
That would have cured the disease of distrust
Choosing to fly out west
Against the wishes of the flock
Leaving your eggs inside an empty nest
Because a dove cannot survive without a hawk
Your senses would slowly unchain
Until making your way to familiar ground
So long as the journey is guided by pain
Your way home will never be found
After writing this poem I bought a copy of Forever Changes. Though “Your Mind and We Belong Together” was recorded after Forever Changes it was included on an expanded re-release of Forever Changes in 2001. There are actually two versions of the song on the CD. The first version includes more than eight minutes of outtakes where Lee, amongst other things, berates an unidentified band mate for playing too hard on the strings, lambastes bassist Bryan MacLean for playing too fast and chews out lead guitarist Johnny Echols for not being able to “blow it in the studio.” Complex songs make for difficult arrangements especially when they are conceived by an unstable genius.
In the early 1990s, Lee collaborated with Baby Lemonade, an L.A. based band that were Love devotees and together they became Love with Arthur Lee. Lee began writing new material for the first time in nearly two decades. However, Lee was often his own worst enemy. In 1996, Lee would be sentenced to 12 years in prison for firing a gun in the air during a dispute with a neighbor. Because Lee had previous felony convictions for drug possession and breaking and entering, Lee was automatically sent to prison under California’s three strikes law. But prison turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Partially due to prosecutorial misconduct and in part due to Lee’s good behavior in prison, he was released in the fall of 2001.
His time in prison gave Lee a renewed sense of purpose. He resumed his association with Baby Lemonade and began touring. Back in the 1960s, Love almost never performed outside of Los Angeles. It is a significant reason that Love only had one top 40 hit “7 and 7 Is” (which peaked at number #36 on the Billboard charts) and why their albums sold poorly.
But Forever Changes didn’t quite fade like tie dye. Though it wasn’t something one heard on the radio, it was the sort of album one might take out of your parents or an older brother’s cousin and start listening to it. One might be initially put off by the heavy orchestral arrangements but not enough that one could not appreciate its acoustic foundations. After a few listens, one could get a sense of its Latin flavor on songs such as Bryan MacLean’s “Alone Again Or” and “Maybe The People Would Be The Times or Between Clark and Hilldale”. One would be amused by “Oh, the snot has caked against my pants” at the beginning of “Live and Let Live”. Love was also one of those bands that was better received in England than in America and occasionally a royal seal of approval can help an otherwise overlooked discography. When Rolling Stone came out with its 500 Greatest Albums of All-Time, Forever Changes was ranked at #40 finishing ahead of Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life and Led Zeppelin IV.
In 2003, Arthur Lee and Baby Lemonade accompanied by a string and horn section performed Forever Changes in its entirety in concert throughout Europe and North America. Later that year, a CD and DVD of the Forever Changes Concert would be released. I would recommend that you buy both Forever Changes and the Forever Changes Concert CD to hear how well the music on that album has held up nearly four decades after it was recorded.
Lee would perform Forever Changes with the revamped Love throughout 2003 and 2004 and would occasionally be joined by original Love lead guitarist Johnny Echols. Unfortunately, this renewed success would be short lived. Lee’s erratic behavior resurfaced and he would miss shows or when he would show up he would not sing. It was not unlike the behavior of Sly Stone at the Grammy Awards show earlier this year. Baby Lemonade guitarist Mike Randle told the Los Angeles Times, “When he was sober, he was the sweetest, most giving man on the planet. But I would say he was sober 15% of the time. The rest was dealing with him and not trying to take it personally.” In 2005, Lee left Love at the beginning of a tour and Love carried on as the Love Band. But it was not the same. How could there be Love without Arthur Lee?
Lee subsequently moved from Los Angeles to Memphis, his birthplace. He formed a new band but it did not get off the ground when in April 2006 he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. Since Lee did not have health insurance a number of benefit concerts were held to help pay his medical expenses. In late June, Robert Plant (apparently not objecting to Forever Changes finishing ahead of Led Zeppelin IV in the Rolling Stone survey) headlined a benefit for Lee at New York City’s Beacon Theater.
Lee underwent three rounds of chemotherapy before receiving a bone marrow transplant using stem cells from an umbilical cord. Lee became the first adult in Tennessee to undergo such a procedure. However, doctors were not optimistic about his prognosis and although Lee hoped to be on stage by the fall he would never again set foot out of the hospital.
Over the past month, I have been listening to Love’s music at work, at home and on my walkman. I played Forever Changes for both my best friend and girlfriend and both of them who like me are in their early 30’s were blown away. My girlfriend asked me if she could borrow Forever Changes and I lent it to her for a whole week (it was tough but well worth it). I would check out various Love and Arthur Lee websites almost on a daily basis. I did so for two completely contradictory reasons. The first of which was that I hoped Lee would have an amazing recovery and would play music again. Maybe not with Baby Lemonade. But Forever Changes or no Forever Changes, I made a solemn vow that if Lee were to ever play another note of music in public that I would be there to witness it. If Lee couldn’t come to Boston I would come to him.
But, of course, the second reason I checked out the websites was to, quite frankly, see if he had survived another day. Realistically, given the severity of Lee’s illness and the experimental stage of embryonic stem cell medicine his chances were not good. But then again, when Lee wrote Forever Changes he believed it would be his last year on earth. It was to be his final statement and it many ways it was exactly that. Only he had the opportunity to live another day and share his trials and tribulations with the succeeding generation that was more than receptive to listen.
Late last week, I found myself rather busy and for a couple of days did not look at the websites to check on his condition. This past Monday, I had a funny, uneasy feeling that I ought to look and sure enough Arthur Lee had uttered his final word.
When John Densmore, the former percussionist for The Doors, heard of Lee’s death he lit some white sage. (www.calendarlive.com/music/cl-et-lee7aug07,0,2909618.story?coll=cl-home-more-channels) A fitting tribute as Lee recommended that Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman sign the Doors and Holzman acted on Lee’s recommendation to the delight of millions of rock n roll fans.
I don’t think my tribute to Lee will take such a spectacular form. But I have decided to put together my first collection of poetry since 2003. Not all of the poems that I have written are about Arthur Lee per se but they are inspired by him in one way or another. Although one of my poems is a direct response to a song he wrote called, “She Comes in Colors”:
My love she comes in colors
You can tell her from the clothes she wears
My poem is titled, “She Comes in Black & White”:
You wore a shirt that read, “Keep away!”
It somehow alluded my sight
She comes in black and white
No other colors
Not a sliver of gray
We almost conquered the summit
Until you brought me down from ecstasy’s height
She comes in black and white
No other colors
Not a sliver of gray
When reaching out for your hand
Was the moment you chose to take flight
She comes in black and white
No other colors
Not a sliver of gray
The question is not where it went wrong
But if it was ever right
She comes in black and white
No other colors
Not a sliver of gray
I do not know when I will complete this collection or what I will call it. But I do know that Arthur Lee has inspired me to write poetry again and it will serve as my ongoing tribute to him. R.I.P.
(Printer friendly version) Email: Aaron Goldstein
