TODAY IS FOREVER

MY LITTLE RED BOOK ebook BUY IT TODAY

2011-10-08T13:01:00.004-07:00

MY LITTLE RED BOOK - LOVE DAY-BY-DAY 1945-1971
‎"My Little Red Book" by Bruno Ceriotti and with the forewords by Johnny Echols and Michael Stuart-Ware, is the most comprehensive, compelling, complete, immensely detailed, impeccably researched, and meticulously compiled account ever published about LOVE, one of the most influental bands in the history of rock. The ebook collates eye-witness accounts, tour dates and gig locations, record releases and reviews, recording studio data and contemporary interviews, and is illustrated with a rare collection of period photographs and print memorabilia. All this is woven into an absorbing day-by-day narrative format that tells the story of LOVE in a way that will surprise and delight even their most dedicated fans!!!. This book tells the band’s story, but also describes the life story of each of the members of LOVE: where they came from, what their roots where, how they see their time with the band, and what they experienced afterwards. It has been written with the close participation of LOVE's former members: Johnny Echols, Michael Stuart-Ware, Alban 'Snoopy' Pfisterer and Craig Tarwater. This is a truly TERRIFIC book to treasure. This book will stay by your side like an encyclopedia which you will study and refer to for years to come. The author traces LOVE's story in a maniacally detailed chronology and leaves no stone unturned!!!. "My Little Red Book" is available only in digital editions (ebook, 133 pgs, 91 photos) only through the official website: http://mylittleredbook.weebly.com/

Love with Arthur Lee - Alone Again Or [VHS]

2011-10-06T05:51:00.000-07:00

Documentary on Arthur filmed 89

2011-10-06T04:56:00.002-07:00

Love from Django's Ghost on Vimeo.

Soundcheck: Love Lost...And Found - WNYC

2011-09-20T21:17:00.000-07:00

Soundcheck: Love Lost...And Found - WNYC

VANITY FAIR

2011-08-31T19:17:00.001-07:00

VANITY FAIR
by Bruce Handy 12:30 PM, AUGUST 26 2011

Love is one of those great 1960s bands that rock critics rhapsodize about and not nearly enough normal people have heard. And yet, unlike the Incredible String Band or the Shaggs, say, or even the late-period Monkees, Love is actually a pleasure to listen to. A fixture on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, the group released several terrific albums and, in 1967, one absolute masterpiece, Forever Changes, which if you’ve never heard you must listen to right away: no album better distills the weird mix of paranoia and exaltation that marked the 60s, and Love did it simply, with gorgeous melodies and compelling musicianship—and nary a phased guitar, backwards tape loop, trippy sound effect, cod raga, or reference to gnomes.

Love went through numerous roster changes, rivaling Fleetwood Mac in that regard, but the constant was Arthur Lee, the group’s lead songwriter and singer, and one of the few African-Americans then or since fronting a band in what had become a “white” idiom—rock. Lee was one of the era’s most singular songwriters and performers, as original as Dylan or Lennon-McCartney. Maybe more so: few lyricists can be as simultaneously obtuse and evocative. (Though, of more recent vintage, Steven Malkmus comes to mind.)

Oh the snot has caked against my pants
It has turned into crystal
There’s a bluebird sitting on a branch
Guess I’ll take my pistol
I’ve got it in my hand
Because he’s on my land

That reverie—one of my all-time favorite openings to a song—is from “Live and Let Live,” off Forever Changes. As you might have just surmised, Lee would have trouble with drugs and the law in later life and, as was the case with a lot of 60s artists, his muse would become more elusive in the 70s. He hopped around between labels, making records with diminishing artistic and financial returns, tried a solo album, and then, in 1972, put together a new incarnation of Love and set about recording what might have been a memorable comeback album but for the fact that the new label Lee had signed with, Buffalo Records (funded by one of the producers of Hair), folded. Aside from a handful of recordings, Lee wasn’t much heard from across the next three decades, until he was released from prison in 2001 after serving five and a half years on charges of illegally possessing a firearm. He spent the last five years of his life touring with a reformed Love to enthusiastic audiences and critical acclaim before dying of leukemia in 2006.

This brief episode of Behind the Music has been preface to the news that the aforementioned Love comeback album, Black Beauty, is finally getting an official release on High Moon Records (and with much better sound quality than the many bootleg versions). This is not the first coming of Smile or even Chinese Democracy, but it’s an excellent album and a welcome addition to the Love discography, occupying a kind of compromise between the fluid psychedelia of Forever Changes and the heavier, Hendrix-influenced sound of latter-day Love.

Here is an exclusive preview from the album, the aptly named “Product of the Times.” It’s a live cut from 1970 that Lee intended as the album’s coda. In this critic’s carefully considered opinion, it rocks.

BLACK BEAUTY NPR

2011-08-31T18:49:00.002-07:00

Arthur Lee: Freed From The Vaults
by MARC SILVER

Herbert Worthington
From a 1973 album that was never released, psychedelic rocker Arthur Lee offers a bit of homespun philosophy in "Beep Beep."

CD: Black Beauty

Genre: Rock

April 26, 2011
The club of African-American psychedelic rockers is pretty small, with Jimi Hendrix and Arthur Lee serving as two charter members. Hendrix, as everyone knows, rose to great fame. Lee had a brief spell of celebrity with his group Love and his 1967 album Forever Changes, kept on making music but never broke through again, served six years in jail on firearm-related charges and died of leukemia in 2006 at age 61.

In 1973, while still in his prime, Lee recorded an album called Black Beauty that was never released. Now, the music has been freed from the vaults, and it reveals an Arthur Lee who could not only rock hard, but also had other offbeat musical personalities. Consider "Beep, Beep" — psychedelic rock it is not. The rhythm veers between reggae and calypso, while a neighborhood guy contributes a lilting steel-drum line. Lee is on the harpsichord and at the mic, singing in a faux island accent and offering the kind of homespun advice you'd expect to hear from a back-porch philosopher: "Slow down, man, 'cause you're going too fast." Later in this cheery and charming song, Lee declares, "I'm going to be what I want," and it's clear that what he wanted to be was a musician who could break down barriers — and who was perfectly at ease stretching the boundaries of his music to encompass the sounds of the world at large.

BETWEEN CLARK AND HILLDALE

2011-05-21T19:18:00.001-07:00

LOVE LA's Best Band

2011-05-20T09:58:00.001-07:00

THE DOORS? BLACK FLAG? THE CHILI PEPPERS? NOPE. L.A.'S BEST BAND WAS LOVE.
The more things change . . .
BY JEFF WEISS
Wednesday, May 7, 2008 - 12:00 pm
Let’s talk greatest Los Angeles bands for a second. Depending how you’re wired, there are roughly a dozen candidates for the throne. If you tend to spend a small but significant minority of your time swallowing spoonfuls of liquid acid on Venice rooftops, the Doors, the Beach Boys, the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield/CSNY and maybe even Sublime make your shortlist. If you’ve rocked a green Mohawk and/or owned a Henry Rollins spoken-word record, you’d probably lean toward Black Flag, X, the Minutemen or the Germs. If your personal hairspray use has emitted enough CO2 to wreak serious havoc on the ozone layer, there’s Van Halen or Guns N’ Roses; if you’re inclined toward Latin music, Los Lobos looms, and if you’re into being wrong, there’s always the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Love accurately rendered everything that makes L.A. wonderful and everything that makes it warped.

Love accurately rendered everything that makes L.A. wonderful and everything that makes it warped.
Then there’s Love, the least commercially successful and arguably the greatest of the bunch, a band whose reputation rests largely on the strength of one perfect document: 1967’s Forever Changes, perhaps the most quintessentially Los Angeles record there is, a seamless summation of the town’s fun-house angles and myriad complexities. Unlike the aforementioned groups, whose masterpieces tended to be manifestations of particular Angeleno subcultures, Love’s picture of Los Angelesis very much a native vision. Frontman Arthur Lee divines dark prophecies that pull from the pulse of L.A.’s noirish underworld; its Hispanic heritage emerges in plangent pinpoint trumpet blasts from a Tijuana brass band. The sepia tones of the old Sunset Strip spring to life: California blonds in sundresses and flatironed hair, hippies in Day-Globeads and kaleidoscopic color, flailing in long-forgotten nightclubs, starkly contrasting with images of the riots in the streets and the flatfooted fury of the crewcut, pug-nosed Parker police force.

Love’s third effort contained multitudes precisely because the band’s geographically scattered and racially diverse composition mirrored the city of a million scenes. Lee and lead guitarist Johnny Echols grew up in South L.A., attended Dorsey High, developed a Booker T. & the MGs fixation and were well-known in the local club scene by the time they formed Love in their early 20s. Rhythm guitarist-vocalist Bryan MacLean, the author of “Alone Again Or” and “Old Man,” grew up in Beverly Hills, the son of an architect to the stars. He liked show tunes and counted Liza Minnelli as his first girlfriend (apparently, the two of them used to sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” together while sunning themselves poolside). Meanwhile, despite a Sarasota upbringing, Love bassist Ken Forssi had already played on the Surfaris’ “Wipe Out,” the seminal West Coast surf-guitar song. With such inherent tension built in, the only possible outcome was disaster, particularly considering the ravages of heroin addiction, Lee’s megalomaniacal genius and an ill-fated idea to cohabitate a hilltop Los Feliz mansion nicknamed “the Castle,” previously owned by Bela Lugosi.

Sure enough, the initial June ’67 sessions for Forever Changes infamously flamed out when the band’s disarray forced Elektra to recruit session men to record “Andmoreagain” and the Neil Young–arranged “The Daily Planet.” But when they regrouped that September, something changed. According to legend, stirred by the realization of their own expendability, Love played with a newfound sense of urgency and hunger. The quote most frequently cited about Forever Changes is that Lee thought he’d die immediately upon its completion; it’s difficult not to interpret it as an early requiem for the troubled singer-songwriter, who passed away last year from leukemia. Just 22 years old, Lee seemed spooked by revelation. On “A House Is Not a Motel,” he foresees “the news of today [being] the movies of tomorrow.” On “The Red Telephone,” he blithely croons about “sitting on a hillside watching all the people die,” before finishing with a flourish about getting locked up with the key thrown away, foreshadowing the legal struggles that would haunt his future.

But other than the winking homage to the strip of land adjacent to the Whisky a GoGo on “Maybe the People Would Be the Times or Between Clark and Hilldale,” Love veered away from any concrete evocation of Los Angeles. Instead, Forever Changes captures the way the city feels,the cadences of its sunny, stuttering locomotion, the halcyon sand-and-surf California of the imagination clashing with smog, stripped resources and stark realities. The undercurrent of fear and alienation sluicing through a city where the stakes seem so high and the odds so stacked. Its timelessness stems from the notion that as much as L.A. changes, it will always retain certain immutable qualities that Love’s music captures: the baroque excess evidenced in the airy strings that buoy Lee’s celestial wail, the furious fusion of styles and sounds, the laidback folk-rock melodies and the latent, orchestral anger.

That’s why Rhino can reissue Forever Changes for the second time this decade, with the only new material on this latest edition a few unreleased acoustic demos, a half-assed cover of “Wooly Bully” and a much-vaunted alternate mix practically indistinguishable from the original. It really doesn’t matter. What does is the accuracy with which Love rendered everything that makes this city wonderful and everything that makes it warped. So that even today, with their Los Angeles a faded memory, few greater joys exist than slipping Forever Changes into your CD player on a bright spring morning after a cold, clean rain, when Los Angeles glows with a gold and green tint.

Start at the intersection of Sunset and César Chávez, let the rich metal rain of “Alone Again Or” dazzle you, horns scattering in synchronicity with the Mariachi strains buzzing off of Olvera Street; angle past the band’s old stomping grounds in Los Feliz. Let the album loop through Beverly Hills, the platinum light flooding your car, careening past the salmon-colored walls of the Beverly Hills Hotel, only blocks away from MacLean’s childhood home. Ride this strange bullet out all the way to the beach, where if you’ve looped it just right and the traffic gods have smiled on you, you might just hear the fragile fatalism of “You Set the Scene” slap up against the roaring waves of Sunset Beach — with the tacit understanding that not everything changes.

A GOOD READ

2011-05-17T00:41:00.001-07:00

Son of the source
Jonathan Wilson and California as muse
Kandia Crazy Horse

California my way: Pacifica in all her roaring glory; "Bluebird"; Gene Clark suffering for his art at the Troubadour; Arthur Lee perched atop Laurel Canyon as dark magus of the Sunset Strip; "Free Huey!"; George Hunter and the Charlatans giving birth to the '60s in Frisco and Virginia City; redbones holding it down at Alcatraz; Barry White's boudoir epics vs. War's low rider country-funk; r.i.p. Nudie Cohn; surf-and-skate as spiritual practice and Third World coalition builder at street level; "We'll Get By"; Mary Ellen Pleasants; Sly Stone's pop hoodoo; "¡Viva Cesar Chavez!"; the Watts Towers as organic temple and pan-African signifier; Iron Eyes Cody; the impenetrable alien secrets of Joshua Tree; Citizen Kane; Country Joe McDonald in a helmet ripping "Section 43" at Monterey; Jack London's and Charles Manson's erudite racism; rebellions yielding the "black Woodstock," Wattstax; Skid Row tacos; alas, poor Ishi; is Mount Shasta really an Atlantean portal?; "Snakes on Everything"; RTX; a great big wave looming to wash away Neil Young and his spindly wood home from Topanga Canyon; Chet Helms, my hero; really tall red trees — and the glossy harmonies of the Mamas & the Papas, much beloved favorites of my mother before she left upon her starship. Their masterpiece "California Dreamin'" was on my mind as Indian summer gave way to autumn and the 40th anniversaries of polarized cosmic events such as the man on the moon, Woodstock, the Manson murders, the late Michael Jackson's pop debut unfolded apace.
Harvey Kubernik, a keenly clued-in and cosmically sensitive Pisces born in Hollywood, just dropped this season's key entry chronicling that era and its ever-lingering aftereffects: the fine Laurel Canyon study Canyon of Dreams (Sterling, 384 pages, $29.95). Much of what made California north and south such a prime destination to escape the limits and cruel lacunae of Manifest Destiny in the 1960s went down in the postwar boomtowns of San Francisco and Los Angeles and their ex-urban satellites. Kubernik focuses on the tall tales of L.A . He reveals how the creativity, social experimentation, and mystery yearning of the denizens of canyons on L.A.'s west side changed America as it was teleported on the airwaves and on the backs of freaky-deak human hosts. The elite and cult acts that largely power Kubernik's fables — Gene Clark; Arthurly; Gram Parsons; Lowell George; John and Michelle Phillips; the magicians of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young — have left towering sonic, sartorial, and spiritual legacies. Yet Kubernik is not mired in the misty mountain-hopping of yesteryear — he's keen enough to close Canyon of Dreams with a portrait of one of that halcyon era's most important heirs: Jonathan Wilson.

Y'all can ken whether Wilson deserves to be the coda of Kubernik's book when his Emerald Triangle Tour featuring Jonathan Rice, Farmer Dave Scher, and local light Andy Cabic rolls into town. Yet the evidence is there in his extant albums — 1998's The Ballad of Hope Nicholls (by his former band, North Carolina's Muscadine); 2007's Frankie Ray, and 2008's Gentle Spirit — and his myriad contributions to the projects of friends. I can hear, see, and most important, feel some measure of all that makes California utopian, the South home, and America an ideal worth fighting for, despite their respective horrors, in Wilson's music.

New York, N.Y., with its epic filth, noise, and madding crowds, was not so kind to Wilson when he made the inevitable leap from North Cackalack. Still, he excavated a great artifact of the artist-as-young-man from the experience: Frankie Ray.

With the move to California, that recording's odes to heartbreak and alienation gave way to shimmering hymns to nature arrayed across no less than four unreleased song cycles and counting. Gentle Spirit simply displays Wilson as revelation, but it was his cover of an innocuous Madonna hit (first offered to Michael Jackson) from the mid-1980s that truly convinced me of his indelible gifts. He transfigures "La Isla Bonita" beyond recognition — it starts out as an Allman Brothers outtake and slowly, steadily evolves into a 3-D spaghetti western, then a metallic, mountain-ringing treatise of electric guitar evangelism. His forthcoming covers album, I'm Covered, OK?, should make plain the wonders of his rare gift for interpretation.
To quote the once-mighty Pointer Sisters as they backed Wilson's fellow underrated North Carolina maverick Betty Davis: "Y'all got to believe, believe in sumthin' ... Why not believe in me?" This grandbaby of a Southern Baptist preacher from southwest Georgia would never steer your ears or asses wrong. I was once accused by a former editor of dancing around my keyboard as I wrote (and what's wrong with that?). I don't; I have "spells" like Harriet Tubman, like Joseph Smith in the upstate New York woods, or Edgar Cayce's automatic writing — as with this piece. Yes, I want to convert you, get you onboard the underground smellroad to Glory. I follow the Spirit and my black ass — and the loose booty's hollerin': make pilgrimage with Jonathan Wilson and 'nem up the coast if you're magical and mystical friends of the road.

THE EMERALD TRIANGLE TOUR

Mon/2, 8 p.m. (doors at 7:30 p.m.), $15

The Independent

628 Divisadero, SF

www.independentsf.com

AUGUST 1970

2011-05-03T13:22:00.000-07:00

LOVE FAMILY TREE

2011-05-02T13:25:00.005-07:00

Rock Prosopography 102
a lengthy footnote to 'Rock Prosopography 101 blog'
Saturday, December 11, 2010
LOVE FAMILY TREE - PERFORMANCE LIST

This story is the work of Bruno Ceriotti. Help in putting this together has been provided by Johnny Echols, Alban 'Snoopy' Pfisterer, Bobby Beausoleil, Michael Stuart-Ware, Ed Toussaint, Michael P Selinsky, Bill Walton, Gerard Daily, Chris Simondet and Mark Smigel, to whom I'm most grateful.

THE AMERICAN FOUR #1 (aka THE WEIRDOS #1) (ca. FEB 1964 - MAY 1964)
1) Arthur Porter 'Po' Taylor (aka Arthur Lee) vocals, organ, rhythm guitar
2) Johnny 'Iceberg Slim' Echols lead guitar
3) John 'Fleck' Fleckenstein bass
4) John Jacobson drums

ca. February - ca. April 1964: Cappy's, Los Angeles, CA

ca. February - ca. April 1964: Beverly Bowl, Montebello, CA
The band played in this bowling alley as house band, six days a week, for several months. Sometimes they were billed as 'The Weirdos'.

THE AMERICAN FOUR #2 (aka THE WEIRDOS #2) (MAY 1964 - APR 1965) / THE GRASS ROOTS #1 (APR 1965 - JUL 1965)
1) Arthur Lee
2) Johnny Echols
3) John Fleck
4) Don Conka drums

ca. May 1964 - ca. January 1965: Cappy's, Los Angeles, CA

ca. May 1964 - ca. January 1965: Beverly Bowl, Montebello, CA
The band played in this bowling alley as house band, six days a week, for several months. Sometimes they were billed as 'The Weirdos'.

ca. February - ca. March 1965: California Club, 1759 West Santa Barbara Avenue, South Los Angeles, CA
Supposedly future Love’s flautist and sax player Tjay Cantrelli sat-in with The American Four a couple of times. Also on the bill were The O’Jays and The Isley Brothers, both with Jimi Hendrix on guitar. Arthur Lee remember (wrongly?) that Jimi Hendrix played there with The Furies (???). Footnote: Jimi Hendrix picked up Johnny Echols guitar.

April - July 1965: Brave New World, 7207 Melrose Avenue, West Hollywood, CA
The Grass Roots played there as house band six days a week.

THE GRASS ROOTS #2 (JUL 1965 - AUG 1965)
1) Arthur Lee
2) Johnny Echols
3) John Fleck
4) Don Conka
5) Robert Kenneth 'Bobby' Beausoleil six-string rhythm guitar

July - August 1965: Brave New World, 7207 Melrose Avenue, West Hollywood, CA
The band played there as house band six days a week.

THE GRASS ROOTS #3 (AUG 1965)
1) Arthur Lee
2) Johnny Echols
3) Johnny Fleck
4) Don Conka
5) Bobby Beausoleil
+
6) Bryan MacLean vocals, six-string rhythm guitar

August 1965: Brave New World, 7207 Melrose Avenue, West Hollywood, CA
The band played there as house, six days a week, sometimes with former The Byrds's roadie Bryan MacLean filling in for Bobby Beausoleil, because at that time the band was just thinking to replace Bobby with Bryan. When they tried out Bryan, Bobby was not on stage, So although they were in the same room together, they never played on stage at the same time as some sources wrongly claimed. They were considering using two rhythm guitars but never did, and after the try-outs they let Bobby go.

THE GRASS ROOTS #4 (AUG 1965 - OCT ??, 1965) / LOVE #1 (OCT ??, 1965 - NOV 1965)
1) Arthur Lee
2) Johnny Echols
3) Don Conka
4) Johnny Fleck
5) Bryan MacLean

August - October 1965: Brave New World, 7207 Melrose Avenue, West Hollywood, CA
The band played there as house band six days a week.

October 1965 - November 1965: Bido Lito's, 1608 North Cosmo Street, Downtown Hollywood, CA
The band played there as house band.

LOVE #2 (NOV 1965)
1) Arthur Lee
2) Johnny Echols
3) Don Conka
4) Bryan MacLean
5) Michael 'Mike' Dowd bass

November 1965: Bido Lito's, 1608 North Cosmo Street, Downtown Hollywood, CA
The band played there as house band.

LOVE #3 (NOV 1965)
1) Arthur Lee
2) Johnny Echols
3) Don Conka
4) Bryan MacLean
5) Doug bass

November 1965: Bido Lito's, 1608 North Cosmo Street, Downtown Hollywood, CA
The band played there as house band.

LOVE #4 (NOV 1965)
1) Arthur Lee
2) Johnny Echols
3) Don Conka
4) Bryan MacLean

November 1965: Bido Lito's, 1608 N Cosmo Street, Downtown Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA
The band played there as house band.

LOVE #5 (NOV 1965 - JAN 23, 1966)
1) Arthur Lee
2) Johnny Echols
3) Don Conka
4) Bryan MacLean
5) Kenneth Raymond 'Kenny' Forssi bass
+
6) Alban Pfisterer (aka Snoopy) drums

November - December 1965: Bido Lito's, 1608 North Cosmo Street, Downtown Hollywood, CA
The band played there as house band, sometimes with Snoopy filling in for Don Conka, because the latter was somewhere, high on LSD. One night Jac Holzman of 'Elektra Records' saw the band (with Snoopy) there and after the show signed the band for his label.

January ? - January 2?, 1966: Bido Lito's, 1608 North Cosmo Street, Downtown Hollywood, CA
The band played there as house band, sometimes with Snoopy filling in for Don Conka, because the latter was somewhere, high on LSD.

January ?-?, 1966: The Trip, 8572 West Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood, CA with Paul Butterfield Blues Band
The band, with Snoopy on drums, filling in unbilled for the advertised The Byrds for a couple of gigs. At one of this show guitarist David Crosby of The Byrds sat-in with Love during the song: 'John Lee Hooker'.

LOVE #6 (JAN 24, 1966 - AUG 2?, 1966)
1) Arthur Lee
2) Johnny Echols
3) Bryan MacLean
4) Kenny Forssi
5) Snoopy

January 2? - March 2?, 1966: Bido Lito's, 1608 North Cosmo Street, Downtown Hollywood, CA
The band played there as house band. One night, right before the show, Kenny Forssi, Johnny Echols and their friend Billy Doherty (bass player of The Lost Souls) were talking outside the club when, at some point, they were approched by a guy who looked like an “Hells Angels” that, even without saying a word, put in the hands of Kenny, Johnny and Billy, some flyers and then disappeared. This flyers promoted a show somewhere in L.A. called “Acid Test” and performed by a band that nobody knew at that time called The Grateful Dead. Ah, by the way, the “mysterious” guy who gave them the flyers was the great late Grateful Dead's keyboardist Ron 'Pigpen' McKernan (!!).

February 22 - March 10, 1966: Whisky a' Go Go, 8901 Sunset Boulevard at Clark Street, Sunset Strip, West Hollywood, CA with The Leaves
Love were advertised from February 22 but may not have played until February 25.

March 10-11, 1966: Bido Lito's, 1608 North Cosmo Street, Downtown Hollywood, CA

March ??, 1966, Bido Lito's, 1608 N Cosmo Street, Downtown Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA with Sons Of Adam

April 8-9, 1966: Fillmore Auditorium, 1805 Geary Boulevard at Fillmore Street, Fillmore District, San Francisco, CA with The Sons Of Adam, The Charlatans "A Dance Concert"
The band was billed as 'The Love' on the poster.

May 12-14, 1966: Brave New World, 1644 North Cherokee Avenue, Downtown Hollywood, CA with The Doors
The club closed sometime after this shows.

May 20-22, 1966: Avalon Ballroom, 1268 Sutter Street at Van Ness Street, Polk Gulch, San Francisco, CA with Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band (20-21), Big Brother and The Holding Company (21) "Hupmobile-8 A Freewheeling Vehicle"
The Sunday (22) show was cancelled due to poor tickets sales.

May 28 - June 1, 1966: Whisky a' Go-Go, 8901 Sunset Boulevard at Clark Stree, West Hollywood, CA with The Doors

June 11, 1966: Earl Warren Show Grounds, 3400 Calle Real, Santa Barbara, CA with Neil Diamond
Only 765 people were in attendance (!!).

June 18, 1966: 'American Bandstand', ABC-TV, ABC Television Center, Los Angeles, CA with Steve Alaimo (broadcast date)
The band lip-synched: 'A Message To Pretty' and 'My Little Red Book'.

June 23, 1966: 'Where The Action Is', ABC-TV, ABC Television Center, Los Angeles, CA with Keith Allison, Gene Pitney, Steve Alaimo (broadcast date)
The band lip-synched: 'My Little Red Book'.

June 25, 1966: Hollywood Bowl, 2301 North Highland Avenue, Los Angeles, CA with The Beach Boys, The Byrds, The Lovin Spoonful, Chad & Jeremy, Percy Sledge, The Sunrays, Neil Diamond, The Leaves, Sir Douglas Quintet, Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band, The New Motown Sound "Beach Boys Summer Spectacular"
The show was promoted by Irvin Grantz and radio station KRLA. The attendance figure is 12,400 and the box office gross is 51,000 dollars. The Beach Boys net 16,000 dollars for the show, while the rest of the bands split the remaining 12,000 dollars after venue rent, police fees, and Irving Grantz are paid. About that show Johnny Echols remember: “I won a hundred bucks from Percy Sledge.... He thought he could play poker, he tried to bluff Iceberg Slim with a pair of fives. That's a non starter!”.

July 3, 1966: Fillmore Auditorium, 1805 Geary Boulevard at Fillmore Street, Fillmore District, San Francisco, CA with Grateful Dead, Group B "Independence Ball"

July 15-16, 1966: Avalon Ballroom, 1268 Sutter Street at Van Ness Street, Polk Gulch, San Francisco, CA with Big Brother and The Holding Company
The shows were cancelled but the reason/s are unknown to me.

July 22, 1966: Rollarena, East 14th Street, San Leandro, CA
There certainly would have been other local acts on the bill, but they are unknown to me.

July 23, 1966: Strand Theater, 10th Street, Modesto, CA with Them, The Immediate Family, The Grassroots, The Ratz, The Canadian Fuzz, The Nimitz Freeway, Peter Wheat & The Breadmen

August 5-6, 1966: Fillmore Auditorium, 1805 Geary Boulevard at Fillmore Street, Fillmore District, San Francisco, CA with Everpresent Fullness

August 10-21, 1966: Whisky a' Go-Go, 8901 Sunset Boulevard at Clark Stree, West Hollywood, CA with The Doors
The band was originally advertised from August 10-27. Arthur Lee and Love’s manager Ronnie Haran convinced Jac Holzman of 'Elektra Records', to sees The Doors during the Wednesday (10) show.

August 19-20, 1966: Marigold Ballroom, Fresno, CA

August 27, 1966: Longshoremen's Hall, 400 North Point, Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco, CA

Summer 1966: Fifth Estate (?), northwest corner of Curry Road and Scottsdale Road, Tempe, AZ
Love turned down an invitation to play there because Arthur Lee said: "Tempe, Arizona? It's so fucking hot there".

unknown date, 1966: It's Boss, 8433 Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood, CA

unknown date, 1966: Pierside Pavilion, 300 Pacific Coast Highway, Downtown Huntington Beach, CA

LOVE #7 (AUG 2?, 1966 - DEC 2?, 1966)
1) Arthur Lee
2) Johnny Echols
3) Bryan MacLean
4) Kenny Forssi
5) Snoopy keyboards, organ, harpsicord, tamburine
6) Paul Michael Stuart-Ware (aka Michael Stuart) drums
7) John Barberis (aka Tjay Cantrelli) sax, flute

October 19-30, 1966: Whisky a' Go-Go, 8901 Sunset Boulevard at Clark Street, West Hollywood, CA with Sons Of Adam (19-21, 23-30), Buffalo Springfield (22)

November ?-?, 1966: Hullabaloo, 6230 Sunset Boulevard, Downtown Hollywood, CA with The Seeds
Two-days shows: the first night a film crew filmed the band first set but the video footage remain unreleased, while the second night guitarist Randy Holden of The Other Half (and also Michael Stuart's former bandmate in the Sons Of Adam) filling in for Johnny Echols, because the latter was sick with the flu.

November 2?, 1966: grand ballroom, U.C.L.A. (University of California in Los Angeles), 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA "UCLA Homecoming Dance"

November 23, 1966: Civic Auditorium, 135 West San Carlos Street, San Jose, CA with The Leaves, Chocolate Watch Band, The Giant Sunflower, The Tijuan Rejects, Ray Columbus

December 2-4, 1966: Fillmore Auditorium, 1805 Geary Boulevard at Fillmore Street, Fillmore District, San Francisco, CA with Moby Grape, Lee Michaels

December 9, 1966: Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, 1855 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA with The Turtles, Gene Clark, The Seeds, The Standells, The Count Five

December 23, 1966 Pasadena Civic Auditorium, 300 East Green Street, Pasadena, CA "Folk Rock Festival"

December 2?, 1966: Dallas Convention Center, 650 South Griffin Street, Dallas, TX

December 2?, 1966: 'unknown title', ?-TV, Dallas, TX
The band lip-synched: 'My Little Red Book'. The show was taped live in the afternoon and broadcasted that same evening.

LOVE #8 (DEC 2?, 1966 - JAN ??, 1967)
1) Arthur Lee
2) Johnny Echols
3) Bryan MacLean
4) Kenny Forssi
5) Michael Stuart
6) Snoopy

December 31, 1966: Teenbeat Club, 4416 Paradise Road, Las Vegas, NV with Scatter Blues

January ?-?, 1967: LaCave (?), 10165 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH with unknown group (two nights)

January 6-7, 1967: Whisky a' Go Go, 8901 Sunset Boulevard at Clark Street, West Hollywood, CA

LOVE #9 (JAN ??, 1967 - AUG 1968)
1) Arthur Lee
2) Johnny Echols
3) Bryan MacLean
4) Kenny Forssi
5) Michael Stuart

February 11, 1967: Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, 344 Tully Road, San Jose, CA with Mojo Men, Chocolate Watch Band "Big Abe’s 158th Birthday Party"
Love were the main attraction of the show, so, as usual, they should have been the last to perform, but for a reason unknown to me, something must have happened in the backstage right before the show, so finally they played first, as opening act (!!).

February 14 1967: Hullabaloo, 6230 Sunset Boulevard, Downtown Hollywood, CA with Strawberry Alarm Clock, Pubblic Bubble
Arthur Lee asked flute played Steve Bartek of the Pubblic Bubble to sat-in with Love for their entire set.

February 18, 1967: Valley Music Theatre, 20600 Ventura Boulevard, Woodland Hills, CA with Canned Heat Blues Band (maybe canceled), Iron Butterfly, East Side Kids, Morning Glory

March 3, 1967: Winterland, 2000 Post Street at Steiner Street, San Francisco, CA with Grateful Dead, Moby Grape, Loading Zone, Blue Crumb Truck Factory "The First Annual Love Circus"

March 4, 1967: Earl Warren Show Grounds, 3400 Calle Road, Santa Barbara, CA with Sons Of Adam, Jackie Lee, The Renegades
2714 people were in attendance.

March 21-26, 1967: The Rock Garden, 4742 Mission Boulevard, San Francisco, CA with Big Brother and The Holding Company, C.I.A. (Citizens For Interplanetary Activity)

April 6, 1967: Skating Rink Arena, Modesto, CA with The Doors, Infinity and (possibly) Eisage

April 23, 1967: Cheetah, 1 Navy Street, Venice, Santa Monica, CA with Chambers Bros., Iron Butterfly

Spring 1967: Valley Music Theatre, 20600 Ventura Boulevard, Woodland Hills, CA with The Yellow Balloon, Iron Butterfly, International Submarine Band

Spring 1967: Reno Memorial Coliseum, Reno, NV (two nights)

May 19-20, 1967: Winterland, 2000 Post Street at Steiner Street, San Francisco, CA with Moby Grape, P.J. Proby, Young Giants, Carousels "Rock Revolution"

May 22-27, 1967: Bido Lito's, 1608 North Cosmo Street, Downtown Hollywood, CA

June 2, 1967: Pasadena Civic Auditorium, 300 East Green Street, Pasadena, CA with The Doors, Canned Heat, West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
The show was cancelled at last minute, apparently because of a delay in the completion of extensive renovations in the auditorium, which then opens the next night with a concert by The Seeds. However, some argue that in fact the show finally took place and only The Doors cancelled.

June 16-18, 1967: Monterey County Fairgrounds, 2004 Fairgrounds Road, Monterey, CA "First Monterey International Pop Festival"
Love turned down an invitation to play there.

June 24, 1967: Valley Music Theatre, 20600 Ventura Boulevard, Woodland Hills, CA

July 5-7, 1967: Cheetah, 1 Navy Street, Venice, Santa Monica, CA

July 16, 1967: Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, 1855 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA with The Doors
Love turned down an invitation to play there and I think the show was finally cancelled.

September 29, 1967: Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, 1855 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA with Spirit, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Linda Ronstadt (Love cancelled at last minute)

December 15-17, 1967: The Blue Law, 19840 South Hamilton Avenue, Torrance, CA with Canned Heat, The Hook (Love maybe played only on day 15)

December 28-30, 1967: Whisky a' Go Go, 8901 Sunset Boulevard at Clark Street, West Hollywood, CA

March 8-10, 1968: Avalon Ballroom, 1268 Sutter Street at Van Ness Street, Polk Gulch, San Francisco, CA with Congress of Wonders, Sons of Champlin, Blue Cheer

April 6-14, 1968: Anaheim Convention Center, Anaheim, CA with Big Brother and The Holding Company, Blue Cheer, Country Joe and The Fish, Steppenwolf, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Canned Heat, James Cotton Blues Band, American Breed, Iron Butterfly, Hook, The Box Tops, Sweetwater, Electric Flag, Sunshine Company and many more "Teen Time USA"
Love played at one of this nine-days event, but I don’t know the exact day.

April 18, 1968: Fillmore Auditorium, 1805 Geary Boulevard, Fillmore District, San Francisco, CA with The Staple Singers, Roland Kirk, Lights by Holy See

April 19-20, 1968: Winterland, 2000 Post Street at Steiner Street, San Francisco, CA with The Staple Singers, Roland Kirk, Lights by Holy See

April 2? or May ?, 1968: unknown college, Catskill, NY

May 3, 1968: Gym, S.U.N.Y. (Stony Brook University in New York), 100 Nicolls Road, Stony Brook, NY with Janis Ian

May 8-9, 1968: New Generation Club, 52 West 8th Street, New York City, NY

May 1?-1?, 1968: LaCave (?), 10165 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH (two nights)

May 14-16, 1968 Steve Paul's The Scene, 301 West 46th Street, New York City, NY

May 18, 1968: Gulfstream Park, 901 South Federal Highway, Hallandale, FL “Miami Pop Festival" (Love cancelled at last minute)

May 31 - June 1, 1968: Grande Ballroom, 8952 Grand River At Beverly, 1 Block South Of Joy Road, Detroit, MI with Crazy World Of Arthur Brown (31-1), Wilson Mower Pursuit (31), Psychedelic Stooges (1)

June 7-9, 1968: Electric Theatre, 4812 North Clark Street, Chicago, IL with Chicago Slim Blues Band

June 14-15, 1968: Kaleidoscope, 6230 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA with Rhinoceros, Taj Mahal, Loading Zone
Supposedly on the Saturday (15) show, former Buffalo Springfield’s Neil Young sat-in with Love during the song: 'Revelation', traded guitar solos with Johnny Echols.

July 19-20, 1968: Kaleidoscope, 6230 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA with Rhinoceros, Crazy World Of Arthur Brown

LOVE #10 (AUG 1968 - SEPT 1968)
1) Arthur Lee
2) George Paul Suranovich drums
3) Frank Fayad bass
4) James Lewis (aka Jay Donnellan) lead guitar

August 28, 1968: Swing Auditorium, 689 East Street, San Bernardino, CA with Iron Butterfly, Don McCoy (MC), Jim Conniff (MC)

August 29 - September 2, 1968: Whisky a' Go Go, 8901 Sunset Boulevard at Clark Street, West Hollywood, CA with Black Pearl
Love had been originally booked for the week of September 4-8, but ended up playing the week before exactly.

LOVE #11 (SEPT 1968 - OCT 1968)
1) Arthur Lee
2) Frank Fayad
3) Jay Donnellan
4) Drachen Theaker drums

LOVE #12 (aka #10) (OCT 1968 - AUG 1969)
1) Arthur Lee
2) Frank Fayad
3) George Paul Suranovich
4) Jay Donnellan

November 9, 1968: Shrine Exposition Hall, 665 West Jefferson Boulevard and 700 West 32nd Street, South Los Angeles, CA with Buffington Rhodes, Procol Harum, Chicago Transit Authority

November 15-17, 1968: Avalon Ballroom, 1268 Sutter Street at Van Ness Street, Polk Gulch, San Francisco, CA with Lee Michaels, Saloom Sinclair & Mother Bear

December 6-7, 1968: The Bank, 19840 South Hamilton Avenue, Torrance, CA with Three Dog Night (6-7), Fair BeFall (6), Middle Earth (7)

February 28 - March 2, 1969: Avalon Ballroom, 1268 Sutter Street at Van Ness Street, Polk Gulch, San Francisco, CA with Mad River (28, 1-2), Zephyr (28, 1-2), Pulse (28, 1), Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band (2)

April 23-27, 1969: Whisky a' Go Go, 8901 Sunset Boulevard at Clark Street, West Hollywood, CA with Mondo Santanegro

May 30-31, 1969: Rose Palace, 835 South Raymond Street, Pasadena, CA

June 21, 1969: Devonshire Downs, Northridge, CA with Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jethro Tull, Steppenwolf, Eric Burdon, Buffy St. Marie, Friends Of Distinction, Charity, Sweetwater, Lee Michaels, Albert Collins, Brenton Wood “Newport Pop Festival (aka Newport ’69)”

July 2-6, 1969: Whisky a' Go Go, 8901 Sunset Boulevard at Clark Street, West Hollywood, CA with Smokestack Lightning

July 7, 1969: Aquarius Theater, 6230 Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood, CA with Lonnie Mack

August 1, 1969: Elk's Temple, 614 Southwest 11th Avenue, Portland, OR

August 2, 1969: Oracle Arena & Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, 7000 Coliseum Way, Oakland, CA with Blood, Sweat and Tears, Lee Michaels (Love refused to play!!)

LOVE #13 (AUG 1969 - NOV 22, 1970)
1) Arthur Lee
2) Frank Fayad
3) George Paul Suranovich
4) Gary Rowles lead guitar

August 16-18, 1969: Max Yasgur's dairy farm, White Lake, Bethel, Sullivan County, Woodstock Valley, NY "Woodstock Music & Art Fair presents An Aquarian Exposition - 3 Days Of Peace & Music (aka Woodstock or Woodstock Festival')" (Love turned down an invitation to play there)

August 23, 1969: Paradise Valley Resort, 3501 Paradise Valley Road, Squamish, BC, Canada with Alice Cooper, Chicago (C.T.A.), Strawberry Alarm Clock and many more "Vancouver Pop Festival"

September 13, 1969: Balboa Park Bowl, 1549 El Pedro, San Diego, CA with Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks

November 2, 1969: McDonough Memorial Gymnasium, Georgetown University, 1201 New York Avenue Northwest, Washington D.C.

November 21 or 28, 1969: Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, 1855 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA
Love reunion gig with their “classic” line-up of Arthur Lee, Johnny Echols, Michael Stuart and Kenny Forssi.

December 31, 1969: Grand Olympic Auditorium, 1801 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA with Lee Michaels, Youngbloods, Taj Mahal, Southwind & Wolfgang

January 1-4, 1970: Whisky a' Go Go, 8901 Sunset Boulevard at Clark Street, West Hollywood, CA with Kaleidoscope

February 9, 1970: San Diego Sports Arena, 3500 Sports Arena Boulevard, San Diego, CA with Beautiful Day, Frank Zappa, Sweetwater, Penrod

February 11, 13-14, 1970: Fillmore East, 102 2nd Avenue, New York City, NY with Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers, Joshua Light Show

February 19, 1970: Speakeasy, 48 Margaret Street, London, UK

February 20, 1970: Goldsmiths College, Lewisham Way, New Cross, City of London, UK

February 21, 1970: University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading, Berkshire, UK

February 24, 1970: Manchester Polytechnic, All Saints Building, All Saints, Manchester, Greater Manchester, UK

February 27, 1970: Waltham Forest Technical College and School of Art, Waltham Forest, City of London, UK with Skin Alley

February 28, 1970: The Roundhouse, 100 Chalk Farm Road, London, UK with Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Matthews Southern Comfort, May Blitz, Jody Grind, Stuart Lyon "Roundhouse Spring Festival"

March 3, 1970: Imperial College, London, UK

March 5, 1970: Lanchester Polytechnic, Priory Street, Coventry, West Midlands, UK

March 6, 1970: Leeds Polytechnic, 2 Great George Street, City Centre, Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK

March 7, 1970: Bath Pavilion, North Parade Road, Bath, North East Somerset, UK (cancelled)

March 7, 1970: The University of Sheffield, Western Bank Norton, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK

March 8, 1970: The Greyhound, 151-153 Greyhound Lane Croydon, City of London, UK

March 10, 1970: Town Hall, Victoria Square, Birmingham, West Midlands, UK with Colosseum

March 11, 1970 (?): Rhein-Main-Halle (?), Rheinstraße 20, Wiesbaden, Germany
The show was filmed by a German television troupe.

March 12, 1970: Tivolis Koncertsal, Tietgensgade 20, Copenhagen, Denmark
The show was filmed by a Danish television troupe and a little part of Love performance, plus an Arthur Lee’s interview in the backstage, was broadcasted in Denmark on July 17, 1970 in a TV special titled: 'Love Live Tivolis Koncertsal'.

March 13, 1970: Stockholms konserthus, Hötorget 8, Stockholm, Sweden

March 14, 1970: K.B. Hallen, Peter Bangs Vej 147, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark

March 21, 1970: Gym, S.U.N.Y. (Stony Brook University in New York), 100 Nicolls Road, Stony Brook, NY with James Taylor, Pig Iron (Love cancelled)

May 22, 1970: Monterey County Fairgrounds, 2004 Fairgrounds Road, Monterey, CA with Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, Canned Heat, Gypsy, Lion

June 12, 1970: Municipal Auditorium, 100 Auditorium Circle, San Antonio, TX with Touch Stone, Frank Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention

June 13, 1970: Braves Stadium, 755 Hank Aaron Drive Southwest, Atlanta, GA with Funk, Inc., Sun Country, Shelly Issacs Sabudi, It's A Beautiful Day, Traffic, Allman Brothers, Mothers of Invention, Mountain, Ten Years After (canceled), Sweetwater (canceled), Ike & Tina Turner (canceled), Albert King (canceled) "Cosmic Festival"
Love was scheduled but did not play.

June 13-14, 1970: Portland Civic Auditorium, 222 Southwest Clay Street, Portland, OR with Ravi Shankar, B.B. King, Delaney and Bonnie, Little Richard, Flying Burrito Brothers, Country Joe & The Fish, Roxy, Nick Gravenites, Albert Collins and the Icebreakers, Big Brother And The Holding Company, Illinois Speed Press, Bo Diddley, Buddy Miles, Eclipse, Notary Sojac, River "Portland Music & Art Fair"

July 18, 1970: The Terrace Ballroom, 464 South Main Street, Salt Lake City, UT with Blue Mountain Eagle (filling in for Blue Cheer), Fever Tree

November 19-22, 1970: Fillmore West, 10 South Van Ness Avenue at 1545 Market Street, San Francisco, CA with Black Sabbath, James Gang, Lights by Spontaneity
The band was billed as 'Love with Arthur Lee' on the poster. George Paul Suranovich left (again) the band right after this shows.

LOVE #14 (NOV 23, 1970 - DEC 1970)
1) Arthur Lee
2) Frank Fayad
3) Gary Rowles
4) Don Poncher drums

December 4-5, 1970: Fillmore East, 102 2nd Avenue, New York City, NY with Kinks, Quatermass, Lights by Joe’s Lights
The band was billed as 'Love with Arthur Lee' on the poster.

LOVE #15 (aka #13) (DEC 1970 - JAN 1971)
1) Arthur Lee
2) Frank Fayad
3) George Paul Suranovich
4) Gary Rowles

December 17-19, 1970: Boston Tea Party, 15 Landsdowne Street, Boston, MA with Sugar Creek

December 25-26, 1970: Eastown Theatre, 8041 Harper Avenue, Detroit, MI with Alice Cooper, The Frut

LOVE #16 (JAN 1971 - FEB 1971)
1) Arthur Lee
2) Frank Fayad
3) Michael Stuart
4) Gary Rowles

January 24, 1971: Long Beach Arena, 300 East Ocean Boulevard, Long Beach, CA

January 29, 1971: Valley Music Teatre, 20600 Ventura Boulevard, Woodlands Hills, CA

LOVE #17 (FEB 1971 - DEC 1971)
1) Arthur Lee
2) Frank Fayad
3) Don Poncher
4) Craig Tarwater guitar

February 14, 1971: P.N.E. (Pacific National Exhibition) Coliseum, 100 North Renfrew Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada

February ??, 1971: unknown venue, St. Joseph, MO

October 4, 1971: Milwaukee Civic Arena, 400 West Kilburn Avenue, Milwaukee, WI with Grand Funk Railroad

A '60s Tour With Few Takers Is Still a Rock-and-Roll High

2009-08-19T13:15:00.001-07:00

On Tour with "Love"
First-time concert promoter and D.C. lawyer Patrick Hand is learning the ropes of the music business as he spends his summer vacation promoting the "California '66 Revue." The tour straight out of "Spinal Tap," after one musician died and another band pulled out. The single remaining band, Love, continues to tour, losing loads of money along the way. We caught up with Hand and Love at the Double Door nightclub in Chicago.

By J. Freedom DuLac
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 16, 2009
At the intersection of rock-and-roll fantasy and the realities of life, Washington lawyer Patrick Hand is the guy in the black T-shirt emblazoned with the hippy-trippy logo for the 1960s band Love.

THIS STORY
A '60s Tour With Few Takers Is Still a Rock-and-Roll High
On Tour with "Love"
At 51, with a wife, three children and a successful private practice, Hand is spending half of August -- and, as it turns out, a healthy sum -- promoting a summer concert tour featuring a psychedelic folk-rock band that once appeared on TV's "American Bandstand" but over the decades became an obscure combo with a cult following.

It's everyone's fantasy: With the years slipping by, successful career man decides he must live his dream, in this case liberating the rock fanatic within. Who among the middle-aged doesn't dream of chasing a passion, even if it means cracking the nest egg in the process? How could Hand have known that he would end up sitting in an empty concert hall, wondering whether anyone else shared his dream?

"Some people choose to spend lots of money to go to Antarctica or to climb Mount Everest," Hand says. "I get to go on the road with a great rock-and-roll band that's almost Hall of Fame quality. I get to spend time with a great group of guys and see a great show every night. I've enjoyed every minute of it. Well, almost every minute of it."

Hand's California '66 Revue tour is not going well. At all. The other night in Chicago, 55 people came to a club that holds 473. Several shows have been canceled, including the tour finale, which had been scheduled for Tuesday at the Birchmere in Alexandria.

Birchmere manager Michael Jaworek sympathizes with Hand's passion but had to pull the plug. "It doesn't do anybody any good financially or aesthetically to see 50 people in the music hall," he says. "It just wasn't selling at all. At some point, someone has to be the voice of sad, painful, brutal reason and say that this is not going to work."

Tuesday's concert has since been rebooked at the Velvet Lounge, a U Street NW club that's one-fourth the size of the 500-capacity Birchmere. The show will go on. Will anybody show up? (If they do, Hand isn't putting them on the comp list, no matter how close they may be. Even his wife and her friends must pay for their $12 tickets.)

His summer of Love started with the Electric Prunes, the psychedelic garage-rock band that Hand considers, as he wrote in a news release announcing the tour, "the best rock band in the world right now. The Electric Prunes are the only band from the 1960s who are putting out better music now than then."

After he saw the Prunes in concert last year, Hand realized that "this is just something I wanted to do. I've never wanted to be defined just as a lawyer."

In the real world, Hand represents clients in serious criminal cases, some of them high-profile. On the floor of Love's tour van -- a customized Dodge Sprinter 2500 outfitted with oversize leather seats, a flat-screen television and Hand's name on the rental agreement -- there's an enormous file marked "JACKS, BRITTANY." (Hand represents the estate of the 17-year-old girl whose mother, Banita Jacks, was convicted in D.C. Superior Court last month of killing Brittany and her three sisters.)

Now, many thousands of dollars into his summer adventure, Hand insists it's all "pretty exhilarating." But the Prunes backed out a week before the first show after a series of disagreements over logistics and finances. It was a crushing blow. As personally thrilling as the experience might be, the California '66 Revue isn't much of a revue anymore.

All of the artists except Love have dropped off -- or dropped dead. Sky Saxon, the singer from the '60s garage-rock band the Seeds, died of heart and kidney failure in late June, which in retrospect wasn't a particularly good omen. Nor was the van accident before the tour opener in Hoboken, N.J., where Hand's friend backed the Sprinter into a parked Prius -- then told Hand he didn't have insurance.

A '60s Tour With Few Takers Is Still a Rock-and-Roll High

First-time concert promoter and D.C. lawyer Patrick Hand is learning the ropes of the music business as he spends his summer vacation promoting the "California '66 Revue." The tour straight out of "Spinal Tap," after one musician died and another band pulled out. The single remaining band, Love, continues to tour, losing loads of money along the way. We caught up with Hand and Love at the Double Door nightclub in Chicago.

"It's almost like every night you're putting on a party," Hand says. "Except you're not just concerned about whether people are going to have a good time. You're worried about how many people are going to come and about whether you're going to make any money, or at least not lose any. It's obvious that I'm going to lose money on this. But I'm still having fun." It is also, he says, "my tale of woe."

Hotel rooms in Chicago, via Priceline: $75 each.

Rented band gear: $2,800.

Two-week van rental: $4,200.

Living the dream: Priceless?

Hand won't say how much the tour will wind up costing him, only that "I didn't put in more than I can afford to lose."

His wife, Katie Griffin Hand, says she loves her husband's passion and gumption. And the money? "Oh, that," she says. "Every 10 days, I'd say: 'Listen, honey: I'm so glad the tour's going well. Can we have the money talk now?' " She laughs.

After the Prunes bailed out -- and with advance ticket sales abysmal -- venues began canceling. The tour opener in Philadelphia was scrapped, as was a show in Foxboro, Mass.

"I've never been involved with a tour that's had this much tsuris [distress]," says Cary Baker, the Los Angeles music business veteran who is doing publicity for the Revue.

"Patrick came at this as a music fan," says Prunes bass guitarist Mark Tulin. "He didn't try to cheat us or take advantage of us. We still like Patrick. He's a really well-intentioned guy who had this belief of how it would go, and part of it was based on his belief in the bands, which is really heartwarming."

Tulin adds: "Patrick just thought it would be fun. Go on the bus and hang out with the band as they travel. I hope he doesn't lose too much; I feel sorry for him."

More dropped dates: One in Detroit, and another in Montreal. Instead of that trip to Canada, Hand drove the band to Vermont for a barbecue at his parents' house. They spent the night at his brother's vacation home. More dropouts, too: Saxon's replacement in the lineup, former Moby Grape guitarist Jerry Miller, bailed last week, the day before he was to have joined the tour. Hand wanted Miller to revise his contract, "but he didn't want to do that, so I bought him out. In essence, I paid him not to play because it saves me money."

A '60s Tour With Few Takers Is Still a Rock-and-Roll High

VIDEO

On Tour with "Love"
First-time concert promoter and D.C. lawyer Patrick Hand is learning the ropes of the music business as he spends his summer vacation promoting the "California '66 Revue." The tour straight out of "Spinal Tap," after one musician died and another band pulled out. The single remaining band, Love, continues to tour, losing loads of money along the way. We caught up with Hand and Love at the Double Door nightclub in Chicago.

"I went through a midlife crisis back around '93 and '94, when I got sick of practicing law and wanted to be a writer," he says. "I never thought when I started this tour that I'm going to give up the practice of law to become a rock-and-roll promoter. I've been around long enough and been to enough concerts to know that there's not enough money to be made, at least not by me."

A quarter-century ago, at a club on Connecticut Avenue NW, he went to see members of the Band and the Byrds, "and there were about 14 people in the venue," Hand says. "I counted them. I was 26 years old at the time, a year or two out of law school, and I remember thinking: Practicing law may not be a bad gig."

Hand yawns incessantly. It's Tuesday afternoon in Milwaukee, and the two-week tour is at the midway point. Hand has taken over driving duties after sending the tour manager back to England in another cost-cutting move. The show is booked at Shank Hall, a rock club named for a venue in "This Is Spinal Tap," the 1984 rock-and-roll mockumentary about a fictional heavy metal band suffering a disastrous concert tour. Tickets are $25.

Hand, who negotiated the deals with the clubs despite having never booked a concert in his life, will collect 70 percent of the gate, with no guarantees. He wonders about ticket sales: "We were at 29 yesterday; did we sell any more?"

Maybe, he's told, but with Miller backing out after the loss of Saxon and the Prunes, maybe not. A sign at the door advises that the lineup is down to Love alone, with full refunds available. While Hand is at the bar, staring at the stage, a man comes in and returns five tickets.

Would the California '66 Revue have been a hit if the tour had gone off as planned, with the Prunes and Saxon joining Love in flashing back to an important time in youth culture? "I don't think so," Hand admits. "There's just not enough interest in the genre and these acts. The whole is not greater than the sum of its parts." Ah, hindsight.

Steve Baenen, wearing a Deep Purple concert T-shirt, approaches the table where Hand has set up shirts, CDs and posters. His long hair pulled back in a ponytail, Baenen has made the two-hour drive from Green Bay, because "it's hard to find a trippy show anymore." He buys $30 worth of CDs. Hand gives him a concert poster that still lists the three original acts.

"What happened to the Prunes?" Baenen asks.

Hand: "Not enough advance sales. Not enough money to pay for everything."

Baenen: "That's a bummer, man."

Hand: "It is a bummer."

A '60s Tour With Few Takers Is Still a Rock-and-Roll High

VIDEO

On Tour with "Love"
First-time concert promoter and D.C. lawyer Patrick Hand is learning the ropes of the music business as he spends his summer vacation promoting the "California '66 Revue." The tour straight out of "Spinal Tap," after one musician died and another band pulled out. The single remaining band, Love, continues to tour, losing loads of money along the way. We caught up with Hand and Love at the Double Door nightclub in Chicago.

Hand knows what you're thinking: midlife crisis. You're thinking: "Dude, it would have been easier -- and cheaper -- to lease a new Porsche." But Hand says he had already come to terms with his age.

"I went through a midlife crisis back around '93 and '94, when I got sick of practicing law and wanted to be a writer," he says. "I never thought when I started this tour that I'm going to give up the practice of law to become a rock-and-roll promoter. I've been around long enough and been to enough concerts to know that there's not enough money to be made, at least not by me."

A quarter-century ago, at a club on Connecticut Avenue NW, he went to see members of the Band and the Byrds, "and there were about 14 people in the venue," Hand says. "I counted them. I was 26 years old at the time, a year or two out of law school, and I remember thinking: Practicing law may not be a bad gig."

Hand yawns incessantly. It's Tuesday afternoon in Milwaukee, and the two-week tour is at the midway point. Hand has taken over driving duties after sending the tour manager back to England in another cost-cutting move. The show is booked at Shank Hall, a rock club named for a venue in "This Is Spinal Tap," the 1984 rock-and-roll mockumentary about a fictional heavy metal band suffering a disastrous concert tour. Tickets are $25.

Hand, who negotiated the deals with the clubs despite having never booked a concert in his life, will collect 70 percent of the gate, with no guarantees. He wonders about ticket sales: "We were at 29 yesterday; did we sell any more?"

Maybe, he's told, but with Miller backing out after the loss of Saxon and the Prunes, maybe not. A sign at the door advises that the lineup is down to Love alone, with full refunds available. While Hand is at the bar, staring at the stage, a man comes in and returns five tickets.

Would the California '66 Revue have been a hit if the tour had gone off as planned, with the Prunes and Saxon joining Love in flashing back to an important time in youth culture? "I don't think so," Hand admits. "There's just not enough interest in the genre and these acts. The whole is not greater than the sum of its parts." Ah, hindsight.

Steve Baenen, wearing a Deep Purple concert T-shirt, approaches the table where Hand has set up shirts, CDs and posters. His long hair pulled back in a ponytail, Baenen has made the two-hour drive from Green Bay, because "it's hard to find a trippy show anymore." He buys $30 worth of CDs. Hand gives him a concert poster that still lists the three original acts.

"What happened to the Prunes?" Baenen asks.

Hand: "Not enough advance sales. Not enough money to pay for everything."

Baenen: "That's a bummer, man."

Hand: "It is a bummer."

When the band takes the stage, there are fewer than 50 people in the room, including bartenders, waitresses, the sound guy, the door guy and the musicians.

"This show is not about who's not here; it's about who is here," guitarist Mike Randle tells the audience. (Offstage, Randle says he once performed in front of a single ticket-holder, in 1993. )

Love performs for 90 minutes, and Hand watches most of the set alone from a table at the side of the room. He has plenty of space to play air drums along to the music.

He decides later that it's the best show the band has played on the tour. The final count: 25 presale tickets and 15 walk-ups. But 10 of the presold tickets weren't used, meaning they are likely to be returned for refunds. For now, Hand's take is $525, which won't come close to covering the hotel rooms, per diems, publicist, van rental, gas and equipment rental, let alone the six band members. Hand says he has averted what "could have turned into a financial disaster for me" only by trimming expenses and dropping some shows. So, next summer: a nice trip to the beach with the family? Not necessarily.

"We've been talking about going to South Africa during the World Cup," he says.

We?

"Yeah, with Love maybe opening for a bigger band. Hopefully, we can do it. But that's only with guarantees. I'll have to do it a lot differently. But I think it would be cool."

His wife isn't so sure about that. "He loves music so much," Katie Hand says. "If you can't support your spouse, I don't know whom you can support. But you know, we're not going to do it again next year."

California Revue: Through

2009-08-19T11:03:00.001-07:00

California Revue: Through

Posted on Tuesday August 18, 2009 at 09:01 AM 1 |
The Seeds with Sky Saxon were expected to venture out on a package tour including the Electric Prunes and Love this summer, but that has reportedly fizzled. And, by that, the Washington Post means fizzled.

The Post recently published an exposé on the tour by pop music critic J. Freedom DuLac – a story about an attorney with a dream to be a concert tour promoter. But much like the dreams of attorneys who want to become restaurateurs, and like so many other first-time promoters, the dream became a financial nightmare.
Washington lawyer Patrick Hand wanted the country to take another look at the Electric Prunes – a band some consider the forefathers of psychedelic rock. In a press release announcing the tour, Hand said the Prunes are “the best rock band in the world right now. The Electric Prunes are the only band from the 1960s who are putting out better music now than then.”
He also landed Love, which is synonymous with leader Arthur Lee, who died in 2006. Hand also got Sky Saxon and The Seeds to come along for the California ’66 Revue tour.
But the Prunes backed out because of logistical and financial agreements a week before the tour started, according to the Post. That was followed by the death of Saxon. Former Moby Grape guitarist Jerry Miller was to take Saxon’s place, but that fell apart at the last second.
Hand wanted to revise Miller’s contract, he told the Post, but “he didn’t want to do that, so I bought him out. In essence, I paid him not to play because it saves me money.”
Which means the August tour was Love, minus Lee. A visit to Chicago had 55 people in a 473-capacity room. The tour finale at the 500-capacity Birchmere in Alexandria, Va., was canceled. Plenty of venues dropped out along the way. DuLac attended the Milwaukee, Wisc., show, which had “fewer than 50 people in the room, including bartenders, waitresses, the sound guy, the door guy and the musicians.”
It got to the point where nobody got comps, with even Hand’s wife, Katie Griffin Hand, paying the $12 cost to get in. Although Hand said he has not lost money that he can’t afford to lose, it went away at a pretty good clip. Wife Katie chuckled at the situation.
“Every 10 days, I’d say: ‘Listen, honey: I’m so glad the tour’s going well,’” she told the Post. “‘Can we have the money talk now?’”

Ghost tour comes to Lee's Palace

2009-08-13T12:38:00.001-07:00

http://www.nowtoronto.com/daily/story.cfm?content=170782

MUSIC
Ghost tour comes to Lee's Palace
A CONCERT BILL THAT INCLUDES MANY DEAD MUSICIANS
BY JASON KELLER
The grim spectre of death will be at Lee Palace’s this Friday in the form of a 60s nostalgia psychedelic rock tour called the California 66 Revue.

When the revival tour was announced in mid-June it boasted three of the best Cali psych rock combos from back in the day – Electric Prunes, Love and Sky “Sunlight” Saxon of proto-punk LA garage rockers the Seeds.

Tragically, Saxon died about a week later – June 25 – in an Austin, Texas hospital from an undetermined internal infection but the news was greatly overshadowed by the untimely death of another, far more famous musician hours later.

Best known for a couple Top 40 hits, Can’t Seem to Make You Mine and Pushin' Too Hard, the Seeds, with their inclusion on the legendary Nuggets compilation, eventually became a cult band garage rockers will always namecheck because the Stones are too obvious.

The California 66 was already on shaky ground before Saxon’s death by trumpeting a modern configuration of another cultish psych pop band from the LA scene – Love – which debatably has no business existing without deceased frontman Arthur Lee, the voice, main songwriter and face of the group in all its various incarnations over the last 30-plus years.

Lee passed away in 2006 and now original guitarist John Echols and some players going by the very hippy-dippy name of Baby Lemonade (Lee’s backing group for about a decade before his death) are touring as Love.

Echols did play in the original Love lineup up until their near breakthrough Forever Changes, which is cited as one of the most overlooked records of the late 60s, but was given the boot along with the rest of the band by Lee soon after Changes’ release.

To see Love without Lee is difficult to wrap your head around. It’s like going to see ELO without Jeff Lynne.

To make matters worse for the troubled tour is the recent cancellation of the band originally responsible for putting the tour together - obscure psych combo the Electric Prunes. The influential feedback rockers, now fronted by Mike Tulin and James Lowe, pulled out at the last minute due to irreconcilable differences with promoter Patrick Hand.

The Prunes biggest success came from what many describe as a religious concept album called Mass in F Minor. The head trip album contained psychedelic versions of prayers, and a tune called Kyrie Eleison which made it onto the Easy Rider soundtrack.

Yet this show somehow still goes on.

Filling in the deep vacant hole left by Saxon and the Prunes is Jerry Miller, one of three guitarists from San Francisco psych crackpots Moby Grape, a group better known for wild Canuck frontman Skip Spence, also deceased, then any other their unheard records.

Despite all the problems, fatalities, cancellations, the California 66 Revue, unlike many of the unsung musicians associated with it, lives on.

Check the Lee’s Palace website for more ticket information on the California 66 Revue.

Aug 11, 2009 at 12:06 AM
Copyright 2009 NOW Communications

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ARTHUR

2009-03-07T15:33:00.010-08:00

MARCH 7 sunrise

i miss you so much. love always,...noon Forest Lawn & a good Merlot

Sunset 5:55

HE BIDS HIS BELOVED BE AT PEACE

2009-01-13T08:28:00.001-08:00

HE BIDS HIS BELOVED BE AT PEACE

by: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

HEAR the Shadowy Horses, their long manes a-shake,
Their hoofs heavy with tumult, their eyes glimmering white;
The North unfolds above them clinging, creeping night,
The East her hidden joy before the morning break,
The West weeps in pale dew and sighs passing away,
The South is pouring down roses of crimson fire:
O vanity of Sleep, Hope, Dream, endless Desire,
The Horses of Disaster plunge in the heavy clay:
Beloved, let your eyes half close, and your heart beat
Over my heart, and your hair fall over my breast,
Drowning love's lonely hour in deep twilight of rest,
And hiding their tossing manes and their tumultuous feet.
"He Bids His Beloved Be at Peace" is reprinted from The Wind Among the Reeds. W.B. Yeats. London: Elkin Mathews, 1899.

SOMEBODYS WATCHING YOU

2008-12-04T04:11:00.000-08:00

January 1989 Summer Of LOve show Universal Amphitheatre

2008-12-04T04:08:00.000-08:00

An Undying Love: Love's False Start and Out Here

2008-07-18T20:29:00.001-07:00

An Undying Love: Love's False Start and Out Here
[18 July 2008]

Two new reissues portray Arthur Lee's complicated life after "Forever".
by Charles A. Hohman

“Once I had a singing group
Singing group done gone
Now, I’ve got another group
Didn’t take too long”.
—Arthur Lee, “Doggone”

What happens when the life you expected to end continues? Such was the predicament facing Love frontman Arthur Lee, who famously recorded his mortality-obsessed 1967 masterpiece Forever Changes under the impression he’d been worm food within a year. While Forever did not mark the end of Lee, it did mark the end of Love, at least its original line-up. By 1969, the still-very-alive Lee had assembled an entirely new band under the same moniker: players who, unlike Bryan MacLean (author of Love classics like “Alone Again Or” and “Softly to Me”), wouldn’t question or infringe upon Lee’s often dictatorial leadership. Indeed, these Phase 2 Love albums often play like Arthur Lee solo discs, with new musicians offering backup rather than additional (possibly competing) perspectives.

False Start
(COLLECTORS' CHOICE; US: 10 JUN 2008; UK: 26 MAY 2008)
AMAZON

Out Here
(COLLECTORS' CHOICE; US: 10 JUN 2008; UK: 26 MAY 2008)
AMAZON
After Four Sail, Love’s final Elektra album, the band moved to Blue Thumb Records, and promptly released the double album Out Here in 1969, and the ten-track False Start a year later. These first two Blue Thumb albums have recently been reissued on Collector’s Choice, and both illustrate Lee’s concerted efforts to distance himself from his old band, his old music, his old life, and his old self.

Culled mainly from the Four Sail sessions (a more cohesive, though not superior, album), Out Here is, like many two-discers of its time, messy, indulgent, sporadically brilliant and often infuriating. For example, “Doggone” is a lilting tune of loss, until it unravels on an eight-minute (!) drum solo. Many good tracks end too soon to feel complete, and many bad tracks squander early promise on meandering jams.

Like many of his contemporaries, Lee was consuming drugs pretty liberally at this point, and the music reflects this. “Signed D.C.”, a tender acoustic plea to Love’s drug-addled first drummer from the group’s debut, is reworked as a blistering rocker. Where on the original, Lee seemed distant and preachy when inhabiting the first-person perspective, he now seems to be living the drug fiend’s life. It’s a tacit there-but-for-the-grace-of-god-went-I moment: he demonically repeats the word “dealer” and omits the title entirely, thereby leaving the viewpoint unshifted. In essence, Lee has become D.C.

Out Here is full of stellar highlights: two brief and funny country songs (“Abalony”, “Car Lights on in the Daytime Blues”), two gospel-inflected ravers (“I’ll Pray for You”, “Run to the Top”), trippy drug songs (“I Still Wonder”, “You Are Something”) and some righteous throwaways, including “Discharged”, an obvious yet amusing anti-army rant that semi-blasphemously quotes “America the Beautiful”. Lee contributes his share of pretty tunes, but where Forever was meticulous and timeless, Out Here is often tossed off and dated. It has more in common with the garage-psychedelia of Love’s earlier albums than the folk-pop beauty of Forever. There’s little to impress those who adore Forever: Lee’s vocals are more forceful hard-rock strutter than stoic prophet, and his lyrics eschew epigrammatic wisdom for uninspired bromides.

This is even more evident on False Start. Love’s most blatantly commercial album since their 1966 self-titled debut. Less than half the length of Out Here, False ditches the psychedelic excesses for terse, cowbell-happy pub-rock. Supposedly, the album’s marquee track is “The Everlasting First”, which lacks any discernible hooks or insight but does feature some wah-wah wanking from one Jimi Hendrix, a phoned-in performance that, if uncredited, would be unidentifiable. And its lyrics are pretty puzzling: Lee begins with a love song, and ends up talking about the unjust persecutions of Jesus, Lincoln, and MLK.

As a no-frills rock album, False Start is perfectly serviceable, diverse even. But as a Love album, it falls short, due more in part to lyrical superficiality than radio-ready concessions. Lee’s more pessimistic inclinations are masked, or chemically suppressed, with a hollow, up-with-people mentality. The man who once warned of water turning to blood and shooting bluebirds now sings of riding vibrations and sunshine. “Open up your heart and let the sun come shining in”, he suggests, a far cry from the fire-and-brimstone sermons he once recited. For finger-wagging sage advice, Lee can do no better than “You’re gonna reap just what you sow / I’m here to let everybody know / If you don’t do your best, you’re gonna find yourself in an awful mess”. “Stand Out”, a lesser track from Out Here, is duplicated in a rudimentary and no more impressive live version, and jaunty goofs like the immaturely titled “Slick Dick” (where Lee even admits “I know what it sounds like but it ain’t”) and “Gimi a Little Break” (note the Hendrix-fied spelling) further trivialize the album.

However, only in their weakest moments do these albums prove difficult, unpleasant listens: the band is tight and funky, the melodies are generous, and Lee is a versatile pop singer, probably more versatile than Hendrix even. It’s just that Lee is or was capable of so much more than these simplistic exercises. The double meaning of Love (hey, it’s an emotion, and it’s also the band name) is toyed with repeatedly, as on the eleven-minute “Love is More Than Words or Better Late Than Never” and “Love is Coming”, which might as well be a Monkees-esque self-referential theme song. At the end of “Keep on Shining”, Lee repeatedly shouts the word “love”, as though it’s imprisoning him, keeping him from shining, in fact.

And perhaps that’s the lesson of these albums. Forever Changes is a work not simply of prophecy, but finality, digging the grave for ‘60s idealism before the movement even peaked. In its aftermath, both Love the band and love the concept are debunked myths and irrelevant jokes. The man who once proclaimed “the things that I must do consist of more than style” is now prizing style over substance. On Out Here and False Start, Lee has become a casualty of that which he once railed against: it’s a sad, harrowing portrait of one more artist harnessed by the shadow of his own masterpiece, and the certainty of his own convictions. In that respect, these albums represent the shortcomings of peace-love utopianism every bit as much as Lee’s more regularly heralded work.

:: The Playlist ::: Arthur Lee Documentary "Love Story' Due July 29 On DVD

2008-06-03T04:19:00.002-07:00

Arthur Lee Documentary "Love Story' Due July 29 On DVD

Via one of my fave new reads "The Playlist"

"The feature-length documentary about mercurial frontman Arthur Lee and his proto-psychedelic rock band Love, will finally see a release on DVD later this summer on July 29."

"Produced and directed by first-time film makers Chris Hall & Mike Kerry, "Love Story," the film was originally shot in 2005 and '06 and had its world premiere at the 50th London Film Festival in October 2006 (its US premiere came in 2007 at the Los Angeles Film Festival, but never did find a regular theatrical release.

http://bedazzled.blogs.com/bedazzled/2008/05/arthur-lee-docu.html

:: The Playlist ::: Arthur Lee Documentary "Love Story' Due July 29 On DVD

thankful to Torben for Mojo review
http://love.torbenskott.dk/default.asp

ARTHUR LEE DOCUMENTARY COMING TO DVD

2008-05-23T08:04:00.006-07:00

ARTHUR LEE/LOVE DOC COMING THIS JULY TO DVD
By Liz Lawson on May 20, 2008 1:12 PM
Categories: Film & TV, Music, News
On July 29, much to the relief of Haddaway, we will all finally know for sure what Love is. For the first time, Love Story, the feature length documentary about seminal Arthur Lee-fronted Los Angeles rock band Love, will be released on DVD in the States.
One of the first interracial pop bands in the United States, Love boasted musicians Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix as fans, but never found commercial success, due in part to the mentally and physically unstable lead singer Lee. It also likely had something to do with the fact that all of the band's members but Lee were heroin addicts, and that Lee refused to tour and consistently turned down festival appearances. The frontman eventually spent many of the last years of his life in prison for possession of firearms, before passing away in 2006 from acute myeloid leukemia.

Regardless of the bands personal strife, Love made some incredible music, and the band's third album, Forever Changes, stands today as one of the crowning achievements of rock music. (Look forward to a review of the Deluxe Edition in Paste's July issue!)

The documentary features interview time with Lee shortly before his death, as well as the other original members of the band, and footage of Love guitarist Bryan McLean, who died of a heart attack on Christmas day in 1998. Considering the colorful history that the members of the band have, Love Story should be well worth watching.

Love Documentary Coming to DVD, Late LPs Reissued

Last year, Pitchfork reported about Love Story, a documentary about the legendary psychedelic folk/pop band Love, as well as reissues of a couple Love albums that came after their 1967 classic Forever Changes. Now, the movie is coming to DVD, and those records are getting a wider reissue on a different label.

Start Productions will release Love Story on DVD July 29. The documentary delves into the legacies of Love and bandleader/frontman Arthur Lee, who died of leukemia in 2006. In addition to interview footage with Lee himself, the movie contains interviews with all of the original band's surviving members, Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie and Mani, the Doors' John Densmore, Elektra Records' Jac Holzman, and Lord Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, among others.

Love Story also features rare footage of Love and previously unreleased footage of late band member Bryan MacLean. The DVD includes an hour of bonus material, and Bobby Gillespie wrote the package's liner notes.
As for the reissues, they are of 1969 double album Out Here and 1970's False Start, both originally recorded for the Blue Thumb label and reissued last year in a limited edition box set called Love: The Blue Thumb Recordings. These new reissues come out June 10 on Collectors' Choice and give the albums separate, less limited releases.

Out Here and False Start are notable for a more electric sound than Forever Changes, due to the fact that Lee almost entirely reassembled Love's lineup following Forever Changes' release. False Start even kicks off with "The Everlasting First", a song co-written by Lee with Jimi Hendrix and featuring Hendrix on guitar.

Posted by Dave Maher in dvd, reissue on Fri: 05-16-08: 11:30 AM CDT

LOVE STORY 14 -Arthur Lee on Jimi Hendrix

Arthur Lee Revisits The Castle

Thanks for the news Torben & Diane

2008-05-13T16:24:00.002-07:00

OUR NEVER ENDING LOVE FOR ARTHUR LEE

2008-05-10T18:37:00.001-07:00

DUBLIN, IRELAND

Our never-ending love for Arthur Lee

Enduring: many of Arthur Lee's songs on the 1967 album Forever Changes are still pertinent

By Eamon Sweeney
Saturday May 10 2008

There are only three albums in existence that I've bought more than once, namely, Loveless by My Bloody Valentine, The Velvet Underground & Nico and Forever Changes by Love.

Normally, the music industry's obsession with re-issues is little short of a scam to fleece fans, forcing them to buy the same album time and again, but the re-release of Forever Changes is a different matter.

On its original release in 1967, the album failed to make an impact, peaking at 154 in the Billboard charts. However, it has aged remarkably well and is regarded as one of the greatest albums ever made.

Bob Dylan once said that people are still living off the table scraps of the Sixties. Put on Forever Changes and you realise how right he is. Modern alternative musicians such as Belle & Sebastian and Calexico owe a massive creative debt to the world's first multi-racial psychedelic band.

It's impossible to reduce Forever Changes to a single soundbite such as "psycheldelia" or "rock". Mariachi horns, strings, intertwining guitars and folk and baroque elements fuse to produce one of the most singular set of songs recorded.

The album's subject matter and tone were completely out of synch with flower power and the summer of love. Love's frontman and main songwriter Arthur Lee said: "When I did that album, I thought I was going to die at that particular time, so they were my last words."

Lee wasn't just an eccentric musician -- he was a certified crackpot. Love's drummer Bryan McClean said that when he first met Lee, he was, "so strange and unusual that at first sight I couldn't determine his gender". Elektra Records boss Jac Holzman said: "Arthur is not of this world. He lives in a world of his own creation."

During the Watts race riots of 1965, Lee drove through the chaos every day to check that his mother was safe. She was light-skinned enough to be mistaken as white, while Arthur was involved in a scene and industry where he was a black man in a mainly white world.

In the same year that Forever Changes was released, Joan Didion published Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a collection of essays named after a line from Yeats' The Second Coming. Issues Didion explored include hippies, murder and the disintegration of self-respect and morality in modern America. Forever Changes could well be its soundtrack.

According to the author and journalist Jon Savage: "The songs on Forever Changes consistently hit the places where the political chaos of the time became indistinguishable from the psychic chaos."

One of the most striking and unsettling songs is The Red Telephone, a track that lifts its title from the nickname for the phone that the US President might use to call Moscow to declare nuclear war. "They're locking them up today," sings Lee. "They're throwing away the key. I don't know who it will be tomorrow -- you or me?"

Thankfully, Forever Changes isn't some kind of terrifying post-hippie burn-out album about paranoia. Listening to Forever Changes is an uplifting and beautiful experience. The final track, You Set the Scene, is one of the most heartening and positive songs ever recorded.

After writing his masterpiece, Lee rapidly sunk into a spiral. He was sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment in 1996 for repeated drug and firearm possession charges. However, he served six years and even managed to tour in 2002 and play his first Irish show, in the Ambassador.

On his release, Lee said God frequently appeared to him in prison, always repeating the same statement: "Love on earth must be."

Bizarrely, Lee was honoured at Westminster in 2002 by a motion led by Labour MP Peter Bradley. Lee was greeted by the strange sight of MP Stephen Pound dropping to his knees, giving Lee a Wayne's World "We're not worthy" welcome.

In 2006, Arthur was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukaemia. Despite chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, he died on August 23, 2006. Since his death, young bands such as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and the Dears have repeatedly cited Lee and Love as a major influence.

Forty years after its original release, Forever Changes sounds as fresh and startling as ever. The famous line on A House is Not a Motel, "The news today will be the movies of tomorrow", is as pertinent now as it was in the late Sixties.

Not all of the best records are instant classics. Indeed, in his book on Forever Changes, Andrew Hultkrans cautions: "Be forewarned: Forever Changes initially resists interpretation, even ordinary enjoyment, and requires many spins before it casts its odd spell; once it does, though, it will beguile, baffle and thrill you for your remaining days."

- Eamon Sweeney

Backstage Pass: A conversation with Love's Arthur Lee, Part II

2008-05-10T09:02:00.001-07:00

Backstage Pass: A conversation with Love's Arthur Lee, Part II
Goldmine writers

Love was psychedelic rock. R&B. Folk and blues. The band was at the forefront of the Sunset Strip ’60s, and singer-composer Arthur Lee was driving the train. He was friends with Jimi Hendrix and formed an interracial band before the guitarist ever entertained the notion. Love’s Forever Changes album rearranged everything — horns and strings and zigzag vocals.

At the time of this interview in 1975, Arthur Lee had disappeared himself for some three years. He was now back with a reformed Love and an album called Reel To Real. It is not Da Capo, nor is it even close to Forever Changes, but it is Love, and sometimes that’s all you need.

Do you remember where the name Love came from?

Arthur Lee: It was immediately after I heard that someone ripped my name off, The Grass Roots. There was a guy who was established, or whoever did it, he must have been established. He had the name copyrighted and all that, man.

I trusted people. I didn’t think anybody was gonna steal my name. It wasn’t my name, actually. But anyway, I think the reason I called the group Love was because rather than to hate somebody for stealing something from you, man, maybe you should love them. It would be a different approach to the whole trip. You dig it?

So, that’s how I got the name Love. I was riding on the freeway, trying to think of another name. “Well, Grass Roots is gone, call it Love?”

How did you meet up with Elektra?

AL: Elektra met up with me, man. Jac Holzman came to Bido Lido’s. He came with Herb Cohen, Mickey Cohen’s nephew. That was my first manager. He came to Bido Lido’s, man, and tried to pull a fast one.

They thought I was 26 or 27, and I signed a contract. If you sign a contract and you’re not 21 — I don’t know how the law goes today, and I didn’t yesterday either. And I sure ain’t gonna be thinking about it tomorrow (laughs)! But if you’re not 21, or you don’t have your parent’s consent or so-called judge’s consent, then f**k it, man, the contract is nowhere. So, I knew that, I knew that, man. I went ahead, and did that album with those people. I just thought up a name, Grass Roots Publishing; I lost the Grass Roots name for the group so stuck it on as the publishing company. It says Grass Roots Productions. And what happened was they found out that I wasn’t 21 when I signed that contract, man, so anything that I signed, anything didn’t matter. You dig?

So, Herb Cohen forged my name. And I had a handwriting expert under an attorney here in L.A., Al Schlesinger. “Yeah, this is legit.” I don’t see why I’d lie; it’s not important, but that’s what went down. What it was, as I said in the beginning of this particular bit, was I just thought you couldn’t have 100 percent of your publishing. I was 19, 20. I didn’t know, man.

But anyway, I gave this guy half the publishing, man. I wanted it back after I was 21 naturally, so what I had to do was buy it back. I paid five grand, got my publishing back from a guy who never had the publishing in the first place. If I could ever find that piece of paper, I got a lawsuit, you know? I’m going out and sue that motherf**ker, man!

No, that’s stupid. But, whatever.

How long was Love together before you recorded the first album?

AL: Well, we were the Grass Roots, you know, like I told you, and then all was changed was just the name change, man. We were together about six months, eight months, something like that.

Was this all stuff that you had been playing in clubs?

AL: No. We were playing “Smokestack Lightning” and “Little Red Book” and things that other people wrote and did. But I hadn’t gotten into my own thing, so when I had a chance to do an album, of course, [I said] “First thing, I’m gonna do ‘Little Red Book’ and make sure it sells.” You know what I mean? And then I’ll throw all the rest of my shit on there, man, and maybe people will go for that, too. So, it was a chance, and it’s turned out pretty good as far as I’m concerned.

Were you surprised?

AL: Yeah. What I expected actually, man, was to retire after the first album. I went through so many changes with them dudes in the studio the first time around, man. I figured, “Yeah, I’ll go through these changes with these people, because I know this record is gonna do it for me. I’ll just kiss it goodbye and retire at 21 like I planned.” Well, I’m 29 now, and I ain’t retired, man. As a matter of fact, do you got a couple bucks at the moment (laughs)? Ten albums later, shit. Same old story. S-O-S, Same Old Shit.

There were 14 songs on the Love album, which was pretty remarkable at the time.

AL: There could have been 20, man, at least. It was the first album, man; I had written all these f**kin’ songs, gone around to all these f**kin’ record companies, and every time I got turned down or somethin’, every time I went through some so-called bummer, man, I try to write somethin’ good to overcome the bad feeling that I got. I wrote “Andmoreagain” like that for sure. Here I am, upstairs with a chick that I dig, and the next thing I know, Bryan’s f**king her downstairs (laughs). There’s “And more again” and more and more and more and more, again and again and again. F**k it; it’s cool.

So on the first album, you were just trying to put down all the different kinds of things you were going through and all the different music you had in your head? There are a lot of styles on there.

AL: Yeah, man, there are, there are. The musicians weren’t up to par in the studio, man. We played so much better live. I wanted to make sure I got my foot in the door, so I wrote all those songs, and we did those songs. But we didn’t do the songs that we were drawing all those f***ing people by as The Grass Roots, you dig?

Forever Changes is kind of a big jump from the second album.

AL: To you. I can understand how you can say that and other people. To me, I’ve never had a big jump. I’ve never jumped big at all. I’m not meaning that I haven’t done a big thing or anything, but I mean the way you said that…

There were more instruments, and I think the songwriting itself had progressed.

AL: I had to try it out. I was feeling my way. Like from the first album, if they dig that then maybe I’ll get a chance to do another album.

Then, maybe I’ll get a chance to do my thing. My thing was the Forever Changes album. That’s when I finally got a chance to do my thing, and I wasn’t worried about whether the public was gonna buy it or whatever.

Forever Changes took a while to record.

AL: Yeah, it did. It took longer because the guys... they got headstrong or something. Neil Young came in, and he was supposed to produce the Forever Changes album. He had all these studio guys down in there, and I’m spending all this bread. And then my group would come down and check these guys out; then they’d go out to the studio.

The bass player would tell the studio bass player what to play. And I’d say, “Well, what the f**k? If you knew what to play, how come you didn’t do it?” Because we went in the studio and tried to do that song, and those dudes were somewhere else, man. So, after seeing my money go down the drain, those motherf**kers, then they got it together enough to do at least what they did on Forever Changes — which I think is still mixed wrong. The engineer at the time, Bruce Botnick and I, we were really at a poor understanding of who he thought he was and I knew I was him anyways (laughs). I knew he was me anyway.

Why not just produce it yourself?

AL: I produced Vindicator myself. But why not produce it myself at that time? Because I still didn’t understand… I didn’t know how far I could go. I started off singing and playing the accordion and all that stuff; I didn’t know how far. When it got into things like business, the organizations like publishers and producers and all of that, I didn’t know. I didn’t know if I could do that or not. That’s why I didn’t produce; I did produce it, though!

Was the band doing much touring during this period?

AL: We weren’t doing anything, but we were up and down the West Coast. What they wanted us to do was go and eat shit. I just wasn’t going for it, because I had my $50 a month pad; I was eating every day. And I just didn’t see why I had to go out on the road and eat shit. You know? Like The Doors came along right after us, and they went out and ate shit, and Elektra did everything for them. A little shit goes a long way.

If they had set up some good tours for you, would you have gone out?

AL: I went out. I went out, man. We did the best we could.

I mean if they had taken care of you more. You just seem bitter about going out on the road.

AL: I wasn’t bitter, man. I wasn’t. I just didn’t feel like going that’s all. It was either I was so young, it was either my hair wasn’t long enough or I didn’t have the right kind of pants on. Now, that’s how stupid the trip was. No shit.

Did you think going on the road might help you sell more albums?

AL: I always thought that if something was good, it would get through anyway — whether you went out on the road or not. There’s a guy now, Barry White — how many times has he been out on the road?

Next thing you know, he’s playing at the Hollywood Bowl! Now, I don’t know how many people came or what, but I know that the dude ain’t no work-at-the-Whiskey-six-months-and-then-go-to-the-Troubadour. But he’s selling; he’s got the #1 record now, and he’s doing all this shit now. That’s why I thought it was gonna happen for me.

For the Four Sail album, you got an entirely new band.

AL: On Four Sail, it was spelled F-O-U-R, but it was really like a For Sale sign in front of a house. I needed some bread. So the group was for sale. No shit.

You were fed up with them?

AL: Well, Elektra, yeah. I had done the last thing for Elektra, and they didn’t do me no justice as far as the way I look at it, man. Maybe they would have if I had applied myself better than I did, but I didn’t, and they didn’t. So f**k it. For sale! Love’s for sale, who wants to buy?

(Bob) Krasnow came along, Blue Thumb Records. He bought it. That’s cool, you know. I wanna tell you something right now, man. I ain’t never been on a record company that I didn’t try to do my best. A lot of people can say that this guy goes from record company to record company just for the front bread or whatever and jacks them up. That is bullshit, man. Anything that I do, I want to make sure that I do it the best that I can. It may not sound good sometimes to you or even to me, but man, I try to do my best.

BEST L A BAND

2008-05-10T08:48:00.002-07:00

THE DOORS? BLACK FLAG? THE CHILI PEPPERS? NOPE. L.A.'S BEST BAND WAS LOVE.

The more things change . . .

BY JEFF WEISS
Wednesday, May 7, 2008 - 12:00 pm
Let’s talk greatest Los Angeles bands for a second. Depending how you’re wired, there are roughly a dozen candidates for the throne. If you tend to spend a small but significant minority of your time swallowing spoonfuls of liquid acid on Venice rooftops, the Doors, the Beach Boys, the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield/CSNY and maybe even Sublime make your shortlist. If you’ve rocked a green Mohawk and/or owned a Henry Rollins spoken-word record, you’d probably lean toward Black Flag, X, the Minutemen or the Germs. If your personal hairspray use has emitted enough CO2 to wreak serious havoc on the ozone layer, there’s Van Halen or Guns N’ Roses; if you’re inclined toward Latin music, Los Lobos looms, and if you’re into being wrong, there’s always the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Love accurately rendered everything that makes L.A. wonderful and everything that makes it warped.

Love accurately rendered everything that makes L.A. wonderful and everything that makes it warped.
Then there’s Love, the least commercially successful and arguably the greatest of the bunch, a band whose reputation rests largely on the strength of one perfect document: 1967’s Forever Changes, perhaps the most quintessentially Los Angeles record there is, a seamless summation of the town’s fun-house angles and myriad complexities. Unlike the aforementioned groups, whose masterpieces tended to be manifestations of particular Angeleno subcultures, Love’s picture of Los Angelesis very much a native vision. Frontman Arthur Lee divines dark prophecies that pull from the pulse of L.A.’s noirish underworld; its Hispanic heritage emerges in plangent pinpoint trumpet blasts from a Tijuana brass band. The sepia tones of the old Sunset Strip spring to life: California blonds in sundresses and flatironed hair, hippies in Day-Globeads and kaleidoscopic color, flailing in long-forgotten nightclubs, starkly contrasting with images of the riots in the streets and the flatfooted fury of the crewcut, pug-nosed Parker police force.

Love’s third effort contained multitudes precisely because the band’s geographically scattered and racially diverse composition mirrored the city of a million scenes. Lee and lead guitarist Johnny Echols grew up in South L.A., attended Dorsey High, developed a Booker T. & the MGs fixation and were well-known in the local club scene by the time they formed Love in their early 20s. Rhythm guitarist-vocalist Bryan MacLean, the author of “Alone Again Or” and “Old Man,” grew up in Beverly Hills, the son of an architect to the stars. He liked show tunes and counted Liza Minnelli as his first girlfriend (apparently, the two of them used to sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” together while sunning themselves poolside). Meanwhile, despite a Sarasota upbringing, Love bassist Ken Forssi had already played on the Surfaris’ “Wipe Out,” the seminal West Coast surf-guitar song. With such inherent tension built in, the only possible outcome was disaster, particularly considering the ravages of heroin addiction, Lee’s megalomaniacal genius and an ill-fated idea to cohabitate a hilltop Los Feliz mansion nicknamed “the Castle,” previously owned by Bela Lugosi.

Sure enough, the initial June ’67 sessions for Forever Changes infamously flamed out when the band’s disarray forced Elektra to recruit session men to record “Andmoreagain” and the Neil Young–arranged “The Daily Planet.” But when they regrouped that September, something changed. According to legend, stirred by the realization of their own expendability, Love played with a newfound sense of urgency and hunger. The quote most frequently cited about Forever Changes is that Lee thought he’d die immediately upon its completion; it’s difficult not to interpret it as an early requiem for the troubled singer-songwriter, who passed away last year from leukemia. Just 22 years old, Lee seemed spooked by revelation. On “A House Is Not a Motel,” he foresees “the news of today [being] the movies of tomorrow.” On “The Red Telephone,” he blithely croons about “sitting on a hillside watching all the people die,” before finishing with a flourish about getting locked up with the key thrown away, foreshadowing the legal struggles that would haunt his future.

But other than the winking homage to the strip of land adjacent to the Whisky a GoGo on “Maybe the People Would Be the Times or Between Clark and Hilldale,” Love veered away from any concrete evocation of Los Angeles. Instead, Forever Changes captures the way the city feels,the cadences of its sunny, stuttering locomotion, the halcyon sand-and-surf California of the imagination clashing with smog, stripped resources and stark realities. The undercurrent of fear and alienation sluicing through a city where the stakes seem so high and the odds so stacked. Its timelessness stems from the notion that as much as L.A. changes, it will always retain certain immutable qualities that Love’s music captures: the baroque excess evidenced in the airy strings that buoy Lee’s celestial wail, the furious fusion of styles and sounds, the laidback folk-rock melodies and the latent, orchestral anger.

That’s why Rhino can reissue Forever Changes for the second time this decade, with the only new material on this latest edition a few unreleased acoustic demos, a half-assed cover of “Wooly Bully” and a much-vaunted alternate mix practically indistinguishable from the original. It really doesn’t matter. What does is the accuracy with which Love rendered everything that makes this city wonderful and everything that makes it warped. So that even today, with their Los Angeles a faded memory, few greater joys exist than slipping Forever Changes into your CD player on a bright spring morning after a cold, clean rain, when Los Angeles glows with a gold and green tint.

Start at the intersection of Sunset and César Chávez, let the rich metal rain of “Alone Again Or” dazzle you, horns scattering in synchronicity with the Mariachi strains buzzing off of Olvera Street; angle past the band’s old stomping grounds in Los Feliz. Let the album loop through Beverly Hills, the platinum light flooding your car, careening past the salmon-colored walls of the Beverly Hills Hotel, only blocks away from MacLean’s childhood home. Ride this strange bullet out all the way to the beach, where if you’ve looped it just right and the traffic gods have smiled on you, you might just hear the fragile fatalism of “You Set the Scene” slap up against the roaring waves of Sunset Beach — with the tacit understanding that not everything changes.

THE DOORS? BLACK FLAG? THE CHILI PEPPERS? NOPE. L.A.'S BEST BAND WAS LOVE.
The more things change . . .
BY JEFF WEISS
Wednesday, May 7, 2008 - 12:00 pm
COMMENTS
There are 4 comments posted for this article.

"if your into being wrong,theres always the red hot chili peppers" i laughed so hard i blew diet coke out my nose! great article i love LOVE.
Posted on Thursday, May 8, at 1:17 pm by Chloe

Whenever I really, really miss home (I'm now in Georgia), Forever Changes is just the godsend it has always been.
Posted on Friday, May 9, at 1:38 am by david c

Forever changes while no thing stays the same. Not in LA. But the ladies of the canyon might be feeling scorned by Feff Weiss' excellent rendering in precious memories of the halcyon and busy days of the Strip(how could he have left off the the Turtles?)via the best album of rock music our city ranged over-Loves' "Forever Changes". The Byrds,Doors but esp. The Buffalo Springfield might have known a hotflash or two of those ladies' scorn at being held lower than Arthur Lee's rambling but brilliant masterwork. Stills and Young with Bruce Palmers underrated bass also kept up with Love's LA myth-making in a prodigious laying down of "where-it's at" from the Sunset Strips own riot music "For What It's Worth" to the edgy personalities of the music's scene-"Mr. Soul" and, finally, to the memorializing of those wonderful LA women-"Bluebird" and "Rock and Roll Woman". I mean nowadays I "can't even sing" while driving in LA any more. But LA? with or without me it is still "Uno Mundo" all the same!
Posted on Friday, May 9, at 10:19 am by barnabus Zeus Palmatier

I'm glad to have read Jeff Weiss' article on LOVE, because it sums up my feelings pretty well. I grew up in LA in the 60s and I thought that they are the hottest band around. If only they had toured more, they would've been even more famous. Both Arthur Lee and Bryan Maclean were musical geniuses, and I never get tired of listening to them. They created some music that people can enjoy forever. How many bands can you say that of?
Posted on Friday, May 9, at 3:30 pm by Randy Martin

Backstage Pass: A conversation with Love's Arthur Lee, Part I

2008-04-24T08:22:00.000-07:00

Backstage Pass: A conversation with Love's Arthur Lee, Part I
Steve Rosen
STAY TUNED: Part II will appear in the May 9, 2008, edition of Goldmine.

Arthur Lee, gangster of love, came bopping through the conference room doors of RSO Records. His head was shaved and his clothes were mildly unkempt. A moustache adorned his upper lip, facial hair suggesting something between a felon and a pimp.

Verbally, his thoughts came out in staccato bursts. He is part hustler, part hipster. The eyes were narrowed and a faux smile, a sneer, played upon his face. It was the beginning of 1975, and the Memphis-born musician was back with Real To Reel, the first Love album in four years and what would be the final Love album for nearly two decades.

As he lowered his thin, but muscled, frame into a chair, his gaze took in the room around him. Arthur was not high, but he acted like it. His head darted back and forth, and he tended to mumble beneath his breath. Lee’s body coiled and uncoiled as if preparing itself to strike. Apropos of nothing, he addresses the tape player on the table before him: “I don’t like violence, but I love to fight.”

For the next hour and a half, he did wage a sort of personal battle. As he called up all the old demons — former bandmates, publishing companies, managers and record labels — he tried in vain to exorcise them. By turns, Lee revealed anger, disillusion and a type of hard-earned pride.

By the time of this interview, Arthur Porter Taylor (his birth name) had been bounced around from label to label and had lost virtually all of his music publishing to conniving manipulators. Maybe there was good reason for the anger.

Finally seated, he emits a mad cackle, the first of many. It is startling in its intensity and will serve as a warning sign for areas he won’t talk about. When Arthur laughs, there is nothing funny about it. The room is hushed, save for the strains of his new album playing from monitors. He nods in time to the music.

“It’s an R&B-type thing and pretty funky. I’ve got to see if people are going to dig my trip.”

The stage set, Arthur Lee attempts to unravel himself.

Would you mind going back and talking about how you first got into music and the Los Angeles scene?
Arthur Lee: No, I don’t mind going back at all, man. My aunt used to take me around the beer gardens, man, when I was about 4 or 5 years old. That ain’t how I got into it, but that’s one of the things that had to do with it. F**k, man, I dug music from as far back as “The Hucklebuck” (this was an instrumental song from 1949 that made it to #1 in the R&B charts). Man, doing the “Hucklebuck!” “The Hucklebuck,” “The Sh-Boom,” you know? It just rang bells in my head. I said, “Wow, man, I think I can do that!” But I didn’t know how to go about it.

You know, if you’ve got a talent, it’s one thing, but you’ve got to know the person to put you on the stage to perform your talent. And that’s been my problem ever since I’ve started. What, am I gonna go and tell some other dude that I can sing better or good as what I hear on the radio? You know what I mean? It’s just listening to the f**kin’ radio, man — listening to all kinds of music, all kinds of music.

What was your first band?
AL: My first band started at Dorsey High School. I had a school basketball record while I was there. Arthur Lee! I like sports, man. I like livin’, ya know, good trip.

My first band was [with] Johnny Echols, that’s that cat who’s on that Forever Changes album. We went to school together, and he had a band. I was playing congos or congas, or whatever you call them, at the time and a little accordion, a little piano. Billy Preston went to Dorsey, too. Probably a lot of cats and musicians that went to Dorsey, man. Pete Townshend… Ed Townson… What’s that cat’s name? Check this out. I don’t give a f**k what he says; I mean, this interview could go ’round the world, man. But the truth is the truth. This dude used to be a janitor and also an athletic groupie. And now, he’s with The Fifth Dimension. You know the heavy-set guy in the Fifth Dimension? What’s his name? Ron Townson (this is the correct name)? Pete Townshend? Eric Townshend? Yeah, me, him and Billy, man! We all went to Dorsey. Well, he didn’t go to Dorsey, he was the janitor there. I was stealing lunches, and he was sweeping the floor. It cracked me up!

Did you ever play with Billy?
AL: Billy? No, man. Billy always seemed like… well, we were two different types of people. He’s got his thing, and I’ve got my thing, and I’m glad of that. It’s a negative and positive world, so that makes sense.

When did the LAGs happen?
AL: Oh, that. I guess that was the first recording band. Or was it the American Four? I think it was. No, no, no, yeah, it was not the LAGs, it was the L-A-Gs. I was into Booker T and the MG’s, ya dig it? The M-G meant Memphis Group. L-A-G would mean the L. A. Group. It wasn’t LAG — I wasn’t laggin’!

I was lagging when I was high school and the bathroom a lot. We were pitching pennies, but actually we were pinching pennies, but they were really dollars. I was averaging like 18, 20 bucks a week, man. I wasn’t doing bad, man. The teacher comes in one day and this f**kin’ bathroom is all filled with smoke.

This cat comes in there, and he says, “All right, I knew you guys were in here gamblin’ and smoking! And I want each and every one of you to go and report to the boy’s vice principal right now. I’ll be over there in a few minutes.” Wow, man! Can you imagine that shit? That’s like some cat tellin’ me, man, “Hey, look, you go out and sit in the electric chair, and I’ll be up there in a minute to turn the juice on.”

Did The LAGs ever record anything?
AL: Yeah, we did a song called “The Ninth Wave” on Capitol Records, man. It’s f**ked, man. I heard, like, you go to a big record company or something, if they sign you, they rip you off. So, what I did was give the people not the best thing that I had — to test them. And if they pushed back, then I’d give them the best thing I had.You give them the best, and you make sure that you’re the best, or f**k, you’re outta there. You know? And I was outta there! (laughs). It must have been ’63, ’64.

How did they find you?
AL: How did they find me? Now there’s a good question. I kept telling these guys, Adam Ross and Jack Levy... they used to be managers (also producers) of a group called The Rivingtons.

“Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow.” I figured I couldn’t go wrong.

I went to a lot of people, man. I went to a lot of black people first, because that was the neighborhood. I’m from a black neighborhood, and I went to J.W. Alexander of Sire Records, who was Sam Cooke’s manager. He turned me down. I went to Billy Revis of Revis Records — that’s how I met Jimi Hendrix (the guitarist recorded his first solo on Rosa Lee Brooks’ “Utee” single in 1964). And there was nothing happening there.

So, f**k it, man. I was working out in Montebello under the name of The American Four. Give ‘em their own name, man: America (laughs)! Then, maybe you can make $20! There’s gotta be a gimmick. You can’t be good. Whoever heard of a good musician? But Love ain’t no gimmick. So, that’s when all that shit ceased. Yeah, changin’ the name to Love, man, really tripped my life out.

Where did the name come from?
AL: The name came from… Lou Adler (produced Mamas & The Papas and other acts) ripping me off when I was called The Grass Roots. I think it was Lou Adler; I don’t know.

But, I think he had done the records and some shit, and The Grass Roots were on that label (Dunhill Records). All of a sudden, that Barry somebody (Steve Barri) was playing at The Trip (club on the Sunset Strip). And we’re in, like, the biggest f**king group in Hollywood! I know it, man, just word-of-mouth group.

We didn’t have a record out, and we’re called The Grass Roots. The next thing I know, I look up on the marquee and there’s (Steve Barri) and The Grass Roots. Those cats were from San Francisco who aren’t even the guys in The Grass Roots now. But who gives a f**k, man?
Where I got the name Grass Roots from was from Malcolm X. Because Malcolm X said in the days when brothers was slaves, as if they aren’t now, there were two kinds of so-called niggers. One was a house nigger and one was a field nigger. The house nigger wore the same clothes his master wore. If the master got sick, he’d say, “Well, what’s the matter? Are we sick?” (laughs). Then, there was a field nigger. Like if the house caught on fire, the field nigger would pray for a breeze, man (laughs).The people that were doing something for themselves definitely could not be doing something for somebody else to get recognized. Nobody gives you freedom. You go out, and you get your own freedom, if you think that’s where it’s at. So, that’s where I got the name The Grass Roots. I thought he was on it. Right on (laughs)?

When did the wig thing come in?
AL: When I saw Mick Jagger on TV. It was the Red Skelton Show, the first time The Rolling Stones ever played.

What was it about Mick Jagger that so moved you?
AL: No, it wasn’t Jagger, actually; it was a cross between Jagger and Jimi Hendrix. I started working on it when I was at my girlfriend’s house one day. All of a sudden, man, I turned around, and there’s this car accident and his leg is all f**ked up, and these guys are driving by, and they jump out of their car. And the guys that jumped out of the car were The Valentinos. Bobby Womack, the Valentinos? And they had hair as long as you in 1963.

I looked at it, and I looked at their head and their hair and everything. “Something must be happening here! I don’t know what it is.” And the next thing I know, I saw Jimi Hendrix going in The California Club over on Western and Santa Barbara. It was called California Club then. Well, he was walking in, and he had a hoodoo priest suit on, man, and some shoes with runned-over heels. And I was walking right behind that dude, and his hair was real long. You know, “Whoa! There must be something in this trip!

So, I put a wig on, man, right there in Montebello, and start singing Beatle (sic) and Rolling Stone (sic) and “oop oop a doo” and all that shit, funky, and the next thing I know, man, I go to Ciro’s, and The Byrds are playing there. And I bumped into Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones, and he looked at me... he couldn’t believe, I don’t think. I looked at him, and I know I wasn’t believin’. Then, the next time, I saw Jim McGuinn and The Byrds and those guys.

Like, the music in my head that I had in the back of my head (whistles a high to low note) — way in the back — I knew I could do the things that I saw The Byrds doing at Ciro’s. Packin’ the house every night, all these people jumping up, and freaks flying around and carrying on. So, man, you know, I jumped on the wagon, because when they left, they left a huge following of people here. So, I didn’t get my trip from The Byrds, but they was a big influence on the first Love album. You know what I mean? But see, I was hungry, man.

I said, “I’ll go around, and I’m gonna do this thing until I’m capable of doing my thing.” That came about just about right after Da Capo, I think. It was sorta like Da Capo and Forever Changes, and then, I started doing my style of things. Which is, what do they call people, ventriloquists or some shit like that? I think I can do that with my voice as far as singing goes. I can sound like a lot of people, man. So, that’s my thing. I’m not trying to tell nobody I’m the best; I just want them to know I am (laughs). You dig it?

What about your relationship with Bryan MacLean?
AL: You mean the last time I saw him? I got two gates, man. To get to my pad, you’ve gotta go through two gates — bottom of the hill and then you get to the top of the hill, you go to another gate, right? This dude jumps over the gate, goes past my guard dogs — so-called guard dogs — jumps in the motherf**kin’ window, man, and wakes me up.

My bodyguard or whoever is sleeping on the couch, I said, “Who let you in, man?” He says, “Nobody, I came through the bathroom window.” “Who the f**k are you? Joe Cocker? You know, I haven’t see you in 10 years, man (laughs)! What the f**k… Well, look, that’s cool, but just don’t do it again.” Next thing I know, whammo, he’s jumping the fence again. So, the last time I saw Bryan I slapped him. Not hard. I missed. As a matter of fact, I f**ked up my hand, but I guess it was meant to be, because where is violence anyway? That’s nowhere unless you want to off somebody (laughs).

He made some good music with you, though.
AL: He did. He was a great musician, great writer. It’s too bad he doesn’t know it. That’s the only thing that’s wrong, man. Like I was telling you — I don’t know if I was telling you or the guy that was interviewing me a little while ago — you gotta know the person to put you onstage and do your thing. You’ve gotta know somebody to get to where you wanna be.

How did you get together with Jimi?
AL: He played on a record called “My Diary.” This chick’s mother found her diary, and I was f**king the shit out of this chick for a year. S

he wanted this chick to be with a lighter-skinned black dude with the straighter hair. And she found her diary, “And we f**ked in the alley and f**ked in the streets/Then we got somethin’ to eat.” But it really broke me up when she found out about the diary bit. (Sings) “Why did my mother find my diary!” And Jimi’s (sings guitar lick), “Doo-doo-doo, doo-dedoo-doo…”

Yeah! Yeah, man, that’s how I met Jimi Hendrix.
And then the next thing I know, I’m playing at the Fillmore West. There was this cat called Pigpen in the Grateful Dead, and, like, everything is peace, love, and acid tests and all that shit. So, I go there, man, and I’m peace, love, you know, and we’re playing and we’re getting standing ovations. And the second billing is a group called Grateful Dead. I’m in the bathroom, and I’m combing my curlies, straightened hair, making sure that my triangle glasses are on straight and my pants are crooked and the zipper’s open (laughs).

And this cat Pigpen from the Grateful Dead came in and said, “Hey, you know something, man? I heard that people that wear triangle glasses usually have triangle heads!” And I said, “Hey, right on, man! Peace, love!” Then, I went into the other room, and I thought about it (laughs). He’s dead now. That’s a trip, man. I had nothing to do with it, but anyway he was a trip. You get so hung up, and that’s what you get for getting hung up and going down one street too fast. Because there’s always something coming on the other side. You know what I mean? I ain’t got no racial problem, man, at all. I’m just prejudice (laughs).

How did you decide that you wanted Jimi to play on the record?
AL: This guy at Revis Records, Billy Revis, told me that. See, what I needed was a guy that played something like, (singing) “It was a gypsy woman around the campfire/Wheeoo!”

And that type of guitar. Well, he said he knew a dude that could do that backwards, man, and he wasn’t lying because he brought Jimi in. It’s out of sight, man; he’s out of sight now.

Was Jimi playing with anyone then?
AL: He was playing with Little Richard. He was playing with the Isley Brothers. I think he was playing more with Little Richard than the Isley Brothers.

Did you ever talk about starting a band together?
AL: Yeah, we were gonna start a band. He wanted to use Stevie Winwood, and there’s a dude, his name is Remy Kabocka.

He played with Ginger Baker’s Air Force. He’s got his own band now. I just got back from London and he was over there. What was the question?

How you were going to start a band with Jimi.
AL: It was gonna be called BandAid. You know what I mean? That was Jimi’s idea but he died, so f**k it. The name was still cool (laughs)!

Part II of the Arthur Lee interview will appear in the May 9 edition of Goldmine.

2008-04-24T08:20:00.001-07:00

Michael Walker’s April 2008 Playlist:

2008-04-19T15:34:00.001-07:00

April 9, 2008, 10:48 am
Living With Music:
A Playlist by Michael Walker
By DWIGHT GARNER

Michael Walker (Hilary De Vries)
On Wednesdays, this blog is the delivery vehicle for “Living With Music,” a playlist of songs from a writer or some other kind of book-world personage.

This week: Michael Walker, author of “Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood.”

Michael Walker’s April 2008 Playlist:

Each song was either written in or about Laurel Canyon, or the performer lived there.

1) Our House, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Graham Nash and Joni Mitchell were in the thick of their affair and living together in Mitchell’s Laurel Canyon cottage when Nash wrote what would become the counterculture’s ode to domestic bliss. He and Mitchell had just returned from breakfast and a stop at an antiques store where she bought the song’s storied vase. “It was one of those L.A. mornings that are gray and not-quite-rainy,” Nash told me, “I said to her, ‘Y’know, why don’t you put some flowers in the vase and I’ll light a fire.’ And I started to think: here we are, Joni Mitchell and Graham Nash, and I love this woman, and this moment is a very grounded moment in our relationship. And I sat down at the piano and an hour later ‘Our House’ was done.”

2) Ladies of the Canyon, Joni Mitchell. The title song of Mitchell’s breakthrough 1970 album essayed with bemused affection the women passing through her Laurel Canyon cottage (which she still owns). What some may not realize is that those are real-life ladies populating the song. “I was the Trina who ’sewed lace on widows weeds,’” Trina Robbins, now a San Francisco-based comics writer and artist, wrote to me after “Laurel Canyon” was published. “The coat that was a ’second-hand one’ was a three-quarter length skunk coat from the 1940s, which, with its big shoulder pads, was as wide as it was long. I made clothes for people like David Crosby, Donovan and especially Cass Elliot, because she couldn’t find anything decent in her size.” Gary Burden, who designed the covers of the first Crosby Stills & Nash album and Mitchell’s “Blue,” told me the Annie in the song (”Annie sits you down to eat…”) is his wife.

3) Laurel Canyon Home, John Mayall. John Mayall bunked with Frank Zappa at the latter’s Laurel Canyon log cabin in 1968 and became so besotted with canyon he wrote a song-cycle about it. Centerpiece of the “Blues from Laurel Canyon” album, “Laurel Canyon Home” captures the canyon’s sleepy inertia perfectly (”got the sun and trees and silence / I’m in my Laurel Canyon home”). Mayall moved into his own Laurel Canyon home thereafter; the house was destroyed in a 1979 wildfire but Mayall rebuilt and hung on until the mid-90s before moving to the San Fernando Valley, the last of the canyon’s 1960s music fraternity to leave. On the same album, Mayall recalls the frantic scene at the Zappa household on “2401” (the Zappas lived at 2401 Laurel Canyon Boulevard) which was overrun day and night with members of the Mothers of Invention and half the freak population of L.A. Mayall’s lyrics name-check Zappa’s wife, Gail, and infant daughter Moon, as well as members of the GTO’s groupie clique and a gun-toting intruder identified as “The Raven.” (Zappa artfully talked him out of his gun - and the house - and moved soon thereafter.)

4) Twelve-Thirty (Young Girls Are Coming to the Canyon), the Mamas and the Papas. John Phillips started writing “12:30” when he was a folksinger living in New York. Joining forces with folkie veterans Denny Doherty, Phillips and his second wife, Michelle, moved to L.A. and, with Cass Elliot, coalesced as the Mamas and the Papas around a string of landmark hit singles in the mid-’60s, including “California Dreamin’” and “Monday, Monday.” The band installed themselves in houses in Laurel Canyon; Elliot’s would become the canyon’s de facto salon (see “You Don’t Have to Cry,” below). Plagued by internecine rivalries, infidelities and drug debilitation, the group was close to disbanding when “12:30″ - their last hit - was released in 1968. A combination of the song Phillips started in New York and another begun after he’d moved to the canyon, it opens with Phillips lamenting that New York was “dark and dirty,” the view outside his window a church clock with hands stuck at 12:30. When the song moves to Laurel Canyon for the chorus the tempo picks up, the harmonies soar and Phillips exults at the now much-improved view: the “young girls” of the title - proto groupies looking for rock stars - such that he “can longer keep my blinds drawn.” California dreamin’ indeed.

5) Love Street, the Doors. Among Jim Morrison’s many temporary Los Angeles domiciles was an apartment in a house catty-corner from the Laurel Canyon Country store on Rothdell Trail. From this perch, when not sparring with long-suffering girlfriend Pamela Courson or sleeping off one his epic benders, Morrison could watch customers drift in and out of the store in their hippie splendor. It is an article of faith among canyonites that the line in the song “there’s a store where the creatures meet” refers to the Canyon Store and its clientele. (But then, who wouldn’t want to be immortalized in a Doors song?) During the ’90s, when the house was derelict, somebody spray-painted “MR. MOJO RISIN’” across the front; a subsequent owner installed a three-story totem pole with carved likenesses of Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.

6) You Don’t Have to Cry, Crosby, Stills & Nash. Graham Nash always maintained that he, Stephen Stills and David Crosby first sang together in Joni Mitchell’s Laurel Canyon cottage; Stills just as adamantly insists it was at Cass Elliot’s. The casual evidence seems to support Stills. Elliot was renowned on the L.A. music scene as a hippie yenta, and her house on Woodrow Wilson Drive was everyone’s second home and salon in the carefree, pre-Manson days. There was a pool, privacy and plenty of good food and dope to share in a scene rapidly fragmenting as people’s records and careers came in. When Elliot found out that Crosby and Stills were busking around the canyon with new songs and desultory plans to form a group, she dragooned Nash, in L.A. on tour with the Hollies, to the Woodrow Wilson house, where Stills and Crosby sang for Nash “You Don’t Have to Cry.” Nash asked for them to sing it twice more then laid in his harmony. The rest, as they say, is history. “When David and Stephen and I were halfway through ‘You Don’t Have to Cry,”’ Nash told me, “all of a sudden we realized we’d have to be a band.” Elliot’s clairvoyance still amazes Nash. “What an incredible thing first of all to envision and secondly to pull it off. She knew what we had to do - but how do you know that when we haven’t even sung together?”

7) Seven & Seven Is, Love. Written and sung the world-class eccentric Arthur Lee, this blistering piece of proto punk rock and psychedelia from one of L.A.’s most inventive bands served notice of the creative fire burning through the canyon in the mid-’60s. To say Love was groundbreaking would be extreme understatement, including where their leader chose to lay his tinted granny glasses - Lee, who died in 2006, always claimed he was the first of the ’60s musicians to move to the canyon. He also recommended the Doors to Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman; Jimi Hendrix may have copped from him his groovy Regency look; and years later, the many incarnations of Prince are a testament to Love’s racially integrated lineup and Lee’s inscrutable charisma onstage and off. Lee’s former house at the very top of the canyon is still pretty much as it was in the ’60s; several scenes in the Jack Nicholson-scripted 1967 counterculture-exploitation classic “The Trip” were shot there - look for an indoor-outdoor swimming pool spanned by a bridge.

8) Cocaine, Jackson Browne. As the 1960s bled into the 1970s and cocaine supplanted pot and acid as the drug of choice across the L.A. music scene, a wave of canyon-based singer-songwriters became superstars singing about romantic succor and earnest introspection. Among them was Jackson Browne - who a few years before was billeted in a music publisher’s laundry room in the canyon. He and future Eagle Glenn Frey wrote this adaptation of Rev. Gary Davis’s folk-blues standard, rendered as a woozy field recording punctuated by loud snuffles and sniggers on Browne’s 1977 “Running on Empty” album. The 1970s coke blizzard killed off whatever was left of Laurel Canyon’s 1960s atmospherics; Browne later sharpened the cautionary notes sounded in his and Frey’s version of “Cocaine” with the lyric: “There was damage to the body, there was damage to the soul, there was damage to the rock and roll.”

9) Mr. Tambourine Man, the Byrds. The folk-rock explosion that put L.A. and Laurel Canyon at the epicenter of the post-Beatles youthquake starts here, in 1965, with the Byrds’ jingle-jangling adaptation of Bob Dylan. “Mr. Tambourine Man” was a worldwide No. 1 smash and catapulted the fledgling Byrds into superstardom, along with Beach Boys the first American band to seriously challenge the primacy of the Beatles, whom both wound end up influencing. Chris Hillman, along with Byrds founding member Roger McGuinn, moved to a house in the canyon just as it was starting to fly its freak flag high. The Byrds’ ethereal harmonies captured the Edenesque feel of the place perfectly and evoked the eucalyptus- and marijuana-scented hills where David Crosby would thunder down Laurel Canyon Boulevard on a Triumph motorcycle with a cape flapping from his neck - “Lawrence of Laurel Canyon,” sneered the Byrds’ manager, Jim Dickson. “Laurel Canyon was sort of the mecca,” Hillman said. “It was quite the place to be.”

10) Laurel Canyon, Jackie DeShannon. The fingerprints of the gloriously prolific singer-songwriter Jackie DeShannon - she wrote songs with Jimmy Page! she toured with the Beatles! - could be found all over the music coming out of the canyon, first in the folk-rock era (the Byrds covered her “Don’t Doubt Yourself, Babe”) and later, in the glossy pop-country-whatever L.A. sound of the ’70s, prefigured in her 1969 smash “Put a Little Love in Your Heart.” “Laurel Canyon,” DeShannon’s mash note to the canyon from the 1968 album of the same name, hints at the soulful country-funk about to explode via Eric Clapton’s collaboration with Delaney & Bonnie and includes couplets like “shades of Camelot / giving all I’ve got to Laurel Canyon.” (The album cover was shot on the Canyon Country Store’s steps.)

ZIG ZAG Vol 5 No 9 1974

2008-04-19T13:53:00.001-07:00

Audio Interviews w/Arthur Lee

2008-04-13T07:21:00.002-07:00

JAZZ & POP June 1970

2008-04-09T15:54:00.004-07:00

RESURRECTION

2008-03-23T10:56:00.003-07:00

BESTOWING GRACE UPON GRACE UPON GRACE
HAPPY EASTER

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ARTHUR- LOVE ETERNAL-CANDLES BURNING

2008-03-07T22:29:00.003-08:00

Love with Arthur Lee: August at Spaceland

2008-02-20T20:36:00.001-08:00

blue thumb

2008-02-17T00:50:00.003-08:00

YOU'RE THE PRETTIEST SONG

2008-01-23T08:23:00.000-08:00

LUMONICS created this for me click title and see their work
photo: Mike Fornatale ?93?
vest: moi 89

A Few LP Covers & ...

2008-01-21T06:36:00.001-08:00

THE CASTLE

2008-01-04T02:21:00.000-08:00

click title for history old and new (in PDF) REALLY LaRgE SO BiG you might grab some skates and roll a time or two for you know who.

the person who posted this titled it 'Arthur Lee Is God' in 2002 at The Melkweg Amsterdam some guy shouted the same sentiment

2007-12-03T11:51:00.000-08:00

Arthur Lee is God

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Santa Monica Civic Auditorium

2007-12-03T03:47:00.000-08:00

Click title to hear NPR remembrance of Arthur recorded August 7, 2006
Hendrix biographer Charles Cross tells Tony Cox about Lee's life and career.

published Mojo June 1997

2007-12-01T21:17:00.000-08:00

Quarter to the Third

2007-12-01T18:19:00.000-08:00

Anatomy of a ‘Riot’

2007-11-23T04:27:00.000-08:00

Anatomy of a ‘Riot’
~ By NATALIE NICHOLS ~

Photo Courtesy Domenic Priore
~ Revelation: Love guitarist Johnny Echols at the Hullabaloo in 1966 ~

I’m going down to the Strip tonight
I’m not on a stay-home trip tonight
Long hair seems to be the main attraction
But the heat is causing all the action …

–The Standells, “Riot on Sunset Strip”

That was the scene in November 1966, as police cracked down on teenagers protesting draconian enforcement of a curfew intended to keep them off the Sunset Strip. Along this magical stretch between Crescent Heights and Doheny, kids had thronged clubs like the Whisky a Go Go, Ciro’s, the Trip, and Pandora’s Box for nearly two years – mingling, dancing, and watching the Byrds, the Doors, Love, Buffalo Springfield, the Standells, and many other eventually iconic rock bands. It was a vibrant creative interlude that, as author Domenic Priore writes in his new book Riot on Sunset Strip (Jawbone Press, paper, $29.95), “has given our world immeasureable color and contributed to much positive social change.”

But, as conveyed by the brash guitar lead and howling sirens on the Standells’ theme to 1967 teensploitation flick Riot on Sunset Strip, the thrill of the new soon clashed with the will of the old. And, despite youth outrage and even parental objections, baton-wielding sheriff’s deputies quickly put a stop to the freewheeling fun.

Priore’s book – including a foreword by the late, great Arthur Lee of Love – arrives just as the popcult cuckoo clock heralds the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love. (Gee, seems like just yesterday it was the 30th anniversary of the Summer of Love.) These repetitive milestones are tiresome, but the ’60s remain a fabled era of innovation and evolution. After all, back then a former Mouseketeer – namely, Standells singer-drummer Dick Dodd – could grow up to become a cool, socially conscious garage-rocker instead of an empty-headed product à la Britney, Justin, and Xtina. Riot reminds us that, in those days, teen culture was the tail that wagged the capitalist running-dogs, and not the other way around.

But mostly, the book demonstrates that Los Angeles was a virtually unparalleled ’60s crucible for the underground fusion of music, visual arts, and activism that flowered in mainstream culture during the Summer of Love. Priore conveys the excitement, as well as the turmoil, of change. Still, Riot has a pervasive sense of doom.

“I see this story as a tragedy,” says Priore, a longtime acquaintance who, full disclosure, includes me among the book’s long list of “those who helped” (although I’m not sure why). “And I think the most dismaying thing is how people perceive [that time] now: San Francisco was the god city, and Manson was what L.A. was about. I am hoping the book might change some of those opinions.”

An obsessive pop-culture historian whose 1995 Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile! remains the definitive book about the Beach Boys’ legendary lost album Smile, Priore scoured old copies of the L.A. Free Press, culled info from liner notes, and tracked down vintage photos to create a vivid sense of time and place. His fascination with minutiae can be head-spinning, but the details make Riot a compelling exploration of the historical, political, racial, and cultural contexts affecting the Strip, and L.A. itself, as far back as the 1920s.

“It’s hard to capture the essence of a scene as a whole,” says the L.A. native, and that’s an understatement. He was only five in 1965 but caught occasional fleeting glimpses of the Strip from the family car, as well as hearing about it from older siblings who were there. He also saw many Strip bands on Shindig!, Hollywood a Go Go, and numerous other L.A.-based rock TV shows of the day. These memories fueled his curiosity about how this impromptu movement arose, and he works hard to show how various discrete local scenes – Chicano rock, Venice beats, rockabilly, surf, folk, R&B, as well as art movements, comedy, and film – crossed paths and cross-pollinated with the Strip scene, which was also fed by and in turn influenced such American heroes as Bob Dylan and British stars as the Rolling Stones.

The demise of it all is tragic indeed, but the “Aftermath” chapter may be more depressing, delineating how much the Strip has changed. When you look at the old photographs of the street, you can recognize the outline of what’s still there. But when you actually travel down the boulevard, no trace of those days remains.

Domenic Priore, with special guests Michael Stuart-Ware (former Love drummer) and Jim Lowe and Mark Tulin (of the Electric Prunes), appear at Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, on Thur., July 12, at 7 p.m. (310) 659-3110 or Booksoup.com.

07-05-07

NOW isn't this spirit lifting?

2007-11-09T07:47:00.000-08:00

The interview below has been kicking around the edges for awhile and having at last secured it to the floor, I just felt it was so lonely and dark and unsuitable; didn't FEEL and with Arthur always "keep on the sunny side," ya know,and if it's a tuffy "mind over matter" so I just brought this beauty to accompany the groovy interview down yonder. enjoy.

Bowery Ballroom New York USA August 10, 2002
Photos by Gary Brant

Arthur Lee Interview

2007-11-09T03:04:00.000-08:00

thanks to torben
Arthur Lee Interview from
Rockmusic ru Magazine
December 2003

Arthur Lee: "I am blessed enough to know who I am"
Arthur Lee is the strange and contradictory persona. His band Love albums became classics no less than The Beatles´ "Sgt.Pepper´s Lonely Hearts Club Band" or "Piper at the Gates of Down" Pink Floyd.
Love was the first LA underground band to sign with the major label - Elektra: dark-skinned frontman, dressed in camouflage, leather jeans, one military boot and with a bottle in his hands, screaming wild and twitching onstage - he knew, how to make the impression. But on the peak of success Arthur Lee have decided, that touring is unnecessary - and Elekta boss Jack Holtzman hired Love imitators, The Doors, - and everyone knows, what happens afterwards. In 1969, after the most successful album "Forever Changes", Lee suddenly disbands Love and recruits absolutely new musicians.
He is all that - contradictorous, rebel-by-the-cause, even if the cause is he himself. Distant echoes of his ideas, his songs are everywhere in modern music, from pop to trip-hop to radical punk. As Bruce Botnick, sound engineer who recorded Love in 60s, said: "Hit parades of the 90s were overflowed by Arthur´s ideas of the 60s".
In 1995 Arthur Lee was imprisoned for 12 years for gun usage (Lee said, accusation was unjust). The campaign was organized for his discharge, where I did what I could (we have organized a concert here for Arthur Lee freedom). The goal was achieved, and in 2001 Arthur Lee was set free. He re-banded Love, and the new concert album and DVD "Forever Changes In Concert" was released.
I have contacted Arthur Lee and ask him some questions."

Q: J. Andrey Manoukhin for Rockmusic.Ru

A: Arthur Lee of Love

Q: In our country of 70-years totalitarism music of Love was absolutely prohibited, for listening it you could have been fired or even imprisoned for a half of month. Listening music of Love was such an exploit here. And Arthur Lee himself was like The Statue of Freedom. To think of THE man, who invented virtually all modern music, to have his breakfast or ironing his shirt, was a blasphemy. And how do you think, the living man Arthur Lee - who is he?

A. I am blessed enough to know who I am.

Q: The world has radically changed in this almost 40 years. Now, years later, you calmed down or still rebelling, in heart if not in words? And do world now needs The Man in One Boot?

A. Has the world changed now from what you thought I was rebelling about?

Q: You called yourselves Love - and were so wild and sometimes dangerous, that Peter Albin of Big Brother & The Holding Co. once said: "They should call themselves Hate". Don't you think you were too aggressive to be Love?

A. I think the guy from Big Brother has a mental problem at the time. I wonder how he is doing now.

Q: Your most successful albums, Da Capo and Forever Changes, both were released in 1967, year of Summer of Love. But you weren't the heroes of Summer of Love. You haven't even performed not one of big festivals of hippie era. Why? Was it, maybe, because of hippie ideology or something else?

A. I never was much for those non profit organisations. But I was one of the first black hippies.

Q: Some called Iggy Pop godfather of punk, some called Lou Reed. Haven't you ever wanted to state your own fathership? You deserve it.

A. I thought 7&7 Is was the first Punk record.

Q: Robby Krieger of Doors wanted to be as good as Love. You were both on Elektra, have same producer. But both now and in late 60s Doors were more popular, then you are, even if less interesting. What do you think of the situation?

A. I think it should be known that I was the one who helped the Doors get signed to Elektra Records.

Q: In early 60s you worked with another icon, Jimi Hendrix, and later recorded together. What do you think of him? Is that true, that you recorded not the only song, but the whole album together?

A. The first time Jimi Hendrix played in a recording studio was on one of my songs called MY DIARY. Read my book (when it comes out) and you'll find out what else I think of Jimi Hendrix.

Q: Now you are releasing Forever Changes In Concert both in CD and DVD formats. For me, it is the "must have" thing. But what do you want to say? And why now? And DVD - do you think it would be SO interesting, that people would not only listen, but watch you doing music onstage after all this years?

A. Buy and see yourself.

Q: Music of Love is loved for many people, and many of them are musicians, too. Notably, Robert Plant did House Is Not A Motel on his latest Song To The Siren album. Do you like cover versions of your songs, particularly his?

A. Although I've never heard his version, I think Robert Plant is a fine singer, a trend setter and a gentleman.

Q: What cover versions would you like to play, if it'll be the ocasion?

A. Mazzay Star, I guess Five String Serenade.

Q: You've created base for most of modern music scene. Who of current musicians could be creator for 30 years forward scene? Or you have successfully returned to fill that space?

A. I don't know anyone who can do what Im doing now

Q: You were and are a superstar, your name is in every rock encyclopaedia. What it is - to be a star?

A. I can't do nothing without the Grace of God.

Q: What do you believe in now?

A. God.

MY FLASH ON YOU slide show

2007-11-06T08:57:00.000-08:00

from:barbh1
Slide show of Arthur Lee and band members of Love. The music is My Flash on You

WHO WROTE MY DIARY? decide for yourself

2007-11-06T06:24:00.000-08:00

CLICK TITLE TO HEAR SONG

GARAGE HANGOVER
http://www.garagehangover.com/?q=taxonomy/term/220

Lee wrote the great soul song My Diary for Rosa Lee Brooks, and this was one of Jimi Hendrix's first recording sessions. Lee also wrote I've Been Trying for Little Ray.

http://www.earlyhendrix.com/disco/brooks.htm

EARLY HENDRIX>DISCOGRAPHY -CONFIRMED >Rosa Lee Brooks

Released in USA
Titles: My Diary / Utee - 7" single
Composers:
My Diary - (Arthur Lee)
Utee - (Rosa Lee Brooks, Billy Revis)
Producer: Billy Revis
Release date: 1965
Label: Revis Records
Catalog number: 1013
Matrix A: RR-1013-A
Matrix B: RR-1013-B

Exists in 2 different versions:
- Stock copy (red & black label)
- With text: "Promotional Not For Sale" (red & white label)

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:7sKkZfNrpFoJ:www.earlyhendrix.com/artists/brooks/index.htm+MY+DIARY+by+ROSA+LEE+BROOKS&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us&client=safari

THE PRE-HISTORY OF JIMI HENDRIX EARLY HENDRIX
[INTRO] - [DATE] - [RECORDINGS]

Intro
Rosa Lee Brook's only claim to fame seems to be the 45 with Hendrix on guitar. Currently I'm aware of just one other recording that might feature her vocals. Rosa Lee still lives and performs in Los Angeles. According to her not only did Hendrix play on "My Diary" and "Utee", in addition they also had a relationship during Hendrix's stay in Los Angeles.

Hendrix himself never mentioned the Rosa Lee Brooks single, but both Arthur Lee of Love (who composed "My Diary") and Rosa Lee Brooks have stated that he played guitar on the session. Arthur Lee says that he met Jimi Hendrix when Billy Revis recommended him as someone who could play in the style of Curtis Mayfield.
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http://www.bigtakeover.com/news/forever-changing-rip-arthur-lee-love-1945-2006

The Big Takeover > news
Forever Changing: R.I.P. Arthur Lee (Love), 1945-2006
by Greg Bartalos
9 August 2006

And Arthur wasted no time in making his mark. At 18, he had his first known recording under his belt, as part of THE LAGS. Around this time Arthur composed “My Diary,” which was performed by ROSA LEE BROOKS, and featured a then little-known guitarist named JIMI HENDRIX (possibly his first officially-released recorded output).

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http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:Awg_TMd0hJIJ:www.rollingstone.com/news/story/11086397/arthur_lee_19452006+MY+DIARY+by+ARTHUR+LEE&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us&client=safari

Arthur Lee (1945-2006)
The mastermind behind pioneering psychedelic-pop outfit Love succumbs to leukemia at age sixty-one

JAMES SULLIVANPosted Aug 04, 2006 9:58 AM

Arthur Lee Porter was born in Memphis on May 7th, 1945. His family moved to Los Angeles when he was a child. By his teen years, he was forming local bands. One of them, Arthur Lee and the LAGs (named in tribute to Booker T and the MGs), recorded an instrumental single for Capitol Records in 1963. The following year, Lee engineered what was perhaps Hendrix's first studio session, hiring the young guitarist to play on "My Diary," a song Lee wrote and produced for R&B singer Rosa Lee Brooks.

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ARTHUR LEE by Barney Hoskyns

Page 5
Rosa Lee Brooks's My Diary, a cracking little soul single he produced way back in 1964, and which features (so he claims) the very first session ever played ...
Page 16
Lee wrote and produced the aforementioned My Diary, hiring recently- fired Little Richard sideman James Marshall Hendrix to play on it after seeing him back ...
Page 33
(Message To Pretty, like My Diary before it, was about Lee's "first love" Anita, whose parents didn't want her consorting with such an obvious bad apple. ...

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http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:hhcfu3KhhkAJ:www.mtv.com/news/articles/1537924/20060804/love.jhtml+MY+DIARY+by+ARTHUR+LEE&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us&client=safari

MTV
Aug 4 2006 1:45 PM EDT
Love Frontman Arthur Lee, Psychedelic Pioneer, Dies At 61
Talented, troubled singer/songwriter succumbs to leukemia.
By James Montgomery, with additional reporting by Jem Aswad

Lee, a native of Memphis, moved to Los Angeles in the early 1960s to work as a session musician and songwriter: One of his earliest compositions, "My Diary," was recorded by R&B chanteuse Rosa Lee Brooks, and the sessions featured a young Jimi Hendrix on electric guitar (Lee and Hendrix would later collaborate again, with one song called "The Everlasting First" appearing on Love's 1970 album Fals Start.

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http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:1zHtTGxQIMoJ:www.spectropop.com/remembers/ArthurLee.htm+MY+DIARY+by+ARTHUR+LEE&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=us&client=safari

Spectropop remembers

ARTHUR LEE (1945 - 2006)

In 1963, they signed a one-off deal with Capitol Records and issued 'The Ninth Wave'/'Rumble-Still-Skins', two surf instrumentals. When they disbanded, Lee formed a new band called the American Four with the guitarist Johnny Echols. In 1964, they cut one single, 'Luci Baines', and Lee began showing promise as a producer and arranger with Li'L Ray and Ronnie and the Pomona Casuals. He worked with the young Jimi Hendrix on 'My Diary' by Rosa Lee Brooks and was impressed by the guitarist's musical ability and freaky afro.

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http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:TktfmVaKEtUJ:www.imdb.com/name/nm1411958/bio+MY+DIARY+by+ARTHUR+LEE&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us&client=safari

MDb: Movies, TV, Celebs

Gave Jimi Hendrix his first paying gig. Lee produced a song for a woman named Rosa Lee Brooks titled "My Diary" in which Hendrix was hired to play guitar. The two would not cross paths again until a few years later.

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In 1964 he forayed into R & B by writing a song, and local hit, for Rosa Lee Brooks, "My Diary," recorded for Revis. Most interestingly, it featured a very young Jimi Hendrix guitar accompaniment! (Jimi would later play guitar on the Love LP title cut, "Everlasting First" in early 1971.) Producer Bob Keene, who was associated with Donna, Selma, and Atco, used some of his tunes, like "I've Been Trying" for Little Ray, and wrote for his vocal part "Luci Baines" for the American Four. He became the composer and lead singer for a club band, Ronnie and the Pomona Casuals, with his contributions to the "jerk" dance craze/phase, the "Everybody Jerk," and "Slow Jerk."

I BELIEVE ARTHUR not ROSEA LEE BROOKS wrote this

2007-11-06T05:49:00.000-08:00

See any date on this proposed contract? I don't.

ON THURSDAY YOU CAN HEAR WHAT SHE HAS TO SAY;

JIMI HENDRIX TRIBUTE

"MUSIC FAMILY AND FRIENDS"

"A TRIBUTE TO THE LEGENDARY"

" JAMES MARSHALL/JIMI HENDRIX"

WITH

ROSA LEE BROOKS/GOLDENROSE

SPECIAL GUEST

"HENDRIX DISCIPLE"

STAN SKIBBY

"COMING THURSDAY"

NOV 8TH @ 7:30PST. 9:30 EST.

WITH

GARY@ WHPK 88.5 FM CHICAGO

STREAMING WWW.WHPK.ORG

"HEAR ROSA LEE SHARING THE TRUE LA. STORY"

PLEASE MARK YOUR CALENDER

SHOW CAN BE HEARD NATIONWIDE

TUNE IN TEST RUN AND SAVE TO FAVORITES

ALL SOULS DAY

2007-10-31T16:25:00.000-07:00

All Souls Day November 2

William-Adolphe Bouguereau
So for all our departed friends and relatives, especially for those whose souls nobody bothers to pray for:

Eternal Rest grant unto them O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace.

A blessed All Souls Day to everyone.

Thankyou Fay

2007-10-21T23:47:00.001-07:00

pic I took from june 04. Just for you dearest maria

LINK TO A GREAT VIDEO BY STEVE WAY

2007-10-19T07:05:00.000-07:00

ARTHUR LEE AND LOVE CANTERBURY 2003

MY FLASH ON YOU

2007-10-19T06:50:00.000-07:00

ARTHUR LEE and LOVE - Live! - My Flash on You - Psychedelic
From: waltdisneyforever
performing in california

POSTERS & stuff

2007-10-12T01:27:00.000-07:00

Arthur Lee Love Vindicator LP Ad 1972

Love Arthur Lee 1969 Pasadena

Love Arthur Lee Taj Mahal 1968

Terrace Ballroom, 7/18/196?

ARTHUR

2007-10-09T23:00:00.000-07:00

LIKE THE SUN THE STARS AND THE MOON

2007-10-04T08:10:00.000-07:00

Arthur's horoscope for day of his funeral
August 12,2006 11:am Los Angeles Ca.
Taking the initiative **
At this time you feel very self- assured and confident, and you will have the necessary material and physical resources to carry out whatever objectives you have in mind. If necessary, you work very hard to gather people who will work with you and to assure whatever backing you need. You undertake every task with great zeal and energy. And you don't stand about waiting for someone to give you directions. You take the initiative yourself and finish the task swiftly. Also you will contribute everything you have to the effort. You are sufficiently confident of success that you are willing to take risks, and such risks are reasonably likely to turn out well. This process takes place in such a way that you learn more about yourself, and at the same time you are able to let others know clearly where you stand.

The interpretation above is for your transit selected for today:
Mars Trine Med.Coeli
activity period from 10 August 2006 to 13 August 2006.
Other transits occurring today:

Moon Opposition Chiron, exact at 05:26
Moon Square Saturn, exact at 09:36
Moon Opposition Neptune, exact at 12:25
Moon Trine Pluto, exact at 16:54
Moon in the 9th House, exact at 19:47
Moon Sextile Uranus, exact at 18:30
Moon enters Aries, 03:22

ARTHUR's NATAL CHART

'Arthur '

Personal Portrait
for Arthur , born on 7 March 1945

Sun in Pisces, Moon in Sagittarius * Ascendant in Leo, Sun in the Eighth House * Moon in the Fifth House * Mars Opposition Ascendant * Sun in the Eighth House * Venus in the Ninth House * Saturn in the Eleventh House

The report was generated with the following birth data: male, born on 7 March 1945 at 4:40 pm in Memphis, Tennessee.

Your sun sign is Pisces. This is the sign in which the Sun is in your birth chart. Your Ascendant is in Leo, and your Moon is in Sagittarius.

Partner references which may occur in the text are set for a relationship with a woman.

Sun in Pisces, Moon in Sagittarius

This astrological combination indicates a person who is in a perpetual state of motion. Your nature is excitable, sometimes irritable. You love change and will probably be involved in numerous occupations throughout life. You approach each new project and contract with new enthusiasm. At first, your interest is real enough, but it tends to be fitful. You appear to be a busy worker and have good abilities in a variety of areas. In society you are inclined to be talkative, sometimes enjoying gossip. However, your intentions are always sincere and you have a sympathetic nature. Your most conscious aim in life is to gain understanding and sympathy, but your chances for attaining these are diminished because of the diffuseness of your character.

The key to a harmonious existence lies in trying to concentrate your will in a single direction.

Ascendant in Leo, Sun in the Eighth House

At the time of your birth the zodiacal sign of Leo was ascending in the horizon. Its ruler the Sun is located in the eighth house.

People with Leo in the Ascendant seem to possess a flair for the life of nobility and regality. Your life will be in many ways influenced by decisions you make that have been motivated by your pride, desire for power, for authority, and your need to convince others of your courage.

In life you will act with a rather frank, generous, and amiable disposition. The course of events in your life will unfold themselves swiftly, and a life full of chance and circumstances will be the outcome of your desire to rule, to organize, to hold the keys of authority. You should be aware that as a result of overly strong impulses there is the danger of failures and upsets in life. You will be generally regarded as an amiable, sincere and generous person who, however, has much pride and sensitivity. Egocentricity is one of the prices of being born with the Ascendant sign of Leo. Another aspect of this zodiacal sign is that your personality becomes excessively charged with passion and sexual desire. On the other hand, these zodiacal signs grant in life a large dose of vitality as well as a fine physical shape and a strong, healthy constitution.

Willpower is a characteristic of your personality. You seek opportunities and when you find them you go to it, using both your mind and your emotions to strive for success with zeal and determination. You are very self-assured and you implement ideas with a self- assurance that lets nothing get in your way of success.

It would be beneficial to you, however, if you were not so candid and frank and if you did not expect others to act and feel as you do.

Leo will grant you very sincere and affectionate relationships in which you desire to bring happiness and an overall feeling of charitable spirit and warmth to your loved one. In your sexual relationships you appear as happy, strong, playful and even a little innocent.

You will always act better as a leader than a subordinate.

The main meaning of this house is that of loss and crisis, as well as taboo and occult topics. The eighth house deals with themes that have to do with deep emotional metamorphosis. This may take on forms which you find painful to experience, but with the Sun in this house, it is important to you to find out everything in connection with the eternal cycle of dying and becoming and to deal more consciously with these themes. In that sense a loss of a loved one may be an important, traumatic, and decisive event in your life and can develop a more profound realization of your own nature.

Moon in the Fifth House

The Moon was found in the fifth house at the time of your birth. This indicates that you will participate actively in business speculations with many changes occurring in this respect. You were born with a knack for dealing with people and with the ability to communicate with them, particularly in connection with business enterprises.

Your emotional nature is very much geared to your love of pleasure, and you possess a very curious aptitude which may bring you financial gains as well as pleasures in business.

In spite of the positive qualities you have, the fact of the matter is that in love you are very changeable, unstable, or too preoccupied with trivialities.

Your love feelings are very well developed and lead to strong drives for sensations and passionate tendencies which unfortunately are not directed to one object alone.

It is possible that throughout life you may be connected with small and numerous business investments with a fairly good return.

Mars Opposition Ascendant

Mars opposition the Ascendant shows that you attract people who threaten you. You do not really have that much self-confidence; your aggressive actions are an attempt to convince yourself that you do.

Meeting others in competition is how you learn to assert yourself constructively, with greater self-control and discipline. Naturally argumentative, you are not the easiest person to get along with. You must learn to be more compromising if you want peace and harmony. Making concessions shows strength of character, not weakness, and if you realize this, you will be respected for your maturity.

In personal relationships, your offensive tactics force you to raise your defenses when the going gets rough.

But an attitude of superiority often masks feelings of inferiority or inadequacy. You have a lot of creative energy you should express. Remember, it is what you do rather than what you say you can do that is important. Develop more self-control, or you will run into many troublesome situations that could be extremely difficult to resolve.

Sun in the Eighth House

The Sun was found in your eighth house at the time of birth. This inclines your individuality to be oriented, in one way or another, to the deeper sides of life. Your sexual feelings are long-lasting, intense, and vital. Your inner self seems attracted to unusual matters related to the termination of life-death and its mysteries.

Traditional astrology indicates that near your middle age a crisis will rear its head in your life. If this period is successfully spanned you can expect a prolonged life with a gradual heightening vitality.

Financially, there are definite chances for money inherited from either your partner or from another relative.

Venus in the Ninth House

Venus was found in the ninth house at the time of birth. Your mind appears as very adaptable, gentle, peace-loving and tactful. This position indicates that the secret for your ability to reach a state of harmony and emotional balance may come through the use of your higher mental powers. You have been born with an exquisitely refined, artistic mind which has a very subtle appreciation of all that has to do with culture. Your disposition is kind, congenial, gentle and sympathetic and you have a natural ability to assist other individuals.

This position gives you much social intercourse with intellectual persons and success derived therefrom.

Merely minor disabilities will affect you in your intellectual endeavors. The worst that could happen would be an overly inquisitive, indecisive nature that never seems to be satisfied. However, you have within you the ability to avoid these psychological obstacles.

Saturn in the Eleventh House

Saturn was found in the eleventh house at the time of birth. Psychologically, this denotes a rather hidden and limited view of your personal ambitions, your friendships, and of your future. You're very ambitious, cautious, just, patient, responsible, but perhaps, too serious.

You're an individual with few friends and even there you may find that some of them will assist you with advice rather than with actual help in times of peril.

Arthur (male)
born on 7 March 1945 local time 04:40 pm
in Memphis, TN (US) U.T. 21:40
90w03, 35n09 sid. time 02:40:45
Planetary positions
planet sign degree house motion
Sun Pisces 16°57'39 08 direct
Moon Sagittarius 25°14'16 05 direct
Mercury Pisces 23°25'27 08 direct
Venus Aries 28°07'56 09 direct
Mars Aquarius 16°35'39 06/7 direct
Mars is technically near the end of house 6 and is interpreted in house 7.
Jupiter Virgo 23°18'07 02 retrograde
Saturn Cancer 03°50'07 11 stationary (D)
Uranus Gemini 09°16'45 10 direct
Neptune Libra 05°33'33 02 retrograde
Pluto Leo 08°18'26 12 retrograde
True Node Cancer 16°22'57 11 direct

House positions (Placidus)
Ascendant Leo 18°47'02
2nd House Virgo 12°06'34
3rd House Libra 10°03'53
Imum Coeli Scorpio 12°38'06
5th House Sagittarius 17°03'02
6th House Capricorn 19°36'00
Descendant Aquarius 18°47'02
8th House Pisces 12°06'34
9th House Aries 10°03'53
Medium Coeli Taurus 12°38'06
11th House Gemini 17°03'02
12th House Cancer 19°36'00
Major aspects
Sun Conjunction Mercury 6°28
Sun Opposition Jupiter 6°20
Sun Square Uranus 7°41
Sun Quincunx Ascendant 1°49
Moon Square Mercury 1°49
Moon Trine Venus 2°54
Moon Square Jupiter 1°56
Moon Trine Ascendant 6°27
Mercury Opposition Jupiter 0°07
Venus Sextile Saturn 5°42
Mars Opposition Ascendant 2°11
Saturn Square Neptune 1°43
Uranus Trine Neptune 3°43
Uranus Sextile Pluto 0°58
Neptune Sextile Pluto 2°45
Numbers indicate orb (deviation from the exact aspect angle)

1970 DANISH TV PROGRAM w/ARTHUR LEE

2007-10-04T01:19:00.000-07:00

It's the Danish TV program En gruppe ved navn Love (A group by the name Love), broadcast date 17 July 1970. The concert footage is from Tivoli Koncertsal, Copenhagen, 12 March 1970. R.I.P. Arthur Lee

Love - Your Mind and We Belong Together (Promo Film)

2007-10-04T01:18:00.000-07:00

From: ThomasGalasso

A music video of sorts for the song "Your Mind and We Belong Together". A very rare find considering the original Love stayed out of the spotlight for much of their existance. I would speculate this was filmed in parts of 1967 or 1968 right before the original lineup was fired by frontman/founder Arthur Lee.

Arthur Lee & Love She comes in colors

2007-10-04T01:07:00.000-07:00

A HOUSE IS NOT A MOTEL

2007-10-03T12:03:00.000-07:00

"If he had made it, no one else could have." CLICK HERE

2007-10-02T23:35:00.000-07:00

believe this was taken in Greece unfortunately no idea who the photographer was

English release on the Harvest label

2007-10-01T22:24:00.000-07:00

CLICK TITLE to hear interview with Arthur from 1992

thanks Gary

UNIVIBES Magazine interview

2007-10-01T22:22:00.000-07:00

again thank you Gary
The interview was conducted in March 91, published in UV issue May 1991

Love with Arthur Lee in Malmo, Sweden May 1996

2007-09-25T14:19:00.000-07:00

thanks to jazzman for posting

Love with Arthur Lee in Malmo, Sweden May 1996. Video shot by the late Gene Kraut, the man who brought LOVE to the world again!

GATHER ROUND

2007-09-24T13:03:00.000-07:00

click title to hear

L.A. felt the love of the summer of ‘67 too

2007-09-21T21:31:00.001-07:00

CLICK title to link to:
Laurel Canyon, where rock legends let their hair down
By August Brown, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Entertainment News : Pop Music
COVER STORY
L.A. felt the love of the summer of ‘67 too

Free-spirited dancers in Elysian Park in 1967. Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images

It wasn't all blooming up north. Jim Morrison, the Byrds, Neil Young and other greats made the Sunset Strip a must-stop.

By Geoff Boucher, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
August 2, 2007
Maybe it was the flowers in their hair.

San Francisco enjoys tremendous cultural traction on our collective memory lane when it comes to the Summer of Love, that swirling season currently celebrating its 40th anniversary. But what about Los Angeles? Haight-Ashbury wasn't the only California street marker that mattered. There was also a history-making strand called the Sunset Strip.

The Trip was one of the many nightclubs on the Sunset Strip in 1967 that attracted crowds of kids and young adults making the rock ’n’ roll scene.
(Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

FOR THE RECORD:
Summer of Love: An article about the Summer of Love in Thursday's Calendar Weekend said that John Phillips wrote the song "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" during the summer of 1967. The song was actually written earlier and debuted on the national charts that May. The article also said that Elliot Mintz was a radio host on KPCC-FM; he was a host on KPPC-FM. In addition, a photo of the band Buffalo Springfield gave the wrong identification for one of the band members. Bruce Palmer was pictured second from right, not Jim Fielder. —
"The Strip, that was a major center for music of the day, with the Byrds and the Doors and the Buffalo Springfield," says Lou Adler, the music producer and impresario. "In San Francisco, things were exploding and everything was new. It all happened at once. But in Los Angeles, it had been building for a while, so it was more gradual. It wasn't observed in the same way. The scene here was so well-connected with the entertainment industry too, that it was not as jolting to observers."

True, the only visible seasonal change in Los Angeles is the arrival of a new entertainment trend, so even a youth culture revolution could blend in. Still, the summer of 1967 is a time of landmark memories, and not just for the gigs on the Strip where Jim Morrison, Neil Young and Arthur Lee were each reshaping the idea of what a rock star should look and sound like. There was the life in the canyons, where music, art, poetry and hedonism mixed in a bucolic dream state.

Elliot Mintz, then a young, bright and bracing radio host on KPCC-FM, which was entering its glory years, remembers how the Strip was the lightning-rod center of music for the city but the canyons were a seismograph for the latest push forward in art, poetry and political thought. "Laurel Canyon was a place unto itself, a village and community, the West Coast counterpoint to Greenwich Village. When someone felt that Laurel was getting too crowded and the scene was moving away from them, they went to Topanga, they migrated," Mintz says. "It was like the Wild West there, and you lived like a pioneer. That's where you went if you wanted to truly drop out and if you wanted to embrace the forward edge of where these societal changes seemed to be going."

The changes were evident in many places. Venice Beach was taking on a strange new vibe, remembers Ray Manzarek, the keyboardist for the Doors, the iconic L.A. band that had the No. 1 song on the charts 40 years ago this week with the decadent "Light My Fire."

"Venice was getting interesting; it had a leftover beatnik spirit to it that made it ready to catch this new scene coming in, so it was turning hippie in '67," says Manzarek. "Things were everywhere, though. Elysian Park had love-ins -- that was fun -- and Laurel Canyon had these kids like bands of gypsies. The center of it all, music-wise, though, of course, was the Whisky."

The Whisky a Go-Go, the Galaxy, the London Fog, Gazzari's, the Crescendo, the Interlude, the Trip; these were some of the clubs of the era where the scene met crowds of kids streaming into town from all points east to find the soundtrack to this tradition-shaking new youth culture. The music was an electrified extension of a folk sound popularized by the Byrds and the Mamas and the Papas, but darker, more psychedelic sounds were percolating up thanks to bands such as Love and the Doors.

There were culture clashes aplenty. Older Angelenos were appalled by the scruffy bands of youngsters and trippy vagabonds invading the Strip. The police weren't far behind. In early 1967, Buffalo Springfield had released "For What It's Worth," the pulsing, ominous single that became an anthem for the turbulent decade -- the lyrics "Stop, hey, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down" became shorthand for young people's anxieties about authority and the Vietnam War -- but the true topic was closer to home. Springfield's Stephen Stills wrote the lyric "field day for the heat" about a clash between cops and kids over the closure of the Strip's Pandora's Box club; the lyrics may have felt national, but it was tailored to L.A. first.

The friction is memorable, but so, according to Manzarek, are the Summer of Love's gentler generational encounters. He points to established L.A. institutions such as Barney's Beanery and Canter's, which were serving a strange and shaggy new generation that was taking L.A. from its "Dragnet" persona toward something that would be caricatured by "The Mod Squad." "After 2 a.m., everyone would pile into Canter's, one of the best Jewish delicatessens in town, because it was open all night and it had great pastrami and corned beef on rye," Manzarek says. "I remember rolling in there late one night and seeing Frank Zappa at a table with Captain Beefheart. Now these were high-desert guys, from Lancaster and out there, and they were like the insane, mad-monk squadrons that Tom Wolfe wrote about. We talked and they couldn't have been nicer. The waitresses who had been there for decades were unfazed by this band of gypsies that came from the Sunset Strip every night. That was Los Angeles at that moment."

David Houston, co-owner today of Barney's Beanery, said anyone wanting to bask in that infamous summer can still do it simply by inspecting the wonderfully dank corners of his storied bar. "You can see and feel the past here, which is one of the reasons so many writers still come and drink here. That's why Quentin Tarantino and Johnny Depp and others come through the door." The place began in the 1920s (it's L.A.'s third oldest restaurant), and although Clark Gable and Mae West dined there, the real historical draw for most patrons and tourists today is that such fabled 1960s clientele as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin -- who scrawled graffiti on a wall and on another night threw a bottle at Morrison -- hung out at Barney's. "The Doors' offices were across the street, and our rehearsal hall, where we would eventually record 'L.A. Woman,' was downstairs," Manzarek says. "Jim hung out at Barney's a lot. That was one of his favorite places. There were so many great places in L.A. But there still are and there always have been. It's hard to remember them all."

That may be the reason for San Francisco's "ownership" of the Summer of Love. That city not only took on much of the counterculture persona it still wears like a wonderful consignment-shop jacket, it also documented it well. Rolling Stone started in San Francisco in the heat of 1967, and the literature and underground comics of the Bay Area have frozen that moment in memory in a singular way.

Maybe it's just that L.A. doesn't need that summer as much. The Dead are still the most Grateful in San Francisco, for instance, but our city has had plenty of signature bands since the Doors closed with Morrison's death. L.A., says Mintz, moves too quickly to be frozen in memory. "That is the history of Los Angeles. The 1960s happened here in ways that they happened everywhere else, but then they also happened in ways that did not happen everywhere else."

Oh, by the way, that song "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" was a product of L.A. It was written by John Phillips, of the Mamas and the Papas, right here, during the Summer of Love.

geoff.boucher@latimes.com

NINETY MILES AWAY

2007-09-21T20:51:00.000-07:00

What Arthur was doing after Forever Changes and the Blue Thumb Recordings. "Ninety Miles Away" performed at the Coconut Teaszer 12/27/92. Band members: Melvan Whittington on guitar, Robert Rozelle on bass, Justin Polimeni on drums, Alan Talbert on sax, Tony Mikesell on keyboards. Alan and Arthur went to the same high school. Video shot by Don Conka. Courtesy of LoveArthurLee.com'

Arthur Lee (left) and Tjay Cantrelli (far right) - 1966

2007-09-21T19:17:00.000-07:00

Arthur Sweden May 2002

2007-09-20T19:05:00.000-07:00

from hulabulaman
Arthur Lee interview with part of "you set the scene"live sweden may 21 2002

1966 LOVE Santa Monica Civic Auditorium

2007-09-19T13:32:00.000-07:00

Thank you Thomas for the fine pics

Little bit of file searching and I came up with Dec 1966 Kpla concert, as well as Buffalo springfield and Sonny & cher it featured the Music machine and Captain beefheart and his magic band...Some line up, must've been the seven piece Love.
Best wishes from England town ! have a great weekend.
As always
Gary

Your Friend And Mine (Neil' S song)

2007-09-19T13:28:00.001-07:00

click title to hear song
from
http://mrmeuble.blogspot.com/2007/09/love-me-two-times.html

I'm With You

2007-09-19T13:18:00.000-07:00

click title to hear song

from web page
http://mrmeuble.blogspot.com/2007/09/love-me-two-times.html

IN MEMORIALE

2007-09-09T09:09:00.000-07:00

ROGER KEITH BARRETT (1946-2006) ARTHUR TAYLOR PORTER (1945-2006)
by Gary Hill

CRAWDADDY April 68

2007-08-11T05:43:00.000-07:00

article Sandy Perlman
source thanks to mikeb from the UK

ARTHUR LEE and LOVE - 7+7 is - LIVE! - PSYCHEDELic

2007-08-07T15:18:00.000-07:00

From: waltdisneyforever

This is from TRANCAS

Remembering Arthur

2007-08-07T13:11:00.000-07:00

Arthur Lee of LOVE - Interview

2007-06-06T02:22:00.000-07:00

From: waltdisneyforever
love interview with arthur lee

LOVE WHISKY 1966

2007-05-26T08:26:00.000-07:00

thankyou Fay

7 and 7 is by Love featuring Arthur Lee

2007-05-20T08:39:00.001-07:00

From ColoradoSurfrider
A small tribute to a great band and guitar player Arthur Lee who sadly left us this year. You can internet search to learn more about him.

OZ #27 Apr 70

2007-05-01T09:34:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Torben Skott
http://www.love.torbenskott.dk/default.asp

LOVE DISCOGRAPHIES, LYRICS, & ALBUM REVIEWS Site

2007-04-30T23:52:00.001-07:00

Click title for link
thanks nick

ARTHUR Easter 2005

2007-04-16T13:22:00.000-07:00

Arthur at
"Le Beat Bespoké " #1 in London, in the Easter of 2005.
photo by SharpGrphx

Another wonderful FAY photo June 2004

2007-04-02T17:11:00.000-07:00

Grace after Grace after grace

2007-03-26T12:55:00.000-07:00

been weeping on your porch
this mornin
you didn't see me
the wind kept me hidden
as i tossed hither thither and yon
how you feelin?
i was in pieces across the universe
just moments ago.
our creator has the grandest voice
it's not like ours
it doesn't come from his center,
you know like us.

in its fortissimo
it stirs no leaf
but we know we've heard
by the force which touches our center
embracing our souls
extending Grace
after Grace
after grace
the world is more hollow without you
my love
yet you are now so joyously whole

© 2007

blumndysaug7thmarch3dontcrydarlin'

ARTHUR LOVED AMOS N' ANDY we'd fall out & roll on the floor in raucous laughter

2007-03-22T05:50:00.000-07:00

Amos N' Andy Young Girl's Mother

Provided By:
simelzer
Andy gets involved with Madame Queen's daughter and all hell breaks loose. Look for more of these edited versions of this classic comedy on my channel.

RIOT ON THE SUNSET STRIP

2007-03-13T19:07:00.000-07:00

Riot On Sunset Strip
Rock'n'Roll's Last Stand In Hollywood

Domenic Priore
Foreword by Arthur Lee of Love
288 pages
Over 100 B&W and colour photos
ISBN: 978-1-906002-04-6
£19.95 / $29.95
June 2007
On the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles in 1965 and 1966 an electrifying scene appeared out of nowhere, exploded into creativity, and then, just as suddenly, vanished. So much remarkable music, art, and social revolution came from one place at one time, it's difficult now to grasp how it all happened. In that moment, rock'n'roll displaced movies as the centre of action in Hollywood. This book tells the story of that astonishing time.

The nightlife was a heady mix of modernist design, pop art, and beat aesthetics. From the moment The Byrds debuted at Ciro's on March 26th 1965 - with Bob Dylan joining them on stage - right up to the demonstrations of November 1966, Sunset Strip nightclubs nurtured and broke The Doors, Love, Buffalo Springfield (featuring Neil Young and Stephen Stills), Frank Zappa's Mothers Of Invention, Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, The Turtles, The Mamas & The Papas, and many others. The Strip was a hotbed for garage punk bands such as The Standells, The Seeds, The Music Machine, The Electric Prunes, The Leaves, and The Bobby Fuller 4. Folk-rock and psychedelia were born there, and it was a favourite hangout and inspiration for The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Them, The Velvet Underground, and The Yardbirds. Pop art and rock'n'roll combined, and the new fusion quickly permeated television, animation, and New Hollywood's indie cinema.

Riot On Sunset Strip: Rock'n'Roll's Last Stand In Hollywood captures the excitement of this great artistic awakening, telling how the scene came together and then fell apart at the Monterey Pop festival, an event destined to be recalled as the tragic finale of the Summer Of Love. Domenic Priore's book serves as an inspiration for contemporary youth culture, chafing at corporate domination. For those who lived through those times, it will be a startling evocation of the social and artistic revolution that was the 1960s.

Domenic Priore is a writer and television producer specialising in pop culture and music. He is the author of Beatsville (with Martin McIntosh) and Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson's Lost Masterpiece (with forewords by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks), and was the main writer on the AMC documentaries Hollywood Rocks The Movies: The Early Years 1955-1970 (hosted by Ringo Starr) and Hollywood Rocks The Movies: The 1970s (hosted by David Bowie). A native of Los Angeles, Priore has now returned there after living in New York City and San Francisco.
Edited by - mikeb on 11/03/2007 17:07:35

Arthur on Jools Alone Again Or

2007-02-25T05:04:00.000-08:00

billysmusicvideo
Arthur Lee and Love - Alone Again Or (Jools Hollands Show 14 Nov.03)

Maybe The People ... - Arthur Lee and Love -

2007-02-25T05:01:00.000-08:00

billysmusicvideo
Arthur Lee and Love - Maybe The People Would Be The Times Or Between Clark And Hilldale (Jools Hollands Show 14 Nov.03)

Bummer In The Summer

2007-02-15T21:46:00.000-08:00

From bebopPete
Arthur Lee performs the song "Bummer In The Summer" (a song which originally appeared on the 1967 album "Forever Changes" by the band Love). This was filmed at the time of Arthur Lee's appearance at the 2004 Glastonbury Festival in the U.K

The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This

2007-02-15T21:17:00.000-08:00

From Elliottmarx
Arthur Lee & Love recorded live in London. January 15th, 2003
Royal Festival Hall

NEW ROSE lp

2007-01-08T13:34:00.000-08:00

Fay's Photo

2006-12-25T13:31:00.001-08:00

Fay Brennan photo. June 29 2004 at The Robin in Wolverhampton, UK.

LOVE with ARTHUR LEE "You Set The Scene"

2006-12-25T13:26:00.000-08:00

From jazmaan
Love with Arthur Lee & The Forever Changes Ensemble at the Henry Fonda Theater, Hollywood, CA December 27, 2003

Forever Changes Concert at London's Royal Festival Hal

2006-12-14T14:25:00.000-08:00

from hershoreline
From the Forever Changes Concert at London's Royal Festival Hall. Live recording of the first two songs of the performance.The songs are Alone Again Or and A House is Not a Motel

red telephone TRIBUTE from odinvonzero

2006-12-14T14:17:00.000-08:00

The Underground STOKE 3-22-04

2006-11-30T04:32:00.000-08:00

Photos: Marg
http://www.peripheralanomaly.co.uk

LOVE STORY Film David Angel speaks of Arthur's genius

2006-11-30T04:30:00.001-08:00

LoveStory.davidangel.clip12

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Jac Holzman The Interview

2006-11-30T04:26:00.000-08:00

Jac Holzman The Interview
CLICK TITLE TO VIEW
picture from garage hangover

MOJO June 1997

2006-11-30T04:23:00.000-08:00

thanks to http://www.bryanmaclean.com/

MY DIARY Click to listen

2006-11-30T04:17:00.001-08:00

Arthur wrote the great soul song My Diary recorded by Rosa Lee Brooks, this was also some say Jimi Hendrix's first recording session.

Released in USA
Titles: My Diary / Utee - 7" single
Composers:
My Diary - (Arthur Lee)
Utee - (Rosa Lee Brooks, Billy Revis)
Producer: Billy Revis
Release date: 1964
Label: Revis Records
Catalog number: 1013
Matrix A: RR-1013-A
Matrix B: RR-1013-B

Exists in 2 different versions:
- Stock copy (red & black label)
- With text: "Promotional Not For Sale" (red & white label)

Arthur's Headstone God Bless Your Soul

2006-11-29T02:27:00.000-08:00

thanks to http://www.love.torbenskott.dk/

photo Tim Hearn