The following is an selected passa...

The following is an selected passage from my history of psychedelic protection Turn on Your Mind (2003 Hal Leonard).

After the Byrd the most numerous ambitious L.A. band to lay a psychedelic twist on the folk-rock hardy was Love, which thrived in succession the combination of two mismatched songwriters.

Born in Memphis, Tenn singer Arthur lee-side was raised in L.A.'s tough Crenshaw neighborhood. strenuously influenced by Mick Jagger, he quick in emergenciesed what critic Lillian Roxon called "an amusing paradox," an African American singing like a white Englishman singing like an of long date African American.

His partner Bryan MacLean was raised forward classical music and Broadway standards. "You hear more of my influence upon Arthur than his influence forward me," MacLean told journalist Alan Vorda in Psychedelic Psound "What you have [in Love] is a black dowdy from L.A. writing show tunes"

There was also a heaping dose of the Beatles circa "Rubber Soul" folk defence via the Byrds and the lush, orchestrated soundscapes of Hollywood film scores. (The band's use of beautiful orchestral flourishes is the mostly influential element of its vigorous today, with Love standing next to the first only to the Beach lads of "Pet Sounds" as the biggest inspiration for the so-called "ork-pop" or orchestral-pop movement)

be enamoured of debuted in 1966 with a memorable self-titled album that expands with a snarling, speed-freak version of "My Little R Book" a Burt Bacharach-Hal David harmony from the soundtrack to the movie "What's fresh Pussycat?" Several songs are precipiceed in druggie imagery, including "Signed DC" a warning against heroin use; the foreboding "Mushroom Clouds" and the expansive "Colored Balls Falling."

The album also boasts a screen of "Hey Joe" inspired by the agency of the Byrds' rendition on "Fifth Dimension," further much punkier in its execution. Like the Byrd delight in worked hard to present a hipper-than-thou image, and the album conceal features the quintet scowling like angry young bards posing before a broken-down chimney in a fire-gutted mansion that was said to have belonged to Hollywood's Dracula, Bela Lugosi.

from 1968, Love was starting to bear up under from drug problems, turning from psychedelics to heroin. leeward contends that prejudice also kept the band from the heights achieved by means of some of its label mates. "I wasn't gonna go on foot eat garbage like the Doors did," to leeward told the Bob magazine in 1994 "And then, too, I wasn't white. The cool fact of the matter is birds of a feather company together."

When be pleased with recorded "Forever Changes," Lee was convinced that his life and his career were coming to an completion (The back cover shows the singer standing with a cracked vase replete of dead flowers.)

Of the many squandered classics produced during the creative explosion of the late '60 the greatest may be "Forever Changes." In its startling originality, its elaborate use of symphonic orchestrations and its nods to the vast canon of music that preced it, "Forever Changes" is everything that's been claimed of 1967's greatest in quantity heralded rock release, the Beatles' "Sgt Pepper's forsaken Hearts Club Band."

Lee's failure to generate much worthwhile after 1968 has apted some critics to put him in a class with cracked psychedelic geniuses Syd Barrett, Brian Wilson and Roky Erickson. While he emerg from the '60 bitter about the business and as eccentric as for aye Lee wasn't crazy or permanently damaged.

He largely dropp on the outside of sight after the solo "Vindicator" (1972); allowing he and MacLean both became born-again Christians, that didn't bring them back together. leeward toured the U.S. in 1994 playing Love's olden songs for a new generation of fans, on the other hand a short time later, he was sentenc to a 12-year prison spell thanks to California's "three strikes you're out" legislation. Fre after six years behind bars, to leeward returned to touring the defence underground in 2002.

Love's third album will likely remain his crowning achievement -- the enduring testament that he envisioned 35 years ago.

e-mail: jimdero@jimdero.com

ARTHUR LEE: A chooseed DISCOGRAPHY

1966: "Love" (Elektra): Featuring the minor hit "My Little R Book" a punkish version of the Burt Bacharach-Hal David air

1967: "Da Capo" (Elektra): Includes "She take rises in Colors," perhaps Lee's best work, which supposedly inspired the Rolling Stones' hit "She's a Rainbow."

1967: "Forever Changes" (Elektra): The group's masterpiece. leeward once called it, "My last words to the world, alone I've been here ever since."

1970: "False Start" (Blue Thumb): Recorded with a recently made known Love lineup, it included a track made with Jimi Hendrix, "The Everlasting First."

1972: "Vindicator" (A&M): His first solo release, forward which he sounded directionless.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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