Legend Johnny Keeps Arthur’s LOVE Alive
All Images Barry Morris
Forever Changes by LOVE is a piece of work that escorts you, from the callow to the creaky, through the twists and turns of your life.
Its haunting and poignant yet exuberant tracks cry of youth, death, optimism, negativity, paranoia, naivety, happiness, sadness, fear, loathing and loving. It is both unsettling and reassuring; it is surprisingly in the moment and yet prompts a wistful longing for a lost age.
Arthur Lee’s Los Angeles-based psychedelic band recorded Forever Changes as their third- and clearly best- effort of four top class albums in the mid-sixties. This was no breakthrough album; they had already torn up the Strip and won the laurels of Laurel Canyon. Love and Da Capo had sold six figures or more each. They had houses and cars and a rock star way of life. The band- Arthur Lee on guitar and vocals for all but two of the tracks; Johnny Echols on lead guitar; Bryan Maclean on guitar and the other vocals; drummer Michael Stuart and bassist Ken Forssi- were drifting and disjointed and nearly not good enough to play on the tracks Arthur had written. In fact, it seems co-producer Bruce Botnik had session musicians ready to go and he did put down a few tracks with them (He also had Neil Young ready to work with him but that’s another story).
Arthur, in turn, was beset by his own demons, convinced he was likely to join many contemporary talents of that time and die very young. Working in one of rock’s rare diverse bands, in a predominately white industry, and against a background of the Vietnam War, his experiences and his inner fears did not allow him to wholeheartedly follow the beckoning bourgeoise flower power movement that was already fuelling nearby San Francisco’s hedonistic counterculture. He refused to tour and the band lost vital opportunities to tighten up the sound and spread the word of their talent.
These internalised pushings and pullings vied with Arthur’s never-doubted musical strength and inner belief in the music and his determination to transfer it into sounds to share. It all fired up Forever Changes- and riding shotgun with him was his childhood friend, guitar man Johnny Echols. Well, what else do you become when you’re from Memphis Tennessee and your middle name is Marshall?
Behind the crisp and clipped vocals, Forever Changes is an album of exquisite supplementary sounds that combine, overlap and standout throughout the eleven tracks. Harpischord, Tijuana brass, lush strings, multiple rhythm changes, flexible bass patterns- it is an incredibly bold, mature and complex sound for a group of musicians that were barely out of their teens.
And perhaps the most significant contributor was Johnny Echols’ chopping, coaxing, piercing, howling crystal-clear guitar work, a sound that helped to spawn many successors in the school halls and back bedrooms of the world as the new rock generation unfurled their wings.
Arthur avoided the curse of the 27 Club and in fact it wasn’t until 2006, aged 61, that his prophetic fears of death eventually came true. But LOVE live on, and, led by Johnny Echols, they came to the UK and they came to Cardiff’s Earl Haig Club to put a spring in the arthritic step of their original fans while inducting younger ones into rock’s hall of fame.
Were they any good? You bet.
Any fears were dispersed after a few bars of “A House Is Not A Motel”, Arthur’s anti-war opus “By the time that I’m through singing /the bells from the school of war will be ringing/more confusions/ blood transfusions” with a fab burst of Johnny’s timeless guitar setting the mood and the pace for the night.
The three guitar line-up (This LOVE is administered by Johnny’s tour band, Baby Lemonade , who had played with Arthur Lee and are a fine collection of psychedelia-ridden lads- Rusty Squeezebox, Mike Randle, drummer David Green and Dave Chapple on bass) chimed and riffed and chugged and boogied and managed to replicate the distinctive vocals and also power their way past the classic fills that had been previously designated to strings and brass.
Live and Let Live ; the brilliant The Daily Planet- and then Johnny came alive on the classic The Red Telephone, reaching back into the mists of time to replicate and reaffirm his set-in-stone belief in freedom from the very depths of his heart.
The wonderful AndMoreAgain and Brian Macleans’ magical AloneAgainOr were heart rending moments that both recaptured the immediacy of teenage angst and yearning but also depicted for us older fans a closed-off time of innocence and uncertainty, of lost yet loved years.
Yes, there were other great tracks from the other three albums (Four Sail followed Forever Changes) including You Set the Scene, Neil’s Song, Singing Cowboy (and they’ll be a few older fans with painful sides after overdoing the Yoo Hoo-backed arm stretches) and Revelation.
But Forever Changes remains the pinnacle of LOVE’s creativity.
So good, I bought two tee-shirts.
Praise for Love’s ‘Forever Changes’ LP:
‘The Second Greatest Psychedelic Album of all Time’
‘One of the Best and Most Highly Regarded and Influential Rock Albums of All Time’
‘One of the Finest and Most Haunting Albums to come out of the Summer of Love’
‘The Best Record Ever’ – The Stone Roses.
Five stars out of five -AllMusic
Five stars out of five- The Encyclopedia of Popular Music
Five stars out of five -Rolling Stone Album Guide
Ten out of ten-NME
All Images by Kind Permission Barry Morris