Love Heart Images Biography
Just one in a series of major ironies for Arthur Lee (b. 1944, Memphis, Tennessee) is the fact that his pioneering work with Love is now as revered internationally--at least on some critical levels--as the music of Jim Morrison's Doors. The first rock group to be signed by Elektra, Love was an unusual group by many standards--not least because both Lee, the band's lead singer and main songwriter, and John Echols, the band's guitarist, were black men who played rock 'n' roll. Very much an underground group (they rarely performed outside Los Angeles), Love first made their name on the basis of two superb 1966 singles: a remake of Manfred Mann's "My Little Red Book" (penned by Burt Bacharach & Hal David) from What's New Pussycat? and Lee's own "Seven And Seven Is," a top 40 hit. But much more influential were Love's albums, the first three of which displayed remarkable diversity and artistic growth.
The 1966 debut album Love was a much better than average collection of melodic, Byrds and Beatles-inspired pop, most of it written by Lee himself. By 1967's Da Capo, Love's original quintet had added two members, and the group's sound had grown much more sophisticated (including flute, saxophone and harpsichord)--as did Lee's compositions. Tracks like "Stephanie Knows Who" and "The Castle" were enormously inventive and dynamic, filled with complex chords and atmospheric shadings that sound contemporary even today. And the group had experimented even further by filling the second side of their LP with a 19-minute single track called "Revelation."
Still, all this served only as a prelude to 1967's Forever Changes, Love's all-time classic and an album many hold to be pop's finest. A mixture of hard rock and soft symphonic pop, it featured gorgeous string arrangements, trumpets, and pleasingly surreal lyrics by Lee. Released months after the so-called Summer Of Love, the album's back cover bore a picture of Lee holding a broken jug of obviously dead flowers; inside, Lee was singing lines like "They're locking him up today/ They're throwing away the key/ I wonder who it'll be tomorrow/ You or me?" A timeless album that is better heard than described, it will keep Arthur Lee's name in circulation well into the next century. "Those were my last words to the world," Lee recalled in 1981, "and I've been here ever since. Just like a guy saying good-bye, and you look out your front door and he's still there. I know I was real young, but I just thought that would be the year for me to exit."
Just one in a series of major ironies for Arthur Lee (b. 1944, Memphis, Tennessee) is the fact that his pioneering work with Love is now as revered internationally--at least on some critical levels--as the music of Jim Morrison's Doors. The first rock group to be signed by Elektra, Love was an unusual group by many standards--not least because both Lee, the band's lead singer and main songwriter, and John Echols, the band's guitarist, were black men who played rock 'n' roll. Very much an underground group (they rarely performed outside Los Angeles), Love first made their name on the basis of two superb 1966 singles: a remake of Manfred Mann's "My Little Red Book" (penned by Burt Bacharach & Hal David) from What's New Pussycat? and Lee's own "Seven And Seven Is," a top 40 hit. But much more influential were Love's albums, the first three of which displayed remarkable diversity and artistic growth.
The 1966 debut album Love was a much better than average collection of melodic, Byrds and Beatles-inspired pop, most of it written by Lee himself. By 1967's Da Capo, Love's original quintet had added two members, and the group's sound had grown much more sophisticated (including flute, saxophone and harpsichord)--as did Lee's compositions. Tracks like "Stephanie Knows Who" and "The Castle" were enormously inventive and dynamic, filled with complex chords and atmospheric shadings that sound contemporary even today. And the group had experimented even further by filling the second side of their LP with a 19-minute single track called "Revelation."
Still, all this served only as a prelude to 1967's Forever Changes, Love's all-time classic and an album many hold to be pop's finest. A mixture of hard rock and soft symphonic pop, it featured gorgeous string arrangements, trumpets, and pleasingly surreal lyrics by Lee. Released months after the so-called Summer Of Love, the album's back cover bore a picture of Lee holding a broken jug of obviously dead flowers; inside, Lee was singing lines like "They're locking him up today/ They're throwing away the key/ I wonder who it'll be tomorrow/ You or me?" A timeless album that is better heard than described, it will keep Arthur Lee's name in circulation well into the next century. "Those were my last words to the world," Lee recalled in 1981, "and I've been here ever since. Just like a guy saying good-bye, and you look out your front door and he's still there. I know I was real young, but I just thought that would be the year for me to exit."
Love Heart Images
Love Heart Images
Love Heart Images
Love Heart Images
Love Heart Images
Love Heart Images
Love Heart Images
Love Heart Images
Love Heart Images
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Love Heart Images
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