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Forever Changes: Arthur Lee — Twenty Years On
Back in the 1990s (pre-internet and pre-vinyl repress boom) bands like Los Angeles psychedelic rock pioneers, Love were raised to almost mythical status as in-the-know teenagers frantically sought bootlegs of their recordings, or hoped for a cool aunt or uncle who might even have the original vinyl. Coupled with primary songwriter and frontman Arthur Lee spending most of the decade in the state penitentiary on trumped up firearms charges, the band’s legendary third album, Forever Changes, became the holy grail of lost classics long before YouTube suddenly made everything immediately available.
Upon his release from prison in 2001, a version of the band (basically Lee and friends — sometimes LA’s Baby Lemonade, and randomly on one UK jaunt, Liverpool’s Shack) toured to mixed success — a chaotic Glastonbury performance in 2003 led to the see-through stage curtain being pulled as the band gamefully played on behind it, while another UK show at Manchester Academy the same year was attended by anyone and everyone from the North West indie music scene and was rapturously received. Those tours, before Lee’s premature death, aged 61 from acute myeloid leukaemia twenty years ago this week in 2006, helped validate the fabled narrative around his career, even without the rest of the original line-up of the band, including the distinctive guitar phrasings of Johnny Echols —…
