Love's mystique rests largely in one brilliant work, released at the tail end of 1967. Forever Changes is an album many have come to worship as an eerie document of a fading counterculture. Recorded at the height of the Summer of Love, it eschews idealised flower-power sentiments in favour of themes of dislocation and stasis.
However, Forever Changes is anything but dreary or lacking in wonder. If anything, its distance from the more prevalent variations on a folk-rock theme make it both a pop culture curiosity and a thing of considerable beauty. Even after 43 years, it's impossible to complete the sentence "It sounds a bit like ..." when explaining its appeal.
Lee must have watched other LA bands such as the Byrds profit from hummable, hook-laden tunes and considered emulating them. Love was, after all, successful and popular in its own way.
But instead, he and fellow songwriter Bryan MacLean scripted songs that contained extended, non-circular melodies, and drew elements of blues, psychedelic rock, mariachi, classical music and orchestral pop together in a never-before heard amalgam. All this while the rest of the band, apathetic and directionless, took extended leave.
Little wonder then that the errant musicians leapt to attention and insisted on completing the remaining tunes after session musicians had tracked Andmoreagain and The Daily Planet. They didn't want to miss out on what was developing as an astonishing album, and as a consequence they each poured their soul into the task. Sublime orchestrations by David Angel completed the picture.
The DVD of a gripping 2002 performance at the Royal Festival Hall by Arthur Lee and a fresh incarnation of Love makes a fine accompaniment to this wonderfully imaginative, compelling album.
