Love-Love

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1963-1966
Lee, who had lived in Los Angeles since the age of five, had been recording since 1963 with his bands, the LAG's and Lee's American Four. He'd also produced a single, "My Diary", for Rosa Lee Brooks in 1964 which included Jimi Hendrix on guitar.[1] A garage outfit, The Sons Of Adam, which included future Love drummer Michael Stuart, also recorded a Lee composition, "Feathered Fish". However, after viewing a Byrds performance, Lee determined to join the newly minted folk-rock sound of the Byrds to his primarily R'n'B style. Soon after, he formed The Grass Roots with guitarist John Echols (another Memphis native), bassist Johnny Fleckenstein and drummer Don Conka. Byrds roadie Bryan MacLean joined the band just before they changed their name to Love, spurred by the release of a single by another group called The Grass Roots.

Love started playing the L.A. clubs in April, 1965 and became a popular act. At this time, they were playing extended numbers such as "Revelation" (originally titled "John Lee Hooker") and getting the attention of such luminaries as the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds. The band lived communally in a house once owned by horror actor Bela Lugosi, and their first two albums included photos shot in the garden of that house.


1966-1968
Signed to the Elektra Records label, the band scored a minor hit single in 1966 with their version of Burt Bacharach's "My Little Red Book". In the meantime, Lee had dismissed Conka and Fleckenstein, replacing them with Alban "Snoopy" Pfisterer and Ken Forssi (from a post-"Wipeout" version of The Surfaris). Their debut album, Love, was released in May 1966, and included "Signed D.C" and MacLean's "Softly To Me". The album sold moderately well and reached #57 on the album charts.

In August, 1966, the single "7 and 7 Is" became their highest-charting at #33. Two more members were added around this time, Tjay Cantrelli (aka John Barberis) on woodwinds and Michael Stuart on drums. Pfisterer, never a confident drummer, switched to harpsichord.

Their musical reputation largely rests on two albums issued in 1967, Da Capo and Forever Changes. Da Capo, released in January of that year, included rockers like "Stephanie Knows Who" and "7 and 7 Is," and melodic songs such as "¡Qué Vida!" and "She Comes in Colors". Gone were the Byrds influences and jangly guitars, replaced by melodically airy art-songs with predominantly jazz and classical influences. Some critics derided it as a one-side album, with the six songs on Side One contrasting markedly with the lack of focus displayed on the other side, which was devoted entirely to the rambling, unfocused, 19-minute "Revelation". Cantrelli and Pfisterer soon quit the band, leaving it as a five-piece once again.

Forever Changes, released in November 1967, is a suite of songs using acoustic guitars, strings and horns that was recorded while the band was falling apart as the result of various abuses. Producer Bruce Botnick originally planned to record the entire album with session musicians backing Lee and MacLean but after two tracks had been recorded in this way the rest of the band were stung into producing the discipline required to complete the rest of the album in only 64 hours. Writer Richard Meltzer, in his The Aesthetics of Rock, comments on Love's "orchestral moves", "post-doper word contraction cuteness" and Lee's vocal style that serves as a "reaffirmation of Johnny Mathis". Forever Changes included one modest hit single, the MacLean-written "Alone Again Or", while "You Set the Scene" went on to receive airplay from some progressive rock radio stations. By this stage, Love were far more popular in the UK, where the album reached #24, than in their home country, where it could only reach #154. Love, did, however, have a strong following in the U.S. at the time among cognoscenti of the cutting edge.


1968-2006
MacLean, suffering from heroin addiction, soon left the band, as did all the other members except Lee. Echols and Forssi also fell prey to the ravages of heroin addiction and disappeared from the scene. Arthur Lee and a reconstituted Love continued to record fitfully until the late 1970s before finally disbanding. The new version of Love, which included Jay Donnellan and Gary Rowles on guitars, Frank Fayad on bass, and George Suranovich on drums as well as Lee, played in a style very different from the band's previous line-up.

After spending six years in prison in the 1990s for firearms offences, Arthur Lee began to play Love's classic songs in concert by reuniting with the members of Baby Lemonade. In the early 2000s, co-founder of Love and original guitarist Johnny Echols rejoined his partner, Arthur Lee, in this line-up and performed as "Love with Arthur Lee and Johnny Echols". This reformed group toured for several years, frequently performing Forever Changes in its entirety.

Bryan MacLean died in Los Angeles of a massive heart attack on December 25, 1998, while having dinner with a young fan who was researching a book about the band. He was 52. Arthur Lee died in Memphis, Tenn., on August 3, 2006, of complications from leukemia. He was 61.


The Album
Love is the eponymous debut by the Los Angeles-based band Love. Twelve of the album's fourteen tracks were recorded at Sunset Sound Recorders in Hollywood on January 24-27, 1966. The remaining two tracks ("A Message To Pretty" and "My Flash On You") come from another, undocumented session.

One of the first rock albums issued on then-folk giant Elektra Records, the album was anchored by the group's radical reworking of the Burt Bacharach-Hal David song "My Little Red Book" which had guitar riffs that gave Syd Barrett some inspiration to write the Pink Floyd song "Interstellar Overdrive" which is on Pink Floyd's album The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, the anti-drug anthem "Signed D.C." (allegedly a reference to one-time Love drummer Don Conka), and the poignant "A Message to Pretty". The stark instrumental "Emotions" is used uncredited in Haskell Wexler's 1969 film Medium Cool as a recurring theme.

"My Little Red Book" was featured over the final credits of the movie "High Fidelity" in 2000 starring John Cusack and Jack Black







Love-Love @320

1 My Little Red Book (Mono Mix)
2 Can't Explain (Mono Mix)
3 A Message To Pretty (Mono Mix)
4 My Flash On You (Mono Mix)
5 Softly To Me (Mono Mix)
6 No Matter What You Do (Mono Mix)
7 Emotions (Mono Mix)
8 You I'll Be Following (Mono Mix)
9 Gazing (Mono Mix)
10 Hey Joe (Mono Mix)
11 Signed D.C. (Mono Mix)
12 Coloured Balls Falling (Mono Mix)
13 Mushroom Clouds (Mono Mix)
14 And More (Mono Mix)
15 My Little Red Book (Stereo Mix)
16 Can't Explain (Stereo Mix)
17 A Message To Pretty (Stereo Mix)
18 My Flash On You (Stereo Mix)
19 Softly To Me (Stereo Mix)
20 No Matter What You Do (Stereo Mix)
21 Emotions (Stereo Mix)
22 You I'll Be Following (Stereo Mix)
23 Gazing (Stereo Mix)
24 Hey Joe (Stereo Mix)
25 Signed D.C. (Stereo Mix)
26 Coloured Balls Falling (Stereo Mix)
27 Mushroom Clouds (Stereo Mix)
28 And More (Stereo Mix)
BONUS TRACKS
29 Number 14
30 Signed D.C. (Alternate Version / Previously Unissued)




Here:

pt1: sharebee.com/3182dfeb
pt2: sharebee.com/6fa765a4
ps: echoesof-the-past.blogspot.com