Love
Forever Changes (Elektra Traditions/Rhino)
Smoke tendrils drift heavenward tracing out shimmering images—brief glimpses and snatches of an evocative, almost paradisiacal landscape, a place where “all of God’s children gotta have their freedom.” Hummingbirds hum while a bluebird sits contentedly on a branch. Strings swell and soar on wave after wave of breathtaking melody. A blissed-out reverie accompanied by the gentle strum of guitar, a midsummer night’s dream keyed to trumpet fanfare. Put simply, Love’s Forever Changes, recently remastered and expanded as part of Rhino’s Elektra Traditions series, is the quintessential psychedelic time capsule. And if that bit of critical reductionism implies a dated curio, trust me, this long-acknowledged classic is timeless—a work of uncommon beauty.
Led by resident genius (every band of the era had one) Arthur Lee and gifted lyricist/vocalist/ guitarist Bryan MacLean, Love fashioned a volatile if somewhat uneasy marriage of Nuggets-identified proto-punk, Byrds-inspired folk rock, and fey, Latin-tinged pop. By 1967, as L.A.’s preeminent underground club act, the band had already released two moderately successful, critically well-received albums and two blistering singles—the horny Bacharach-David recontextualization “My Little Red Book” and the Armageddon-invoking “7 and 7 Is.” Even a brief (and need I add, subjective) roll call of that year’s landmark works—The Velvet Underground and Nico, Moby Grape, Wild Honey, Buffalo Springfield Again, Are You Experienced?, the then-unreleased Basement Tapes, and of course Sgt. Pepper’s—reveals an environment of tremendous artistic fecundity, an unprecedented creative moment in which each release proffered a barely veiled challenge. Surprisingly, Love was up to the task.
In fact, if you’ll forgive yet another critical shorthand, Forever Changes functions as the id to The Greatest Album of All Time’s super ego. Where Sgt. Pepper’s is a self-consciously crafted, exquisitely detailed “work of art,” Love’s third effort feels more organic, the love child of serendipity and an unbridled aspiration far exceeding its creators’ amateurish grasp. Over time, the Beatles’ wildly celebrated work has been overwhelmed by its staggering reputation; beneath the weight of history’s unreasonably lofty pronouncements, rock ’n’ roll’s crowning achievement often sounds fussy, overdetermined, even claustrophobic. On the other hand, Forever Changes continues to surprise, like the elliptical dispatches of an ever-unspooling musical subconscious—a subconscious that ultimately belies the “All You Need Is Love” ethos for the dangerous half-truth it is.
Not that Love’s offering wasn’t just as “constructed” as its more glamorous cousin. As the work tapes, demos, and outtakes that augment the current package make clear, Forever Changes’ seemingly effortless grace was the deliberate if nonetheless unlikely product of Lee’s painstaking, sometimes dictatorial studio machinations. Over a four-month recording period, the group effectively exorcised its garage-band roots, producing a sprightly yet resilient acoustic framework that grounded the songwriter’s ambitious orchestral concept.
Despite its inauspicious backstory, Forever Changes unfolds as a seamless whole, both natural and unforced. The strings whip the band’s sumptuous melodies into a frothy confection. The horns provide color and commentary, punctuating the record’s mesmeric flow. Judiciously parceled electric guitar fills provide muscle and a hint of menace while the songs’ multipartite structures dazzle and confound like an extended foray in a musical fun house. And atop this delicate sonic alchemy, Lee’s wryly genteel vocals channel a tripped-out Johnny Mathis—bemused, ironically detached, the master of ceremonies as grinning satyr.
Understandably, the album’s plush aural playground tends to distract from trivialities such as artistic intent and meaning. Lee’s (and MacLean’s) surreal lyrical content is often overlooked or, worse yet, dismissed as stream-of-consciousness fluff, the pleasant if ultimately impenetrable ramblings of a drug-addled mind. Even the usually forthright Dave Marsh, a longtime Forever Changes adherent, can only muster a limp (and somewhat misleading) “curiously passionate love songs” when forced to deconstruct the album’s “inchoate” lyrics.
Obsessed with premonitions of imminent death, Lee spiked his masterwork with a roiling sea of darkly subversive undercurrents. The hummingbirds’ hum surrenders to visions of entropy and breakdown. The bluebird, an unsuspecting trespasser, is summarily executed. And the inalienable rights of “God’s children” are undercut by the petulant whine, “I want my freedom.” From L.A.’s slight remove, Northern California’s prepackaged Summer of Love seemed just another alluring, ultimately illusory shadowplay. In this context, even the lead track’s seemingly benign tag line “people are the greatest fun” registers as vaguely sinister, if not willfully perverse.
This is a sentiment the darkly insinuating “A House Is Not a Motel” only serves to reinforce. After urging the listener to search his home for shackles, Lee whispers of impending war and unrest. Soon, L.A.’s glittering streets, “paved with gold,” are awash in blood. The instrumental outro portends ominous visions of chaos and confusion. A roughed-up guitar lead is quickly subsumed in pulses of acid-damaged distortion and feedback as barely discernable voices howl and plead deep in the mix. The songwriter’s construction houses restless ghosts and simmering violence.
Though Forever Changes rarely veers so precipitously into apocalyptic territory, grave potentialities linger in the work’s hidden recesses. The album benefits from an undeniable creative frisson, a palpable tension between its surface pleasures and its deeply conflicted soul. As Lee vows to “face each day with a smile” while riding a surge of triumphal horns to the album’s close, the listener senses a hard-fought (though somewhat ironic) victory over personal and public demons. “There’ll be a time for you to start all over,” the singer declares—a time for forever changes.
And change he did. Despite an encouraging critical reception, Forever Changes was a commercial flop, peaking at No. 154 on Billboard’s album chart. Soon after, the band members surrendered to their indolent tendencies. Following a brilliant, unintended farewell single, “Your Mind and We Belong Together” b/w “Laughing Stock” (which concludes the Elektra Traditions package), Lee parted with his original mates. Though the singer/songwriter’s subsequent efforts released under the Love brand name stand in relative disrepute, the peaks—notably, Four Sail and False Start—certainly match the original configuration’s earliest releases. Still, such minor distinctions seem trifling in the wake of Forever Changes’ accomplishment, an album whose legend has long outlasted that of its creators.
In the past, Love has been described as L.A.’s answer to the Velvet Underground—an attractive syllogism that quickly unravels under even cursory scrutiny. Though Lee’s band rivaled the Velvets for sheer musical breadth, it fell far short in conception, execution, and lasting import. That said, I’ll take Forever Changes over any of the fabled Manhattanites’ releases—even The Velvet Underground, with its hushed intimacy and fractured lyricism. Forever Changes is genuine desert-island material.
