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| FOREVER CHANGES--Love |
I caught
wind that 2017 would be the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Love's
seminal record, Forever Changes—an occasion I could not let glide
past without a dutiful, a tribute, listen to the revered 1967 album. I was
mesmerized all over again by a shimmering range of materials: an acidic rock
guitar, martial rhythms, sad, almost mocking Mariachi horn sorties, a Spanish
guitar and tango beats, lush arrangements, MOR pop-jazz, and the cunning skill
to write the sort of private lyric that drew the listener closer to the
speaker, thirsting for the words, yet cruelly denying a comforting, a vulgar,
assurance.
There were
menacing undercurrents beneath the fleeting elegance, an album full of wide
roads, sharp terms, and an almost unbearable, idyllic optimism. It was as if
Arthur Lee, that vibrant vocalist and principal songwriter, had absorbed every
note of music—from every style that poured, a glittering sludge, from Los
Angeles radio—blending them with a master’s will, providing a true, an original
thing, something no one had, in all probability, ever heard before. It remains
a fascinating and dramatic document; it’s damn good music. The way this disc
moves, a chameleon on a plaid fabric, from one mood to the next, quickly but
not jarringly, from upbeat, dance-happy jazz to the serene yet melancholic
textures, shades, and tonalities the orchestrations create as they play over
the solid rock band base, remains amazing and, I think, utterly unequaled.
The Beatles
were antecedents, of course, in their clever employ of diverse musical styles
in their songs, mixing them up in ways rock and roll songwriters hadn't
imagined up to that time. But a major element of Lee's and Love's success in
diving headlong into that choppy eclecticism was a certain fastidiousness, an
avoidance of the limitless disasters of others who attempted their own, clumsy
versions of Sgt. Pepper.
Not all the
music on Forever Changes has aged well, alas. Lee’s lyrics
sometimes become a murmuring stream of hippie know-nothingism—a kind of
spiritual slumming. The guitar solos, though mercifully brief, are likewise
cringe-inducing, those atonal fuzz tone blasts that sour the album’s otherwise
sublime arrangements. Where, one wonders, were Hendrix and Clapton when their
savvy on the frets was so desperately needed?
All told,
this is only a nitpicking, a minor quibble, a footnote to genius. The record is
of its time and still creates a spell fifty years later. Arthur Lee was one of
the greatest of rock singers as well, an ironic commentary on identity
politics; we see this in his beautiful crooner style, which echoes the
under-considered talent of Johnny Mathis and Sammy Davis Jr., two pioneering
black performers who honed singing styles that were smooth, gallant, and
perfectly acceptable to large white audiences. We also see it in the way Lee
mastered the grunting, gravelly, slurring style of British singers like Mick
Jagger and Eric Burdon—two singers who tried to replicate the sound of their
heroes Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf but who, lacking the true vocal apparatus,
wound up creating a style of singing that was itself appealing and a valid
means of personal expression. Lee was equally smitten with both styles and
mingled them throughout his oeuvre; the silky croon and gruff belt combined for
an unexpected effect, mysterious and suggestively unique.
Two songs
particularly have remained with me these fifty years since I first heard this
record, melodies, chords, and winsome vocals that echo still amidst the
accumulated memories: the opening song, and the album's final song. The first,
written by the guitarist and singer Bryan MacLean, is the exquisitely flawless
"Alone Again Or." It begins faintly, a ghost of sound, volume slowly
increasing, a Spanish guitar and a sharp, insistent report of a small drum kit,
simple and elegantly finger-picked chords that bring us a confession of a kind,
a soul reaching out to a lover who leaves him alone in his isolation. The
second verse is a declaration, a statement of personal purpose:
"I
heard a funny thing /somebody said to me /you know that I could be in love with
almost everyone, I think that people are/The greatest fun…."
As the
melody charges, segues into a stirring horn solo and again fades off and then
builds momentum, we have the genius of the album, a mix of insight and naivete
trying to balance them out, contained in a gorgeous, simple framework.
MacLean's forlorn disquisition is about the battle of a man trying to bring
clarity to the many sensations his senses brought him. Each day a new hope,
every afternoon the same confusions of elation and sadness, each night a
solitude that embraces the narrator as fully as the sleep that will come over
him and so prepare him for the morning.
The album's
last tune, Lee’s masterpiece, is "You Set the Scene," a fascinating
stitchery of the kind of rush discotheque pulse where everything is noticed and
reality becomes a druggy collage. Details are word fragments, phrases, and
images that do not follow each other in a logical order; it is as good a
description of an acid trip as I’ve listened to. The trippy pulse of the first
section segues into the steady, marching stride of the second portion. Horns
blare a hearkening fanfare, drums kick in with a steady, even gait, and the
narrator seems to have crashed from his high after a vision and now allows his
eyes to scour the hillsides and valleys and consider, finally, the kind of
future he’d like to live in.
"Everything
I've seen needs rearranging /And for anyone who thinks it's strange/Then you
should be the first to want to make this change/And for everyone who thinks
that life is just a game/Do you like the part you're playing?"
Yes, this
smacks of the old counterculture conceits, the young man, smitten with The
Truth, saying farewell to parents and old friends to become genuinely
authentic. But Lee’s imagination prevents this from becoming a preposterous
demonstration. Lee’s voice soars, croons, quivers, strains effectively on high
notes, floating with confidence over the increasingly dynamic horn arrangement.
This is a march into the future; it astonishes me how magnificent this music
still sounds fifty years on. Forever Changes, Love's third album,
is considered by many to be the best American response to the Beatles'
bar-raising disc Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. As is too
often the case, Lee’s greatest creative period was short-lived; drugs, jail,
eccentricity, and erratic behavior prevented him from regaining the heights he
reached with Forever Changes.
