| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| DaveyTee |
Posted - 09/08/2006 : 09:17:18
Quite a lengthy obituary appeared in The Scotsman newspaper. As you have to register with The Scotsman site to get access to it, I've copied it below. Interesting that most of the serious UK papers have given major space to Arthur's death - has this also happened in the USA and elsewhere?
From The Scotsman:
Arthur Lee
Musician
Born: 7 May, 1945, in Memphis, Tennessee.
Died: 3 August, 2006, in Memphis, aged 61.
ARTHUR Lee succeeded in forging a legacy as one of rock music's great visionaries and forbidding eccentrics.
He established himself as the first black rock star of the post-Beatles era and fronted his band, Love, through astonishing musical changes that have continued to resonate for other rockers and a cult of critics and fans.
Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant cited the influence of Lee and Love in his acceptance speech at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.
But Love also became one of the first burnout bands of the 1960s, and with Lee's death, only three members survive of the eight who were in the band between 1965 and 1967.
Dogged by in-band squabbling, substance abuse and Lee's reluctance to tour, the first version of Love was finished by 1968, although Lee continued using the band name to record and perform at least sporadically for the rest of his life.
He was imprisoned from 1996 to 2001 on a weapons charge, but after his release he had new energy and a new story to tell that led to a resurgence for a time in concerts, including a 2003 performance in London, available on DVD, in which Lee was able to recreate Love's masterpiece album, Forever Changes, backed by a sharp, four-man rock band and an orchestra of horns and strings.
Love's first three albums were indeed forever changing. They yielded eloquent folk-rock on the 1966 debut, Love, the first rock record ever released by Elektra Records, and jazz-inflected rock with a flute player added to the lineup on the follow-up, Da Capo.
That album also included the explosive hard rock of the band's lone Top 40 single, 7 and 7 is - a song that ended with the sound of an atom bomb exploding and foreshadowed late-1970s punk rock by ten years. In 1967 came Forever Changes, a gorgeous, haunting song cycle infused with classical horns and strings.
Lee was born Arthur Porter Taylor. His mother, Agnes, was a schoolteacher; he saw little of his father, Chester Taylor, who was a cornet player. When he was five, he and his mother moved to Los Angeles. Six years later, she married Clinton Lee, a carpenter and plumber. Lee began taking accordion lessons as a child and by his mid-teens was playing keyboards in Los Angeles clubs.
Besides helping to hasten rock's acquisition of a wide range of stylistic possibilities, Love played a crucial role in Los Angeles' early rock history. By 1965, the Byrds had created a Hollywood folk-rock scene. When Lee and his guitar-playing boyhood friend, Johnny Echols, saw the Byrds, they decided folk-rock was the way to go, rather than the Booker T & the MGs-style rhythm and blues they had been playing.
Love's racially integrated lineup - Lee and Echols were black, MacLean, bassist Ken Forssi, and drummers Don Conka, Alban "Snoopy" Pfisterer and Michael Stuart were white - forged a model that the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Sly and the Family Stone and War would follow to much greater stardom. Echols said that he and Lee met Hendrix while he was still R&B sideman Jimmy James, and that Hendrix took fashion cues from the flamboyantly dressed Lee.
Intent on bringing his New York-based Elektra label into the rock era, Jac Holzman rifled through newspaper club listings on a trip to Los Angeles and thought the name Love looked interesting.
What he saw was Lee fronting the band in a motley pre-hippie outfit. "It was just a sight, their take on things was so interesting, and the girls in the club were so into what they were doing," Holzman said. He quickly got an inkling that, in Lee, he wasn't dealing with a typical fellow.
"He was one of those people you know is likely to do something terrible to you or around you," Holzman said, "but you like him so much and he's so talented that you always support him." Holzman said he trusted Lee's musical judgment enough to check out a band he recommended called the Doors - and to keep going back after he didn't initially think much of them, because Lee kept saying the Doors were special. In return, the Doors apparently considered Love to be "the coolest band around".
After the first version of Love disbanded, Lee found new musicians and made a pair of albums, Four Sail and Out Here, that showed continued songwriting strength. Hendrix accompanied him on False Start from 1970.
Then Lee fell from the spotlight for the better part of two decades, re-emerging in 1989.
Then, in 1993, he connected with a new set of young admirers, the interracial Los Angeles pop-rock band Baby Lemonade, who became the next and last incarnation of Love, billed now as Love With Arthur Lee. It became the steadiest, most enduring line-up of Lee's career. He toured regularly until his 1996 sentencing, then picked up with the same players after his release in 2001.
Lee and guitarists Mike Randle and Rusty Squeezebox worked on new material and in 2005 were confident about landing a new contract. But Lee did not rise to the occasion. He could be brilliant and focused, Randle said, but last year he began to miss gigs or show up only to stand on stage without singing.
"When he was sober, he was the sweetest, most giving man on the planet," Randle said. "But I would say he was sober 15 per cent of the time. The rest was dealing with him and not trying to take it personally." Early this year, Lee moved from Toluca Lake to his birthplace, Memphis.
Lee married his longtime girlfriend, Diane, near the end of his life. He had no children.
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| astrolobe33 |
Posted - 09/08/2006 : 15:43:29
Oops! I know you really meant 7TH March '45... |
| John E |
Posted - 09/08/2006 : 13:43:16
Nice piece, but they've got Arthur's birth-date wrong. It is of course
3rd March 1945 (not May). Arthur was a Pisces through and through!
I believe The Daily Telegraph also got it wrong, interpreting 7/3 as
3rd July (i.e. the American way round). Love, John E |
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