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Last Update:
06.
november 2003
Dear Friends:
Fuller
Up, The Dead Musician Directory Obituary from Rolling Stone, issue 806, February 18, 1999 Bryan MacLean: 1946-1998 Love guitarist dead at 52 Bryan MacLean, a founding singer and guitarist for the legendary band Love, died on December 25th at age fifty-two. MacLean suffered apparent heart failure in a Los Angeles restaurant where he was dining with Kevin Delaney, a writer currently working on a Love biography. Born on September 25th, 1946, MacLean, an L.A. native, did not pick up the guitar until he was seventeen. But he was a precocious composer. His first song, "Orange Skies," was later recorded by Love for the 1967 album Da Capo. MacLean also worked as the Byrds' road manager before joining Love's charter lineup in 1965. Love's innovative fusion of jazzy soul, folk rock and Who-ish punk was the brainchild of leader Arthur Lee, who also dominated the band's songwriting. But MacLean's writing style - an elegant melange of raga, flamenco, classical music and Broadway-theater balladry - was a vital influence on Love's sound, and he contributed four of the best-loved songs on the original group's three great Elektra LPs: "Softly to Me," on the 1966 debut, Love; "Orange Skies"; and "Alone Again Or" and "Old Man" on the '67 orchestral- pop beauty Forever Changes. Despite their name, Love were a fractious band, and MacLean quit in 1968. He left the music business two years later to devote himself to Christianity. "I needed to go back and grow up," he told me in 1997, "to take care of things that I ran away from in adolescence and to let the rock-star thing wear off." But MacLean continued writing music during the next three decades. His half sister, Maria McKee, recorded "Don't Toss Us Away" in 1985 with her band Lone Justice; singer Patty Loveless had a country hit with the song in 1988. MacLean died in the midst of a career renaissance. In 1997, Sundazed Music issued Ifyoubelievein, a collection of his home demos, many from MacLean's Love days. And MacLean, who recently finished an album of Christian music, was to record new material this year for what was to be his first official pop-solo release. -- David Fricke
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