Friday Flashback: Love Is More Than Words

Some memorable run-ins with the late, great, exceedingly complicated Arthur Lee

Greetings, Jagged Time Lapsers!

First of all, I’d like to welcome all my new JTL subscribers to the party, and thank all my subscribers old and new for keeping this Substack thang afloat with your support. It’s often a hard slog being a freelance writer, both because you’re almost always waiting for outlets to pay you for work you did months ago, and because it can sometimes be difficult to tell if the work you’ve put your heart and soul into is actually connecting with your readers.

Thankfully, this format enables me to get almost instant feedback from the likes o’ youse, and this subscription model (combined with the generous support of my paid subscribers) has turned Jagged Time Lapse into a freelance outlet I can consistently count upon, without ever having to beg Accounts Payable to cut me a long-overdue check. So, to all of you who are supporting my writing, giving me encouragement, and helping me keep the lights on over here, I send my heartfelt thanks and undying love.

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And speaking of Love…

Today I’m reposting one of my favorite JTL pieces — one which originally ran back in March 2023, well before most of my current subscribers were onboard over here, so most of you will be seeing it for the first time. I was inspired to blow the dust off of it because a) It serves as a nice appetizer for the forthcoming CROSSED CHANNELS podcast, in which

Tony Fletcher

and I discuss Arthur Lee and Love (and which will be up next week), and b) My girlfriend and I will be seeing Love Revisited — a.k.a. my old L.A. pals from Baby Lemonade with original Love lead guitarist Johnny Echols — in Scotland two weeks from today. So I’m in a heavy Love mood at the moment, which is never a bad thing. Hopefully this post will put you in one, too…

The first Love record I ever owned was 1967’s Forever Changes, which I purchased — on the same fateful October 1986 New York City record shopping excursion that led me to the my first copy of the third Velvets LP — without ever having heard a note of it. I was familiar with their earlier singles “My Little Red Book” and “7 & 7 Is” via oldies radio shows and various compilations, and had dug them mightily, but I’d read that Forever Changes was a whole different ballgame. My knowledge of classic psychedelia was still pretty limited at the time, but my interest (both in the music and the drugs that inspired it) was growing, and the fact that some critics considered Forever Changes THEE greatest psych LP of all time meant that I absolutely needed to seek it out.

But when I got my copy back to my dorm room and popped it onto the turntable, I felt initially confused and underwhelmed. From all the raves and descriptions I’d read, I was expecting something along the lines of mind-frying, wall-warping, color-spraying psychedelia — not this hushed, quasi-elegant affair with acoustic guitars and Johnny Mathis-esque vocals.

At first, I thought the record’s slew of rave reviews must have been another example of rock critic over-hype… but then I listened to it a few more times, and then a few more times after that with headphones. And with each spin, the subtle brilliance of the album revealed itself, and its colors (and striking lyrical images) within gradually came to vivid life. Two months later, I found myself standing at the top of L.A.’s Barnsdall Park singing “Sitting on a hillside/Watching all the people die” to myself and trying to imagine what the city below must have looked like during the smog-choked “Summer of Love” when Forever Changes was written.

Over the next three years, I managed to hunt down all of Love’s albums, as well as Arthur’s post-Love solo work, which was not an easy task in the days before the internet, eBay, etc. I obsessively memorized and absorbed every single word and note of these records, finding things to love about even the lesser efforts. I loved the idea of Love almost as much as the music itself — a fiercely intelligent, musically diverse, multi-racial unit who were so supremely cool that even The Doors looked up to them…

1969’s Four Sail was the real revelation to me, though; it was generally written off in those days as being a disappointing follow-up to Forever Changes — largely because Arthur had replaced all of the original members other than himself by this point, and how could the band possibly be as good without the ethereal presence of beautiful white guy Bryan MacLean? — but I thought it was every bit an impressive listen in its own ornery way. Plus, it contained the exact sort of searing guitar interplay I’d hoped to find on Forever Changes. (I once called Four Sail “Forever Changes’ unwashed biker cousin” in the pages of Ugly Things, and it’s an assessment I continue to stand by.)

Love was a major influence on my post-college band Lava Sutra. I tried to sing like Arthur, tried to cop some of his oddball chord progressions (and even straight-up nicked the guitar intro to “Robert Montgomery”) for our own compositions, while Love classics “My Flash On You,” “Can’t Explain,” “You I’ll Be Following,” “Gather Round” and the heavied-out Out Here version of “Signed D.C.” all made it into our setlists at some point. However, I was wise enough to realize that Arthur’s innate ability to poetically mix beauty with horror, wonder with brutality, and street-smart attitudes with cosmic observations was well beyond my reach; the man had a serious lyrical gift, and I wasn’t even going to try to emulate it.

By this point — the early ‘90s — Arthur was laying extremely low in Los Angeles, purportedly a burned-out shadow of his former self, but I’d heard word of him occasionally resurfacing for the odd gig. So in August 1993, when I left Lava Sutra and moved from Chicago to Los Angeles, witnessing a live performance by Arthur Lee was tops on my to-do list. I didn’t have to wait long; within a week or two of arriving, I saw an ad in the paper for an upcoming Arthur Lee gig at the Palomino, and practically ran to the nearest Musicland outlet to snap up some tickets for me, my girlfriend Carole and my Uncle John, since I was so afraid that the show would sell out on us.

I shouldn’t have worried; by that time, Arthur was pretty much L.A.’s forgotten man, and there were maybe 50 people at the show, if that. I held my breath as he took the stage, hoping that I wasn’t about to see one of my all-time rock heroes embarrass himself, but kept my expectations low just the same. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised — shocked, even — by how good Arthur looked, how beautifully he sang, and how well his band of young backing musicians seemed to know Love’s more complex material. I wrote a rave review of the show for the LA Reader, and after attending several more gigs eventually got to know the guys in his band, some local cats about my age who also made music of their own under the name Baby Lemonade.

Mike Randle, Baby Lemonade’s dynamite lead guitarist, became an especially dear friend of mine — one I’m still close with to this day. Mike has the best Arthur Lee stories, but I’m not gonna share any of those here; Mike’s been working on a book that will include them all, and I don’t want to steal his thunder. But I do have a few Arthur stories of my own…

I was honestly scared shitless of Arthur from the very first time I was ever in the same room with him. Sure, some of it was just me being intimidated/starstruck by someone whose music I adored, but the dude also had a presence that was seriously heavy. Plus, I’d heard many rumors and stories through the years about how he would cruelly fuck with people just for the sheer hell of it — even if it meant shooting his own career in the foot in the process — and I really didn’t want to come face-to-face with that aspect of his personality. At the second gig we attended, I asked Carole to get Arthur’s autograph for me, because I was just too freaked out to go up and ask him myself. She did, and told me when she came back to our table with a signed CD booklet that he’d seemed really quiet and nice. Hmmm… I didn’t buy it.

Every Arthur Lee and Baby Lemonade gig I saw in late ‘93/early ‘94 was absolutely brilliant. There was one particularly memorable one at a fancy-schmantzy Sunset Strip nightclub called Bar One, which for whatever reason had one night a week hosted by former Motley Crue frontman Vince Neil, who wound up booking Arthur and the boys to play on one of his nights. Vince and his band were supposed to play afterwards, but Arthur’s set was so ferociously, jaw-droppingly badass that they decided not to even bother. There was no stage in the place — the bands just set up in a corner of the floor — but I swear to the gods that I actually saw Arthur levitate during an extended jam on “Singing Cowboy,” floating over to where me and my friend Eric stood to shake his maracas in our face, grinning evilly all the while.

[EDIT: I should hereby state for the historical record that Vince spent the rest of the evening drinking and brooding in his “private booth” while wearing the most absurd pair of yak boots imaginable.]

Unfortunately, as word got out that Arthur was “back,” and he and Baby Lemonade began to play larger venues to bigger crowds, he began to act more erratically onstage. It was not unusual for him to pause between songs to tell any number of O.J. Simpson jokes, or offer “private guitar lessons” to an attractive woman in the audience. And then there was that time in 1994 when he and Love were booked on a bill with L.A. psych legends Spirit — who at this point were basically just guitarist/singer Randy California, drummer Ed Cassidy, and somebody covering the rest of the parts on a synthesizer. While I was watching Spirit’s opening set from next to the soundboard, Arthur came up beside me and began to heckle them loudly and mercilessly from where we stood — and after every jibe, he’d turn and elbow me hard in the ribs with a hearty “Heh heh!” For instance…

Randy California [introducing a cover of “Red House” by Jimi Hendrix]: You know, the thing about Jimi, man, not a lot of people know this, but he loved children, man. Jimi really loved children.

Arthur Lee [loud enough that the whole damn room can hear him]: He hated you! He hated you! I know — he told me! [To me] Heh heh heh! Got him good that time!

Of course, I always wanted to interview Arthur about Love’s sweeter days, even though I knew that it was probably a fool’s errand. I was trying to get my foot in the door at MOJO in those days, and figured an Arthur interview would be a sure-fire way in, so I pitched it to Barney Hoskyns, one of the editors there at the time. When Barney replied that they could indeed use a short interview about the making of Forever Changes, I asked Mike Randle to put me in touch with Arthur’s then-manager so I could set something up. After a week or so, the manager got back to me with a phone number for Arthur and a time to call him.

I was nervous as hell. For one thing, this was Arthur Lee. For another, this assignment was for MOJO. And to make matters even more nerve-wracking, this was also the first-ever phone interview I’d done with anyone; I remember frantically running over to the Radio Shack on Wilshire Boulevard to buy a suction-cup microphone that would connect my office phone receiver to my blocky hand-held cassette recorder, and praying that it would actually work.

It would have been so cool if the interview had gone well… but alas, it did not. From the moment he picked up the phone, Arthur was obviously in a foul mood; either he had not been informed of our interview, or he’d completely forgotten about it, or maybe he just wanted to hear me squirm.

“Who gave you my number?” he demanded. I told him that I had set up the interview with his manager, who had given it to me. “Let me tell you something, man,” he replied testily, “[name of manager] is not my manager. And he is not my father, my brother or my mother, either.”

Okay, I said, but I still wanted to interview him for MOJO magazine, so —

“Look here,” he cut me off. “You’re calling me when I’m busy watching The Beverly Hillbillies! This is my time!”

I honestly can’t remember if I convinced him to stay on the line with me, or if I called him back after The Beverly Hillbillies drew to its hilarity-filled conclusion, but the interview did eventually get done. Getting each answer from him was like pulling teeth, however, and on the rare occasions when he did offer up a lengthier response it was mostly to talk shit about everyone else who’d been involved with Forever Changes — especially Neil Young, who was initially supposed to produce the album (an idea Arthur was never on board with). A short Q&A eventually ran in MOJO, but it wasn’t either of our’s best work.

Still, as deeply mortifying as that whole experience was, I hung on to Arthur’s phone number, simply because I got a kick out of being able to flip through my office rolodex and see it pop up, something I couldn’t have even conceived of a decade earlier. Ditto for the voicemail I got one day on my office line from Alban “Snoopy” Pfisterer, who had played drums on the first Love album and keyboards on the second; he was looking to get in touch with Arthur, so I figured I should probably call Arthur and pass Snoopy’s info along, rather than just give out Arthur’s number. Much to my relief, I got Arthur’s answering machine, so I just left a message to the effect that Snoopy wanted to talk to him. I gave him Snoopy’s number, and out of habit I must have left my own.

About two months later, I was down in Austin for the 1996 SXSW Music Festival; one evening, exhausted from a long day of trying to fit as many shows into my itinerary (and as much beer and barbecue down my gullet) as possible, I retired early to my hotel room and decided to check my work voicemail. “Hey man, it’s Arthur,” growled a familiar voice. “Call me back!” Well, what the hell…

The Arthur I got this time was the polar opposite of the one I’d tried to interview — soft-spoken, funny and exceedingly charming. He couldn’t seem to remember why he’d called me, but he definitely remembered who I was. “How are things over at The Reader?” he asked. I told him that I’d left him a message a while back about Snoopy, though I was currently in Texas and didn’t have his number on me. “Oh yeah, that Snoopy, he’s a trip,” Arthur chuckled.

I expected him to hang up at that point, but he kept talking; about new songs he was writing, about the Baby Lemonade guys, about switching back and forth between being a vegetarian and a carnivore. I don’t know if he was high, or bored, or lonely, but he clearly wanted to shoot the shit. And it’s not like I really had anything better to do at that point in the evening than shoot the shit with Arthur Lee…

That was the last time I ever spoke to Arthur. His arrest on the firearms charge came soon afterwards, followed by the court case, the prison sentence, the comeback and the leukemia. He was a brilliant, deep and profoundly complicated man; I certainly got to see his unpleasant side, but I’m thankful that I got to experience his lighter and sweeter side as well, if only for a 20 minute phone call. Best of all, though, is that I got to see him in action when he was hungry again, and when he was backed by a band that not only knew his stuff cold but also pushed him to give the music his all. Ultimately, that’s the face of Arthur Lee I will always see.

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