Love: Forever Changes

Some explosions leave more rubble than cleared ground. In his original review of Alexander "Skip" Spence's 1969 album Oar, Greil Marcus wrote of record-store bargain bins overcrowded with the fallout of psychedelia, an undifferentiated mass of swirling day-glo which he feared the one-time Moby Grape member's off-kilter debut would eventually join. An acquired taste if ever there was one, the eccentric Oar was up against stacked odds from the first, for reasons other than the sheer number of releases pitched at the peace-loving longhair crowd. But why did Love's Forever Changes get lost, too The third album from the racially integrated L.A. band, now resurfacing in a deluxe remastered edition, Forever Changes first appeared in the fall of 1967. Today, it feels like a sonic snapshot of the Summer Of Love as it entered autumn, the right album at the right moment. Consisting largely of acoustic songs set against a background of strings with the odd flamenco flourish, Forever Changes sounds like a response to the innovations put forward by The Beatles and The Beach Boys while adding twists unique to the Sunset Strip scene and frontman Arthur Lee's own twisted psyche. "And the water's turned to blood / And if you don't think so, go turn on your tub," Lee sings on the apocalyptic "A House Is Not A Hotel," and the bad trip he's on sounds like the undoing of an entire historical moment, a utopia turned to nightmare. Though Bryan MacLean contributes two tracks, including the superb "Alone Again Or," the tone of apocalyptic pop Lee sets is what carries through the album. But then, who wants to hear that the good times are drying up In retrospect, it's not hard to see Forever Changes as a link between the first explosion of psychedelic optimism and the darker sounds then emerging from Love's labelmate The Doors and Lee's friend Jimi Hendrix. But at first, all those foreboding lyrics set to sunny melodies must have sounded too far ahead of their time, or too much of it. Lee was convinced his contributions would be the last before his death. Given his troubled life since then, it's comforting to think he might have summoned up some of the resigned despair of his band's enduring, if overlooked, classic.