Arthur Lee seems so embedded in the 1960s that it's hard to imagine him existing outside that decade. Strongly influenced by the baroque folk-pop of the Byrds, his smart, steely psychedelia conveyed a dark vision of hippie America-- a distinct contrast to the good vibrations typically associated with the Summer of Love. That was the same year-- 1967, for those of you who don't read Rolling Stone (which I think might be everybody)-- that Lee and his band Love released its scene-paranoid masterpiece Forever Changes, on which he painted himself as a true L.A. outsider, haunting the scrub-brush hills and looking deep into the dark heart of the city around him. In those songs, he foretells his own doom, and everyone else's: On "The Red Telephone", he sings, "Sitting on the hillside/ Watching all the people die/ I'll feel much better on the other side."
Following Forever Changes, Lee dissolved the now-classic Love line-up-- including songwriter Bryan McLean and childhood friend Johnny Echols-- and reformed the band with an entirely different cast of characters for his final Elektra album, Four Sail, in 1969. Lacking Echols' effortless inventiveness on guitar, Jay Donnellan was a perfect foil for Lee, and the rhythm section of Frank Fayad on bass and George Suranovich on drums lent a lean menace to their jams. Lee originally intended Four Sail as an epic double album, but the label whittled it down to a short ten tracks, including opener "August" and closer "Always See Your Face". The remaining tracks were released by Bob Krasnow's Blue Thumb Records three months later as Out Here, followed by False Start in 1970. These two albums, only sporadically in print since then, have now been remastered and collected on a 3xCD, limited-edition set by Hip-O Select, which also includes a concert's worth of previously unreleased live tracks and strangely cursory liner notes by Dave Thompson. Imperfect but fascinating, these albums-- and this set-- are essential listening for Love fans, tracking Lee's sad decline into the 70s.
Neither of these albums live up to the standards set by Love's Da Capo and Forever Changes LPs and early singles. There are many more digressions, failed experiments, and too much general fucking around, all of which is heightened by Lee's pointed bitterness. Nevertheless, there are moments of genuine and heartbreaking clarity on all three discs in this set, when Lee speaks creatively and strongly or when the band hits an effortless groove. Out Here ranges wildly, with two tracks passing the 11-minute mark (including a pointless rehearsal-level drum solo from Suranovich) and twice that many fall short of two minutes.
Opener "I'll Pray for You" is immediately poppy and playful, reminiscent of Love's pre-Changes output; its catchy, multilayered call-and-response hook might best be described as jangle gospel. The sing-songy melody of "Abalony" works better than the military marching band parody on the embarrassing "Discharged" or the lengthy freak-outs on the tiring "Doggone" and "Love Is More Than Words or Better Late Than Never". The sequencing is awkward, too, making the album seem like more of a mess than it really is and further highlighting Lee's caginess: "Once I had a singing group/ Singing group done gone," he remarks on "Doggone". "Now I got another group/ Didn't take too long." This new Love isn't a pop band, but a rock band, and Lee's hostility toward his listeners and fellow bandmates makes the band's name strikingly ironic.
Lee's eclecticism serves him much better on False Start, which is generally a much more palatable album than its predecessor. Lee and his group-- with Gary Rowles replacing Donnellan-- jump playfully among styles, from the relatively sunny soul of "Keep On Shining" to the Sly Stone funk of "Love Is Coming" to the simple, lively folk-pop of "Flying". Opener "The Everlasting First", which features Jimi Hendrix playing (but not singing), begins abruptly, jostling the listener into Lee's world, then segues suddenly into "Flying", as if it's only a snippet of an infinite song. The live version of "Stand Out" actually begins in the fade-out of "Gimi a Little Break", with Lee introducing the song to a lively audience. The studio version of "Stand Out" originally appeared on Out Here, but it seemed lost on that overly busy album. Here it sounds like a near-perfect piece of slyly subversive funk-rock, urging listeners to "stand out!" rather than assimilate into a crowd.
On these two albums, Lee repeatedly refers to other artists and other songs, which doesn't anchor him to the mainstream culture but reiterates his underground detachment. This constant dissociation heightens the lively tension on the live disc, which was recorded at various stops on the band's 1970 tour of England. Like the studio version that closes Out Here, "Gather 'Round" appropriates the melody from Dylan's "The Times They Are A'Changin'", not out of laziness but as a pointed commentary on the death of that generation's idealism. Lee thrives on complication and contradiction: As either a supremely cynical or a playful gesture, he turns the song into an impromptu cover of Wilson Pickett's "Funky Broadway". Similarly, he performs songs from every Love album (including a particularly caustic "Bummer in the Summer" from Forever Changes) as a means of acknowledging his past glories as well as his fraught history. Live, this version of Love sounds like a band mustering the conviction to take on the world one more time. But they never did: Lee disbanded the line-up shortly after the tour. Love would barely see the 70s, except as a series of failed reunions.
