Love With Arthur Lee
We set the record spinning on Greg’s turntable–a Zenith Circle of Sound, state of the art in 1972–and the music that came out was just as hilarious and befuddling as the cover. We were hip, or thought we were; we listened to Hendrix, the Doors, and the Beatles. This stuff was amateurish, underproduced, and positively dorky–I don’t think any of us ever listened to more than two or three cuts. Love’s take on Bacharach and David’s “My Little Red Book,” driven by tambourine and bass, was mildly sinister but bush-league in execution, an affront to my sensitive pubescent hearing buds. And when MacLean sang “Hey Joe,” the duress in the poor guy’s cracked tenor made him sound like a man with a knife to his throat–a far cry from Jimi’s cool, menacing delivery. These guys were a joke, and it was a mystery to us why a major label like Elektra–home of the Doors, no less–had signed them.
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Perhaps he was just being contrary. “No shit,” I said. “A legend, eh?” I fancied myself a music geek, conversant with pop mythology. Syd Barrett, Nick Drake, Alex Chilton–I knew their work well and dropped their names with aplomb. I hadn’t heard word one about Arthur Lee. Did Will actually like the guy, or was he pulling my leg? I called his bluff and loaned him the album. I never saw it again.
When my brothers and I first laid eyes on Love’s debut, Bowie was glam, Robert Plant preened in ripped denim hip-huggers and unbuttoned girlie shirts, and most southern rockers could pass for Spahn Ranch security. Arthur and the boys naturally seemed a bit out of touch to us. But reappraise the photo on that Love album alongside the big releases of 1966: on the bowdlerized “Yesterday”…and Today cover the Beatles look like pasty English tourists, and I suspect that the run on ten-gallon pooh-bah hats in the wake of the Mamas & the Papas’ breakthrough was short-lived. In hindsight Lee’s getup on the cover of Love’s debut anticipated the mix-and-match harlequin duds with which the Woodstock Nation would accoutre itself.
Lee and Baby Lemonade return as Love this Friday night at Park West, warming up for the Zombies. There won’t be horns or strings, but if it’s your first time, you don’t have to worry that you’re missing out. The first time’s always the best, even if it’s taken you 30 years to catch on.
