The Everlasting 'Forever' Of Arthur Lee

Arthur Lee at the Birchmere in 2003. His band Love's 1967 "Forever Changes" is an album for the ages. (By Michael Robinson-chavez -- The Washington Post)

Arthur Lee and his off-again-on-again rock group Love made only one great album -- a brooding, opulent and improbable dream called "Forever Changes," released in the fall of 1967. Still, such devotion has this single disc inspired over the decades that the news of Lee's death from leukemia -- on Thursday, in Memphis, at age 61 -- affected his more ardent listeners as a personal loss.

"Forever Changes" is one of those works of art that are not for everybody but are very much for some people, along the same lines as Malcolm Lowry's novel "Under the Volcano" (which generally bores and annoys those it fails to bowl over) or Alain Resnais's "Last Year at Marienbad" (which is regularly chosen as both one of the best and one of the worst films ever made). It was never a "hit" -- there were dozens of records in 1967 that outsold "Forever Changes" many times over. But it never quite went out of print, either, and, year after year, devotees passed on copies to new listeners with evangelical fervor, with the result that its legion of fans is notably multi-generational. And so my 19-year-old son and his musician friends love "Forever Changes" just as much as I did at their age, and for many of the same reasons, few of which have anything to do with nostalgia.

What does it sound like? Well, imagine taking one of the most tuneful and adventurous pop albums by the Byrds ("Younger Than Yesterday" maybe, or "Notorious Byrd Brothers") and allowing it to marinate for a year or two in the most decadent and exotic spices. Then toss in some of the unhinged paranoia of Syd Barrett and the early Pink Floyd, the reclusive melancholy of post-surf Brian Wilson, the cotton-candy orchestration of '60s arrangers such as Paul Mauriat ("Love Is Blue") or Joshua Rifkin (who fashioned Judy Collins's hit version of "Both Sides Now") and set it all to dark and prophetic lyrics that seem to mean much more than they dare to say. "Forever Changes" combines a seductive surface prettiness with a sense that something is desperately wrong. It is psychedelia at its edgiest.

Lee was a genuine prodigy. Born in Memphis in 1945 and raised in the Crenshaw-Adams district of Los Angeles, he made his first recording at 18 and had formed the initial lineup of Love by the time he was 20. The group was unusual not only because it was multiracial (a real rarity in 1966) but because Lee, an African American and Love's unquestioned leader, was largely uninterested in the more traditional expressions of mid-'60s black musical culture -- namely, soul and rhythm and blues.

The first album, titled, simply, "Love," was an energetic but mostly conventional set of short songs -- one highlight was a taut, punked-out rendition of Burt Bacharach's "My Little Red Book" that would have done credit to the Ramones. Their second disc, "Da Capo," was more venturesome, but marred by one side devoted entirely to the interminable "Revelation," a not-especially-inspired jam session that grew.

And then there was "Forever Changes." As Andrew Hultkrans observes in a 130-page book (one of several published to date) about the record's history: " 'Forever Changes' is notable for its relative sonic austerity, with folk and classical influences dominant and not a Mellotron in ear shot. At its core, the record could be the product of an extremely inventive acoustic duo, with bass, drums, and tasteful orchestration providing unobtrusive but essential support. When a wailing electric guitar arrives, which happens only twice, it cuts across the pastoral-Gothic soundscape like a strafing fighter plane, making its point far more effectively than it would in a typical psych-rock context."

Contrary to popular belief, "Forever Changes" did not exhaust Lee's creativity. Such albums as "Four Sail," "Out Here" (both 1969), "False Start" (1970) and even an atypical and much neglected exploration of mid-'70s funk, "Reel to Real" (1974), have their inspired moments. But Lee had drug and alcohol problems and, it seems, a violent temper, as well. In 1996, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison after threatening a neighbor with a gun. He was released in 2001.

In 2002, a new version of Love played more than 60 concerts around Europe and the United States, culminating in a recorded performance of "Forever Changes" at the Royal Festival Hall in London before an overwhelmingly youthful audience. Unlike such hideous disappointments as Brian Wilson's Vegas-style solo rendition of "Pet Sounds," most of this new album sounded terrific. The rhythm section was tight and muscular, the bullfight trumpets and swooping strings rang out as incongruously as ever, and Lee threw himself into his vocals with a desperate and exhilarating urgency. And if it wasn't quite "Forever Changes," that was all right, too. Nothing else is, either.