Yet Love has not endured as their contemporaries have because Lee refused to play the major label game. He hated flying and being jarred out of LA— where he lived in a castle, was regarded as royalty, and the mixed-race nature of his band wasn’t a major issue— so he refused to tour. His controlling, stubborn, angry, paranoid nature alienated many of the people who most wanted him to succeed. Eventually he became a serious coke addict who chastised his bandmates for their drug use.
Of course, Arthur Lee was also a genius by pop standards, and his complications have earned him a cult similar to those that revel in every eccentricity of Brian Wilson, Roky Erickson, Syd Barrett, and Peter Green. Forever Changes has topped many a “greatest album of all time” poll in the UK, where Love enjoyed far greater success than they did in the U.S., and its timeless beauty has inspired a horde of later-generation artists, including Led Zeppelin, The Damned, Robyn Hitchcock, Belle and Sebastian, and The Soundtrack of Our Lives.
John Einarson’s 2010 authorized biography Forever Changes: Arthur Lee and the Book of Love captured all sides of the Love polygon, acknowledging Lee’s brilliance without skimming over his belligerence, self-indulgence, and unpredictability. Although Einarson spends ample time poring over Lee’s less desirable qualities, he remains objective by structuring his book as a near-oral-history with the majority of quotes coming from Lee’s unpublished autobiography.
The rest of the book largely consists of interview excerpts Einarson collected from sixty subjects, including many surviving members of Love’s various line-ups. Johnny Echols— the vastly underrated guitarist who drove the group’s revered early albums with his fierce, stuttering leads— is particularly enlightening, helping to dispel many of the myths surrounding the band. Although Lee is the chief focus of the book, all supporting players are adequately profiled. Bryan MacLean, who composed “Alone Again, Or”, the most well-known track on Forever Changes, is represented in interviews conducted before his death in 1998, as well as conversations with his mother and his sister, Maria McKee (later of Lone Justice). Einarson’s clean, cohesive prose glues it all together seamlessly.
Forever Changes becomes a bit of a heavy read halfway through when Lee’s drug-issues really take over and he becomes an increasingly less sympathetic figure— abusing girlfriends, firing bandmates for failing to kiss his ass adequately, etc. — but it’s all part of the Love story. Lee would experience better times after being released from prison following a weapons charge in late 2001 and taking Forever Changes on the road to massive success. The onset of leukemia, which took his life in 2006, brought a sad end to this resurgence.
Forever Changes: Arthur Lee and the Book of Love is now returning as a second edition with a slightly different title, Forever Changes: The Authorized Biography of Arthur Lee and Love, and a new foreword by Echols, who writes briefly but lovingly about his old cohort, a slightly revised introduction from the author, and a trippy new cover design. With any title Forever Changes remains the definitive book of Love.
[*This review is an updated version of one I originally published in 2010]
