Arthur Lee and Love on Jools Holland. The song is "Alone Again Or”by Bryan MacLean who curiously recorded the piece entirely without Arthur until he heard everyone raving about it when he went in and sang over it and changed the title to ‘Alone Again O’ [from Alone Again]
According to the band's guitarist Johnny Echols:
"Arthur wasn't even at the studio when we recorded "Alone Again". When he heard everyone saying what a great song it was, and how great Bryan's voice sounded. Arthur became jealous and decided to feature his voice on a record he had absolutely nothing to do with. To make matters worse Arthur changed the title of Bryan's song. That was basically the beginning of the end for the group"
. . . . .
A House is Not a Motel - Love (Arthur Lee song)
Maybe the People Would Be The Times or Between Clark and Hilldale - Live
There's so much music out there that's not only indifferent but so finely worked or rather overworked that to hear aged, sparse demos of this quality is a breath of Alpine air. Candy's Waltz is not outakes from the great ifyoubelievein CD from two years ago (see CWAS#3) but further revelations from similar sources. Indeed it may be an overall stronger and more even collection. The vocals are fuzzy at the edges belying the tapes thirty years existence in damp or dusty garages and the songs are probably one takes. And it's great.
All the observations I made about the former collection remain relevant here: the Crosby inspired jazz/folk guitar with its Spanish tinges; the flighty Tim Buckley exuberance of the vocals, so rich and romantic, so much rounder and bigger than Arthur Lee's often mumbled delivery. Again it is a matter of taste if one prefer Bryan's idiosyncratic phrasing or Arthur's more normal arrangements. Probably a band arrangement could not handle such enormous and sudden changes in tempo and phrasing and, anyway, the daCapo Love could bring a warm sunshine to Bryan' music. Well whatever here's seventeen new Bryan Maclean songs! Assuming Arthur had it in him to write another Forever Changes (and it seemed not) Bryan could have submitted about half a dozen Candy songs.
The tunes really get inside you. Opener I can'tremember was written, like Orange Skies in 1966 age 17 and is similarly effortlessly inspired. I had to find this and several other beautiful tunes like Always I Wanted, Claudia and the title track on the piano to marvel at the Brian Wilson-like complexity of the melodies. It has been suggested that Arthur, though passing over many BM songs took more than a little inspiration from them. Castle Waltz from 1966 bears a huge resemblance to DaCapo's The Castle. A 1969 tune Father and Husband conversely sounds like several Forever Changes epic passages. There are two live songs replete with charming banter and track 20 is a telling BM radio interview for all Love fans. For many of us this album will again open the overgrown door to the magic garden.
Well here’s a turn up and I had thought Bryan only recordedifyoubelievein as a solo effort so this I am expecting to be a rare treat! Early MacLean! Intriguingly the whole things is posted track by track on YouTube . . . . Apologies if I am labouring an old commonly known poet but this now doubles the amounts of Bryan’s solo work owned by yours truly . . . . . .the man who wrote Alone Again Or!
Bryan MacLean - Candy’s Waltz
Bryan MacLean Interview
(With Phil Nee- WRCO AM/FM Radio, Richard Center, Wisconsin January 13, 1998)
Bryan MacLean guitarist, singer and songwriter of the cult 60's Californian band Love, died of a heart attack on Christmas day 1998 in the city of Los Angeles where he was born.
Love were responsible for producing the album 'Forever Changes' in 1967 which has long held the reputation with music critics for being one of the finest albums ever made and although Arthur Lee did most of the song writing for the band, it is Bryan's song 'Alone Again Or' from that classic album that Love are generally remembered for.
Born in Beverley Hills, California in 1946, Bryan's father was an architect to the Hollywood stars and his mother an artist and a dancer. Neighbour Fritz Loew of the composers Lener and Loew recognised him as a melodic genius at the age of three as he doodled on the piano. Bryan's gift for music was duly noted and he was given piano lessons and taught classical arrangement theory. Bryan's early influences were more Billie Holliday and George Gershwin rather than Robert Johnson, although he confessed a strong obsession for Elvis Presley. During his childhood he wore out show music records from 'Guys and Dolls', 'Oklahoma', 'South Pacific' and 'West Side Story'.
His first girlfriend was Liza Minelli and they would sit at the piano together and sing songs like 'The Wizard of Oz'. He learned to swim in Elizabeth Taylor's pool and his father's best friend was Robert Stack from T.V's 'Untouchables'. At 17 Bryan encountered the Beatles, "Before the Beatles I had been into folk music. I had been showing my art work at a panel shop (I wanted to be an artist in the bohemian tradition) - where we would sit around with banjos and do folk music, but when I saw 'A Hard Days Night' everything changed. I let my hair grow out and I got kicked out of three high schools."
Bryan started playing guitar in 1963/64. He got a job at the Balladeer before it changed its name to the Troubadour Club, playing back-up blues guitar. It was here he met the pre Byrds Jet Set while dating Jackie De Shannon and he became 'fast friends' with David Crosby. He moved away from home and by early 1965 he became road manager for the Byrds on their first Californian tour with the Rolling Stones. He managed one more cross-country tour with the group after they hit big with 'Mr Tambourine Man' but the exhausting 30 one nighters broke him physically and when the Byrds left for their first U.K. tour in the summer of 1965 they left Bryan behind.
After an unsuccessful audition for a part in the Monkees Bryan got into a car on Sunset Strip which Arthur Lee was driving. Arthur had a band called the Grass Roots doing a residency at the Brave New World Club and being street wise knew Bryan's 'connections' with the Byrds. He knew all of the scene that followed the Byrds would follow Bryan if he invited him to see the band play at the club as the Byrds were out of town and sure enough after a couple of weeks the crowds were lined up and down the street for blocks. Bryan desperately wanted to join the band and he said, "I'd give my right arm to be in your group." To which Arthur responded "No - you're going to need it!" The Grass Roots became Love when another group registered a hit with the name.
"The music that is presented in this collection was written, decades ago, when I was in the band LOVE, and was written with that band in mind, and had been intended to be performed by, and associated with the band, LOVE... So what did happen? ... why weren't they? well...
Arthur was the leader, and he made the final decisions, and we did, primarily his songs. Oh, I didn't mind really, Arthur was my (best) friend, and I was having a ball.
I firmly believe if things had been the other way around, by now, you probably would've already heard a great deal, if not all, of what is assembled here. For one thing, I would have stuck around the band alot longer, not feeling the frustration of having such a backlog of unpublished, and unperformed material, and the natural unfulfilled desire for recognition, or even vindication. But things weren't, and I didn't, and after all, it's not what happens, so much, it's how you end up."
Bryan MacLean
Tracks 1. Barber John - 4:03 2. Fresh Hope - 4:13 3. Kathleen - 2:03 4. Orange Skies - 4:19 5. Strong Commitment - 3:22 6. Alone Again Or - 3:32 7. Tired Of Sitting - 2:33 8. Blues Singer - 3:23 9. Friday's Party - 2:56 10.People - 2:49 11.Claudia - 3:01 12.If You Believe In - 3:06 13.Orange Skies (Second Version) - 4:34 14.Alone Again Or (Second Version) - 3:46 15.She Looks Good - 3:59 16.Old Man - 3:05 All songs by Bryan MacLean
*Bryan MacLean - Vocals, Guitar
Now I have mentioned Bryan before and that he wrote songs on Forever Changes is a given (my top album of all time frequently!) so here is another download of the solo album he released and always worth mentioning he is related to the Lone Justice singer Maria McKee (she’s his half-sister) so those pipes do run in the family
Enjoy! I loved revisiting and feel aloneagainor or somewhere between Clarke and Hilldale
Now the above is not my favourite incarnation of Love but hey, here they are (above) in Copenhagen the YouTube of them in support to The James Gang and Black Sabbath at Fillmore West in 1970 is nowhere near near as good as this but hey . . . . . the mystic master is gone so whatcha gonna do! The guitar solos are actually worth checking out but the vocals are poorly recorded and the sound poorly mixed but then its 1970!
The master . . . . . . .perhaps my favourite poet lyricist bar none Arthur Lee and Love, it is rare to catch me without something from the fine fine poetic band but the guys at HQ have done to again. [context I think Love’s Forever Changes would be top of any list and is no1 for my albums of all time! yes really!)
This is excellent quality and highly collectible! Rehearsals, demos and acoustic early versions abound! Thanks as so often is due to Brother Jobe over there . . . . have at it (oh and this is long out of print BTW)
Supremely talented yet prone to devastating self-sabotage, Arthur Lee was on the ropes in the early 1970s. Glory days on the Sunset Strip, and authorship of one of the greatest records ever – Love’s Forever Changes – had soured, giving way to an incoherent odyssey, and a meandering, undistinguished string of new “Loves”. Occasional bursts of new inspiration were more likely than not to fizzle amid record label flameouts, reluctance to tour, and concomitant drug and personal problems.
Yet for those willing to a) overlook Lee’s steadfast refusal to relive the inimitable themes and textures of Forever Changes, and b) forgive him his excesses and volatilities, by the early ’70s Lee had begun to forge a forceful, distinctive new style: sizzling hard rock true to the spirit of his friend Jimi Hendrix; gritty, inner-city funk underpinnings à la Curtis Mayfield; a few nods to his folk-rock, pop-star past; plus bits of blues and reggae around the edges. Some of this material appeared in real time, in the shape of his ’72 solo outing Vindicator and Love’s ’74 swansong Reel To Real. More has surfaced on archival releases, like Sundazed’s 2009 set, Love Lost.
Bankrolled by entrepreneur Michael Butler (producer of the hit musical Hair) and reuniting Lee with his old Elektra friend, producer Paul Rothchild, Black Beauty was intended to be a culmination, the crowning achievement of Lee’s new direction. It ended up as just another scrapped project. Butler’s label, Buffalo Records, went belly-up before the disc ever reached the market. It would be Lee’s penultimate shot at the big time, 1974’s calamitous UK tour with Eric Clapton sealing his future on the margins.
Black Beauty began organically enough, though. Ditching the ad hoc bands he’d been gigging with around LA, Lee started from scratch, organising a brand-new, all-black Love. The group – guitarist Melvan Whittington, bassist Robert Rozelle, drummer Joe Blocker – bristles with authority and immediacy, imbuing Black Beauty with a raw, pugnacious, in-your-face sound.
Whereas, say, an early take of “Midnight Sun” sounds forced and claustrophobic on Love Lost, its Black Beauty counterpart burns with apocalyptic fervour, resonant of a camaraderie and telepathic interplay oft-lacking in Love’s post-Forever Changes work.
Opening with the gut-punch of “Good & Evil (Young & Able)”, a lascivious, un-PC piece of Hendrixian punk-funk, Black Beauty sprouts tentacles, beaming in testosterone-fuelled garage blasts (“Stay Away”, think Nuggets on steroids), the sumptuously anti-authoritarian riff “Lonely Pigs” and “Can’t Find It”, a haunting lament gliding on a gorgeously elliptical melody, with jagged guitar bits bubbling up through the mix.
For all its hard-rock glory – and Hendrix’ spectre casts a long shadow everywhere on Love’s 1970s work – Black Beauty is eclectic, shifting gears gracefully, suggesting myriad musical directions a healthy Arthur Lee could have pursued. “Beep Beep”, for instance, reflects his infatuation with reggae, and while it might be fluffy kid’s-song fare, it’s catchy as anything. An off-the-wall cover of The Rooftop Singers’ 1963 smash “Walk Right In” is also an inspired call, an album highlight, its jangly guitars and soulful vocal hook signalling a nod to Love’s 1966 folk-rock heyday.
“Skid”, though, with its Dylanesque sneer and gritty depiction of ghetto misery, is Black Beauty’s most startling cut. Lee is at his dramatic best here, falling into the song’s dark atmosphere with an eerie, ghostly desperation – one of his best vocals ever. Skittering from funky acoustic rhythms to a driving, haunting chorus to Whittington’s superb psychedelic guitar fills, one would think this song, if properly promoted, could have put Love back on the map. As it is, it’s an inestimable gem in the group’s vaunted catalogue, its majesty posing a giant “what if?” in the Love saga.
In fact, the better-late-than-never appearance of Black Beauty itself poses some big questions. Could Lee and company have refined, expanded and built on its strengths? Did Arthur have yet more material of this calibre up his sleeve? Nonetheless, supplemented by bonus tracks and Ben Edmonds’ fine liner notes, Black Beauty slots in as a fascinating, decidedly consistent effort from an artist in the throes of disintegration.
by Luke Torn
Tracks 1. Young And Able (Good And Evil) - 3:24 2. Midnight Sun - 3:33 3. Can't Find It - 3:46 4. Walk Right In (Gus Cannon, Hosea Woods) - 3:23 5. Skid (Angela Rackley, Riley Racer) - 2:52 6. Beep Beep - 2:14 7. Stay Away - 2:47 8. Lonely Pigs - 4:25 9. See Myself In You - 3:03 10.Product Of The Times - 4:11 11.Thomasine And Bushrod (Title Song From The Motion Picture) - 2:26 12.Arthur Lee Interview - 22:16 13.Every Time I Look Up, I'm Down - 3:32 14.Nothing - 3:06 15.Keep On Shining - 5:56 16.L.A. Blues (Tom T. Hall) - 3:02 All songs by Arthur Lee except where noted Tracks 1 to 9 recorded Spring-Winter, 1973 at Valentine's, North Hollywood, CA; Paramount Recording Studios, Hollywood, CA; Wally Heider Studios, Hollywood, CA. Track 10 Recorded Live at Boston Tea Garden 1970 Tracks 13-15 Live at Electric Gardens, Glasgow, 5/30/1974
Sound-wise this song from Love’s 5th LP seems like a return to the folk-rock of their self-titled debut LP. The lyrics are another story:
Gather ‘round people as fast as you can I’m gonna tell another story ‘bout an animal called man Well, he struts all around with his tailor made suits But his mind is all filled up with bullshit
This is fun, not the BEST quality but listenable. I have said earlier that I missed out on seeing Arthur by the time he was scheduled to appear locally backed with Baby Lemonade (not here) he was too ill and a short time later had died. A seminal influence on yours truly and a perennial top Ten album with ‘Forever Changes’ which at least brough him some new found fame later on in life after his release from prison on firearms charges with live appearances and the whole thing performed on DVD and star appearances at Glastonbury before we lost him but undoubtedly we lost one of the great pop poets of the era and no mistake.
Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head - BJ Thomas [Bacharach/David] - Butch Cassady and The Sundance Kid
Burt Bacharach, the debonair pop composer, arranger, conductor, record producer and occasional singer whose hit songs in the 1960s distilled that decade’s mood of romantic optimism, died on February 8 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 94. His publicist Tina Brausam confirmed the death. No specific cause was given.
A die-hard romantic whose mature style might be described as Wagnerian lounge music, Bacharach fused the chromatic harmonies and long, angular melodies of late-19th-century symphonic music with modern, bubbly pop orchestration, and embellished the resulting mixture with a staccato rhythmic drive. His effervescent compositions epitomized sophisticated hedonism to a generation of young adults only a few years older than the Beatles.
Because of the high gloss and apolitical stance of the songs Bacharach wrote with his most frequent collaborator, the lyricist Hal David, during an era of confrontation and social upheaval, they were often dismissed as little more than background music by listeners who preferred the hard edge of rock or the intimacy of the singer-songwriter genre. But in hindsight, the Bacharach-David team ranks high in the pantheon of pop songwriting.
Bacharach-David songs like “The Look of Love” (Dusty Springfield’s sultry 1967 hit, featured in the movie “Casino Royale”), “This Guy’s in Love With You” (a No. 1 hit in 1968 for Herb Alpert), and “(They Long to Be) Close to You” (a No. 1 hit in 1970 for the Carpenters) evoked an upscale world of jet travel, sports cars and sleek bachelor pads. Acknowledging this mystique with a wink, Bacharach appeared as himself and performed his 1965 song “What the World Needs Now Is Love” in the 1997 movie “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery,” which spoofed the swinging ’60s ambience of the early James Bond films. He also made cameo appearances in its two sequels.
The Bacharach-David team’s artistic chemistry solidified in 1962, beginning with the hits they wrote and produced for Dionne Warwick, a gifted young gospel-trained singer from East Orange, NJ. The artistic synergy of Bacharach, David and Warwick defined the voice of a young, passionate, on-the-go Everywoman bursting with romantic eagerness and vulnerability. Their urbane style was the immediate forerunner of the earthier Motown sound of the middle and late 1960s. - Stephen Holden, nytimes.com
“The shorthand version of him is that he’s something to do with easy listening,” Elvis Costello, who wrote the 1998 album “Painted from Memory” with Bacharach, said in a 2018 interview with The Associated Press. “It may be agreeable to listen to these songs, but there’s nothing easy about them. Try playing them. Try singing them.” A box set, “The Songs of Bacharach & Costello,” is due to come out March 3.
Brian Wilson twittered: “I’m so sad to hear about Burt Bacharach. Burt was a hero of mine and very influential on my work. He was a giant in the music business. His songs will live forever. Love & Mercy to Burt’s family.”
“Burt’s transition is like losing a family member. These words I’ve been asked to write are being written with sadness over the loss of my dear friend and my musical partner,” Dionne Warwick, 82, said in a statement. “On the lighter side we laughed a lot and had our run-ins, but always found a way to let each other know our family, like roots, were the most important part of our relationship. My heartfelt condolences go out to his family, letting them know he is now peacefully resting and I too will miss him.”
+ + + + +
Love - My Little Red Book [Bacharach/David]
Burt and Elvis (Costello that is!)
Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello live - This House Is Empty Now
A cool cover of William DeVaughn’s classic by Arthur Lee and company.
Post Forever Changes Arthur and the band when the original line up went their separate ways and this proved frustrating and not a little disappointing but here on the album Reel To Real (ever the fan of the pun) he proved he could turn his covers and voice to any singing style he chose.For Sail seemed pub rock heavy but this is soul at its greatest and matched and unequaled amongst the pantheon of soul bands (IMHO) . . . . . .
Should you need any encouragement to check out the Forever Changing Best of Elektra from TWILIGHTZONE (we are up to vol III today! which includes this . . . . regularly in my top three and Arthur in my top writer singer poets of all time . . . . . . . . . .
Songs from a Sunny Day . . . . . . . post the first three Love albums people tended to ignore Arthur's output but the same ole magic was still there . . . in flashes
