Jump to content

Love "Forever Changes" Tour, Los Angeles


The Mule

Recommended Posts

I attended the first American performance of "Forever Changes" with Arthur Lee and Love last night at UCLA's Royce Hall in Los Angeles and, overall, it was an incredible show. The tour began in England in January and last night was the beginning of the American leg of the tour.

In addition to performing the entirety of Love's classic album "Forever Changes" with a string and horn section (Swedish musicians on tour with them), Lee and Love also did many other songs from the Love catalogue including a blistering "7 And 7 Is" during the encore (with Johnny Echols joining them).

Since the late 60s the make-up of "Love" has endlessly shifted with Arthur Lee being the only constant until the 90s when Lee brought in legendary Los Angeles band Baby Lemonade as "Love." Mike Randle played his ass off on lead guitar and Rusty Squeezebox (a friend of mine) did an amazing job on rhythm guitar and vocals--his work on acoustic guitar was especially beautiful. David Green on drums and Dave Chapple on bass drove things along wonderfully. This band is TIGHT.

The wild card in all of this, as ever, is Arthur Lee. Things got off to a bit of a rocky start as the mix was burying his vocals--which was just as well for the first three or four songs because Arthur was struggling--these songs are not easy to sing. Arthur's voice warmed up soon enough and the rest of the show was terrific. Especially fine was "The Red Telephone," the lyrics of which seem more relevant now than they were in the 60s--and Lee put his all into it. By the time the full band and orchestra concluded the set with the titanic "You Set The Scene" the crowd was on it's feet and screaming for an encore---which came and was great. As mentioned previously, Johnny Echols came on stage for "7 And 7 Is" and then another former Love guitarist, Jay Donnellan, joined them for a rip-snorting rendition of "Singing Cowboy." Lee also played some pretty awesome harmonica on "Signed D.C."

Arthur was in a playful mood and spoke to the very-vocal crowd throughout. At one point Arthur asked the audience, "Yeah, you love me up here, but would you love me out on the street?....I think you might..."

The crowd was one of the more eclectic groups I'd seen in a while: old-hippies, new-hippies, record industry types, Paul Stanley from Kiss, Baby Lemonade friends and family, and LOTS of single guys who probably spend way too much time by themselves trolling used record stores. Royce Hall was PACKED.

I'd recommend anyone with an interest in Arthur Lee and Love to make an effort to catch this show if the tour comes anywhere near your town.

Edited by The Mule
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...