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Pissed!
By Johnny Angel

Love Is All You Need:
From the smoky, nostalgic halls of psychedelia comes the complete musical oeuvre of one of the greatest forgotten bands of all time

Old 1995 wasn't exactly a banner year for new music in my house. Sure, there were some great new releases by fresh faces P.J. Harvey, the Lemons and the hilarious Lordz of Brooklyn. But for the most part, the records I'll treasure from 1995 were re-issues. Boxes from the Velvets, Blue Öyster Cult, Def Jam Records--all kept spinning incessantly on my player.

The best of the boxes was Arthur Lee and Love's Love Story 1966-1972. Like many rockers of my era, I was aware of Love's following, as well as the group's three mini-hits: "7&7 Is," "Little Red Book" and "Alone Again Or." And I did have the band's masterpiece, Forever Changes, in the collection, too. But even if this box skimps on rarities (so I'm told), it has been on the stereo every day since it arrived.

Tunes, baby, goddamn tunes! Two sterling songwriters in Lee and Bryan MacLean (Lee being the harder edged of the two, MacLean the dewy-eyed melodist--kinda like that other great L&M songwriting duo of the '60s, Lennon and ... well, you know). Commencing with the Bacharach comp "Little Red Book," running all the way through most of the band's first LP and Forever Changes, and then finishing with a Hendrix cameo, this set never lets up in its inherent brilliance. Each track lives and breathes on its own, salient and masterful.

This band was important. Listen to what two extraordinarily disparate artists said about Love. "We signed with Elektra because Love did," states Robby Krieger of the Doors. "That driving rhythm-guitar thing, that came from Love," says Tommy Ramone of the genesis of the New York punk sound. Sold?

This collection of songs is considered eclectic today for a different reason than it was in the '60s--back then, the idea of an interracial rock combo doing 18-minute suites was radical, and that's what defined the band as an anomaly during its existence. But in 1996, bands like Love don't exist anymore. From track to track, Lee and band assay Byrdsesque jangle, cocktail balladry, punk assaults, Tejano cops--the works--and skip from genre to genre without a single degree of strain.

Pick up a disc by one of today's rock aggregates, and you tend to get the "hit" and 14 variations on the same song. Every band finds its niche and stays put, aiming its output and its imagery at the same imagined market share. Sure, Love dressed like hippies--it was 1967, everyone did. But each of the band's songs is set in the appropriate motif, not like Lee decided to make every thing they recorded conform to a psychedelic norm.

Can you imagine a '90s band going through a set without hugging dearly some tried and true musical stance? I'd love to see an act go from punk barrage to Tex-Mex to Goth to Hip-Hop and still manage to maintain a band sound. Might hold my interest for longer than five minutes, which is what I tend to give most new groups these days.

And with all the complaining about how "There's nothing new," well, the only way to make new pop music, as we've learned over the years, is to cross-pollinate. Open our ears and minds a bit. Love did just that, and that's why I haven't tired of this collection.

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