Besides remembering those newly departed, memorials too often serve as a marker for another casualty: the truth.
Reflections on the dead can be so phony and typically function as a trigger for reappraising someone's life, or in the worst case, outright historical revision. Balance is necessary, but by emphasizing the positive and excising the negative, we do an injustice to the person by robbing them of a life's complexities and abridging his or her story.
When we look at Arthur Lee, the leader of '60s cult rockers Love who died two weeks ago after a months-long battle with leukemia, here's a story that needs to be told in its entirety. A complex personality, talented songwriter and exciting performer, Lee should be remembered for the intricate and gritty music that he created without erasing the countless times that he apparently sabotaged himself and his bandmates. These actions and others would inspire feelings just the opposite from the band's namesake and kept the group from ever achieving the widespread recognition that it deserved.
Lee masterminded a band that once outdrew Sunset Strip rivals such as the Byrds and the Doors and created an album that routinely ranks in most music magazines' "best of" whatever lists. But his death met with little public response.
It was a cruel reversal, as back in the mid-'60s, Love seemed to be on the verge of stardom. They were the right band coming along at just the right time. Conceived and led by Lee, the LA-based band was an eclectic, interracial combo whose music seemed to personify the soon-to-arrive "Summer of Love" and the Los Angeles of that period -- sunny, cutthroat and idealistic but with underlying contrivances. As the group's primary songwriter, Lee pulled together strands of garage-rock, folk, R&B, jazz, show tunes and Latin into a harmonious but often idiosyncratic sound. He would later be extolled as one of the leading lights of psychedelic rock and even punk. (The fact that he was black has caused many to say he paved the way for Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix.)
Lee was Love's lead singer, harmonica player and master of the tambourine (to Lee's credit, he remains one of the few who seemed capable of playing a tambourine in concert and keep his badass stage demeanor.) Like the Baby Boomer generation that he was part of, Lee matured as the band went on and he guided the band through musical advances from obvious folk-rock to a sound that was far darker, complicated in scope and almost regal in sound. This evolution was fed -- with some exceptions -- by an almost constant flow of musicians into and out of the band.
Unlike many of his fellow psychedelic travelers who seemed to bask in the fantastical sound effects of the genre combined with childish poems, Lee's vision of psychedelia was grittier and edgier. While many songwriters' trips seemed lost in another, purer world born of utopian images, his lyrics were firmly anchored to reality, albeit one bent and altered by chemicals.
Lee was also wise about the music business beyond his years. While many would call Lee a hood or say he had street smarts (perhaps code for his complexion), Lee was already a veteran producer and arranger by the time that Love began recording, even though he was only in his early 20s. Love drummer Michael Stuart would say that Lee always had "hidden agendas," but such could be explained away as his inherent wiliness. (Stuart's account of his time with Love can be found in his autobiography, "Behind The Scenes On The Pegasus Carousel." Here too, the portrait of Lee that comes forward is mostly unflattering, specifically when it comes to the issue of money owed to the band and various manipulations.)
Regardless of Lee's antics, the group was such a hot commodity on the LA rock scene that Jac Holzman, the founder of Elektra Records, drafted Love to become the first rock group signed to the folk music-dominated label. Holzman was quickly impressed by Lee's musical talents, but would later liken him to something like a rattlesnake.
"He was one of those people you know is likely to do something terrible to you or around you," Holzman told the
Los Angeles Times two weeks ago, "but you like him so much and he's so talented that you always support him."
The band's first three albums demonstrate a clear arc and rapid progression, but each is squarely focused on the song structures as the method of delivery. Lee took cues from the era's hitmakers and stacked tracks -- thin-sounding electric guitar chords, acoustic guitar strumming, stiff bass lines and snappy drumming -- to create sophisticated compositions. Oddly, although tightly arranged, the music always seemed volatile. Early and brilliant songs like "My Little Red Book" and "Seven And Seven Is" were clearly guitar-driven and backbeat-heavy singles. Later, Lee's songs grew longer and more surprising (and almost unusable to format-dominated radio). The first two records -- "Love" and "Da Capo" -- suggested promise and performed decently in the marketplace.
Lee achieved his greatest triumph with 1967's "Forever Changes." On it, Lee's songwriting reached full fruition and became symphonic. Using strings and Mariachi brass to supplement the complicated transitions and interactions between the dominant acoustic guitar and brittle electric guitar fragments, Lee showed that psychedelic rock wasn't just about cheap sound effects, wah-wah pedals and phasing but could be something truly world shattering in sonic palate and arrangement. (Rumor has it that Neil Young helped in the arranging of a couple of track in the early stages.) As a vocalist, Lee also showed a more mature attitude, replacing the shouter of the first LPs with a new crooner of these most disturbing melodies.
And disturbed is the best way to describe Lee's lyrical mindset. He was never more daring or incisive as he was on "Forever Changes." The record's loose concept was about a psychedelic Los Angeles feeding and choking on itself but in a glorious fashion. Two years before the Altamont Speedway stabbing supposedly spelled an end to the idealized '60s, Lee wrote cryptic prophecies about hippie daydreams morphing into street riots, bloody warfare and drug-addled nightmares on "Forever Changes." Songs like "Alone Again Or" "You Set The Scene" or "The Red Telephone" were the soundtrack to an age that was just on the horizon but one only Lee could see.
The reasons then for why Love failed to catch on are many and largely unknowable. One blames the Doors' success for preoccupying their record label and its coffers. Another said the band's glimpses of success breed laziness. Some said it was Lee's refusal to tour outside LA. Others said it was the intra-band ego battles brought on by Lee's deceitful and dictatorial actions and the near-constant psychological warfare that he engaged in. (Specifically, Lee was cast as villain for undervaluing and sidelining the group's secondary songwriter, rhythm guitarist Bryan Maclean.) And drugs seemed to be a universal problem for all involved.
According to Holzman, it was Lee's erratic behavior that forever condemned the band.
"Arthur was one of the smartest and finest musicians I ever met," he said. "As great as his talent, however, was his penchant for isolation and not doing what was necessary to bring his music to his audience. His isolation cost him a career."
But in what would become a pattern of self-defeating actions, Lee dissolved the band only months after the album's completion and hired new sidemen that leaned in a heavier rock direction. It was a bad move. The resulting Love albums were spottier and apart from some isolated songs, failed to build on the early magic that he was able to achieve with the original group.
While Lee seemed prone to undermine his own, he could be counted on to help others on occasion. He deserves recognition for being an early sponsor to two acts who, thanks to his cheerleading, would swiftly rocket past Love to become classic rock's icons. Lee is often credited with giving an unknown Jimi Hendrix his first appearance on record in 1964. Years later, Lee would encourage Holzman to see an anonymous LA blues band called the Doors. Lee would subsequently express bitter feelings about both Hendrix and the Doors. Although he continually praised the guitar god (and recorded with him again in 1970), he always accused Hendrix of expropriating his hippie look. Lee also rarely missed an opportunity to posthumously humiliate Jim Morrison by talking about what an insipid Love fanboy he was way back when.
If Lee was bitter, he had plenty of cause to be. The '70s would be mostly a lost decade, filled with a series of weak albums, rehashed live records, failed reunions and rumored drug addiction. A recording engineer who worked with Love during its peak said that he ran into Lee panhandling on the Sunset Strip that the band once dominated.
The '80s and '90s would further leave the Love legacy in shadows. Lee toured the nostalgia circuit but to little fanfare. British punk group The Damned covered a Love song while folk-pop duo Mazzy Star recorded a latter-day Lee gem, "Five String Serenade." The highest-profile exposure the group got was most likely when two Love songs were prominently featured in John Cusack's movie "High Fidelity."
At the same time, Lee's alleged antics had finally caught up with him. After a series arrests, he was convicted and sentenced to several years in prison for illegally possessing a firearm, which he was accused of firing in the air during a neighborhood dispute.
After emerging from prison in 2001, Lee seemed eager initially to make up for lost time and make good on his cult status that had grown during his absence. He vowed that an autobiography and a new Love album were in the pipeline. He also hooked up again with small-time, LA psychedelic pop group Baby Lemonade, which he had worked with prior to his time behind bars. Rechristened as "Love with Arthur Lee," they launched a series of tours emphasizing the group's golden oldies and released a live CD and DVD.
Despite the tours' successes, Lee's dark side never completely disappeared. In a 2003 interview in British music magazine New Music Express with Jack White of the White Stripes and the Raconteurs, Lee rudely condemned newer bands for playing "their grandfathers' music," whined about being hounded by the specter of his '60s music and blasted fellow classic-rock dinosaurs.
"I think Mick Jagger stinks. Brian Wilson stinks too," he told White. "Mick and Brian Wilson should give it up."
As usual, Lee's self-destructive streak struck hardest against his own band. Although he had just recently recruited ex-Love guitar player Johnny Echols out of retirement to rejoin the touring group, Lee sunk the momentum the new lineup had achieved when he bailed on a tour last minute last year. The group fragmented and an ugly war of words emerged online as Baby Lemonade guitarist Mike Randle took his long-simmering grievances with his ex-frontman to his blog. When the group did the tour without Lee, Randle alluded to Lee leaving threatening phone messages.
During the last months of his life, Lee, 61, had relocated to Memphis, Tenn., and was putting together a new lineup of Love, according to British music magazine Mojo. Before the new group could really take off, however, Lee was diagnosed with cancer. In June, a tribute concert to offset Lee's mounting medical bills was held in New York and headlined by former Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant, Ryan Adams and a few others.
According to published reports, Lee's wife was at by his bedside when he died on the afternoon of Aug. 3.
And so, when the requisite memorials came, the majority seemed to want to gloss over Lee's alleged transgressions. He was described as "eccentric" or "prickly," but few wanted to delve into what one might argue was an inherent part of the man's makeup. (It raises the interesting question of whether Lee's manipulations were just a carry-over from his arranging skills but on a personal level and without them, he might not have achieved Love's greatest songs.)
Even Randle, whose run-ins with Lee took up a large chunk of his blog postings, seemed to soften his tone after Lee's death. He said he would remember Lee as "a guy who had a big heart and a huge sense of humor. He was not perfect. He could be an a**hole. But he loved us. And I forgot that more than once."
"Arthur usually had our best interest at heart," he said.
But slicing off those parts of Lee's story that don't make us feel all warm inside, we might overlook what was most likely the greatest triumph of Lee's life: that no matter what he, his bandmates, the audience or the powers that be did that kept his career in a state of near-permanent limbo, he always showed courage and determination to get back up and try it again.
Note: For an easy foray into Lee and Love's music, start with Rhino Records' "The Best of Love," which was released a couple of years ago when Lee emerged from prison. It offers a good cross-section of the band's golden era. For the more adventurous, try "Forever Changes," which is the band's unquestioned masterwork and typically ranks as one of the best records of the '60s. "Love Story," a two-disc set goes even deeper into the band's catalog from their '60s and early '70s records and is also highly recommended. Lee's music from the '70s, '80s and '90s is harder to come by, but still available through various Web sites. Love's recent tours to celebrate the anniversary of "Forever Changes" was documented on a CD and DVD. For More Info: Previous Columns:Note: David's music column, Soundbytes, appears Wednesdays in our Entertainment section. He welcomes your questions and comments.
