Love : Forever Changes 1967

Love is an American rock group that was most prominent in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They were originally led by singer/songwriter Arthur Lee, who wrote most of the songs, although some of their best known songs were written by Bryan MacLean. One of the first racially diverse American bands, their music drew on a diverse range of sources including folk rock, hard rock, blues, jazz, flamenco and orchestral pop.

While finding only modest success on the music charts, Love would come to be praised by critics as one of the finest and most important American rock groups of all time. Their third album, Forever Changes (1967), is generally regarded as their masterpiece, included in the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry in 2011.

[ Love's Forever Changes made only a minor dent on the charts when it was first released in 1967, but years later it became recognized as one of the finest and most haunting albums to come out of the Summer of Love, which doubtless has as much to do with the disc's themes and tone as the music, beautiful as it is.
Sharp electric guitars dominated most of Love's first two albums, and they make occasional appearances here on tunes like "A House Is Not a Motel" and "Live and Let Live," but most of Forever Changes is built around interwoven acoustic guitar textures and subtle orchestrations, with strings and horns both reinforcing and punctuating the melodies.

The punky edge of Love's early work gave way to a more gentle, contemplative, and organic sound on Forever Changes, but while Arthur Lee and Bryan MacLean wrote some of their most enduring songs for the album, the lovely melodies and inspired arrangements can't disguise an air of malaise that permeates the sessions.

A certain amount of this reflects the angst of a group undergoing some severe internal strife, but Forever Changes is also an album that heralds the last days of a golden age and anticipates the growing ugliness that would dominate the counterculture in 1968 and 1969; images of violence and war haunt "A House Is Not a Motel," the street scenes of "Maybe the People Would Be the Times or Between Clark and Hillsdale" reflects a jaded mindset that flower power could not ease, the twin specters of race and international strife rise to the surface of "The Red Telephone," romance becomes cynicism in "Bummer in the Summer," the promise of the psychedelic experience decays into hard drug abuse in "Live and Let Live," and even gentle numbers like "Andmoreagain" and "Old Man" sound elegiac, as if the ghosts of Chicago and Altamont were visible over the horizon as Love looked back to brief moments of warmth.

Forever Changes is inarguably Love's masterpiece and an album of enduring beauty, but it's also one of the few major works of its era that saw the dark clouds looming on the cultural horizon, and the result was music that was as prescient as it was compelling.]  AllMusic Review by Mark Deming 

Forever Changes failed to achieve commercial success when it was first released in 1967, but it has since become recognized as one of the greatest albums ever made, ranking 40th on Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, being inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008, and being added to the National Recording Registry in 2011.

Musicians

Arthur Lee : lead vocals, guitar
Bryan MacLean : rhythm guitar, background vocals (lead vocals on "Old Man" and co-lead vocals on "Alone Again Or")
Johnny Echols : lead guitar
Ken Forssi : bass guitar
Michael Stuart-Ware : drums, percussion

Additional musicians

David Angel : arranger, orchestrations
Strings : Robert Barene, Arnold Belnick, James Getzoff, Marshall Sosson, Darrel Terwilliger (violins) ; Norman Botnick (viola) ; Jesse Ehrlich (cello) ; Chuck Berghofer (string bass)
Horns : Bud Brisbois, Roy Caton, Ollie Mitchell (trumpets) ; Richard Leith (trombone)

TRACKS

01. Alone Again Or     3:15
02. A House Is Not A Motel     3:25
03. Andmoreagain     3:15
04. The Daily Planet     3:25
05. Old Man     2:57
06. The Red Telephone     4:45
07. Maybe The People Would Be The Times Or Between Clark And Hilldale     3:30
08. Live And Let Live     5:24
09. The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This     3:00
10. Bummer In The Summer     2:20
11. You Set The Scene     6:49

Take it HERE  FLAC