Que Vida!

Well, now Arthur Lee is gone. Another of my musical influences. Another guy who created some incredibly innovative and influential music in a short time period (that magical 1965-69 period where pop culture seemed to go into hyperspace.
Anyway, his story is more akin to Brian Wilson than Syd barrett. Whereas Syd gave up on anything public, Arthur's creative juices dried up on record and by the 80's was in the "where are they now" bin. However, like Brian Wilson, he found that if he toured playing his greatest album (Forever Changes, like Brian did w/ Pet Sounds and Smile), he'd find a very appreciative audience.
Prior to that, he did attempt a comeback around the time Mazzy Star recorded one of his newer songs and Rhino Records released a box set of Love's best work (though Love was the name of his LA band from 1965-68, it became more of a brand name for anything Lee did thereafter) This was in the early/mid 90's and when he came to the Northampton Center for the Arts, my sister Alyssa and I were all over it. It was a fun show, with local bands The Supreme Dicks and New Radient Storm King opening.
A year later he played at the Baystate but I didn't go.
A year after that he was due to play at Pearl St, and my then housemate Ken Maiuri did a phone interview with him (o what an interview it was!) to preview the show.
The day of the show it was announced: cancelled. Arthur was in trouble w the law.
And the outcome of all that was a few years of jailtime. He was a troubled soul who never could escape the fringe of society. He influenced the Doors, he paved the way for Hendrix to be a black man in a white psychedelic scene, Robert Plant was constantly singing his praises...
And when I first heard "She Comes in Colors" (oh, and the Stones ripped him off by writing She's a Rainbow and using the chorus "she comes in colors..." a year after Love recorded their song) I felt transported to a new land. Within 6 months I had Love's first 3 albums on vinyl. I bought the first one on a visit to Alyssa at UMass while I was in 10th grade. That summer I got Forever Changes at the Strawberries in Danvers. I actually still remember getting a nasty paper cut while enthusiatically getting the plastic off. Da Capo I bought at "Going Deaf for a Living", a cool-ass used shop in Newburyport that is long gone.
I realized in compiling the running order for the first Sitting next to brian album, that my concept of how a running order should go is based on Forever Changes. That, to me, is a 98% perfect album. Arthur Lee thought he was going to die upon its completion. Sadly, life is rarely that romantic.