Love - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 11-23-1970

Here's a concert of Arthur Lee and Love in 1970. It's actually two concerts, and early and late show. Track 10, with an emcee talking, is the start of the late show.

In my opinion, "Forever Changes" by Love is easily one of the top 100 albums of all time. Many music critics have said the same. Unfortunately though, Love didn't play live much when the concert came out in 1967, actually never leaving the Los Angeles area, and when the did, it seems nobody was there to record it. As far as I can tell, it's not until 1970 that there are concert bootlegs. So I tried to find the best one from that year in order to post it here.

In 2015, an official live box set was released, called "Coming Through to You: The Live Recordings 1970-2004." But three out of the four CDs are from the 1990s or 2000s. The first CD is all from 1970, but it's two or three songs each from five different concerts. I wanted to hear a single concert all the way through. This Fillmore West concert was the best sounding one I could find. There's no overlap with the official box set, although it includes three songs recorded at that venue a couple of days prior to this concert. 

This is a soundboard recording, but not the greatest in terms of sound quality. The main issue is the vocals were very low in the mix. That probably explains why this hasn't gotten around much on bootleg trading sites. But that's something that can be easily fixed these days, so I fixed it (using the UVR5 audio editing program). I also cleaned things up, like extra low volume of banter, and song titles being wrong. It's a much better listen now, in my opinion.

One song, "Find Somebody," has "[Edit]" in its title. It was split into two files, with a gap in between. However, I managed to patch it back together in a way that hopefully should make the split totally unnoticeable. 

I assume the people who made the live box set mentioned above looked for live material prior to 1970, and didn't find any. So this is probably as close as we're going to get, chronologically, to hearing Love in 1967. (Along with the 1970 disc of the official box set.) Mostly, the band was playing different songs. In fact, there are only two "Forever Changes" songs here ("Andmoreagain" and "Bummer in the Summer"). But Love was still making very good music at least through 1970. All the songs here are solid.

By the way, three of the songs repeat between the early and late shows: "Product of the Times," "Stand Out," and "Singing Cowboy." I decided to keep both versions in each case.

This album is an hour and seven minutes long. 

01 Product of the Times (Love)
02 talk (Love)
03 Stand Out (Love)
04 Keep On Shining (Love)
05 talk (Love)
06 Andmoreagain (Love)
07 Singing Cowboy (Love)
08 talk (Love)
09 Good Times (Love)
10 talk by emcee (Love)
11 Stand Out (Love)
12 Product of the Times (Love)
13 Bummer in the Summer (Love)
14 Find Somebody [Edit] (Love)
15 Signed D.C. (Love)
16 Slick Dick (Love)
17 Always See Your Face (Love)
18 talk (Love)
19 Singing Cowboy (Love)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/sd7AozX2

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/4gHN2BLXhxqNbPq/file

The cover image of band leader Arthur Lee is from a concert in Copenhagen, Denmark, in March 1970.

Love with Arthur Lee - BBC in Concert, Manchester Academy, Manchester, Britain, 3-21-2004

Yesterday, I posted a Robert Plant concert that was part of a benefit concert for Arthur Lee, the leader of the band Love. I actually found that recently while doing some research for this. So it's fitting that I post them back to back.

Arthur Lee was a musical great, in my opinion, who rarely lived up to his full potential. Some of his troubles were not of his own making. A big one was that in 1996, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison for the negligent discharge of a firearm. The evidence of this relatively minor charge didn't even point to him. A court later reversed the charge, and the prosecutor was found guilty of misconduct, but nonetheless Lee ended up spending five and a half years in prison.

By the time Lee was released at the end of 2001, there was a growing interest in the music of Love. He began touring all over the world using the name "Love with Arthur Lee," which is a bit odd and redundant in my opinion since he basically was Love, having written and sung the vast majority of the band's songs. His musical skills were still intact, and he even was writing the occasional new song that were worthy of the ones from the 1960s.

Unfortunately though, he didn't have long to enjoy this career resurgence. He toured through 2005. But he was diagnosed with leukemia, and his health started to fail fast. He died in 2006 at the age of 61.

There's one really excellent official album from this late stage of his career, called "The Forever Changes Concert," recorded and released in 2003. The songs chosen here are pretty similar, with a heavy emphasis on the classic 1967 album "Forever Changes." Still, I enjoy both concerts. Because this one was recorded by the BBC, the sound quality is excellent, probably as good as the official live album.

Unfortunately, there is only one song here that was written recently at the time, "Rainbow in the Storm." But in my opinion it fits in well with the others, showing he still had his creativity intact. Perhaps if he'd lived a few years longer he would have released an acclaimed album of new material.

This album is an hour and 24 minutes long.

01 talk (Love with Arthur Lee)
02 Live and Let Live (Love with Arthur Lee)
03 Your Mind and We Belong Together (Love with Arthur Lee)
04 talk (Love with Arthur Lee)
05 Alone Again Or (Love with Arthur Lee)
06 Andmoreagain (Love with Arthur Lee)
07 Seven and Seven Is (Love with Arthur Lee)
08 talk (Love with Arthur Lee)
09 Old Man (Love with Arthur Lee)
10 The Daily Planet (Love with Arthur Lee)
11 The Red Telephone (Love with Arthur Lee)
12 Orange Skies (Love with Arthur Lee)
13 My Flash on You (Love with Arthur Lee)
14 Signed D. C. (Love with Arthur Lee)
15 A House Is Not a Motel (Love with Arthur Lee)
16 Bummer in the Summer (Love with Arthur Lee)
17 You Set the Scene (Love with Arthur Lee)
18 talk (Love with Arthur Lee)
19 Rainbow in the Storm (Love with Arthur Lee)
20 talk (Love with Arthur Lee)
21 Singing Cowboy (Love with Arthur Lee)
22 Singing Cowboy Band Intros (Love with Arthur Lee)
23 talk (Love with Arthur Lee)
24 Can't Explain (Love with Arthur Lee)
25 Maybe the People Would Be the Times or Between Clark and Hilldale (Love with Arthur Lee)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16695520/LOVEE2004_BBCncrtMnchestrAcdemy__3-21-2004_atse.zip.html

The cover photo isn't from this exact concert. However, it was taken at the nearby city of Liverpool at around the same time in 2004.

Robert Plant - Benefit for Arthur Lee, Beacon Theatre, New York City, 6-23-2006

Singer Robert Plant has long been a fan of 1960s West Coast rock and folk rock, especially the bands Moby Grape and Love. By early 2006, the health of Arthur Lee, the main singer and songwriter of Love, was in rapid decline, due to leukemia. Love was a very critically acclaimed band, but their sales had never been that big, so Lee didn't have much money for his medical care. Thus, some of his musical friends and admirers stepped up to perform a benefit concert to help pay his medical bills. Musical artists at the concert included Robert Plant, Ian Hunter, Ryan Adams, Nils Lofgren, Yo La Tengo, and Garland Jeffreys.

The bad news is that only a bootleg of Plant's set is publicly available, as far as I know. The good news is that the sound quality of his set is fantastic, just as good as an official album.

The really bad news though is that nothing could stop Lee from getting worse. This concert took place in June 2006. Lee had already started chemotherapy sessions, but he died on August 3, 2006, at the age of 61. Probably his health was so bad that he couldn't attend the concert in person. 

Plant's usual backing band at the time also wasn't there. Instead, he was backed by Ian Hunter's band. He also sang a duet with Hunter, the Everly Brothers classic "When Will I Be Loved." For this concert, the band also included lead guitarist Johnny Echols, who was one of the founders of Love and stayed with the band until shortly after the 1967 release of the band's most acclaimed album, "Forever Changes."

As you'd expect at a concert for Arthur Lee, Plant sang some Love songs. Specifically, he did "Bummer in the Summer," "Old Man," "A House Is Not a Motel," and "Seven and Seven Is." And while Love didn't write the song "Hey Joe," they were one of the first bands to record it for an album (prior to it becoming famous by Jimi Hendrix). Plant has sang some of those songs many times in concert. But this appears to be the only time he's ever sang "Old Man" in public.

Plant, having been the singer for Led Zeppelin, also played three classics by that band: "In the Evening," "What Is and What Should Never Be," and "Ramble On." But what's odd is that he did some cover versions not associated with Love that he rarely or never played in other concerts: "For What It's Worth," "When Will I Be Loved," "Can't Help Falling in Love," and "Nature Boy." In fact, this appears to be the only concert he ever played "When Will I Be Loved" and "Can't Help Falling in Love," and he only did "Nature Boy" three other times.

So this is a unique concert for him. If you're a fan of both Plant (solo and in Led Zeppelin) and Love, like I am, this is a no-brainer to listen to. I'm surprised it's not better known in bootleg circles, especially given the excellent sound quality.

This album is an hour and four minutes long.

01 In the Evening (Robert Plant)
02 talk (Robert Plant)
03 Bummer in the Summer (Robert Plant)
04 talk (Robert Plant)
05 What Is and What Should Never Be (Robert Plant)
06 talk (Robert Plant)
07 Old Man (Robert Plant)
08 talk (Robert Plant)
09 For What It's Worth (Robert Plant)
10 talk (Robert Plant)
11 When Will I Be Loved (Robert Plant & Ian Hunter)
12 talk (Robert Plant)
13 A House Is Not a Motel (Robert Plant)
14 talk (Robert Plant)
15 Can't Help Falling in Love (Robert Plant)
16 talk (Robert Plant)
17 Hey Joe (Robert Plant)
18 Nature Boy (Robert Plant)
19 talk (Robert Plant)
20 Seven and Seven Is (Robert Plant)
21 talk (Robert Plant)
22 Ramble On (Robert Plant)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697035/ROBRTPLNT2006_BenfitforArthrLeBeacnThetre__6-23-2006_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. I found a few, so I could have used one with just Plant in it. But I thought it was more interesting to include this one, which has Ian Hunter on guitar at his side. Hunter was much lower in the photo (probably due to some weird perspective issue), but I used Photoshop to raise him up some.

Arthur Lee - That's the Way It Goes - Non-Album Acoustic Tracks (1992)

First off, just to be clear, Arthur Lee was the singer and songwriter for the vast majority of songs by Love, the band best known for the classic 1967 album "Forever Changes." By the end of the 1960s, Love basically became Lee plus a changing group of back-up musicians, with all the other original members gone. He often continued to bill himself as "Love," but this is basically a collection of solo acoustic recordings, so it seems appropriate to me to bill this to Lee instead of using a band name.

In many cases, a musician and/or band has a heyday and I have very little interest in what they do decades later. But Arthur Lee is a different case. He had many lost years, including spending 1996 to 2002 in prison for "negligent discharge of a firearm." (An appeals court later overturned the conviction, and the prosecutor was found guilty of misconduct.) He often had trouble with drug addiction as well. Sadly, he died of leukemia in 2006. But in the 1990s and 2000s, from time to time, he got his act together and wrote new songs that were just as good as the Love songs from the best years of that band.

The early 1990s were one of those times when Lee got his act together and wrote and performed at a high level. As a sign that he still "had it," one song he wrote around that time, "Five String Serenade," was later covered by Mazzy Star, Jack White of the White Stripes. However, one problem about Lee in his later decades was that he never really got his act together enough to record any well-produced albums of his new songs. (There were a few attempts, but each of them are problematic for various reasons.)

Luckily, we can enjoy many of Lee's quality new songs due to the fact that he played them in solo acoustic format in 1992. (He actually played songs in acoustic format occasionally in the 1990s and 2000s, but for whatever reason, the best sounding recordings all seem to come from 1992.)

Most of the songs here come from an officially released box set of Love's live recordings called "Coming through to You." However, the vast majority of the songs on this four disc box set are full-band performances. I think it makes sense to pull out the acoustic performances and listen to them separately. Some are from radio shows, and others are from concerts where I've removed the audience noise.

On top of that, I've included three songs that were recorded in a studio around 1992, but never released (at least not in those acoustic versions). Ironically, these studio performances probably sound the worst of all the songs on this album. But that's only true in a relative sense. The sound quality is still fairly high all the way through.

Most of the songs here were written by Lee long after Love's heyday in the 1960s. But there are four exceptions: "Alone Again Or," "Hey Joe" (which is a cover done famously by Jimi Hendrix), "Signed D.C.," and a medley of Lee's "Everybody's Got to Live" and John Lennon's "Instant Karma." The reason I'm including these is because they are probably the only quality versions of Lee doing this songs in an acoustic format.

In conclusion, if you enjoy "Forever Changes" and the other great Love music from the 1960s, you really should give this a listen. Don't be put off by the year. Lee definitely had a worthy creative resurgence, and this is probably the best way to listen to it.

01 Five String Serenade (Arthur Lee)
02 Ninety Miles Away (Arthur Lee)
03 Passing By - Hoochie Coochie Man (Arthur Lee)
04 Girl on Fire (Arthur Lee)
05 You're the Prettiest Song (Arthur Lee)
06 I Believe in You (Arthur Lee)
07 Alone Again Or (Arthur Lee)
08 Hey Joe (Arthur Lee)
09 Somebody's Watching You (Arthur Lee)
10 L.A. Calocoa (Arthur Lee)
11 That's the Way It Goes (Arthur Lee)
12 Signed D.C. (Arthur Lee)
13 Everybody's Gotta Live - Instant Karma (Arthur Lee)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16695524/LOVEE1992_ThatstheWyItGoes_atse.zip.html

The cover art photo is of Lee playing in concert in San Francisco in 1992. I lightened the background some, because otherwise, Lee is visually lost with his dark clothes in a dark room. I wish I could find a photo of him playing acoustically around 1992, but I haven't had any luck with that.

Love - Out Here - Alternate Version (1969)

First off, I want to say that I think "Forever Changes" is one of the greatest albums of all time, but you're missing out if you think that's the only album by that band worth owning. The group put out a lot of great music, both before and after that. For instance, Love's "Four Sail" album from 1969 is a solid album all the way through. But after that album, the quality Love songs got increasingly mixed in with subpar songs, with each album generally being worse than the one before.

This is an attempt to fix that, for at least one album. "Forever Changes" come out in 1967. I don't know why, but Love only put out a single in 1968. That meant that by 1969, which by this point was effectively Arthur Lee and a bunch of supporting musicians, had a backlog of songs to deal with. The group owed one more album to their record company, and that company was allowed to pick an album's worth of songs. That became "Four Sail." There were still so many leftover songs though that Love released the double album "Out Here" just three months later, still in 1969.

In retrospect, releasing a double album instead of a single album was a big mistake, because there was about one album's worth of quality music left. So what I've done here is very simple: I just took the 70 or so minutes of "Out There" and boiled it down to the best music, about 44 minutes' worth. In this case, less is more.

But it gets a bit trickier, because two of the songs were quite good, but also way, waaaay too long. First is "Doggone." This is a 12 minute song. The first three minutes is a typical quality Love song, then the next nine minutes is a boring drum solo. Lee later admitted that it was a mistake to ruin the album flow by having a long drum solo there. In 1982, a weird hodgepodge album of previously released Love material called "Studio - Live" came out. On that album, they edited "Doggone" down to just the first three minutes before the drum solo, so that's the version I've used.

The other song that's way too long is "Love Is More than Words or Better Late than Never." This is an 11 minute long song. The first minute has interesting chords, melody, and lyrics. But suddenly that part of the song stops and the next ten minutes is one long guitar solo, vamping over the same two chords over and over again. I actually like the soloing for a while, but not for ten minutes. And it seemed to me a shame that the rest of the song was limited to just one minute. So what I did was edit the guitar solo down to just the first three minutes. Then I took the first minute of the song and had it repeat at the end, making it a five minute long song. So yeah, I took so major liberties with the editing here, but I think the song works much better this way.

Cutting down those two songs shortened the album by about 15 minutes. I cut out about another ten minutes by removing some other songs that just weren't very good. I think the album works much better this way. Now, in my opinion, it's just as strong as "Four Sail," even though it's the "leftovers," because Lee had a lot more than one albums' worth of good songs in 1969.

Interestingly, the logic of cutting the album down is so obvious that the record company also gave it a try. In 1988, they released the album "Out There" (as opposed to "Out Here"), which was the album cut way down, and then some songs from the next album "False Start" added in as well. But there were some problems with that. For instance, "Love Is More than Words or Better Late than Never" was cut from 11 minutes down to just two minutes, which was too short. And the addition of the "False Start" songs changed it into something else. Trust me, this version is better.

01 I'll Pray for You (Love)
02 Abalony (Love)
03 Signed D.C. (Love)
04 Listen to My Song (Love)
05 Stand Out (Love)
06 Doggone [Edit] (Love)
07 I Still Wonder (Love)
08 Love Is More than Words or Better Late than Never [Edit] (Love)
09 Nice to Be (Love)
10 Run to the Top (Love)
11 Willow Willow (Love)
12 You Are Something (Love)
13 Gather Round (Love)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16695515/LOVEE1969_OutHreAlternte_atse.zip.html

The cover is just the "Out Here" cover with no changes.

Love - Da Capo - Alternate Version (1966)

Love is justly celebrated for its 1967 album "Forever Changes." That album is on all the lists of the top 100 albums of all time. Their 1966 album "Da Capo" is similarly excellent... except for one problem. This is an effort to fix it.

The problem is actually two fold. The first is that the album is only 35 minutes long. (Forever Changes was 42 minutes long, and other albums of the time were up to 50 minutes long.) That, by itself, wouldn't be so bad, except that more than half of the album ended up being on song, the 19-minute long "Revelation."

That also wouldn't have been a problem had "Revelation" been a great song, perhaps like "A Quick One While He's Away" by the Who that same year, which was a suite with many diverse parts. But unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Most listeners were bored by "Revelation," and thus generally only listened to the other side of the album, which is only 17 minutes worth of music.  

Here are some quotes from the Wikipedia entry on the album: "The album's critical reputation has suffered as a result of the inclusion of 'Revelation.'"

Also, the entry quotes Richie Unterberger writing for AllMusic: "It's only half a great album, though; the seventh and final track, 'Revelation,' is a tedious 19-minute jam that keeps Da Capo from attaining truly classic status."

Thus, my fix to the album was to get rid of "Revelation" and replace it with some other songs. But actually, it's not a bad song, in my opinion, it just goes on waaaaaay too long. So I edited it down to a "mere" nine minutes (instead of 19) and kept it on the album. Then, luckily, there were two good Love songs from the era to add, one of them a B-side and the other an outtake.

That still would have left it a very short album though, but also luckily, there are some demos from band member Bryan MacLean that are quite good. The band was dominated by Arthur Lee, who wrote and sang most of the songs, but MacLean was occasionally allowed a song or two, such as "Orange Skies" on this album (though it's sung by Lee) and "Alone Again Or" on "Forever Changes," possibly the band's best known song. Clearly, MacLean was a talented songwriter and should have been allowed more songs on each album. His frustration with this caused him to leave the band in 1968.

I picked out what I consider to be the four best MacLean demos from the 1966 and 1967 era and added them to the second half of the album. Unfortunately they're all acoustic guitar demos only, so they sound somewhat different from the rest of the album, but I think they're good songs that match the quality of the rest of the album.
 
Had Lee been more inclusive and included more of MacLean's work instead of using half of the album for a single song, we might be talking about two Love albums being all time classics instead of just one.

01 Stephanie Knows Who (Love)
02 Orange Skies (Love)
03 Que Vida (Love)
04 Seven and Seven Is (Love)
05 The Castle (Love)
06 She Comes in Colors (Love)
07 Blues Singer (Bryan MacLean)
08 Revelation [Edit] (Love)
09 Tired of Sitting (Bryan MacLean)
10 No. Fourteen (Love)
11 Barber John (Bryan MacLean)
12 Love Will Be Here (Bryan MacLean)
13 Wonder People [I Do Wonder] (Love)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16695521/LOVEE1966b_DaCpoAlternte_atse.zip.html

The cover is the exact same cover of the "Da Capo" album.