BUMMER IN THE SUMMER

When I was maybe five years old, I began to take a serious interest in music. Dad #2 gave me a four-track player with two tapes: the “Easy Rider” soundtrack and the “Best of Cream.” From that point I became hyper-aware of the music around me, from the sounds of KRLA and KHJ that blasted through the dash of our gold 1966 Chevy Impala to the records that spun on our giant RCA console record player. I saved allowance money and bought my first single, “Come and Get It” by Badfinger, and spent hours sifting through mom and dad #2’s collection – jazz from Chico Hamilton and Gabor Szabo, lots from the Crosby Stills Nash and Young family, Judy Collins, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison. There was also a record by a group called Love. A peculiar name, I thought. Trippy typography. And black people and white people together on the cover. I was very young, and it was barely the ‘70s, so this boggled my little mind a bit.

I often thought about that Love album (their debut, with “My Little Red Book” on it) and during my teenage years, when the “Paisley Underground” was in full bloom here in Los Angeles, I took the opportunity to look backward at some musical source material, which prompted a closer look at Love, starting with a Rhino Records compilation, eventually making my way to the epic “Forever Changes.”

It wasn’t until I was an adult and writing about music became something of a vocation was I really able to digest Arthur Lee’s talent and put his band’s work in its proper context.

More than any other band of its era, perhaps more than any other band ever, other than perhaps the Beach Boys and X, Love is the sound of Los Angeles. Listening to the band’s catalog is like a walk down Sunset, starting in the Palisades and crossing the town easterly, passing West Hollywood, Silver Lake, Echo Park, before disembarking at Figueroa. Love’s music is expansive and cinematic, melancholy and defiant, like the city itself. You hear different neighborhoods, moods, sunny and gray skies all at once.

I never met Arthur, though by many accounts he was a difficult, troubled guy who caught more than his share of bad breaks. He died Thursday at age 61, losing a battle with leukemia. Let us never forget, though, that with his music he left us with significant historical documents of Los Angeles in full bloom. RIP, brother.