SH Spotlight We love LOVE! "Forever Changes" Elektra 1967 recording sessions and dates, studios, stories, etc.

What about Arthur?

 

I like his work on both of them...not that they sound anything alike.

 

Slightly off topic (or perhaps more than slightly) . . . I had a neighbor who bought the 4-track cartridge of the Doors debut album. I can't remember with certainty the reason for his complaint letter to Elektra -- I think it may have been because the version of Light My Fire was the 45 version, or perhaps there was some other edit on it -- but Elektra responded by sending him a label-less 4-track cartridge with just the unedited track on it.

 

Yes, they sound like different mix engineers, different studios, everything. if the credits didn't say Bruce Botnick, I would never have suspected they were both his work.

 

I think my quote from Echols, "every guitar note was played by either him [Johnny] or Brian"speaks for itself.

 

Arthur was usually in the recording booth taking on a producers role it seems. You can hear him directing the band on the outtakes.

 

I got the first two albums as they were released and was a fan. they had already established that they had no predictable sound.
Still I was taken by surprise by the single. Loved it. When I realized this was the new Love, I ran out and got the album. And...
the rest of the album was not at all like the single. Still sounds that way to me. There is the single, very much a Bryan Maclean thing,
and then there is the rest, very much an Arthur Lee thing. Now it's all great, of course, but it took me quite a while to get into it as I was so enthusiastic
about the single that I craved more of the same and heard the rest as simply NOT LIKE THE SINGLE. Needless to say, I got over it.
But expectations can be a powerful influence to be sure.

 

I hear you, but to me it sets the rest of the experience up perfectly. (And if any album can be seriously described as an "experience," it's this one.) On the one hand, it's superficially sweeter in tone than Arthur's songs, the result being that you're kind of plunged into the abyss that is "A House Is Not a Motel." On the other hand, the key for me is "I think that people are the greatest fun/And I will be alone again tonight my dear." Which neatly sums up the paradox of human existence, the chasm between joy through interpersonal experience and the crushing feeling of loneliness/alienation, AND let you know that much of what is to come is largely the push-pull inside one person's head.

(/pseudointellectual analysis)

 

Like many Led Zeppelin fans, I got turned on to this album by Robert Plant from hearing him rave about it during interviews. I knew Robert loved the west coast sound of bands like the Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape, and expected something along the same lines from Love. Boy, was I dead wrong. The first time I heard AloneAgainOr, I thought I'd made a mistake and bought an album by the Moody Blues instead. It took me a while to get into it, but today I am fully hooked and consider it one of the most incredible albums of its time - of any time, for that matter. The lyrics to You Set the Scene speak to me on a very deep level. I can't tell you how much I regret missing Arthur when he toured with Baby Lemonade back in 2003. I must have watched the performances on Jools Holland dozens of times over the years - including You Set the Scene, which is effing phenomenal. Great album, great band. Hoping to be secure the rights to use A House is Not a Motel in a play I've written called Final Vinyl. It's about a record store in the East Village that's forced to close due to declining sales and rising rents. The guy working behind the counter gets caught rocking out to AHINAM by the hottie who works at the boutique clothing store next door.
Love,
Billy

 

My label says the same. But many accounts, including, if I recall, some re-releases, have Da Capo coming out in early 1967 (Feb?). I wonder whether there was a delay between the printing/pressing and the actual delivery of the album to stores, or whether it was a case of a research error that got traction.

 

Maybe, maybe not... I would like to hear what Bruce Botnick has to say on that. I get the impression that Arthur was something of a control freak, and that he would have had no qualms about re-doing somebody else's guitar parts if they weren't up to snuff, the way Brian Jones did to Keef's parts on the first Rolling Stones LP.

 

Got me! I was think on the tracking sessions of "Your Mind And We Belong Together". But according to Echols etc. Arthur took on the same role for FC.

 

Same as you up until your talk about the single but I bought the album on day of release here in the UK and, without reservation have loved it, and have loved it ever since, I don't hear the disparity between "Alone Again Or" and the other cuts at all, to me it's all of a piece, magnificent.

 

I've got a number of albums like that, where I like all the tracks, but they don't go together for me and I never listen to them together. A well known case (for me,
of course) is Smiley Smile. I like every cut and love most. But I NEVER listen to the whole thing. The two singles are, for me, one kind of thing, and the rest of the cuts
are ............ something else. So that's how I listen to it. I never listen to the other tracks together with the two (great) singles.

 

I think a few songs on that album were done my studio musicians, do to the band being drugged up and out. Love may have overdubbed those tracks, but I highly doubt Johnny and Brian are the only guitarist on that album. Ask Bruce, I'm sure he knows.

 

Can someone give me information on the Deluxe edition. I read here that Disc 2 is a mix mastered by our host? What are the thoughts on this remix?

Thanks

 

It is an interesting and different look at the album making up part of that deluxe edition 2nd CD, the balance being other bonus tracks not mastered by Steve. It is a rough mix done to a cassette, but the mastering of it is such that you often forget many of those facts. Many like the alternative mix better.

There is more information about the mastering of it here with a bit more discussion of the mix origin and preferences here.

Any story to why a retired LA DJ had the cassette?

 

One caveat I should offer to my encounter with Johnny Echols. I called Forever Changes an "MOR" album on FB previous to my personal encounter with the man. His retort (and rightly so)? "You think Forever Changes is an MOR album when it has the words 'the snot has caked against my pants' in it?"

I was wrong and apologized. Forever Changes is a great album; it's just not a rock and roll album IMO ONLY folks, "the snot has caked against my pants," notwithstanding.

Before you accuse of me of hating "Forever Changes," think of this: I just ordered the SACD, have two copies of the album (and one vinyl) and two copies of the European tour. I love it. But it is not a rock and roll album. It is a pop album meant for the emerging FM radio.

 

It is much more then that IMO, and more...

 

It's easy to opine but my post was also filled with factual encounters and discussion with one the album's major players. Let's discuss; not just throw out empty platitudes. The Steve Hoffman forum deserves better than that.

 

Not throwing anything, it only takes reading the different posts in this thread to get an idea why it might be deeper then a pop album made for FM radio, but I do respect your opinion, I see nothing wrong with it, it does seems though that the album means more then that to a lot of people.