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(TV) Part 2
By late 1966, the
effects of minor-league
fame -- the money, the
groupies, the drugs, the
distractions -- were
beginning to suck the
life out of the band; by
the time recording
started on its classic
album -- 1967's
Forever Changes, a
work that frequently
lands at the top of critics' lists of the best rock
records ever made -- the band was a wreck,
strung out, either emotionally (low morale and
intra-band squabbles) or physically (it's said
that Echols was battling a heroin addiction),
and 26-year-old Lee thought the Grim Reaper
was right around the corner. "I thought they might be my last words to this
world-life," he says. "They were droppin' all
around me." Bronson thinks that hanging-by-a-thread feeling
fueled the twisted insights and profound
strangeness of the record -- "That's one of the
reasons why it turned out so spectacular" -- as
did Botnick, who co-produced the record. "Arthur was talkin' about stuff people hadn't
thought about," he says. "But we went into the
studio and the band couldn't play....Bryan,
Snoopy, and everyone else were sitting on a
couch in the control room, crying their eyes
out." The album was only completed because
the Wrecking Crew -- the famous group of local
session musicians -- were brought in to play.
Soon after the record was cut, Lee broke up the
band. Ironically, the very album that brought the group
down secured its place in history, at least for
music critics. Forever Changes delivered a
minor hit, the flamenco-guitar-laced,
MacLean-penned "Alone Again Or" (which
also became a low-level hit in 1987 for the
U.K.'s The Damned). The record also
encapsulated the disenfranchised feeling of
many rebel youths. "If you want to count me,"
Lee sang on "The Red Telephone," "count me
out." Couched within the symphonic strings of
that same song is an eerie premonition: As the
song surges into a nursery-rhyme-like rap, Lee
chants, "They're locking them up today, they're
throwing away the key. I wonder who it will be
tomorrow, you or me?" For like-minded people,
Lee perfectly crystallized the recent gargantuan
shifts taking place in the country, flipping the
script on American youth and altering minds
and souls. For them, Forever Changes, like the
Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's, will always be the
musical benchmark of the '60s. Lee's dark premonition of his own early demise
never came to fruition, but many speculate that's
precisely why his legacy isn't greater. "Think of
Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison," says 23-year-old
Kevin Delaney, a fervent connoisseur of Love
factoids who moved from Pittsburgh to Los
Angeles solely to write a book about the band.
"Arthur lived." But there's another reason why Love remained
securely hidden in the shadows: Jim Morrison.
Lee begged Elektra's Holzman to come see this
new band, but the label-owner was lukewarm
about their act. It took him a few more shows to
see their potential. That was it. "It's pretty obvious that they were eclipsed by
the Doors," says Rhino's Bronson, "It's not fair
to say the Doors were better, but the Doors
would do anything." When Love arrogantly
refused to tour, staying close to L.A., the Doors
toured constantly. When Love turned down a
variety television show appearance, afraid that
it would be a fawning embarrassment, the
Doors would fill-in. "I think Lee always felt like the true artist he
is," says Kubernik, "He thought that if you have
the sound and the songs, that should be enough
to get you over....He sort of let the game come
to him. That's OKin most cases, but in rock and
roll, it's a liability." Then there was Jim Morrison's statue-of-David
good looks -- brimming with over-the-top
sexuality, but just soft and feminine enough for
the teenage girls. Lee, as gorgeous as he could
be, looked dangerous, a little off, too "street,"
and clearly too black for the suburban
teenybopper crowd. Doors second-in-command
Ray Manzarek, when he describes reconnecting
with that slimmed-down Morrison on Venice
Beach that day, could no doubt hear the little
girls sighing -- and, most likely, cash registers
chiming. Manzarek was the packager; Morrison,
partly, was the product. Lee, however, knew
nothing of prettying himself up for mass
consumption. He probably didn't care about
middle America anyway. "Arthur was the guy who could play
everybody's instrument much better than they
could," Botnick says, classifying Lee's talents
with those of Brian Wilson. The comparison is
particularly on target: Imagine Lee as a less
privileged Wilson, a tremendously talented
artist, an operating drug-era casualty, without
the big money and the controlling psychiatrists.
Where would Wilson be today if his family
weren't there to take care of him, without the
gurus? What if nobody took an interest --
however cynical or self-interested -- in his
preservation? Isn't it possible that he could be
in some kind of institutional holding tank?
Wilson is the introspective, wounded '60s
casualty; Lee, if you believe the police reports,
acts out. After the original band broke up, they
dispersed. Forssi and Echols were arrested and
jailed for heroin possession, prompting another
chapter in the Love myth. According to legend,
the pair had been robbing stands, prompting
their nicknames "The Donut Robbers."
Eventually, Forssi became an artist, forging
decorative house sculptures. MacLean
attempted a solo record, but it was never
released. (He later went on to become a
born-again Christian, to pen songs for
half-sister Maria McKee's band Lone Justice,
one of which, "Don't Toss Us Away," became a
hit tune for Patty Loveless.) Pfisterer hit the
road, and Echols dropped out. Lee plugged
away at music, turning away from the white
rock world he'd been immersed in for years.
Changing his tune drastically, he reached out for
the black power movement, soul, and
metal-tinged R&B. He made a record with Jimi
Hendrix; it was never released. He put out
spotty records, most under the name Love,
including one more for Elektra (Four Sail) that
was accepted with lukewarm respect by critics.
Occasionally, he hit the rare songwriting high,
but they were few and far between. Like his music, Lee hasn't weathered the times
well. Though he continued to tour and record,
assembling a different pick-up group of
musicians as "Love" through the '70s and '90s
(with a hiatus in the '80s), he is reported to have
fallen into bouts of drug abuse and alcoholism.
Former bandmate Rozelle claims that he once
saw Lee shoot quantities of cocaine that "would
have killed a normal person. He had a
constitution like a horse." (Lee denies or
deflects all drug-related questions; he even
denies at one point that he ever took LSD --
period -- something contradicted by most
people who knew him in the '60s.) In the '70s, Rozelle says that Lee, angered when
Rozelle demanded payment on a loan, chased
him out of Lee's Mulholland Drive home with a
gun. Rozelle jumped in his car. "He pointed the
gun at the windshield, so I ducked and put the
car in drive and drove off the hillside." Flying
off the cliff, Rozelle ended up in a neighbor
woman's backyard. "Melvan [Whittington, a
friend and bandmate] said that when Arthur saw
me go over, he just turned around and walked in
the house and started sweeping the kitchen. He
said, 'Well, he's dead, so I might as well start
cleanin' up before they come get me.' " But
when Lee found out that Rozelle was indeed
alive, he came running down the mountain. "He
grabbed me, hugged me, he kissed me on the
cheek, and carried me back up the hill. He said,
'Man, why'd you do that to me. Man, I love you.'
Why'd I do that to him? The boy was nuts!" (Rozelle also claims both he and Lee are
related to Jesse James, to which Lee responds,
"No, I'm not related to Jesse James. Jesus
Christ! Tell him to leave that stuff alone, I
thought he was through with that.") In the '80s, Lee pled no contest to a felony
charge of attempted arson when he apparently
tried to ignite a stack of bullets next to a
woman's home. "It never happened," says Lee.
After violating probation, he went to jail for
two years. Then, in 1995, just as Rhino was
releasing the beautifully compiled (if free of
rarities) and comprehensive two-CD set, Love
Story, everything started to go horribly wrong. It all happened in May and June of 1995. First,
Lee and his girlfriend, Susan Levine, were at a
supermarket near their Van Nuys apartment
when a fellow shopper made a rude remark
about Lee and Levine being a racially mixed
couple. Lee, according to the witness, pulled a
gun. "There was no gun," Levine says. "There wasn't
even a water pistol. We just left. I don't
understand how that even got into the court. It
was absurd." On June 29, police came to the couple's
apartment after Levine's parents heard a yell
and something that sounded like a tussle at the
other end of a long-distance call. When police
got there, Levine looked battered. Though she
didn't want to file charges -- and later said that
she had been drinking and fell and hit her chest
on a coffee table -- the police had a different
idea of what happened (based largely on what
they say was Levine's drastically different
explanation at the time). They made an
assessment of spousal battery and pressed
charges against him, since she wouldn't. He was never actually tried for abuse, though,
because a previous incident landed him in jail
first. Two weeks before the abuse incident, on
June 10, Lee's neighbor said he heard a shot and
spotted Lee standing on the terrace with a gun in
his hand. When the neighbor yelled to Lee that
he was going to call the police, he says that Lee
aimed the gun at him. Lee denies that he ever
even fired the gun. His story is that a visiting
fan from New Zealand, Doug Thomas, found the
gun, yelled out "Arriba!" and pulled the trigger.
When Lee heard the shot, he says, he ran to the
balcony and grabbed the gun. Though Thomas denied involvement when the
police arrived, he later claimed he was the
shooter. He and his wife flew to Los Angeles
twice to testify, and Thomas wrote a letter to
Lee's current lawyer, William Genego, when he
heard that a petition to consider Lee's case was
going to be submitted to federal court. "I have
been ill for over 12 months because of my
actions that have caused Arthur Lee much
suffering," Thomas writes. "I was the one that
did fire the shot. There was only one shot fired
and it was me." He also says that as a result of
his guilt, he was subsequently diagnosed with a
serious bi-polar disorder, which even caused
him to be hospitalized. Genego says that the results of a gun-powder
residue test taken on Lee that night turned up
negative when it was finally analyzed a year
later. He also says that his then-lawyer's
representation in court was a travesty. Lee says
he didn't even know that there was a gun. He
also claims ignorance about Teflon-coated
"cop-killer" bullets that the police also found in
his Van Nuys apartment. Lee would have been sentenced to nine months
in jail if he had pled guilty. Instead, he fought
the case and lost. With enhancements attached
to the charge because of his prior felony
conviction and the other events of that month,
the court threw the book at him: 12 years, 85
percent of time served -- nine-plus years in jail.
"I think that Arthur had an incredibly unfair
trial, it's almost not accurate to describe it as a
trial," Genego says. "What happened was he
was not willing to admit that he did it, and he
wanted to go to trial, and people who go to trial
get punished for it." Asked why he has refused to talk with any
reporters since his arrest, Lee explains, "I
thought I would beat this case, so why would I
want to broadcast it?...This has been so
humiliating to me." Ironically, his incarceration arrived at a time
when Lee's profile was at its highest since the
'60s. In 1992, France's New Rose label put out
Arthur Lee and Love, probably his best record
since Forever Changes. "Five String
Serenade," later downplayed into a low-key
blues pop song by Mazzy Star, is on the album;
so is "Somebody's Watching You," a song
which has caused a little earthquake in
England's pop world, since a song that Paul
Weller released last year called "Brand New
Start" sounds like a wholesale ripoff of the tune.
In 1994, Alias Records released a misbegotten
mess of a tribute album featuring Teenage
Fanclub and other alternative bands called
We're All Normal and We Want Our Freedom.
The local indie band Baby Lemonade toured
with Lee in the early to mid-'90s as Love. The
High Llamas backed him in England, where the
Love cult is probably most fervent. Two years
ago, Sundazed Records, the hip, history-minded
East Coast indie, put out ifyoubelievein, a
collection of Love-era demos by Bryan
MacLean. But by 1995, when Rhino Records
held its Love Story record release party, Lee
couldn't make it. The spotlight was once again
on Love's leader. And he was in jail. "Arthur had too much to drink the first night of
our tour, but he never got like that again," says
Baby Lemonade's guitarist Mike Randle. "He
was healthy for the whole tour and didn't mess
with anything. And as a matter of fact, people
were trying to give it to him, and he was saying
no. He didn't have any babysitters there. He
could've done anything he wanted to. The sad
thing is, at this one point in his life, he was
getting a lot of problems off his back. Right
when he was turning everything around, they
throw him in the slammer. "I have no idea how a judge could say the
abusive things he said to Arthur. Said he was a
danger to society. Said he'd done things like
driving without insurance since 1963. It's like,
name me one other rock star that hasn't. Grace
Slick? Keith Richards? David Crosby? Robert
Downey, Jr. has four felony counts; Arthur's
only got three." Part of the reason why Lee could write about
Los Angeles so well is that he embodies both
the dark and light side of the city -- its danger
and rugged beauty. Most people who know him
say that, when he's not drinking, he's incredibly
sweet and gentle. But, in the end, a man who
helped forge California psychedelic rock and
trailblazed garage punk gets little of the credit
he's due for his musical pioneering. And as
much as fans root for him, though, they're also
disappointed in him. "If you look at Arthur and what he's done
musically and how literate and inspired his
lyrics are, despite how he comes across, you
have to think that inside there, there's an
intelligent person," Bronson says. "Someone
who's less could not have done what he's done.
But from time to time I've just heard of him
doing the stupidest things." These days, Lee spends his time reading the
Bible and exercising a lot. He has six more
years to do, and he just spent his 54th birthday
on March 7 behind bars. "It's a drag," he says about prison life, but he's
hopeful about his slim chances for a successful
federal appeal. He's also writing songs. "I've
got some real good songs." he says. "I'm
arranging an orchestra in my head."
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