forever Arthur

Arthur Lee will always be remembered for Forever Changes, often acclaimed as one of the greatest rock albums of all time. In one of his last interviews before his death on 3 August 2006, Lee spoke to Peter Kennedy about Love’s greatest achievement.

You’ve said that you reject the term psychedelic. How would you describe Forever Changes today?

Good music that was pushed under the table. I’m just now getting the benefits of something that happened nearly 40 years ago. I don’t think people were ready for that sort of thing at the time, but, if it had been pushed, I’d have toured more. I’d have come out with the orchestra, like on the album.

So you feel Forever Changes was overlooked?

That’s exactly the word. People categorised it and judged it to be this type or that type of music. It wasn’t supposed to be psychedelic, alternative, new wave... It wasn’t any of those labels. I couldn’t believe that they said it was a psychedelic album. I thought Jimi Hendrix was psychedelic. I asked my friends and they said, “no, you are.”

Another adjective that’s always applied to the album is ‘timeless’. It’ about things that I thought were happening and were going to happen in life, as long as life is here, so they call it timeless. There were always wars before I wrote the songs and the same thing is happening now. That’s what I capitalised on. I was kinda clever in picking out elements of life. Today’s news will be tomorrow’s movies.

I never was an …

by Peter Kennedy
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