Arthur Lee in front of Bido Lito's
Was chatting about music last night with my pal Joe and he mentioned Arthur Lee. Sad to say...I didn't remember Arthur Lee and the band LOVE. So I went to You Tube and got the video of My Little Red Book...
Arthur Taylor Lee (born Arthur Porter Taylor; March 7, 1945 – August 3, 2006) was an American singer-songwriter who rose to fame as the frontman of the Los Angeles rock band Love, widely recognized as one of the most influential rock bands of the sixties.
Lee said when he first heard The Byrds he felt vindicated since he'd already been writing music that had a similar folk rock sound. In 1965 the Grass Roots, his folk rock unit, changed their name to Love because there was already a signed act called The Grass Roots.
Several other names were considered including Bryan MacLean's choice of Summer's Children as well as others, such as the Asylum Choir, Dr Strangelove, Poetic Justice, and the Love.
The name Love was chosen after a club audience voted it the best choice. According to Barney Hoskyns' 2001 book Arthur Lee: Alone Again Or, Manson Family member and sometime Grass Roots guitarist Bobby Beausoleil claimed that Arthur had named the band Love in honor of one of Beausoleil's nicknames, Cupid.
Arthur Lee and Jimi Hendrix
Was about to go hit up Love's lead guitarist and co-founder Johnny Echols on my FB page to see if he would do a short interview for RK. But then I found a really great interview with Johnny on my friend's page It's Psychedelic Baby!
Love's music has been described as a mixture of folk-rock, psychedelic rock, baroque pop, and Spanish-tinged garage rock... I love their version!
The group's cover of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David composition "My Little Red Book" (first recorded by Manfred Mann for the soundtrack of What's New, Pussycat?) received a thumbs-down from Bacharach: Love had altered the song's chord changes.
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