“Forever Changes” Photo Foretell Love Breakup?

by Bob Bembridge in Album Reviews

This group’s 1967 album is considered a rock classic, but the band attracted no more than a cult following outside its native Los Angeles.  

Love’s Forever Changes is rated number 40 on Rolling Stone’s 500 best albums of all time.  Headed by singer-songwriter Arthur Lee, Love’s critical reputation today outshines its modest record sales from the Sixties. 

One reason for the band’s relative obscurity was its notorious sloth.  The band largely refused to tour, and Arthur Lee even passed up the chance to play the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, which established the reputations of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.

Love’s artistic standing rests chiefly on two albums – Da Capo (January 1967) and Forever Changes (November 1967).  “7 and 7 Is” from Da Capo became a minor hit and the group’s only single to make the Top 40.  Forever Changes’ haunting “Alone Again Or,” written by guitarist Bryan MacLean, has become a rock classic.  Rolling Stone called Forever Changes “one of the most distinctive masterpieces in that era of masterpieces.”  Love influenced other Sixties rock groups such as Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. 

Love became a big attraction on the Sunset Strip beginning in the spring of 1965.  Jim Morrison reportedly dreamed that someday the Doors would be as big as Love.  (It was Arthur Lee who brought the Doors to the attention of Elektra Records president Jac Holzman, who shortly thereafter signed them to a record contract.) 

For a long time I was fascinated by the back cover photo on Forever Changes.  Love’s five band members are standing on a balcony overlooking the suburban Los Angeles landscape.  Lee, who died of leukemia in 2006, is holding a broken vase and staring at the camera.  Did this mean that Lee, who was then experiencing drug-induced paranoia, was about to crack up?  Did it mean that the group, three of whose members were using heroin, was about to break up? 

After reading Pegasus Carousel, the memoir by Love drummer Michael Stuart, I contacted Stuart via e-mail and asked him about the Forever Changes photo.  Stuart graciously answered my inquiry, and here’s what he related to me in March 2005:

The back cover shot was taken at Arthur’s “The Trip” house, out on the back deck overlooking LA.  I think that was about the time we were wrapping up rehearsals and preparing to go into the studio to record the album.  Ronnie Haran came over specifically to shoot the pic.  After we had been sitting around the living room for awhile she says, “Come on, let’s go outside,” so we all went out the sliding glass door and stood together near the railing.  There was a Spanish ceramic thing like in the way, and just before Ronnie took the shot my foot brushed against it, and it fell over and broke.  So Arthur looked down and picked up the broken vase and held it up and Ronnie snapped.  Maybe the broken vase was supposed to signify the group was about to break up (which of course it was) or maybe it was supposed to signify nothing and it just worked out that way.   

Next time: Cousin Brucie, WABC, and the demise of AM radio