Love – Forever Changes (1967)

And you’ll do just 

What you choose to do

In 2002, Peter Bradley – a Labour Party member of the House of Commons – proffered the following motion for Parliament’s consideration:

That this House pays tribute to the legendary Arthur Lee, also known as Arthurly, frontman and inspiration of Love, the world's greatest rock band and creators of Forever Changes, the greatest album of all time; notes that following his release from jail he is currently touring Europe; and urges honourable and especially Right honourable Members to consider the potential benefit to their constituents if they were, with the indulgence of their whips, to lighten up and tune in to one of his forthcoming British gigs.

The Forever Changes album cover

A total of nine MPs signed on in support of Bradley’s motion – including not only several other Labour Party members, but also a Conservative and a Liberal Democrat.

Sadly, that motion never reached the floor for vote, despite its obvious merit and its bipartisan – actually, tripartisan – support.  

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The proposition that Forever Changes is the G.O.A.T. of “Golden Decade” has been endorsed not only by those nine members of Parliament but also by the staff of the Brooklyn Vegan – which is a NYC-centric, multi-genre, mostly-music blog founded in 2004.

In 2017, the Brooklyn Vegan marked the 50th anniversary of the “Summer of Love” by picking the 50 best albums of 1967.

Their top choices included classic albums by the Beatles, Byrds, Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Kinks, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, Velvet Underground, Who, and Jimi Hendrix – all of which were very deserving of being so honored.  But they gave the #1 spot in their rankings to Forever Changes.

Click here to see the entire list.

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In his 33 1/3 book about Forever Changes, Andrew Hultkrans said that Arthur Lee – Love’s frontman and primary songwriter – “was one member of the ’60s counterculture who didn’t buy flower-power wholesale, who intuitively understood that letting the sunshine in wouldn’t instantly vaporize the world's (or his own) dark stuff.Lee’s somewhat pessimistic worldview was likely influenced by the fact that Love was falling apart due to its members’ drug use and the increasing personal acrimony that was developing between Lee and Love’s other singer-songwriter, Bryan MacLean.  

So it’s no surprise that Love ended up producing a somewhat schizophrenic album.  (The New Musical Express – the British equivalent of Rolling Stone magazine – described it as “joyous, uplifting and sweet in parts, while at the same time menacing, introverted and paranoid.”)

Maybe that’s why Forever Changes was a flop commercially, peaking – if “peaking” is the appropriate word – at #154 on the Billboard 200 album charts. 

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Despite the dark tone of some of Arthur Lee’s lyrics, most of the music on Forever Changes is as cool as the other side of the pillow.  For me, that album goes down just as easily as Surrealistic Pillow.  

If you’ve never heard it, you need to.

Click here to listen to Forever Changes.

Click here to buy the album from Amazon.

Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced? (1967)

We’ll watch the sunrise

From the bottom of the sea

A year before he released his debut album – Are You Experienced? – Jimi Hendrix was struggling to make a living playing guitar in New York City. 

He got his big break when Keith Richards’s girlfriend, Linda Keith, heard him play at a club one night.  

She told Sire Records founder Seymour Stein and Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham about Hendrix, but neither one of them was impressed.  

Here’s what Billy Madison had to say about their decision:

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Linda Keith next reached out to Chas Chandler, who had just left the Animals to become a record producer.  

Chandler quickly signed Hendrix to a contract and recruited guitarist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell to play with him.

Within weeks, Chandler had arranged for the group – which he had decided to call the Jimi Hendrix Experience – to start recording.

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It’s not surprising that Are You Experienced? sold like hotcakes in both the U.S. and the UK.  

It was loaded with great songs – including “Purple Haze,” “Manic Depression,” “Hey Joe,” “The Wind Cries Mary,” “Fire,” “Foxey Lady,” and “Are You Experienced?” – all of which are still staple fare on classic-rock radio stations.

(Radio stations?  I must be OLD. Who listens to radio stations any more?) 

Want to guess which of those tracks achieved the highest position on the Billboard “Hot 100”?  I’ll give you a minute to think about that.

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A couple of years after Are You Experienced? was released, Hendrix’s record company issued a greatest-hits compilation album titled Smash Hits.  

I bought Smash Hits, which had all seven of the Are You Experienced? tracks listed above. 

But Smash Hits also had “All Along the Watchtower,” which I am not a fan of.  

So in retrospect, I would have been better off buying Are You Experienced?, which came sans “All Along the Watchtower.”  

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So which of the Are You Experienced? tracks that I listed above do you think reached the highest position on the U.S. singles charts?

Whatever you answered, YOU ARE WRONG!  Because none of those songs made it into the top 40 in the U.S.  

If you want to split hairs, “Purple Haze” hit #65 on the Billboard “Hot 100” charts, while “Foxey Lady” made it to #67.  But as far as I’m concerned, you’re a la-la-la-la-loser if you don’t make it into the top 40.

Hendrix did have one top-40 single in the U.S.  The aforementioned “All Along the Watchtower” peaked at #20 in 1968.

In other words, it would technically be accurate to classify Jimi Hendrix as a one-hit wonder.

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Are You Experienced? is considered by many critics to be one of the most original and influential debut albums ever.

“It altered the syntax of the music, if you will, in a way I compare to, say, James Joyce’s Ulysses,” said Smithsonian musicologist Reuben Jackson.  “You read a page or two of Ulysses and then you listen to ‘Purple Haze,’ and you think, ‘My goodness, what is this’?”

(I would amend that statement to read as follows: “You  read a page or two of Ulysses and you think, ‘My goodness, life is far too short to waste time reading gibberish like this’!”)

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Click here to listen to Are You Experienced?

Click here to buy the 1997 reissue of that album from Amazon.  (It contains six bonus tracks in addition to the eleven songs that were on the original version of the album.)

Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow (1967)

I saw you

I saw you

Comin’ back to me

The Jefferson Airplane were the first of the San Francisco-area psychedelic bands to have a real impact on the musical world.  

Their second album, Surrealistic Pillow, was “a groundbreaking piece of folk-rock-based psychedelia, and it hit – literally – like a shot heard round the world,” according to reviewer Bruce Eder of Allmusic.com.  

The only better American album from that era is the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, and both records share many of the same virtues.   The production of Surrealistic Pillow is sophisticated without being slick.  There’s none of the self-indulgent excess that mars many albums of this era.  

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I didn’t buy Surrealistic Pillow at a store – I got it from a record club.  

More record clubs of that era offered a heapin’ helpin’ of free albums, but required you to buy a certain number of additional records – e.g., “Get 12 records free when you agree to buy six more in the next year,” etc.

The ad I responded to offered two records for 99 cents, and there were no strings attached.

What was the other record I got?  I’m glad you asked!  It was Hugo Montenegro’s Music From The Man From U.N.C.L.E. album.  (I don't think this was the actual music played during the television show, which was only the coolest show ever – it consisted of a cover version of the main “Man From U.N.C.L.E.” theme plus other instrumentals in the spirit of the show.)

I remember playing that album one Saturday night when my parents were out to dinner with friends.  I was pretending to be Napoleon Solo, jumping from one hiding place to another – peeking around the corner, and then diving behind the sofa, firing my imaginary Walther P-38 pistol at my pursuers as the music played.  (I was at least 15 years old at the time – maybe even 16 – so this is a little embarrassing to admit.) 

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Surrealistic Pillow didn’t inspire me to run around my house in fantasy secret-agent mode.  In fact, it often put me to sleep.

I remember sitting in the big, overstuffed La-Z-Boy in our living room and drifting off to sleep (despite it being the middle of the day) while Surrealistic Pillow played on our Magnavox console stereo.

It was such a relaxing record to listen to – not boring, just relaxing.  Classical music often had the same effect on me.  I rarely made it through a Mozart or Beethoven symphony without nodding off.  (I wish I could just let myself fall asleep at an orchestra concert.  It's such a nice feeling to go to sleep while listening to music.)

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The Jefferson Airplane was put together by 23-year-old singer Marty Balin to be the house band at The Matrix, a rock-folk-blues club he opened in San Francisco in 1965.  (When I lived in San Francisco in the early 1980s, my apartment was four blocks west and eight blocks south of where The Matrix was located, but it had closed long before.)  Steppenwolf, Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Doors, and the Velvet Underground were among the groups that recorded live albums there.

So was the Great Society, an early acid-rock band that featured a lead singer named Grace Slick.  Signe Anderson was an original female singer of the Jefferson Airplane, but left the group after giving birth to a daughter.  Slick left the Great Society – whose members included her husband and his brother – because she felt that the Jefferson Airplane was run in a much more professional manner.  

Grace Slick

Slick contributed two songs to Surrealistic Pillow:  “Somebody to Love” (which was written by her brother-in-law and had been recorded previously by the Great Society) and “White Rabbit.”  Both were top-ten hit singles.

But Surrealistic Pillow really belongs to Marty Balin.  He wrote or co-wrote five of its songs, including what I think are the four best songs on the record.  We think of Grace Slick as the Jefferson Airplane's lead vocalist because she sang on the two hit singles from Surrealistic Pillow, but Balin was the singer on the lion's share of the songs on that album.

By the way, the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia played guitar on several songs on Surrealistic Pillow, including “Comin’ Back to Me,” which Balin said he wrote in a single setting after smoking some topnotch marijuana given to him by famed blues singer Paul Butterfield.  (That’s Grace Slick playing recorder on the song.)

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Influenced by the success of “heavier” musicians like Jimi Hendrix and Cream, the group changed musical direction after Surrealistic Pillow.  

Paul Kantner, who had a child with Grace Slick, became the band's primary songwriter.  (The couple eventually formed Jefferson Starship.) 

Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady, who had gotten their starts as blues musicians, launched Hot Tuna. 

Marty Balin eventually became the Airplane's odd man out.  He had been a close friend of Janis Joplin, and abstained from drugs and alcohol after her death, which further isolated him from his bandmates.  He left Jefferson Airplane in 1971.

The records that the Airplane released after Surrealistic Pillow contain some very good songs, but the group sort of jumped the shark after its release.  Nothing Jefferson Airplane did later compares to that glorious album. 

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Click here to listen to Surrealistic Pillow.

Click here to buy the 2003 reissue of that album, which contains several bonus tracks that were not on the original LP.