Love – "A House Is Not a Motel" (1967)

And the water’s turned to blood

And if you don’t think so

Go turn on your tub

Love’s Forever Changes, which was released in 1967, is one of the few albums – perhaps the only album – that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds.

The “Forever Changes” album cover

Yet Forever Changes peaked at #154 on the Billboard 200 album chart in February 1968.  

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Here are some of the other albums that were listed ahead of Forever Changes on the Billboard 200 that week:

#153 – Clear Light (by Clear Light)

#152 – A Kind of Hush (John Davidson)

#138 – Valley of the Dolls soundtrack

#129 – Encore! More of the Concert Sound of Henry Mancini 

#125 – The Best of Herman’s Hermits, Volume III 

[NOTE: The only two songs I recognize that are on that album are “There’s a Kind of a Hush (All Over the World)” and “No Milk Today,” which both suck donkey d*ck.]

#122 – Bill Cosby Sings/Silver Throat  

#104 – Hawaiian Album (Ray Coniff)

#101 – Groovin’ with the Soulful Strings

#92 – My Cup Runneth Over (Ed Ames)

#62 – Please Love Me Forever (Bobby Vinton)

#46 – Snoopy and His Friends (Royal Guardsmen)

#41 – Clambake (Elvis Presley)

#12 – It Must Be Him (Vikki Carr)

#10 – The Last Waltz (Engelbert Humperdinck)

I could go on, but I’ve probably beaten that dead horse quite enough for one night.

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Actually, let me beat it just a bit more and make absotively, posilutely sure it’s dead.

Can you believe there were no fewer than eight different Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass albums listed ahead of Forever Changes that week?

One of the eight

(I like “The Lonely Bull” and “A Taste of Honey” as much as the next guy, but EIGHT albums ranked ahead of Forever Changes?)

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Love’s biggest hit single, “7 and 7 Is” – which is the quintessential stick-of-dynamite record – topped out at #33 on the Billboard Hot 100.  It was the group’s only top 40 “hit.”  (No Love single ever charted in the UK.)

Today’s featured song was the B-side of “Alone Again Or,” the only single from Forever Changes to chart in the U.S. – if you can call peaking at the #123 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 “charting.”

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Love’s admirers included Robert Plant, Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones, and the Doors.  

Arthur Lee with Jimi Hendrix

“Love was one of the hottest things I ever saw,” Ray Manzarek of the Doors told an interviewer in 2017. “The most influential band in L.A. at the time, and we all thought it was just a matter of time before Love conquered America.”

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“A House Is Not a Motel” (and most of the other songs on Forever Changes) was written by the group’s lead singer, Arthur Lee.  Lee was all of 22 years old when the album was released.  (He died of leukemia in 2006, when he was 61 years old.)

A lot of musicians and critics thought Arthur Lee was a genius.  I hope Lee believed them, and that the praise they lavished on him made up at least in part for the total lack of public recognition and commercial success that he achieved in his lifetime.

Lee and Love are clearly underrated.  In fact, Love may be the most underrated group of all time.

Click here to listen to “A House Is Not a Motel.”  

Click here to read what 2 or 3 lines had to say about “You Set the Scene,” the best song on Forever Changes.  (“A House Is Not a Motel” is tied for second place with all the other songs on the album,)

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: