Arthur Lee on Jimi Hendrix (Univibe)
Karl
Love, This Is Your Life!
by Caesar Glebbeek
Arthur Lee was born Arthur Porter Taylor in Memphis, Tennessee, 1944. He
moved to Los Angeles in early 1965 where he still lives and works these
days. He formed and disbanded several groups, such as Arthur Lee & The LAGs
(LAG standing for Los Angeles Group) which released one single on Capitol.
In April 1965 the group Love (Arthur: "It's a big word, it's the best part
of life...") made their live debut at the Los Angeles coffee house "Brave
New World." The first line-up of Love consisted of Arthur (guitar & vocals),
John Echols (lead guitar), Bryan MacLean (guitar & vocals), Ken Forssi
(bass) and Don Conka (drums). The story goes that some Hollywood artist
called Vito saw Love perform and decided to back the band financially and
brought the band to the attention of Elektra's Jac Holzman, "30 seconds into
Hey Joe and I knew this was the rock group I wanted."
They were signed up by Elektra, who had just lost The Byrds to Columbia,
basically in a bid to get rid of the labels folkie tag. Although the career
of Arthur Lee has had some ups and downs over the years, Love delivered some
truly superb albums (particularly between 1966 and 1969) via a mixture of
Arthur's strong song writing abilities, some very good cover material (like
the Burt Bacharach/Hal David tune "My Little Red Book") and last but not
least via Arthur's catching and fluent vocals - a tasteful mixture of R&B
and soul influences.
The group's first LP -simply called Love- included an up-tempo version of
"Hey Joe." When released as a single it sold 150,000 copies, pretty good for
an unknown act at that moment. The group delivered more exceptional goodies
on the following three albums, Da Capo, Forever Changes and Four Sail.
During 1968 and 1969 things got a bit out of hand at times due to drugs and
various other personal problems within the band, with the group's personnel
changing frequently as a direct result. Drummer Drachen Theaker was in the
band for four months and claimed, "they're very mellow people...that's what
brought me down...they were too mellow, they never used to do anything
except sit around getting stoned."
Teen magazine Hit Parader once sent somebody around to interview the group.
Expecting to write the typical 'fresh faced, clean cut, all-American boy'
story, the female interviewer instead claimed to have witnessed for a start
that one member of the band acted as 'chick puller' during the interview,
while another member was too stoned to be coherent. In a 1988 interview for
Rolling Stone magazine, Arthur admits to his share of 'close calls' saying,
"I've been on the bright side of life and I've been down. Real, real down...
I thought I was gonna die at the age of twenty-six."
Meanwhile back in 1969, the group delivered their first album for Blue Thumb
(all previous releases were on Elektra) titled Out Here (double). It got a
rather mixed reception - some people just didn't fancy those violins coming
out of their speakers... False Start in late 1970 (more on that later) was
the next release. Although the LP contains some good songs, overall it
didn't contain material of the same high quality as many of the previous
releases. We had to wait for the next release until 1972 when Arthur
released his first solo album titled Vindicator - another brilliant release
with strong compositions. Strange enough the LP didn't do all that well
internationally. Arthur recorded another album titled Black Beauty in 1973
for the Buffalo label but this was shelved completely as the company
collapsed. In 1974 Arthur re-surfaced again with yet another version of Love
(with guest appearances on guitar by Harvey Mandel and Buzzy Feiten), but
the album Reel-To-Real (on RSO Records) turned out to be a disappointing and
rather lack-lustre affair with some poor compositions (except a strong
re-recorded version of "Everybody's Gotta Live" plus the tasty "Which Witch
Is Which"). Although Love continued to perform from time to time (mainly in
California), there have been no new releases on offer since 1974 although
Arthur said he recorded one album per year ever since 1966. A few years ago
the long silence was finally broken with the re-release of several of the
group's old LP's onto the CD format.
In January 1991 I had the pleasure of conducting a telephone interview with
Arthur, in fact his first major interview for several years. He had just
returned from a short spell in hospital and sounded enthusiastic and
optimistic about his plans for the near future [note: at present Arthur is
in jail - C.G.]....
1965
Univibes: Could you tell us how the Rosa Lee Brooks single [S349 and S350]
came about? Did you contact Jimi for this?
Arthur Lee: I didn't get in touch with him, [Billy] Revis got in touch with
him. I asked for someone that could play like the style that Curtis Mayfield
plays on "Gypsy Woman" [sings a few lines]. And he said "oh, I know a guy
who can do that," and he'd bring at that time Jimi Hendrix. At that time
Jimi was playing with a with a bunch of people... He was playing at the
"Californian Club" on Santa Barbara [Boulevard], in western LA. It's now the
Martin Luther King Boulevard. Jimi used to play everywhere....
UV: Would you remember the name of the studio you did the Rosa Lee Brooks
tracks in?
AL: You mean in L.A.? I don't know whose studio it was, it was on Western
Avenue... I really don't know that 'cause the guy used [different] studios.
Revis was Revis Records... I never got paid for that [but] the thing about
it was, he was not the one who would pay me anyway, I just wrote the song
["My Diary"]...
UV: Was it a small studio?
AL: Yeah, fairly...
UV: Four track?
AL: I think it was an eight track studio, if it was that, I can't remember
that....
UV: How did the Olympic recording session [17 March 1970] with Jimi come
about?
AL: Because I knew Jimi Hendrix...and we became real good friends. In
England we'd hang around together, going to different places, riding up and
down the country side in England, having a good time... Plus we both
mysteriously had the same girlfriend [laughs]... Devon Wilson was my
girlfriend first... That was one Dolly Dagger... Anyway, when I went to
London I was surprised to see Jimi, of course I met him over here [Los
Angeles] now and again... He was one of my best friends. We were a lot
alike, we had the same following, the same crowd and the same trip...and we
became real good friends, and when I was in London we were at the
"Speakeasy" and I told him "neither one of us gonna be around very long, so
while we are here we might as well do something together." He fell for that
[laughs]! So we got together. I tried to book something over there, but
Stephen Stills had booked all the studio time [at Island studios]....
UV: They were fully booked?
AL: Well fully booked by one person, Stephen Stills... He wouldn't even give
me a day man, you know, not one fucking day man [laughs]. So I got that
Olympic studio...and he [Jimi] and Remi Kabaka [played percussion with
Ginger Baker's Air Force group from early 1970] and these other two Africans
[came], they're playing tabla, I don't know who they were, but I met Remi
Kabaka. He's the drummer on this jam of "The Everlasting First" [unreleased
version] and another song that I never got to put a vocal on... We never got
a chance to play [again as] he died... We were gonna start a band
together...
UV: Yeah, the Band-Aid?
AL: Yeah! How did you know that?... He said he wanted to try and get Steve
Winwood, Remi Kabaka and myself. But it never materialised. And that's why I
put Band-Aid on that Vindicator [LP] as a tribute, an inside tribute to
Jimi, you know.
UV: But Jimi played on "Ride That Vibration" as well?
AL: Well if he did...
UV: That's what you said during a radio interview for the BBC on 4 July
1980!
AL: No! I said that he asked me what were the words [laughs]. I said he
asked me what are the words of "Ride That Vibration" [sings a few lines] and
then he had to split....
UV: Did you do any other tracks with him during that day, because I
understood...
AL: Maybe that's the understanding, you wanna know the truth? I did "The
Everlasting First" with him, I did "Ezy Ryder," I did a jam, and I did a
couple different versions of "The Everlasting First," and that's about it...
I mean "Ezy Ryder," that never came out either....
UV: Is that Jimi's tune?
AL: That's Jimi's, but he's playing with my band...
UV: So Jimi is definitely not playing on "Ride That Vibration"?
AL: No, that's Gary Rowles....
UV: What happened to all those tapes from the Olympic session?
AL: I don't know where they are. Bob Krasnow [head of Blue Thumb Records in
1970] who is whom I gave then to, I haven't seen him or the tapes since
than, so that's that. But there are a couple versions of "The Everlasting
First." I gave the tapes [to Bob] and I'd say "hold it for me" and when I
went to another company I forgot to get the tapes....
First published in UniVibes #2 (May 1991)
Copyright © 1991 UniVibes - All rights reserved
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