109. The Red Telephone

Love: Forever Changes (Elektra, 1967);
composed by Arthur Lee

Hardly anyone bought this album in 1967, but it has never gone out of print and probably never will. Occasionally, I like to picture an alternate 1960s in which Arthur Lee and his cohort(s) had monster hits, which many of their songs sound like they had to have been. Until of course I once again listen closely and cannot help noticing that under all of Arthur’s (apparent) whimsy and (bodacious) (and jerry-rigged) tunecraft were beefs and paranoia aplenty (which ruled out doing any promotion, let alone touring outside of L.A.). And which makes it somewhat miraculous that three albums into what was already a doomed four-album contract, Elektra mysteriously shelled out for string arrangements to which Love responded with eleven perfect (and perfectly weird) songs that just samba right over your head - each one courting enlightenment while archly noting the blood coming out of their bathroom faucets. This tune ends (what was) side one, opening with a solemnly lyrical vision of nuclear devastation, followed by a playfully dilatory existential disquisition, and ending with a demand apparently copped from the Bonzo Dog Band, “We are all normal and we want our freedom.” But are we not vaporized? Maybe. So what?

Note: Secular essays about individual songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day (or at least regularly) until Donald goes away.