‘We kind of romanticise things now,” says Johnny Echols in reply to my question as to how he experienced 1967’s Summer of Love in Los Angeles. “I recall we were scared to death that they were going to need more bodies for the Vietnam war and would pluck us from Hollywood and send us to some godforsaken jungle to die. There was violence and a kind of seething undercurrent of discontent. Now, people look back and romanticise the time as one of hope and love and all that. But it’s not that simple. There was a dark side.” No 1960s band were better positioned to capture that mix of dark and light than Love, the LA band Echols co-founded with the late Arthur Lee.
To celebrate the 55th anniversary of Forever Changes, the album Love recorded across that fabled summer, the group – now dubbed the Love Band – are touring the UK. Forever Changes’ beautifully odd blend of psych-folk and Latin instrumentation, rock and easy listening, sounded like nothing before or since. A failure in the US when released in November 1967 – reaching No 154 in the US charts, far lower than Love’s previous two albums – yet a success in the UK where Forever Changes reached No 24 and quickly became hailed as a masterpiece: in 1971 ZigZag magazine held a poll that saw Forever Changes voted best ever album, beating the likes of Sgt Pepper and Blonde on Blonde. Since then Forever Changes has continued to enchant listeners and inspire musicians – Primal Scream and the Stone Roses (among many others) all referenced it as a touchstone while artists as diverse as Robert Plant, the Damned and Calexico regularly perform numbers from this idiosyncratic album.
“It’s just amazing to me to think that Love’s music has lasted this long,” says Echols. “If you told Johnny back then that in 2022 he’d be playing this music I just would not have believed it. And I’m so appreciative that British audiences have celebrated our music across the decades – far more so than Americans.”
Arthur Lee died in 2006 aged 61. Lee was Love’s lead singer, main songwriter and a divisive figure: prison time for firearms offences and an often intimidating manner ensured many kept their distance. No one knew him better than Echols – the two first met as children in Memphis (their parents were friends) and later reunited in Los Angeles when Echols’ family followed Lee’s in relocating to California. Here they lived in Crenshaw, a south central neighbourhood, where young Johnny served his musical apprenticeship. “I had a high school band with Billy Preston playing bar mitzvahs, weddings, anything! Arthur saw all the girls screaming at us and determined he wanted in – before that his focus was on basketball.”
By then 16-year-old Echols had already backed Little Richard, and encountered a band in Liverpool who were overawed to be supporting their hero. “Sycophants sounds like a harsh word,” says Echols, “but that’s how the Beatles appeared to me. I mean, they just fawned on Richard. They weren’t famous yet in England. I had to return to LA as my grandmother died so I didn’t go to Hamburg [Richard invited the Beatles to support his residency there] and get to know them like Billy did. In 1964 when they played the Hollywood Bowl they sent Billy tickets and he took me along and my jaw dropped – I had no idea the famous Beatles who changed everything were that little band we met in Liverpool!”
Lee and Echols formed an R&B band, the Grass Roots, who changed direction when 19-year-old guitarist Bryan MacLean joined in 1965. MacLean added Beverly Hills stardust – he learned to swim in Elizabeth Taylor’s pool; worked as a roadie and confidant for the Byrds – and hipped the Crenshaw youths on to folk rock. Forced to change their name, Love – chosen before “peace and love” entered youth lingo – were an anomaly: a mix of blues and folk, garage rock and hippy whimsicality, played by one of the first multiracial American bands. “Arthur and I both have mixed bloodlines,” says Echols, “and LA is a melting pot so it made sense to be a mixed band.”
Love recorded and released three albums in just under two years, then disintegrated, with Lee keeping the name while fronting shifting lineups for several years. As appreciation of Forever Changes grew so did the mythology surrounding Love: rock lore suggests they refused to tour, being drug addled recluses holed-up in Bela Lugosi’s Hollywood mansion with a murderous Charles Manson disciple on guitar, while Echols and bassist Ken Forssi robbed doughnut shops to support their addictions (and were jailed for such). Echols groans when I put such to him.
“We didn’t refuse to tour,” he says. “It was difficult because we were multiracial in the mid-60s, so there was no way we could play the south and midwest, there was so much racial hostility out there. Also, Elektra, then a small, independent folk label, put all their money behind promoting the Doors, a band Arthur and I encouraged them to sign. We did succumb to drugs – we were naive at the time and drugs were part of the milieu – but Kenny and I never, ever robbed a doughnut shop or went to jail. That was a rumour an ex-member started that ZigZag printed.”
He then mentions Bobby Beausoleil, who was in the Grass Roots before he was replaced by MacLean. “Bobby called me from prison last week. He’s doing life for mistakes he made while following Charles Manson” – namely murdering Gary Hinman, a loose associate of the Manson Family cult, in 1969. “He was just a mixed-up kid back then. Love had nothing to do with Manson or his followers.”
Echols, only 20 in 1967, went into rehab then returned to playing sessions, his remarkable chops seeing him work alongside the likes of Glen Campbell and Miles Davis. In 2001, fresh out of prison, Lee began performing again as Love. Lee invited Echols to rejoin the group in 2003 – by then MacLean and Forssi had died – and Love played at the Royal Festival Hall, Glastonbury festival and other prestigious stages (often with string and horn sections to recreate Forever Changes’ orchestral flavours). “It was like a dream come true,” says Echols, “playing our music to appreciative audiences.”
As always with Love, though, a dark side came through. “Arthur wasn’t book smart, but he had street smarts and an innate intelligence,” says Echols. “And he was a warm, giving person. But he would go to the other extreme of being just obnoxious – Lenny Kravitz came all the way to London to see us and Arthur refused to meet him. He was a very complex individual who withdrew more and more into himself, to the point where he became a caricature of what he thought a rock musician was supposed to be. So, at times, he would be obnoxious.” Echols pauses, then adds: “Arthur got addicted to crack cocaine and it ruined him. I’m certain crack is what brought on the leukaemia that killed him.”
Since Lee’s death Echols has continued to sporadically tour with LA band Baby Lemonade (who backed Lee from 1991 onwards) as the Love Band. The group completed a farewell tour of the UK in 2019 before changing their minds and announcing this forthcoming tour, which will see them play Forever Changes in its entirety alongside the strongest songs off Love’s first two albums.
“Love now get the recognition they never got in the 60s,” Echols says. “Forever Changes is in the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Library of Congress National Recording Registry. But it’s still fucked up – the Smithsonian Museum of African American History has a Love exhibit but the photo they use to illustrate the band is from Black Beauty [1973 sessions Lee recorded with African American musicians]. That’s not Love! We were multiracial!”
Echols sighs in frustration, the last man standing of one of rock’s seminal groups still struggling to get their story told correctly.
“Love stood for unity of all people,” he says, “not just one race. In the US things are such a mess – that massacre in Buffalo, that’s hate, it’s what we were against – so I want the music of Love to bring people together, to inspire. That’s why Love are coming to the UK: we love to share the music.”
• The Love Band featuring Johnny Echols tour the UK until 9 July.
