Forever Changes

[Dave Monroe]

Andrew Hultkrans: Forever Changes

After almost 40 years, Love's Forever Changes remains an album that is
widely regarded as one of the benchmarks of '60s psychedelic rock. Yet
the album's texture remains synonymous with mystery, uncertainty, and
chaos.

The album has influenced everyone from Julian Cope to The Damned to
Neil Young. Love's much-lauded, much-interpreted masterpiece, Forever
Changes, has once again been put under the critical microscope. This
go 'round, though, the exposition is often excruciatingly
philosophical.Hultkrans' thesis is simple: Forever Changes' greatness
lay in the fact that vocalist Arthur Lee was a paranoid genius,
convinced he was going to die. He argues that Lee, a citizen of L.A.
at the height of the racially tense Summer of Love, lived a life of
isolation propelled by intense paranoia. Depression, drug use, and
social conflict are also suggested as possible causes for the
temperamental and ultimately fatal relationship between the members of
Love.

Overall, Hultkrans has penned an enjoyable, quick read about one of
rock's enduringly charming albums. However, he spends way too much
time exploring the motives and psyche of Arthur Lee and quoting
outside sources, such as Virginia Woolf and Thomas Pynchon. In return,
there are hardly any details about how this record was written and
created, nor is there much on the four other members of Love. In the
end, the album Forever Changes remains a brilliant psychedelic enigma,
shrouded in a veil of paranoid hallucinogenic isolation. Rob Levy

http://www.playbackstl.com/content/view/5991/162/

Hultkrans, Andrew.  Forever Changes.  NY: Continuum, 2003.

http://www.continuumbooks.com/Books/detail.aspx?ReturnURL=/Series/default.aspx&CountryID=2&ImprintID=2&BookID=120395

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0603&msg=100219

Love, Forever Changes (1967)

http://www.rhino.com/store/ProductDetail.lasso?Number=76717