All you need is Love

It was the return of the magnificent “Seven and Seven Is” man, Arthur Lee, a prodigal black Rock Van Winkle whose landmark 1967 album, Forever Changes, was made with his black, white and psychedelic-hued band, Love. Lee has been out of the public eye for eons: Genius, bad luck and trouble, drugs and band conflicts. Then in 1995, he was sentenced to 12 years after violating California’s three-strikes law for a minor firearms offense; he served six. So in his place all these years we had Hendrix, Sly, Bootsy, Lenny Kravitz. Lee’s the guy Jim Morrison wanted to be.

Now he is free. Lanky and still cowboy-handsome in boots, white western shirt, wraparound girlwatchers and doo-rag under his white Stetson, Lee commandeered rounds of swirling acid punk of thunderous Shakespearean proportion, baroque West Coast orchestral pop with surreal Aquarian Age lyrics that still feel dangerous and more than timely. During the 18 months (1966-67) that he released three classics, Love, Da Capo and especially Forever Changes, his supremely original music was by turn ecstatic, precise, lyrical, stark, folky and raging.

And as it was, it was again. Lee sang his ass off, with his Memphis-via-Watts soul informing exquisite pop-psychedelic eclecticism. Maracas and tambourine in hand, he tossed off asides about the sordid state of pop music (“I can’t wait for this show to end so I can go watch MTV and see Britney and ’NSync do those exercises on stage”), pontificated (“I was invited to Parliament. They got down on their knees with their suits on and bowed down to me. They asked, ‘How many times have you been invited to the White House?’ The White House? Shit! The only white house I was ever invited to was the one my mother and stepfather painted”) and basked in the roar of adulation for this pounding 21/2-hour folk-rock resurrection. His band, Baby Lemonade, did for him what the Wondermints do for the now-peaking Brian Wilson. Lead guitarist Mike Randle is ferocious, honoring Love’s original, Brian Maclean, who died in 1998. The rhythm section breathes like an organic spaceship. My companions, and the Wayne and Garth Interpretive Dancers levitating beside me, wondered if they could really pull off all this gorgeous material without strings or horn sections. They did, in spades.

Opening perfectly for Love was Stew, sans his larger band, the Negro Problem (whose third album, Welcome Back, comes out in September). Literate and provocative, Stew knows love on Earth must be; his worldview is just a bit more cynical.