The love lives on in Arthurs memory

Arthur Lee, singer and songwriter of influential 1960s band Love, has died aged 61. He passed away in Memphis following a battle with acute myeloid leukaemia.

Love were one of the most accomplished west-coast bands of the 1960s, with their 1967 album Forever Changes influencing successive generations of musicians. It regularly appears in ‘all-time album’ polls, with US magazine Rolling Stone listing it as number 40 in its top 500. Their music encompassed blues, jazz, hard rock and Byrds-style folk-rock, embellished with strings and mariachi brass on tracks like Alone Again Or. Together with Lee’s striking lyrical imagery and social comment, this made Love one of the most critically acclaimed – but undersold – acts of the era. Sadly, much of Lee’s work thereafter failed to match Love’s first three albums. After various line-up changes and reunions, Love finally ended in the mid-70s.

In 1996, Lee was arrested for shooting a gun into the air during an argument with a neighbour and convicted on an illegal possession of a firearm charge. On release from prison in 2001, Lee assembled a new line-up of Love and toured Europe and North America, often playing Forever Changes in its entirety.

In early 2006, Lee was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia. He underwent a bone marrow transplant using stem cells from an umbilical chord. A series of benefit concerts took place in Britain and the United States to raise funds for Lee’s medical expenses, including one organised by ex-Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant.

Lee and Love’s music still lives on, and has influenced bands as diverse as the Doors, the Damned, the Stranglers, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Teardrop Explodes, Belle and Sebastian, the Verve, the White Stripes and the Coral.