Is this Love that we’re seeing? Well, since the band on stage tonight started touring behind Arthur Lee, firstly under their own name of Baby Lemonade and later on as Love, and since the five-piece now includes original Love guitarist Johnny Echols it’s hard to imagine any five people better placed to make a claim to be the continuation of the band into the third decade of the 21st century. And it is a band with a legacy that transcends the small fact of having made, as lead singer Rusty Squeezebox claims, “the greatest album of all time” in the shape of “Forever Changes“. A big claim, but not an outrageous one. In a time when having black and white musicians playing in the same band could be a hindrance Love didn’t achieve the breakthrough they fully deserved, but listen to their albums and compare them to say Rain Parade and there’s clearly a chain of influence that leads to bands that would in turn be major influencers of the modern Americana scene, particularly in the realm of guitar led bands. That puts Love up there with the likes of Buffalo Springfield or The Byrds.
Whilst “Forever Changes” would form the heart of the set tonight things actually kicked off with the tambourine and 12-string jangle of ‘My Little Red Book‘, hitting immediate catchy high-energy. It was the first of several songs taken from Love’s eponymous debut album. Lead Singer Rusty Squeezebox sounds enough like Arthur Lee to really carry the songs well, without sounding so much like Arthur Lee that the band would slip into a soulless attempt at imitation. With drummer David “Daddyo” Green at the back of the stage on drums, there’s a magnificent guitar frontline of Mike Randle on lead guitar, Rusty Squeezebox on mostly rhythm, James Nolte on bass and Johnny Echols. And when Johnny Echols lets loose with fiery solos the rest of the line falls back a few paces yielding the spotlight – it’s a beautifully rehearsed gesture of respect.
As the gig progressed it became increasingly obvious just how important it is to keep this music alive – ‘Maybe The People Would Be The Times Or Between Clark And Hilldale‘ is of course a jaw droppingly inventive song, and it truly purrs with James Nolte’s bass, and that it is then contrasted with the apocalyptic visions of ‘The Red Telephone‘ underscores again Arthur Lee’s haunted visions and the discontinuities of one becoming disconnected from reality: “Life goes on here / Day after Day / I don’t know if I am living or if I’m supposed to be.” Ominous awareness of mortality resurfaced on ‘You Set The Scene‘ which acknowledges the shortness of life and also finds some reassurances that life itself goes on, with or without us. It was a complex song then, it remains so now.
And then again moving away from ‘Forever Changes‘ there’s the proto-hard rock of ‘Seven & Seven Is’ and the lush jangle of ‘Gazing’, digging fully into a Byrdsian take on folk-rock. Glorious, glorious music. In fact if there was one thing holding back the gig it was that it was fully seated – this is music too alive to just sit through, and even this was eventually resolved with the encore which kicked off with ‘Signed J.E.’ (originally ‘Signed D.C.‘) which was sung and played by Johnny Echols, becoming a direct comment on his own past issues with heroin. With the band fully engaged there was the absolute joy of ‘Wonder People (I Do Wonder)‘ a song which it is hard to credit was left off “Forever Changes“. The band seem to truly appreciate the, yes appropriate, reverence that the music is held in and there were promises of return visits. People, one can but hope it is true.
