All you need is Love

Forever Changes: the magnum opus of one of rock's great, lost groups

By Geoff Parr

Published: Thursday, November 8, 2007

Updated: Sunday, September 6, 2009

I have this problem where I have so much music on my iPod that I always sort of forget about an artist for a while and I have to force myself to search through my iPod to seek these artists out. So there I was the other night, flipping through the list of artists when I saw it: Love. "Of course," I thought to myself, "I haven't had the pleasure to listen to Love in a long time!" My experience, I feel, serves as a kind of a microcosm of Love's place in rock history now -they're a group that is somewhat forgotten now, but whenever their 1967 album Forever Changes pops up in discourse, people sort of remember, "Yeah, that was one hell of an album." Forever Changes is a masterpiece in every sense of the word and one of the most highly-regarded albums of rock 'n' roll. Love was a band that was very much representative of Los Angeles during the 1960's. They didn't achieve nearly as much wide-scale popularity as The Byrds or Buffalo Springfield did, but they were a significant force in shaping the folk rock sound of L.A. They came out with their self-titled debut in May of 1966 and then followed up that effort with Da Capo in January 1967 -- a definitive psychedelic album in its own right. By the time Love was in the process of developing their third album, The Beatles had unleashed Sgt. Pepper onto the world. From there many bands tried their hand at emulating the lavish production that The Beatles had employed on Pepper. Some found varying degrees of success while many more failed miserably. With their November 1967 release, Forever Changes, Love crafted one of the most tastefully assembled albums to come out of this era -- a perfect wrap-up to the "Summer of Love." If I could only use one word to describe Forever Changes, it would be "lush." The foundations of each song on Forever Changes are made up of very basic, acoustic guitar tunes. What is layered over the songs, however, is very atypical from much of the work that was being done by other artists at the time. The trend of the time was to use organs, exotic instruments, backwards guitar loops, and other strange sounds that have dated very poorly and tend to drag the songs down. And where strings and horns were used, it's usually done to excess and sounds incredibly corny (if you've ever heard The Moody Blues' Days of Futures Past, then you know what I'm talking about). Love, on the other hand, managed to avoid these traps. The feel on Forever Changes is very lavish, ornamental and somewhat psychedelic, but at the same time stays very organic and light. Arthur Lee, the leader and principle songwriter of the group, does a remarkable job of making very fine touches to his work. It's as if, rather then taking a bucket of paint that is the orchestration and throwing it up against the canvas, he very carefully added it in with extremely fine strokes of the brush. It gives a very full sound to the album without being dragged down by over-production. Moreover, what makes Forever Changes such a remarkable album is that it is so melodic throughout, and will frequently take an unpredictable turn. You can be listening to a bit in the album and expect the melody to follow where it should be headed, and then it suddenly takes a left turn. I still find myself thrown off at times while listening to Forever Changes, and I've had this album for three years now. It's a great testament to Arthur Lee as a songwriter that he was able to adjust the melody at such odd times and still not interrupt the flow of the song. The opener of the album "Alone Again Or," is the centerpiece of Forever Changes. The flamenco-inspired guitar playing by Bryan MacLean, who also wrote this song, is masterful and further enhanced by the strings and horns that come in to help build up the song. "Alone Again Or" manages to mix in a sense of longing and hope at the same time, and the bridge is wonderfully built up with the horns and strings. And the line, "Yeah, I heard a funny thing/Somebody said to me/You know that I could be in love with almost everyone" might be the perfect closer to 1967. "The Red Telephone" is an absolutely eerie song, especially with an opening line of "Sitting on the hillside/Watching all the people die/I'll feel much better on the other side." "The Red Telephone," along with "Alone Again Or," is the best song on Forever Changes and probably the most elaborate song. "Andmoreagain" is in a very similar vain as "The Red Telephone," and another one of the highlights on Forever Changes. "You Set the Scene" epitomizes the unpredictability in Arthur Lee's songwriting and is very suite-like. It is an epic song that builds up dramatically to give a perfect ending to the album. And while Forever Changes is very delicate throughout, there are bits where Love demonstrates their garage band roots that they initially built themselves upon earlier in their career (this is the group that brought "Hey Joe" into the rock world so that The Leaves could cover it). "The Daily Planet," a song arranged by Neil Young, has a driving rock beat throughout much of the song. "Bummer in the Summer" has a very Byrds/Buffalo Springfield-ish quality to it, with Lee almost rapping the lyrics over the song (Lee, an African-American, was the self-proclaimed "first black hippie to come out of the scene"). "A House is Not a Motel" and "Live and Let Live" provide biting guitar solos from MacLean, the former of which is absolutely devastating and has similar ethos of Neil Young's aggressive style. Finally, Forever Changes has that all-important quality where it is cohesive throughout the entire album and holds together as a whole. There is a very definitive sound to Forever Changes that gives it its own, unique identity that can allow a listener to immediately distinguish it from everything else, and there is no more important quality for an album to have than that --all the great albums have it. Forever Changes is a nearly flawless album and an absolute work of art. Along with The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, no American album has been as masterfully crafted and put together in such a tasteful manner as Forever Changes. It is an album worth certainly worth remembering.

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Scavengers steal Scan TV sign Saturday

If you read on their facebook page for the stolen sign they accuse them of taking it. I just think that the blame game has gone too far on this campus and people see fraternities as a good scape goat. Yes some do some shady stuff, but at the same time one cannot instantly blame them. "They think it was maybe a fraternity stunt or scavenger hunt of some kind." - taken directly from their facebook page. I do hope that your sign does get returned because I understand how iconic it is for the university and the MUB.

posted by: UNHAlum
Faculty members need a wake-up call

It is time the faculity sucked it up like the rest of us on campus. This year staff over $40,000 received no raise, faculity received 5.5%. Take the 1.5% and be happy.
Do You remember why you became a professor? I hope, to pass your knowledge on to the next generation.
Some of you look like greedy individuals who can only think of the God almighty dollar and not the students you teach and mentor. If we keep increasing out tuition to pay for salaries students will look at other schools and then where will you be, on the street.

posted by: Robert Pettigrew
Faculty members need a wake-up call

I don't think it's fair to compare UNH to UMass (Amherst, I assume) and UConn. Both those schools are considerably larger than UNH — 26,000 and 20,000 undergrads, respectively — while the other schools mentioned are closer to UNH's size, give or take 3,000 students. Massachusetts and Connecticut are also feeling the effects of the recession slightly more than NH is. I realize that UNH commonly uses those schools as comparators, but those two are just on a different level than our school.
There are two other things I'm going to look up before I decide how I feel about this.
First, how does the average UNH professor's salary compare to to other universities? It's probably in line with other schools, but if it's significantly lower, shouldn't UNH profs get that too?
As some have said, if the pay is lower here, professors can quit and go to other schools — if they can find an open position somewhere else. But, if a professor leaves, the school will be left in the position of trying to attract a new teacher with lower-than-average salaries. Enact the raises and UNH remains competitive in keeping and hiring the best professors.
Second, what percentage of UNH's budget goes toward paying the professors? Again, this could be that the professors are asking the university to dedicate an equal amount to paying educators at UNH as they are paid at other schools. If UNH only dedicates 15% of the budget to prof pay and the other schools all dedicate 20%, why shouldn't that be changed? Not to sound Beck-ian, but I don't know and that's something that should be looked at.
Neither of those questions deal with the larger problem of education funding from the state, which I think was something like 2 percent (and that's for all schools, not just colleges). California students staged huge protests yesterday because fee hikes raised they amount they pay per year for school to around $11,000. Meanwhile, that's close to what UNH students have been paying for tuition alone for years, and it continues to rise. If Governor Lynch and our state reps don't start working to increase education funding in the state, all the groups involved, students, professors and administration, need to start showing the kind of outrage that California showed yesterday.

posted by: Clark Kent
Faculty members need a wake-up call

The whiny, lazy, faculty all need to get fired. I haven't seen a more wanna-be-entitled bunch anywhere I have worked. They don't deserve any raises, but instead a pay cut. The rest of the staff had a mandatory salary freeze that will last probably 2 years at least. Faculty also get the bonus of cheaper benefits than the rest of the staff. To top it off they are whiners and complainers about anything not in their contract or if they feel the least bit slighted by the administration. They got out of taking mandatory sexual-harrassment training that everyone else on staff had to take, since somehow their union filed a grievance with the administration that it wasn't required in their contract. The entire training was online and took less than an hour but that's too much for those slackers.
Tenure indeed is the only thing that keeps many of them employed, and it's a concept that needs to get thrown out. Many of them are dead wood, not bringing new ideas to the table and too 'busy' to try anything new, despite having many grad assistants and others to do all their real work, and the most over the top support structure of any organization I have seen.
Yet their greed continues unchecked! Ugh!
Good riddance!

posted by: Your name
Faculty members need a wake-up call

How quickly things change.
Just last week, when editorializing about a group of campus perverts, the attitude of the editors was: "we also don’t think it’s any of our business to judge an organization just because their activities are a shock to our system." Seven days ago we were advised to "shackle our judgment" and told that the campus S&M crowd "deserves respect." Now, a mere week later, when the same editorial board concludes that the UNH faculty union's collective bargaining position is "shocking," what do the editors do? Take their own advice and "shackle their judgment?" Offer respect to the faculty? Conclude that the negotiations are none of their business?
No, none of these. Instead, the hypocritical editors tell "whining" and "greedy" faculty they are lucky to have a job, and should be satisfied with whatever the administration considers to be a fair offer -- because, presumably, the administration ALWAYS tells the truth about university finances, and ALWAYS treats the employees of the university fairly.
Why not spend some effort actually learning the facts regarding the financial situation of the university -- revenues from the state, tuition increases, higher enrollments, grant money? Why not report on the value of the faculty and the university as an economic engine for the state? Why not investigate both the enormous increase in administrative salaries and the bloated growth in new administrative positions over the last two decades? Why not write about the relative compensation of your faculty compared to those with similar education, training, and experience in other fields? I guess these tasks were too challenging. It's just easier to call faculty names.
Everybody loves free-market capitalism as long as the managers and administrators get to call the shots and the workers remain docile and content with whatever the bosses decide they deserve. But, when workers assert their rights and engage in labor negotiations as equals -- well, that is just unacceptable to our enlightened editorial masters. You're all doing a great job of learning how to be corporate lap dog journalists.
Oh, and you spelled "principal" incorrectly.

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All you need is Love

Forever Changes: the magnum opus of one of rock's great, lost groups

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