Top Bloke

(I don’t normally do this sort of thing, but it seems like no one else is going to…)

Whilst on holiday, I bought only one newspaper over the fortnight and was really saddened (though I guess not really surprised) to find myself reading the obituary of Arthur Lee. Now, if you’re not sure who he was, don’t worry, he hasn’t aged very well and doesn’t seem to have attracted the reams of tributes that Syd Barrett has, but in my teens I was very fond of his band, Love. I bought and constantly returned to Love’s first three albums all through the eighties. My real favourite was Forever Changes, their, ahem, “classic” album, which I can’t possibly do justice to. I loved it; let’s just leave it at that…

Having spent such a lot of time listening to the album in my youth, I was amazed to find that a couple of years ago, Arthur Lee, fresh out of jail and in fairly good shape was actually playing in Gloucester. It’s kinda hard to put into perspective how weird that was – I mean the feller was not only a voice from another time and place, he did at times seem to come from another planet. And playing at the Guildhall…

It was a great evening. He was using members of Baby Lemonade as his new “Love”, although I think Johnny Echols from the original band was also there, and he ran through the whole of Forever Changes and some of the high points of the other albums. He looked like he was enjoying himself and some of the old magic was definitely there – for me at least. I consider myself lucky to have seen the man perform and I will remember the evening for a very long time.

Top bloke.