Forever Changes - Album Information

Album Information

After the previous album, Da Capo, keyboardist/drummer Alban "Snoopy" Pfisterer and flautist/saxophonist Tjay Cantrelli were dropped from the band, leaving Love a quintet. The remaining personnel performed on nine of the eleven tracks on Forever Changes. The album was the first to be produced by Arthur Lee, with assistance from Bruce Botnick. Originally, the album was to be produced by Botnick and Neil Young, but Young bowed out due to his commitments to Buffalo Springfield. According to the liner notes of the 1995 compilation Love Story, Young stuck with the album project long enough to arrange the track "The Daily Planet." Young, however, has denied such involvement.

The title of the album came from a story that Lee had heard about a friend-of-a-friend who had broken up with his girlfriend. She exclaimed, "You said you would love me forever!," and he replied, "Well, forever changes." Lee also noted that since the name of the band was Love, the full title was "Love Forever Changes".

The sessions began in June 1967, with the group (except for Lee and Maclean) replaced by well-known Los Angeles session musicians Billy Strange (guitar), Don Randi (piano), Hal Blaine (drums) and most likely Carol Kaye (bass). This line-up was put in place due to the regular line-up's alleged inability to function in the studio. The two tracks recorded during these sessions, "Andmoreagain" and "The Daily Planet", were later given sparing overdubs by the actual members of Love, who felt the tracks otherwise sufficed. Drummer Michael Stuart says that bassist Kaye actually played acoustic guitar on "The Daily Planet" but that Ken Forssi taught her the part.

Botnick recalls that the use of session musicians "sparked" the band, and they "realized they had blown it, got their act together and recorded the rest of the album." After much rehearsal, the group returned to the studio in August and continued through September, quickly laying down the remaining nine tracks, at a total estimated cost of $2,257.

Lee spent three weeks with David Angel, the arranger of the strings and horns, playing and singing the orchestral parts to him. Contrary to what has been reported in other places, Lee envisioned the horns and strings from the beginning, and they were not added as an afterthought. However, Lee did not play any instruments on the album.

"When I did that album," commented Arthur Lee, "I thought I was going to die at that particular time, so those were my last words." This is borne out by perhaps the most famous lines from the album, on the song "The Red Telephone":

"Sitting on a hillside

Watching all the people die

I'll feel much better on the other side."

Musically, the album is very ambitious. Having extended itself on the lengthy jam "Revelation" from Da Capo, Love here composes a more focused mini-suite, the album-ending "You Set the Scene". "That was three different songs ... yet they were brought together to sound like one, which was fantastic," lead guitarist John Echols said of "You Set The Scene" in the liner notes by Andrew Sandoval for the "Collector's Edition" of "Forever Changes" that was released by Rhino Records in 2008.

A September 18 recording session finished the album, adding the horns and strings, as well as some additional piano from Randi, who played all the keyboard parts on the album as the band now had no keyboard player. Lee attended these sessions, and told John Einarson:

"I walked into the studio and took a seat in one of the chairs. I must have been there at least 45 minutes when one of the classical musicians said, 'If this guy Arthur Lee doesn't show up soon, I'm leaving.' I said, 'I'm Arthur.' Most of them, if not all of them couldn't believe their eyes. This black hippie guy is Arthur Lee?"

David Angel said: "String players would talk to me during the break and say, "You're doing something very unusual here." They sensed that this was groundbreaking, and they did sessions every day."

"... Arthur's genius lay in his ability to imagine songs, with fully formed lyrics and melodies," wrote John Einarson in "Forever Changes: Arthur Lee and the Book of Love," an authorized biography on Lee that was released in 2010.

"Forever Changes" was included in its entirety on the 2-CD retrospective Love compilation "Love Story 1966-1972", released by Rhino Records in 1995. The album was re-released in an expanded single-CD version by Rhino in 2001, featuring alternate mixes, outtakes and the group's 1968 single, "Your Mind and We Belong Together"/"Laughing Stock", the last tracks that featured the "Forever Changes" line-up of Johnny Echols, Ken Forssi, Michael Stuart and Bryan MacLean (Forssi and MacLean both died in 1998). As for Lee, he reformed the group in late 1968 with all-new members. Lee continued using the Love name on an on-and-off basis until his death in 2006.

"The Forever Changes Concert" was released in 2003 to great critical acclaim and marked the first time many of the songs had been performed live. The set features the entire album recorded in its original running order during a tour of England by Lee in early 2003 in which he was backed by the band Baby Lemonade and string and horn ensembles. It was released in two formats - a single CD with six bonus tracks and a double CD with four bonus tracks and several visual extras including a screensaver. Both versions include the complete "Forever Changes" album. ("The Forever Changes Concert" was also released on DVD. It features the album, five bonus songs, documentary footage and an interview with Lee.) Because of MacLean's death in 1998, Lee handled the lead vocals on the MacLean songs "Alone Again Or" and "Old Man." In the liner notes to both sets, David Sinclair wrote that "'Forever Changes' has always held a place of honour in the hearts of British fans."

A double-CD "Collector's Edition" of the album was issued by Rhino Records on April 22, 2008. The first disc consists of a remastered version of the original 1967 album. The second disc contains a previously unissued alternate mix of "Forever Changes" (according to the liner notes, the original master of "Forever Changes" is missing, although the alternate mix was made from it at some point). The alternate mix was remastered by renowned sound engineer Steve Hoffman. (He's critically acclaimed for his remastering work on the back catalogues of artists like Miles Davis and Joni Mitchell that have been released on limited edition gold CDs on the DCC label.) The alternate mix of "Forever Changes" included in the second disc features a proto-rap by Lee on a slightly longer version of the album closer "You Set The Scene" that was edited out of the final version that was released commercially. In the liner notes, Andrew Sandoval quotes Lee as saying, "... at the end of 'You Set The Scene' somebody just starts rapping! I said, 'Damn! They even threw another guy in!' And then I remembered I did that. And it sounds just like a rap." The second disc also contains an additional ten tracks (Hoffman did not remaster the extra tracks). These tracks feature the 2001 release bonus songs and previously unissued recordings, including alternate electric backing versions of three songs.

A Super High Material CD (SHM-CD) version of "Forever Changes" was released in Japan in 2009. Manufactured by Warner Music Japan, this limited (and currently out of print) edition CD offers improved sound quality, the best of any version to date. However, the sound quality falls short of the standards common with SACDs (Super Audio CD) and also that of audiophile CDs from companies such as Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. The version given the SHM-CD treatment was the 2001 expanded single disc release from Rhino Records featuring the original eleven songs from "Forever Changes" plus seven bonus tracks. It also includes the liner notes from the 2001 release (in English), an insert with the lyrics in English and Japanese and an OBI strip. The SHM-CD disc can be played on any CD player.