Love

Love came together in Los Angeles in 1965 around Arthur Lee, the band's chief songwriter and its restless center of gravity, and with Black and white musicians sharing the stage they stood out among the American rock bands of the day. They signed to Elektra, and "My Little Red Book" became the label's first hit record, a garage-punk stomp that owned the LA airwaves before it crept onto the national charts. "7 and 7 Is" followed, a burst of frantic, pounding drums that still sounds like it's about to fly apart.

The classic lineup had Lee alongside singer and guitarist Bryan MacLean, guitarist Johnny Echols, bassist Ken Forssi and drummer Don Conka, later replaced by Alban "Snoopy" Pfisterer. Their sound moved between psychedelia, folk rock and garage, and it all came to a head on Forever Changes in 1967, their third album: strings, horns and acoustic guitars wrapped around songs full of unease. "Alone Again Or", with its mariachi trumpet, and the sprawling "You Set the Scene" are the ones that stuck.

The charts never paid them what they were due, but critics came round, and Forever Changes is now counted among the best albums of the '60s; it went into the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry in 2011. By 1968 Lee was the only one left, and he kept recording as Love with shifting casts through the '70s. MacLean and Forssi died in 1998, and Lee in 2006.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.