72. Singing Cowboy -- Love (from
Four Sail)
Arthur Lee was at a crossroads after Love's masterpiece Forever Changes. The flip side of that record's incredible use of orchestration was that a lot of it was there because Lee's bandmates weren't technically capable of reproducing the sounds he heard in his head. So he dissolved the band and put together a new one using the same name.
The output of this version of the group isn't as storied as that of the first version, but it's still of very high quality, just different. This incarnation had a muscular, blues rock sound and featured lots of wailing, fuzzed-out lead guitar. Likely this was a product of Lee's friendship with Jimi Hendrix, whom he had known since 1964 (they did record together before Hendrix' death; one song appeared on a 1970 Love album).
Another factor in the move toward a harder sound may have been that Lee was warming up to the idea of touring. The original incarnation never played outside of California because Lee, an African American, feared for his safety. Perhaps seeing that Hendrix had pulled off successful national tours inspired him to put together a band geared for the stage. The new incarnation did indeed play outside California in 1970 and 1971.
Forever Changes came out in late '67, and the new band wasn't in place until early '69, and Lee had written a ton of songs in the interim. The band recorded three discs' worth of songs in an LA warehouse. It owed one more record to Elektra, its original label. Elektra selected the 10 songs it liked best and released them as Four Sail in September. The rest of the songs were released in December by their new label, Blue Thumb, as the double album Out Here.
Both records are fantastic and are among my favorites of the year, though Out Here has some filler, as you might imagine. One of the high points is Four Sail's Singing Cowboy, a defiant statement against the racists he found so threatening, backed with chilling lead guitar work from Jay Donnellan.
I saw Lee/Love in 1994 (just before he was jailed) and in 2002 (just after he got out). He played this at both shows, with absolute glee (at the second show, while taunting a guy who was being removed for unauthorized videotaping).