Forever Changes
Encyclopedia
Forever Changes is the third album by American rock
band Love
, released by Elektra Records
in November 1967. In 2003, Rolling Stone
magazine ranked Forever Changes 40th in its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008.
, 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
. However, according to the liner notes of the 1995 compilation Love Story, Young did stick with the album project long enough to arrange the track "The Daily Planet".
The title of the album came from a story that Lee had heard about a friend-of-a-friend who had dumped 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 musician
s Billy Strange
(guitar), Don Randi
(piano), Hal Blaine
(drums) and most likely Carol Kaye
(bass). This studio line-up was put in place due to the regular line-up's alleged inability to function. 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.
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 resumed work in August and continued through September, quickly laying down the remaining nine tracks, with a total estimated cost at $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 just added at the end. 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":
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".
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:
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."
The album was released in November with cover art by Bob Pepper and only sold moderately, rising to #154 on the Billboard charts (without the benefit of a hit single). It did however reach the Top 30 in Britain. In general, critics loved the album. Pete Johnson, writing in the Los Angeles Times on February 25, 1968, said: [The LP] "can survive endless listening with no diminishing either of power or of freshness." Gene Youngblood, in the LA Free Press, May 10, 1968, wrote: "Soft, subtle. Forever changing in tonal color, rhythm patterns, vocal nuances, lyric substance. Exquisite nuances."
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 featuring Johnny Echols
, Ken Forssi
, Michael Stuart and Bryan MacLean
. As for Arthur Lee, he would reform the group in late 1968 with all-new members and carry on the Love name for a few more years.
A double-CD "Collector's Edition" of the album was issued by Rhino Records on April 22, 2008. The first disc consists of the original 1967 album, while the second disc is an alternate mix of it plus the 2001 release bonus songs.
readers voted Forever Changes the 82nd greatest album of all time.
Rolling Stone
magazine ranked Forever Changes 40th in its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time in the December 11, 2003 issue. In a special issue of Mojo
magazine, it was ranked the second greatest psychedelic album of all time, while in 1995 it made #11 in Mojo's list of the 100 Greatest Albums Ever Made.
Forever Changes was ranked 83rd in a 2005 survey held by British television's Channel 4
to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time.
Forever Changes was praised by a group of Members of the British Parliament in 2002 as being one of the greatest albums of all time.
According to the New Musical Express, The Stone Roses
' relationship with their future producer John Leckie
was settled when they all agreed that Forever Changes was the "best record ever".
With:
And uncredited contributions from:
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
band Love
Love (band)
Love was an American rock group of the late 1960s and early 1970s. They were led by singer/songwriter Arthur Lee and lead guitarist Johnny Echols...
, released by Elektra Records
Elektra Records
Elektra Records is an American record label owned by Warner Music Group. In 2004, it was consolidated into WMG's Atlantic Records Group. After five years of dormancy, the label was revived by Atlantic in 2009....
in November 1967. In 2003, Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
magazine ranked Forever Changes 40th in its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008.
Album information
Dropping keyboardist Alban "Snoopy" Pfisterer and flautist/saxophonist Tjay Cantrelli, the remaining five-piece performed on nine of the album's eleven tracks. The album was the first to be produced by Arthur LeeArthur Lee (musician)
Arthur Lee was the frontman, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist of the Los Angeles rock band Love, best known for the critically acclaimed 1967 album, Forever Changes.-Early years:...
, with assistance from Bruce Botnick
Bruce Botnick
Bruce Botnick is an American audio engineer and record producer, best known for his work with The Doors, and with Love. He engineered Love's first two albums, and co-produced their third album, Forever Changes, with the band's singer-songwriter, Arthur Lee.In November 1970, he took over production...
.
Originally, the album was to be produced by Botnick and Neil Young
Neil Young
Neil Percival Young, OC, OM is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation...
, but Young bowed out due to his commitments to Buffalo Springfield
Buffalo Springfield
Buffalo Springfield is a North American folk rock band renown both for its music and as a springboard for the careers of Neil Young, Stephen Stills, Richie Furay and Jim Messina. Among the first wave of North American bands to become popular in the wake of the British invasion, the group combined...
. However, according to the liner notes of the 1995 compilation Love Story, Young did stick with the album project long enough to arrange the track "The Daily Planet".
The title of the album came from a story that Lee had heard about a friend-of-a-friend who had dumped 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
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
session musician
Session musician
Session musicians are instrumental and vocal performers, musicians, who are available to work with others at live performances or recording sessions. Usually such musicians are not permanent members of a musical ensemble and often do not achieve fame in their own right as soloists or bandleaders...
s Billy Strange
Billy Strange
William E. "Billy" Strange is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and actor.-Recordings and songwriting:...
(guitar), Don Randi
Don Randi
Don Randi is an American keyboard player, bandleader and songwriter. He has performed on innumerable recordings, including many as a session musician and member of "The Wrecking Crew", as well as releasing his own jazz records...
(piano), Hal Blaine
Hal Blaine
Hal Blaine is an American drummer and session musician. He is most known for his work with the Wrecking Crew in California. Blaine played on numerous hits by popular groups, including Elvis Presley, John Denver, the Ronettes, Simon & Garfunkel, the Carpenters, the Beach Boys, Nancy Sinatra, and...
(drums) and most likely Carol Kaye
Carol Kaye
Carol Kaye is an American musician, best known as one of the most prolific and widely heard bass guitarists in history, playing on an estimated 10,000 recording sessions in a 55 year career....
(bass). This studio line-up was put in place due to the regular line-up's alleged inability to function. 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.
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 resumed work in August and continued through September, quickly laying down the remaining nine tracks, with a total estimated cost at $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 just added at the end. 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
Da Capo (Love album)
Da Capo is the second album by American rock group Love, released in January 1967 by Elektra Records. The bulk of Da Capo was recorded between September 27 and October 2, 1966. "7 and 7 Is" was recorded on June 20, and had been released as a single in July of 1966 backed with "No. Fourteen", an...
, Love here composes a more focused mini-suite, the album-ending "You Set the Scene".
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."
The album was released in November with cover art by Bob Pepper and only sold moderately, rising to #154 on the Billboard charts (without the benefit of a hit single). It did however reach the Top 30 in Britain. In general, critics loved the album. Pete Johnson, writing in the Los Angeles Times on February 25, 1968, said: [The LP] "can survive endless listening with no diminishing either of power or of freshness." Gene Youngblood, in the LA Free Press, May 10, 1968, wrote: "Soft, subtle. Forever changing in tonal color, rhythm patterns, vocal nuances, lyric substance. Exquisite nuances."
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 featuring Johnny Echols
Johnny Echols
Johnny Echols is an American singer/songwriter and guitarist. He has played in bands with performers such as Little Richard, Billy Preston and Jimi Hendrix, and was the guitarist on many recording sessions with Miles Davis...
, Ken Forssi
Ken Forssi
Kenneth Raymond Forssi, known as "Kenny" early in life and then "Ken" , was an American musician. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the oldest child of Raymond B. and Lola G. Forssi. When he was about 9 years old, his family moved to Siesta Key, on the Florida west coast, and then, shortly moved on...
, Michael Stuart and Bryan MacLean
Bryan MacLean
Bryan MacLean was an American singer, guitarist and songwriter, most known for his work with the influential rock band Love. His famous compositions for Love include "Alone Again Or" and "Old Man".-Early life:...
. As for Arthur Lee, he would reform the group in late 1968 with all-new members and carry on the Love name for a few more years.
A double-CD "Collector's Edition" of the album was issued by Rhino Records on April 22, 2008. The first disc consists of the original 1967 album, while the second disc is an alternate mix of it plus the 2001 release bonus songs.
Reception
The most notable retrospective praise came in 2003 from the British magazine, NME, who rated Forever Changes #6 on their list of greatest albums of all time. In 1998, Q magazineQ (magazine)
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...
readers voted Forever Changes the 82nd greatest album of all time.
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
magazine ranked Forever Changes 40th in its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time in the December 11, 2003 issue. In a special issue of Mojo
Mojo (magazine)
MOJO is a popular music magazine published initially by Emap, and since January 2008 by Bauer, monthly in the United Kingdom. Following the success of the magazine Q, publishers Emap were looking for a title which would cater for the burgeoning interest in classic rock music...
magazine, it was ranked the second greatest psychedelic album of all time, while in 1995 it made #11 in Mojo's list of the 100 Greatest Albums Ever Made.
Forever Changes was ranked 83rd in a 2005 survey held by British television's Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time.
Forever Changes was praised by a group of Members of the British Parliament in 2002 as being one of the greatest albums of all time.
According to the New Musical Express, The Stone Roses
The Stone Roses
The Stone Roses are an English alternative rock band formed in Manchester in 1983. They were one of the pioneering groups of the Madchester movement that was active during the late 1980s and early 1990s...
' relationship with their future producer John Leckie
John Leckie
John Leckie is a British music producer, notable for producing many high-profile albums such as The Stone Roses's debut and Radiohead's The Bends...
was settled when they all agreed that Forever Changes was the "best record ever".
Side one
- "Alone Again Or" (Bryan MacLeanBryan MacLeanBryan MacLean was an American singer, guitarist and songwriter, most known for his work with the influential rock band Love. His famous compositions for Love include "Alone Again Or" and "Old Man".-Early life:...
) – 3:16 - "A House Is Not a Motel" – 3:31
- "Andmoreagain" – 3:18
- "The Daily Planet" – 3:30
- "Old Man" (MacLean) – 3:02
- "The Red Telephone" – 4:46
Side two
- "Maybe the People Would Be the Times or Between Clark and Hilldale" – 3:34
- "Live and Let Live" – 5:26
- "The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This" – 3:08
- "Bummer in the Summer" – 2:24
- "You Set the Scene" – 6:56
Music
Band members:- Arthur LeeArthur Lee (musician)Arthur Lee was the frontman, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist of the Los Angeles rock band Love, best known for the critically acclaimed 1967 album, Forever Changes.-Early years:...
: lead vocals, guitar, arranger - Johnny EcholsJohnny EcholsJohnny Echols is an American singer/songwriter and guitarist. He has played in bands with performers such as Little Richard, Billy Preston and Jimi Hendrix, and was the guitarist on many recording sessions with Miles Davis...
: lead guitar - Bryan MacLeanBryan MacLeanBryan MacLean was an American singer, guitarist and songwriter, most known for his work with the influential rock band Love. His famous compositions for Love include "Alone Again Or" and "Old Man".-Early life:...
: rhythm guitar, vocals, arranger (lead vocals on "Old Man") - Ken ForssiKen ForssiKenneth Raymond Forssi, known as "Kenny" early in life and then "Ken" , was an American musician. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the oldest child of Raymond B. and Lola G. Forssi. When he was about 9 years old, his family moved to Siesta Key, on the Florida west coast, and then, shortly moved on...
: bass guitar - Michael Stuart: drums, percussion, vocals
With:
- David Angel: arranger, orchestrations
And uncredited contributions from:
- Jim GordonJim Gordon (musician)James Beck "Jim" Gordon is an American recording artist, musician and songwriter. The Grammy Award winner was one of the most requested session drummers in the late 1960s and 1970s, recording albums with many well-known musicians of the time, and was the drummer in the blues-rock supergroup Derek...
: drums on "Andmoreagain" and "The Daily Planet" - Carol KayeCarol KayeCarol Kaye is an American musician, best known as one of the most prolific and widely heard bass guitarists in history, playing on an estimated 10,000 recording sessions in a 55 year career....
: bass guitar on "Andmoreagain" and acoustic guitar on "The Daily Planet" - Don RandiDon RandiDon Randi is an American keyboard player, bandleader and songwriter. He has performed on innumerable recordings, including many as a session musician and member of "The Wrecking Crew", as well as releasing his own jazz records...
: piano on "Andmoreagain" - Billy StrangeBilly StrangeWilliam E. "Billy" Strange is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and actor.-Recordings and songwriting:...
: guitar on "Andmoreagain" and "The Daily Planet" - Neil YoungNeil YoungNeil Percival Young, OC, OM is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation...
: arranger on "The Daily Planet" - Hal BlaineHal BlaineHal Blaine is an American drummer and session musician. He is most known for his work with the Wrecking Crew in California. Blaine played on numerous hits by popular groups, including Elvis Presley, John Denver, the Ronettes, Simon & Garfunkel, the Carpenters, the Beach Boys, Nancy Sinatra, and...
: drums on "Andmoreagain" - Orchestra: Robert Barene, Arnold Belnick, James Getzoff, Marshall Sosson, Darrel Terwilliger (violins); Norman Botnick (viola); Jesse Ehrlich (cello); Chuck Berghofer (double bass); Bud Brisbois, Roy Caton, Ollie Mitchell (trumpets); Richard Leith (trombone)
Production & design
- Bruce Botnick and Arthur Lee: ProducersRecord producerA record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
- Bruce Botnick: Engineer
- Jac HolzmanJac HolzmanJac Holzman was the founder, chief executive officer and head of both Elektra Records and Nonesuch Records.-Biography:He founded Elektra Records in his St. John's College dorm room in 1950 and Nonesuch Records in 1964...
: Production Supervisor - Zal Schreiber: MasteringAudio masteringMastering, a form of audio post-production, is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device ; the source from which all copies will be produced...
- William S. Harvey: Cover Design
- Bob Pepper: Cover ArtCover artCover art is the illustration or photograph on the outside of a published product such as a book , magazine, comic book, video game , DVD, CD, videotape, or music album. The art has a primarily commercial function, i.e...