Arthur Lee, who forged a legacy as one of rock's great visionaries and forbidding eccentrics while reigning briefly with his band Love as princes of the mid-1960s Sunset Strip, died Thursday of leukemia in a Memphis, Tenn., hospital. He was 61.
Mark Linn, a longtime friend, said Lee learned in February that he had leukemia and spent most of his remaining months in the hospital undergoing chemotherapy and an experimental umbilical cord blood treatment.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday August 09, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 48 words Type of Material: Correction
Lee obituary: The obituary of Arthur Lee, leader of the rock band Love, in Saturday's California section incorrectly said that drummer Michael Stuart uses Stuart-Ware as his married name. He has alternately used the surnames Stuart and Ware, separately and in hyphenated form, before and since his marriage.
Lee, who established himself as the first black rock star of the post-Beatles era, fronted Love through astonishing musical changes that have continued to resonate for other rockers and a cult of critics and fans.
Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant cited the influence of Lee and Love in his acceptance speech at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.
But Love also became one of the first burnout bands of the 1960s, and with Lee's death, only three members survive of the eight who were in the band between 1965 and 1967.
Dogged by intra-band rivalries, substance abuse and Lee's reluctance to tour, the first version of Love was finished by 1968, although Lee continued using the band name to record and perform at least sporadically for the rest of his life.
He was imprisoned from 1996 to 2001 on a weapons charge, but after his release he had new energy and a new story to tell that led to a resurgence for a time in concerts, including a 2003 performance in London, available on DVD, in which Lee was able to re-create Love's masterpiece album, "Forever Changes," backed by a sharp, four-man rock band and an orchestra of horns and strings.
Love's first three albums were indeed forever changing. They yielded eloquent folk-rock on the 1966 debut, "Love," the first rock record ever released by Elektra Records, and jazz-inflected rock with a flute player added to the lineup on the follow-up, "Da Capo."
That album also included the explosive hard rock of the band's lone Top 40 single, "7 and 7 Is" -- a song that ended with the sound of an atom bomb exploding and foreshadowed late-'70s punk rock by 10 years. In 1967 came "Forever Changes," a gorgeous, haunting song cycle infused with classical horns and strings.
Thematically, the album gave an emotionally undulating, impressionistic take that captures sweet hopes from the "Summer of Love" giving way to paranoia and dread.
