Published in Whisky Magazine Issue 40 on 4/6/2004.

• Subscribe
• Buy this issue
• More from this issue
• Preview other issues

This article is 55 months old and some information provided may be time sensitive. Please check all details of events, tours, opening times and other information before travelling or making arrangements.

Copyright Whisky Magazine © 1999-2008. All rights reserved. To use or reproduce part or all of this article please contact us for details of how you can do so legally.

Forever drinking

Dave Broom talks music with seminal 60s band and whisky drinkers, Love.

Brighton 2003. We don’t quite know what to expect. I mean, Arthur Lee and Love are about to play Forever Changes, in total, with horns and strings, something which is scarcely believable for those of us who take the view that Love’s third album is one of the great records, a touchstone of west-coast psychedelia.

But will it work? Is it just going to be a nostalgia trip? Is it going to be so note perfect that we might as well have just stayed at home? Can it be done live anyway? It’s a studio record. It’s never been played live. It’s from 1967 for God’s sake. We should be out there watching the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

It is note perfect, but it is fresh. There’s something which has made this music new, believable, contemporary. That line: “there’s a man who can’t decide if he should fight for what his father thinks is right.� it makes you wonder if Iraq is our generation’s Vietnam.

Then there’s Arthur Lee himself. The man Jim Morrison took as a role model, the man who had only recently been released from a 12-year gaol sentence for allegedly firing a gun in the air who is now singing with such soul, who has such presence.

It’s not just him though. It’s the band. In their other guise they’re called Baby Lemonade. These are young guys who were not even born when the album came out who play with care with, dare I say it, love but not reverence. They take possession of the music.

It’s encapsulated on a moment on Live and Let Live (which being a Love.....

To read the rest of this article you can buy this issue or subscribe to Whisky Magazine to have every issue delivered direct to your door.

You can unlock and read this entire article with 1 of your community tokens by clicking here.

By Dave Broom

Section : Whisky Trends

Page number : 25