Love - Forever Changes Poll

Disc 1 = Original stereo mix

Disc 2 = Stereo mix made in 1970 and used ever since

― Mark G, Tuesday, 1 April 2008 14:11 (3 years ago)

Is this right? This mix is so different and not preferable in my opinion. What versions of the album used this mix previously?

I guess it would make sense if the mix did come from 1970. The acoustic guitars cannot carry this album, though.

Kind of shocked to find out this is the version a lot of people have been listening to for a long time.

i wonder if the vinyl version my older brother had was the original mix. i remember listening to it for the first time, and the guitars on "live and let live" just leaping out of the speaker, which i don't feel like i've experienced with the rhino reissue from around 2000 or so.

The clips on iTunes will give you a good idea. The acoustic guitars are separated and dominate the stereo field much more on the "alternate mix."

yeah i'll check 'em out.

OK, just reading about it and I don't think the "alternate mix" was actually used before. The story about it is interesting:

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/archive/index.php/t-235272.html

The "catch groove" ending on "Andmoreagain" used to bug me, the 'alt'mix has a normal ending.

I don't know which I prefer.

Always overlooked The Daily Planet but it keeps getting stuck in my head now.

I always wondered, is that Neil Young playing electric on that? The breaking-up-feedback bit?

i don't think so (at least I've never heard that he actually played on the record) -- what is it, he's credited with "arranging" the song?

Producing it, I think?

from wiki: "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"."

I remember reading an interview with Arthurly years ago and him saying that Neil Young was brought into produce the album and how the rest of the band were all crying because they were too strung out to play - 'cept he didn't say Neil Young, he said "What was the name of that dude who sung "I've been to Redwood, I've been to Inglewood?"

Weird...for some reason, I remember seeing him credited with "lead guitar" on one song, but can't remember where I saw that. Also, wikipedia sez Jim Gordon played drums on "The Daily Planet," but I coulda sworn it was Hal Blaine (sounds more like Blaine anyway).

The sessions began in June 1967, with the group (except for Lee and Maclean) replaced by well-known Los Angeles session musicians 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.

i think i read an interview with carol kaye where someone asked her if she played on forever changes and she just laughed and said "honey i played on a lot of records." she may have also claimed to be the bass player on most of the buffalo springfield records!

Not sure about Blaine or Jim Gordon, I thought the band played on all the tracks after they'd stopped crying and straightened themselves up (for the duration of the recording of the album that is, then it was back to bad habits after it) (xxp)

"Listen Echols, I don’t understand how you can stay in one range through the whole thing. You’re the one who says you can blow in the studio, man."

xxp

Ah, so that's where I read it: further up on the wikipedia page! It's confusingly contradicted by listing Gordon further down, but it definitely sounds like Blaine.

guess both of those guys would be contenders for LA session drummers at the time.

Didn't know about Kaye's claim to have played on the Springfield's records...then again, she also claimed to have been the bassist on all the Motown hits, despite mountains of evidence and documentation to the contrary.

yeah should be taken with a grain of salt. i know she played on some of those records -- "expecting to fly" for sure.

For a laugh there's Plastic Nancy
She's real fancy with her children
They'll go far, she
Buys them toys to
Keep in practice
Waiting on the war

o_O

That Arthurly could sure write a lyric

I FEEL REAL PHONY WHEN MY NAME IS PHIL

or is that bill?

And "Red Telephone" even did the "...count me out (in)" a year before "Revolution 1"

This is such a damn fine album.

One thing I learned in the last year is that "Alone Again Or" is amazingly straightforward to play on guitar. I had thought it would be some fingerpicked jazz chord nightmare but it's really only 4-5 standard chords and arpeggios. So satisfying to sit down with my limited skills and rip it out.

No capo involved?

It's that "EChord" moved up a fret and back again, yeah? The easy "sounds a bit Spanish" strum.

The Phrygian Dominant? To get fancy.

It's a great album, but one I've maybe played too much at this point. There's really only 'Alone Again Or', 'The Daily Planet' and 'The Red Telephone' that I can listen to without wanting to skip it these days.

I've overplayed it too, but don't single out any particular tracks either way.

Sorry, just to complete the guitar nerd arc, it's not a shifting E chord exactly. The opening is picking D, D sus 2, D sus 4 (top E melody line runs 2-3-5-3-2-0-2-3-2-0-3-2), then arpeggio F#m barre chord with, then without the barre. Verse is barre F#, G, F#, open Em, A, D, Bm, barre F#, G, then alternate between open A, all open strings 4 times and back to open D!

love this album. but alone again or is such an obvious choice! second and third place tracks are pretty great

then arpeggio F#m barre chord with, then without the barre
What do you mean by without the barre? I thought I heard an Em9 in there when I just tried to play it seconds ago, i.e. an open E min chord with an F# in the D string.

I mean arpeggio 244222 then 044000, I may be wrong but it sounds convincing to me.

No you are probably right

I mean that is the same chord I was talking about but with a C# on the A string, which makes in even stronger. I guess you could call it in Em13.

"an" not "in"

You're right of course. I was just surprised I could play the thing.

Yeah, I never even bothered to try until last night after you mentioned it.

Do wish somebody would discover some live audio material from this time or earlier. Sounds from reading Michael Stuart Ware that Lee was pretty down on anybody he found recording him though.
Would have been really something if they'd played Monterey and there was footage. Looked for ages as though lee would just pull out of prestige performances without much warning. I think Stuart Ware talks about last minute cancellation of playing in Atlanta or Texas.

There's a fantastic long interview with John Ecchols in an Ugly Things from about 3 years back. In which he places a mixed race band more firmly in its time. Its about as revelatory as the Arthur lee memoir collected as John Einarson's Forever Changes book.

Michael Stuart Ware was the drummer who had also been in Sons of Adam and he wrote a book about a decade back called Behind The Scenes at The Pegasus Carousel which has since been updated. I haven't read the update.

Very interesting thanks.

top E melody line runs 2-3-5-3-2-0-2-3-2-0-3-2

Not to get finger-nit-picky but I hear, and definitely play, 2-3-5-5-5-3-2-3-2-3-2

I think ledge is right. It lingers longer on the A and there is no E melody note played.

I also do more travis picking than simple arpeggios and throw in a couple of hammer-ons in there, I'd like to say it's my interpretation but it's what the guy I learnt from on youtube did.

Yeah mine was just me thinking it out from memory and I fudge that bit anyway I think.

i wonder who'll it be tomorrow, you or me?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXpXw_DUMxg