Love frontman dies

Saturday, 05, Aug 2006 10:22

Arthur Lee, frontman of sixties band Love, has died of leukaemia in Memphis, Tennessee aged 61, it has been confirmed.

The "so-called first black hippy", as Lee frequently referred to himself, had been battling cancer for two years before finally succumbing on Thursday.

He died with his wife Diane, according to fan websites, at his side.

Lee will be remembered as one of the pioneers of the psychedelic era of rock, taking his band Grass Roots, renamed as Love, into pop history with three albums mixing a variety of musical styles from funk to folk.

After an early single success with My Little Red Book, featuring on their eponymous debut, Love released Da Capo in June 1967 to great critical acclaim. The album featured a 19-minute track, Revelation, which took up the album's entire second side.

Then came their creative peak, Forever Changes, in November of the same year. Tracks like Alone Again Or and The Red Telephone were immensely popular, sending the band into the top flight of creative achievers during the twentieth century.

Lee, who wrote most of Love's songs, takes the credit for much of this achievement. For the rest of his life he attempted a series of musical comebacks, the most successful of which took place in the early 1990s and in 2002, when he toured as Love with Arthur Lee.

His manager, Mark Linn, told the Reuters news agency that Lee's death "comes as a shock to me because Arthur had the uncanny ability to bounce back from everything, and leukemia was no exceptioin. He was confident that he would be back on stage by the fall."