[screamingskull]

Pre-Love

His first known recording is from 1963; The Ninth Wave by his first band, the instrumental outfit called The LAG's, a Booker T & The MG's type of unit which included Johnny Echols, the future guitarist and vocalist for the original line-up of Love. The LAG's also included Lee (organ), Alan Talbot (saxophone) and Roland Davis (drums).
As a songwriter Lee composed the surf songs White Caps and Ski Surfin' Sanctuary. My Diary is the first Lee composition that came near to being a hit. It was written for the R&B singer Rosa Lee Brooks, who performed and recorded it. This recording included Jimi Hendrix on electric guitar. Lee had seen Jimi as a session man backing up the Isley Brothers. It is possible that this is the first appearance of Hendrix on vinyl and, indeed, the first known Hendrix recording session.
I've Been Tryin' was written for Little Ray. Luci Baines, about President Lyndon Johnson's daughter, was performed and recorded with Lee's new band, The American Four. He composed Everybody Jerk and Slow Jerk for Ronnie And The Pamona Casuals, a band that put out an LP on the Donna label featuring lead vocals by Lee.
These early recordings are very rare but have been collected on a 1997 bootleg CD that contains very little information.

Love

Lee said when he first heard The Byrds, he felt vindicated since he'd already been writing music that had a similar folk rock sound. The Grass Roots, his folk rock unit, eventually turned into Love because there was already a signed act called the Grass Roots. This was in 1965. Several other names were considered, including Summer's Children, The Asylum Choir, Dr Strangelove and Poetic Justice. The name Love was chosen after a club audience voted it as the best choice. According to Barney Hoskyn's 2001 book Arthur Lee: Alone Again Or, Manson Family member and sometime Love guitarist Bobby Beausoleil claimed that Arthur had named the band Love in honor of one of Bobby's nicknames, Cupid.
Love's music is difficult to categorize, and has been described as a mixture of folk-rock, psychedelic rock, baroque pop Spanish-tinged pop, R&B, garage rock, even protopunk. Though Lee's vocals have garnered some comparisons to Johnny Mathis, his lyrics often dwell on matters dark and vexing — though often with a wry humor matched by few.
Love released three albums with their core members Johnny Echols (lead guitar), Bryan MacLean (guitar and composer of a few of Love's tunes), Ken Forssi (bass) and Michael Stuart (drums), although Stuart did not appear on the first record.
Love (1966), the hardest rocking album, included a punky cover of Bacharach/David composition My Little Red Book. The B-side of Da Capo (1967) featured just one song — Revelation, criticised by some as a weary jam. The first half, however, contains six gems, including the ground-breaking single (and their only one to achieve any success in the charts) 7 & 7 Is, with its furious drumming and thunderous bass riff. The last album released by the original line-up was Forever Changes (1967).
Love went through several changes of personnel. For critics and fans alike, Forever Changes is regarded as not only their finest recording but one of the best albums of the 1960s, and to at least one critic, the finest disc of its year. Despite this acclaim, the LP sold poorly in its time although it reached the top 30 in England. Nonetheless, its cult status grew.
Soon after, the band's music became somewhat eclipsed by Arthur Lee's behavior. His frail physical and mental health fuelled a rock myth which, like Brian Wilson and Syd Barrett possibly served to keep the memory alive.
After Forever Changes, Arthur Lee split up the band, only to reform it, this time with a new lineup and a harder-edged sound. This version of the band released two albums: Four Sail in September 1969, and the two-record set Out Here in December of the same year. Neither record made the top 100 in the US, though Out Here hit #29 in the UK in May of 1970.
December, 1970, saw the release of the album False Start, which charted in the bottom regions of the top 200, but is notable for featuring a track with Jimi Hendrix on guitar entitled The Everlasting First.

Solo career

In July 1972, Lee released his first solo album Vindicator on A&M Records, featuring a new group of musicians called Band-Aid, a name originally suggested by Jimi Hendrix for a briefly considered lineup of himself, Lee, and Steve Winwood. This album failed to chart. Lee recorded a second solo album in 1973 entitled Black Beauty for Buffalo Records, but the label folded before the album was released.
Lee's next move was to create yet another Love lineup for the Reel to Real album which was released on RSO Records in December 1974. Once again, the album went nearly unnoticed.
A new Lee solo album — called just Arthur Lee — appeared on Rhino Records in 1981, featuring covers of The Bobbettes' Mr Lee, and Jimmy Cliff's Many Rivers to Cross.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, there were various attempts to reunite the original Love lineup. One such show from 1978 featuring Lee and Bryan Maclean was released as a live album entitled Love Live on Rhino Records in 1982. Also in 1982, MCA released Studio/Live, which was a collection of tracks from the early 1970s incarnation of Love.
The 1980s were a mostly fallow period for Lee. According to him: "I was gone for a decade. I went back to my old neighbourhood to take care of my father, who was dying of cancer. I was tired of signing autographs. I was tired of being BS'd out of my money....I just got tired."
Lee didn't re-emerge until 1992 with a new album entitled Arthur Lee & Love on the French New Rose label.
In 1993 he played his first shows in New York and England in nearly 20 years. The next year saw the release of a 45rpm single — Girl on Fire, backed with Midnight Sun — on Distortions Records. He began to tour regularly with a backup band comprising former members of Das Damen, and LA group Baby Lemonade.
In 1995, Rhino Records released the compilation, Love Story, a two-disc set with extensive liner notes which chronicled the period 1966-1972, and reignited interest in the band. In fact, the original Love planned to reform and tour in promotion of the compilation, but Arthur's legal troubles got in the way.

Prison

In the fall of 1996, Arthur Lee was jailed for 12 years for illegal possession of a firearm. Lee had apparently threatened a neighbor with a gun. No one was injured and no property destroyed, but California's "Three strikes and you're out" law meant Lee was guaranteed a prison term, having been convicted on "a couple of assault and drug charges" in the 1980s. While in prison Lee refused visitors and interviews. In all he served nearly five years and was released in December 2001.
Maclean and Forssi both died while Lee was incarcerated.

Final years

In 2002, Arthur Lee began touring in earnest under the name "Love with Arthur Lee". This new phase of his career met great success, and he performed to enthusiastic audiences and critical acclaim throughout Europe and North America. The band began to perform the Forever Changes album in its entirety, often with a string and horn section. A live CD and DVD of this material was released in 2003.
Arthur Lee left the band Love in August 2005. The remaining members continued the tour as The Love Band.
It became known in April 2006 that Lee was being treated for acute myeloid leukemia. A tribute fund was set up shortly after the announcement, with a series of benefit concerts to be performed to help pay medical bills.
Arthur Lee died on August 3, 2006 in Memphis, with his wife, Diane, at his bedside.