I first heard Forever Changes, the psychedelic folk-rock masterpiece by L.A. band, Love, in college. I didn’t love it right away; in fact, I remember thinking the production seemed weak. Of course, this was the mid-80s, when new records were sickeningly over-produced, so my perception of production was sufficiently warped at the time.

After hearing the album a few times, I started to like it—the acoustic rhythms with wild electric leads on top, the unexpectedly beautiful melodies, and the lyrics. Yeah, it was probably the lyrics that got me more than anything else.

The news from today will be the movies of tomorrow/Arthur Lee sings in “A House Is Not a Motel.” And of course, he was right. A plethora of movies have been made about the period (1967) in which the album was recorded and released.

Oh, the snot has caked against my pants/ It has turned into crystal/ These lyrics come at the beginning of the socially conscious track “Live and Let Live”. What a way to start a song!

There are so many quirky tracks on Forever Changes. “Maybe the People Would Be the Times or Between Clark and Hilldale”; the title alone is intriguing, but the fact that the lyrics of this song don’t say the last word of the line until the start of the next line is truly sublime (e.g., And oh, the music is so loud
And then I fade into the…/[Verse 2]Crowds of people standing everywhere

There’s a sort of Renaissance feel to the album’s sound, which is particularly interesting given that the band’s leader, the late Arthur Lee, was black—so talented and so flawed as a person.