The greatest art tends to come from dark places of personal turmoil, distress, and indecision. Even in myself, I can see the creative urges more clearly, and feel the impact of the resultant work more strongly, when I am depressed, sad, or angry. When I am happy, my creative output begins to dry up, whether in writing or photography. Communicating happiness through art can be a beautiful thing, but it so often comes without hunger - without longing - without teeth. Bob Ross could paint happy little trees all day long, but the cumulative impact of his entire life's work doesn't affect me half as much as one quick perusal of, say, The Scream.
It works the same way with music. It's the reason why Lesley Gore's "You Don't Own Me" moves me more than "It's My Party." Why I still feel the urge to rock out to Alanis Morisette's angry, buzzy, "Jagged Little Pill" album, but have long since stopped giving a shit about Jewel. Why "The Downward Spiral" has knocked me on my ass every time I have ever listened to it. Why "Sea Change" is my favorite Beck album, and "Odelay" strikes me more as a curio. The creators channeled some sort of real emotion - anger, betrayal, loss, into amazing works of art. The pursuit of happiness is almost always more compelling than the real thing.
One of my favorite albums came from a man awash in darkness in what has since been dubbed the "summer of love." In the spring of 1967, 22-year old musical wunderkind Arthur Lee (frontman of LA psychedelic rock group Love) began composing what he viewed as his final earthly creative output. In the summer of love he recorded it, and it was released in the fall. He viewed the album, which would become "Forever Changes," as his final words on matters of life because he had a feeling he would soon be dead. Not, perhaps, by his own hand, but simply from the weight of being alive in such a crazy world, at such a crazy time.
"Forever Changes" is full of such premonitions of doom. The album fits soundly into the canon of baroque pop masterpieces released in 1967, but also sounds fresher today than many of its contemporaries in large part because of its unwillingness to pander to the times of its creation. It is wearier, scarier, and more mysterious. The music is sparer, less flowery, with orchestrations favoring acoustic guitar and Latin rhythms over Theremin and Mellotron. The overall picture may be pure psychedelia, but there are no ruminations on incense and peppermints. Lee crafts catchy, snaky melodies about "upbeat" topics such as nuclear war, aging, and a disintegrating social system.
That all of these things were just over the horizon makes Lee's dark vision seem entirely prescient in hindsight. Like a musical version of Orwell, Lee's prophecies must have seemed out of place in their time, but history has proven them eerily prophetic. "Forever Changes" is even more relevant today than it was 45 years ago, and still manages to chill and inspire me in equal measure.
One prophecy that Arthur Lee did not get right was that of his own demise. He said what he wanted to say - made his peace - but was doomed to live into his 60's. As the summer of love faded into the winter of discontent that culminated in Altamont, Lee pressed on, disbanding the remaining lineup of Love in favor of an ever rotating group of musicians that supported him throughout the 70's and 80's, eventually discarding the moniker altogether, releasing music instead under his own name. Various legal troubles led to a prison stint in the 90's, just as interest in Love was beginning to rekindle and Lee was contemplating reuniting with the group's original members. By the time he got out of prison, two of those members had died, taking the idea of a reunion with them.
In 2002, in celebration of "Forever Changes'" 35th anniversary, a recently released Lee formed a new group and staged shows performing the album in its entirety. I saw one of the shows on DVD, and it's wonderful and moving to see a much older, wiser Lee revisiting the album. The songs seem to fit him better as an older man than as a very young one. And it is always uplifting to see an artist finally being celebrated for something they created well ahead of its time. One gets the feeling Lee was ready to die in 1967, but knowing that he got to hang around long enough to see a career renaissance is touching.
Lee made music before "Forever Changes," and far more of it after. But for 43 beautiful minutes, everything about his vision, his band, his compositional talents, and his demons, were in flawless alignment. We should all be so lucky.
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