Now Arthur's dead.
Who's next? Roky Erikson?
All of my heroes are dying. But that's OK, because my heroes should've been dead a long time ago, and the fact that they kept going is a testament to just how heroic they were.
Mind you, they didn't save babies from burning buildings, or fight terrorism, or band together to fight off aliens from outer space.
No, they just made music. Good music, the kind that Top 40 radio never played, the kind that ended up in discount bins, waiting for eager cultural vultures such as myself to gorge and grow fat on the psychedelic goodness these platters contained.
The High Fidelity era is officially over. Nick Hornby's novel captured the last fleeting glance of a time where anal-retentive nerds such as myself labored over the construction of mix tapes, right down to the proper sequencing of tracks and (in my case) in-between bits of dialogue and/or filler to keep listeners entertained.
Arthur, Syd and Roky were my secret weapons: hip enough to influence the bands of the day but obscure enough to remain the best-kept secrets in rock and roll. Their esoteric appeal was like a code: If I was looking at an album track list and spied that the band had covered a Love song or a 13th Floor Elevators tune, it was a hint and a way of winking at me, letting me know, "Yeah, we like the good shit too!"
No matter what flash-in-the-pan bands my friends pelted me with, invoking the Holy Underground Trinity was my constant trump card. No one was cooler, crazier or more self-destructive.
The ones who survived the 60's and the 70's-- Iggy Pop, Keith Richards, David Johansen, Lou Reed --are now thought of as living legends who went through their fair share of ups and downs.
They are famous, whereas Arthur Lee was not.
But people like me know that even someone like Iggy Pop, as cool and bad-ass as he is, owes it to Arthur as much as he owes it to Jim Morrison or David Bowie.
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Even in his dying hour, Arthur Lee was an innovator:
Lee was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia this year. In May, facing certain death after three rounds of chemotherapy failed, he became the first adult in Tennessee to undergo a bone marrow transplant using stem cells from an umbilical cord, according to The (Memphis) Commercial Appeal.
--excerpt from a Reuters report on the death of Arthur Lee
I don't need to tell you what a big fan of Lee I was-- it's in these blog pages. I saw him play shortly after he was released from jail in early 2002 at Spaceland with Baby Lemonade as his backing band. I also saw the Forever Changes tour a few years back, and although his voice was sore the music sounded terrific.
I am glad, in a way, that Lee is dead. Now he can find peace, that's how the cliche goes, and in Lee's case it is fitting. His restlessness bled through the analog master tapes and into my head, causing me to stand up and notice what was going on around me.
I don't need to listen to any Arthur in the next few days, because there hasn't been a day that's gone by since I first found out about Love in 1988 when I haven't played one of their songs, either on the guitar or on the stereo or in my head.
I am going to e-mail some friends with the news, in case they haven't already heard.
Won't somebody please
help me with my miseries
Won't somebody see
what this world has done to me.
And I know, I know
and I say, oh, I say
that no matter where I go
I will always see your face
Won't somebody please
help me with my memory
Can somebody see
what this world has done to me
And I know, I know
and I say, oh, I say
that no matter where you go
you will always see my face
And no matter where you go
you will always see my face
and no matter where you go
you will always see my face
and no matter where I go
I will always see your face
I'm looking I can see your face
Look and you can see my face
I'm looking at you looking at me
--Arthur Lee & Love, "Always See Your Face"
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