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(Credits: Far Out \/ Album Cover)<\/p>\n
Sun 4 January 2026 10:00, UK <\/p>\n
2026 marks the 60th anniversary of the first two LPs by the Los Angeles<\/a> chamber-psych-garage pioneers Love, who released their self-titled debut and its follow-up, Da Capo, in 1966. <\/p>\n Both records have long since been significantly overshadowed by the band\u2019s 1967 magnum opus, Forever Changes, but in stark contradiction to that narrative, Love and Da Capo actually performed much better on the US charts than their canonised successor.<\/p>\n This is a useful bit of historical context, considering how the current critical analysis around frontman Arthur Lee and Love tends to begin and end with Forever Changes, a record that resonated more with British audiences in its own time, and gradually built its cult status in America in the decades that followed. Love\u2019s real impact in the States arguably came in that first year of their existence, when the band became a sensation in the LA music scene and set the template for a boatload of trends that would help define late \u201860s rock and roll.<\/p>\n Before the Doors became the sound of the Sunset Strip, before bands started putting out singles in stereo, before the Jimi Hendrix Experience showed what a racially integrated rock band looked like, and before long hair and beads became the de facto look of the California hippie\u2026 Arthur Lee and his band were already doing every one of these things.\u00a0<\/p>\n According to the Doors\u2019 Ray Manzarek, Love were the end-all-be-all band in LA in 1966, so much so that even the wildly ambitious Jim Morrison<\/a> was content to merely get on their level. \u201cMorrison turned to me and said, \u2018You know, Ray, if we could be as big as Love, man, my life would be complete\u2019,\u201d Manzarek recalled. \u201cI thought Love was one of the hottest things I ever saw. They were the most influential band in Los Angeles . . . we all thought it was just a matter of time before Love conquered America.\u201d<\/p>\n Fashion sense and musical adventurousness aside, part of Love\u2019s immediate appeal was a proto-punk willingness to dig into lyrical subject matter that had rarely been addressed so directly in rock music before. Right out of the gate on the band\u2019s debut, a 21-year-old Arthur Lee \u2013 an African-American kid from South Central LA \u2013 showed no fear in talking openly and honestly about heroin addiction<\/a> in the song \u2018Signed, DC\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cMy soul belongs to the dealer \/ He keeps my mind as well \/ I play the part of the leecher \/ No one cares \/ For me \/ Cares for me.\u201d<\/p>\n Arthur Lee, \u2018Signed DC\u2019<\/p>\n This wasn\u2019t a random, fictional character study either. Lee wrote \u2018Signed, DC\u2019 about Love\u2019s original drummer, Don Conca, who\u2019d been considered one of the most talented young drummers in LA until giving in to his drug addiction and exiting the band before the recording of their first album. Conca would ultimately spend the majority of his life in prison before dying of an overdose in 2004.<\/p>\n