The Love Band featuring Love co-founder Johnny Echols performed more than a dozen Love classics during a memorable set at the Knitting Factory in North Hollywood on Saturday night, April 22, 2023.
The multi-racial, multi-generational lineup, together 20-plus years, included Echols on lead guitar, Rusty Squeezebox (lead vocals, guitar), Mike Randle (guitar, vocals), James Nolte (bass), and David Green (drums).
For the Knitting Factory – a warm-up gig for the Love Band’s major summer ’23 tour of Europe – David Costello (trumpet) and Willie Aron (keyboards, harmonica, tambourine, and backing vocals) joined the band as guest musicians.
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As of spring 2024, the bandmembers were preparing for their latest tour of the United Kingdom in July and August under the “Love with Johnny Echols” banner.
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A Lovely Flashback
In its brief but colorful classic era, 1965-1974, the band Love created and performed dramatic music that both reflected and influenced L.A.’s folk-rock-psychedelia explosion.
By late 1965, Love’s SRO sets at local clubs like the Whisky a Go Go led to a record deal with Jac Holzman at Elektra.
The multi-racial hippie band – Arthur Lee (chief songwriter, lead vocals, drums, percussion, harmonica), Echols (lead guitar), Bryan MacLean (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Ken Forssi (bass), and Alban “Snoopy” Pfisterer (drums) – recorded their eponymous debut album at Sunset Sound in January 1966. Holzman and Mark Abramson co-produced and Bruce Botnik engineered.
Peaking at No. 52 on Billboard’s Hot 100, Love’s amped-up cover of Burt Bacharach’s “My Little Red Book” was the folk and roots-music label’s first chart single by a rock band, even if the “Love” LP rose only as high as No. 57.
Love went on to record the albums “Da Capo” (released November 1966), “Forever Changes” (November 1967), and “Four Sail” (1969) for Elektra, then “Out Here” (December 1969) and “False Start” (December 1970) for Blue Thumb, and “Reel to Real” (December 1974) for RSO.
Though Love was immensely influential in its time, Lee’s dislike of touring outside Southern California limited the group’s wider popularity back then. Fortunately, Love’s material has proved timeless, appealing to succeeding generations of musicians and fans who trip out on American psyche-rock and garage-rock.
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Love Revisited
In 1993, years after the original lineup disbanded, Lee began performing Love music again, backed by Baby Lemonade, a young L.A.-based band featuring Squeezebox, Randle, Green, and Dave Chapple (bass). That lineup toured the U.S. and Europe, where Love’s music was even more popular, until 1996 when Lee was imprisoned in California on weapons charges.
After his release in 2001, Lee and the same players resumed roadwork in the States and abroad as Love with Arthur Lee; Echols, Lee’s sole remaining bandmate from the original Love lineup, rejoined the fray in 2002. Lee exited the band in the summer of 2005, citing health problems; he died a year later from complications of leukemia at age 61.
Since Lee’s death, Love has carried on as the Love Band or Love Revisited featuring Johnny Echols. Their worldwide cult following keeps growing and keeps them active. The last personnel change was in 2021 when James Nolte replaced Chapple on bass.
As on this night at the Knitting Factory in spring 2023, the band’s setlist often includes most or all of “Forever Changes,” among the most influential albums of the era (a Grammy Hall of Fame honoree, also listed in the National Recording Registry), plus other chestnuts including “My Little Red Book” and the fiery “7 and 7 Is,” the band’s biggest hit single, which peaked at No. 33 in summer 1966.
These videos (c) 2023 Stephen K. Peeples.
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Here’s a playlist of all the above:
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Stephen K. Peeples was raised in Miami and Los Angeles in the ’50s and ’60s by career newspaper journalists and music lovers. Based in Santa Clarita, California, he semi-retired in 2021 after a 46-year multi-media career. He earned numerous awards and a Grammy nomination in 1994 as co-producer of the “Monterey International Pop Festival” box set. In May 1995, at Rhino Entertainment, he interviewed Love’s Arthur Lee for the media campaign supporting the label’s “Love Story: 1966-1972″ anthology. As of spring 2024, he was interviewing surf and surf culture legends and writing a book celebrating the 60th anniversary in 2024-2026 of filmmaker Bruce Brown’s epic surf travelog “The Endless Summer,” with the full cooperation of Bruce Brown Films, which is opening its photo archives to the project. Publication is projected for late 2025-early 2026. See the “About” page on Peeples’ website. More of Peeples’ original stories and exclusive interviews are posted on his site and on his YouTube channel.
Article: Love Band with Johnny Echols Weave Magic at Knitting Factory
Category: News and Reviews
Author: Stephen K. Peeples
Article Source: stephenkpeeples.com
