Arthur Lee
Vindicator

Memory of a Friend
Tribute to a Genius
Recovery of a Noble Album

This piece of mine was supposed to be published on the 8th of March 2017.

Vasco is, even today, the person to whom I have always recognized a superior charisma. He was the only one who fascinated me; he was just a year older than me but seemed much older. He managed to be the boy he was but with the confidence of an adult; in the way he acted and presented himself, in his attitudes, in his reasoning. He had dropped out of high school but knew more than us and expressed himself well. Long hair, he managed to dress freaky and elegant at the same time. He loved grass but hated other drugs because he said: "I have to push myself further but always maintain control over myself." And he often had older girlfriends. I observed Vasco a lot, he had a captivating aura. He was generous but also a bit cocky and a bit of a badass; the right amount that I like, in short. In hindsight, I "learned" a lot from him. And he already knew a lot of music, he loved the Beatles and the Doors and introduced me to Drake and the Love... but who the hell knew Drake and the Love at 16, in the early eighties, in Cavriago, the Noble Red Fiefdom??!!

"It was Arthur's isolation from the whole world, not just musical, that was the real cause of their decline, particularly the fact of not being able to give the public what it asked for, which is music, a true, continuous contact, a presence; discontinuity was fatal to them. It's a real shame because Arthur Lee in particular, is one of those few geniuses I have rarely encountered in the whole rock'n'roll world." Jac Holzman.

"We didn't do many of the things that needed to be done to come out into the open and make ourselves known. Our obsession was to do things in the best way, at our own (long) pace, confident that everything would be fine. For this reason, we lost many opportunities." So said in one of his rare interviews Lee in 1970.

Arthur Lee, in charisma and genius, reminds me of Vasco. This not even twenty-year-old was already a musician and author, roaming recording studios and forming the Love. The Love was one of the most beautiful realities of that vital decade for Rock and beyond. Innovators and influential like very few others, they did not have great commercial success only because of Lee's particular character and his heroin addiction with related obsessions and turmoils. At that moment commercial and media success was the last of the priorities.

In two years the Love produced three magnificent albums. They were the first driving group of that magnificent Los Angeles scene, the first resident band of the Whisky Go Go. It was Lee who advised Jac Holzman of Elektra to go to see the Doors and Morrison. Lee was predestined, a genius artist. A forerunner even in looks (which would cause a stir with Hendrix); bright colors, sandals, boots, jackets with fringes, hats, scarves. Speaking of young Jimi from Seattle; imagine their meeting as youngsters in 1964 when, by one of those twists of fate, they found themselves in the same recording room to record the first 45 rpm produced by Lee. His life however will always remain mysterious. Even his 12-year sentence (for a very strange weapons-related accusation - 12 years in America for firearms is already laughable in itself) and the subsequent overturning of the sentence after serving half the sentence is unlikely; in those years Lee, it is said, would have refused any visits in prison.


Only in the last two decades after his arrest, release, and return to the scene (always in his own way) then the illness and death, has he been talked about again. A biography and the possibilities of new communicative means of the last two decades have shed a little light on his life and the craziness of the Love of those years.

Starting with the castle-house "The Castle" where the band "lived" on the hills of Los Angeles (former property of Bela Lugosi and place where they shot the psychedelic movie "The Trip"), together with delinquents, dealers, wastrels, in a sort of toxic commune.
Intentionally isolated from everything and everyone with heroin and music (the first of the two was unfortunately primary) as the only activities. While the Summer of Love was at its best with Happenings and Flower Parties, Lee (however always the only one to deal with contracts and business) was isolating himself more and more and rejecting any date outside Los Angeles. The peak of commercial self-destruction was reached with the refusal to participate in Monterey.

Then continuing with the lineup changes and tyrant Lee who managed everything in person ripping off everyone and everything without the slightest scruple (in this, unfortunately, there have never been denials but instead continuous and reiterated confirmations). Then the disappearance after the mid-seventies, with many versions about his life in those years; continuous rumors of pseudo Reunions of the original Love never officially happened (stories of "certain" encounters like also many recordings lost or lying in some drawer or basement already starting in the seventies), until the arrest in 1995.
If you have never read anything and are interested, search because they are crazy stories (as always the truths will never be known), which even if only partially true, would be totally delirious.

"Vindicator", Lee's first (officially) solo album was released in 1972 when the Love had already disappeared from circulation (to return sporadically and senselessly). Lee was by then a cult artist and in fact, few bought the album. Now you read something about it (not much) but when I looked for it, the first time many years ago, I think it was even "out of catalog". After the release and after death, however, all the albums of the "Love" and Lee were reissued. The few comments that have been made over the years on the album are excellent and, as far as I am concerned, I love this album.

The time of that first folk rock of 1966, of those magical guitar interweavings, of those choirs with that imaginative and fabulous use of voices, strings, flutes, and trumpets, that ability to merge together Soul, rhythm'n'blues, psychedelia, blues, Jazz, garage, and jam sessions are now far away. What does not change is the quality of the sound and the caliber of the songs.

Lee has always surrounded himself with excellent musicians and has always written magnificent songs. In "Vindicator" we have proof of that. Tracks that drag and impeccable musicians. The album has an incessant rhythm; it is blues, it is rock'n'roll, hard rock above all. A rhythmic section with an essential drum and with a technical and very fast bass (a characteristic of the first Love was precisely this bass sound), insane guitars, and his magnificent voice. Because let's not forget that Arthur Lee was a fabulous singer. Let's remember how many ways he has used and varied his voice.

To be noted the frenetic and engaging opening rock'n'roll ("Sad Song") and the vehement raw final track ("Busted Feet"). The delightful swing of "She Said, She Said" is followed by my favorite triptych of the album; tracks 6-7-8. Two fabulous hard rock blues interspersed with the splendid "Everybody's Gotta Live" which calling a ballad is far too reductive. Try to play a game, start "You Want Change Four Your Re-Run" thinking it's a Hendrix piece you never heard...


The album is released as "Arthur Lee with The group Band-Aid". Band Aid is the name of the band that Lee and Hendrix had decided to form with Steve Winwood: it wouldn't have been bad I feel like stating with certainty (heroin permitting obviously). Jimi and Lee found themselves in London (yes, incredibly Lee toured Europe with the Love from "Four Sail"!) for jam sessions and those recordings were then supposed to be (as it is said) the result of their first album. Only "The Everlasting First" will be published the following year as the opening piece of "False Start".

Arthur Lee is the greatest unknown to the general public of rock after making memorable albums with the Love and two splendid soloists (after this he published "Black Beauty" which, to make us understand how messed up everything is, is released as "Love" with him alone on the cover, but does not appear in the band's official discography).

Unknown to the general public but immense for the "colleagues" and insiders. There would be too many to mention of the artists who declare eternal love to the band and to Arthur Lee; it ranges from punk groups to pop artists and this says it all.

When the severity of the illness became known, many artists organized events and benefit concerts to pay for the huge medical treatments he was undergoing. The biggest of these was held at the Beacon Theatre in New York with many artists; Robert Plant accompanied by Ian Hunter and his band performed a series of tracks from both Led Zeppelin and the Love. Robert has always indicated the Love and "Forever Changes" as band and album among his most loved.

Vasco went to visit his father on the evening of the 8th of March 1987, after being with Sonia his girl; Dante was in the hospital for a heart attack. Ironically, I was also in the ward, hospitalized after my first official diagnosed panic attack (30 years ago panic attacks were not even well understood). Informed by his father of my presence in the hospital he came to greet me and teasingly with affection: "Robby I'm going home to make some tapes with the new albums" he tells me all excited with his sly face (grass and rock'n'roll awaited him the best!)

He never made it home, he crashed head-on and was brought back to the hospital dead. They informed me immediately. So the day after I was leaving the hospital with the atrocious pain of my dead friend while Dante's screams echoed in the building and tore my heart apart. If it weren't a drama it would be a grotesquely beautiful farce. Vasco was just 21 years old.

On thinking about it, Vasco was born in 1966, great year that year.