Verner (August 5, 2009)

This is great music. Arthur Lee deserves more recognition for his musical genius

Daiv Whaley (January 26, 2009)

I too had never heard of this album or band before I picked up the disc last summer when it was re-released. And I know some honest-to-God hippies and they had never mentioned the album to me either. In a nutshell, this is just a fantastic, wise and beautiful album.....it feels to me very much like what the Sixties had to feel like for folks in the prime of their young lives. "Alone Again or" and "A House is not a Motel" are amazing songs, and the bi-racial and egocentric nature of the band makes them quite a curious missing link of sorts in Rock. My only "complaint" would be that I wished it rocked just a bit more in some spaces. Bravo and RIP Arthur Lee.

Marcelo (December 15, 2007)

God Saved Arthur!!!! This a number one.

Bernard Ashbahian (September 21, 2007)

This has to be one my favorite albums of the sixties. Lyrically & musically there is not one note out of place. Even the orchestration on each song compliments rather than overpowers the music perfectly. All the tracks are excellant but if I had to pick my favorites they would be "ALONE AGAIN OR","YOU SET THE SCENE", "DAILY PLANET" & "RED TELEPHONE".

TS (October 6, 2006)

I have been listening to music since the 1960's, and this is, and has been since the day I bought it in 1968, my all - time favourite album.
This album has simply everything - the gentle beauty of Alone Again Or and Andmoreagain, the hard - hitting social commentary of The Red Telephone and the Daily Planet, to the magnificent You Set The Scene. Whoever had the idea to orchestrate it was a genius. I had the immense pleasure of seeing Arthur and his band of exuberant young musicians perform this album at the Royal Festival Hall in 2003, and it was one of the most magical nights of my life. This album truly is a timeless classic.

tasos (October 7, 2005)

I've heard over 2.500 albums (carefully more or less) in about 25 years. There's nothing else like it. Simply, ''Forever Changes'' is the spirit of the 60's ITSELF!

KM (October 11, 2004)

To me, this is the greatest album ever made, at least in the Rock idiom. The song construction is unique, very linear, and often abandoning the verse-chorus-verse-chorus construction common to western music. The arrangements, instrumentation and performances stretch the limits of the musicians. For instance, at the end of "You Set The Scene", the trumpet arpeggio is almost impossible for the trumpeter, but he/ she almost makes it. This being behind the note and stretching the ability of the performer makes the greatest music, from Elvis to the Beatles to the Velvet Underground to the Clash to Nirvana and Tupac, all took themselves to the limit in their music. To me, this album speaks to that aesthetic more than any other.

Lyrically, there is the most amazing combination of the times of the 1960's ("the news today will be the movies of tomorrow") the topical ("they're locking us up today, they're throwing away the key. I wonder who it will be tomorrow, you or me") and the timeless (most of the album). The lyrics of "You Set The Scene" fill everything, verses and combinations of lines speak to everything that can happen to someone in a lifetime. Wholeheartedly recommended. Sit back and enjoy this one.

A Child of the late 70s and 80s Generation Loves Forever Changes. (July 31, 2010)

This album is so amazing it's difficult to review. I was not familiar with Love until another reviewer friend of mine recommended them to me a few years ago, and didn't follow up until 6 months ago. The first time I played this album, I realized I'd heard UFO cover "Alone Again Or" in high school, and was delighted to hear the original version for the first time. Now I know what justice they did to the Latin flavored folk beauty.

Since I was born in the mid-60s, all of this stuff is an unearthed treasure trove to me, and yours truly was definitely not prepared for the way this album blew my mind. Some of you own the group from your youth, which my generation is nostalgic about, but each new discovery is such a delightful find for those of us who aren't so wild for today's new music. This album is such a gloriously bohemian product that the sheer essence of its time sucks you right into it, which is never a bad thing. People used to care about something aside from American Idol, facebook, and the commercial humdrum crud that keeps people from being personal and caring about something other than themselves. I envy your generation for caring and trying, and this album is a fine case in point.

Heavy on psychedelic and folk (full of string embellishments that don't hurt either), Forever Changes is such a wonderful adventure into surrealistic art. Faves would be the touching "Andmoreagain" which I love to play constantly. "The Red Telephone" is nothing short of brilliance, and was featured in the film Taking Woodstock, much to my delight. The anti-Vietnam theme is constant, and yet there are portraits Arthur Lee paints of hip social scenes and the pleasantries of Utopia in a country full of ignorance. Irony? Was he trying to paint a picture of people who were so numbed by being fed the war morning, noon, and night that our nation turned away for their own pleasures to escape the madness? We all have to go on.

Love some of these song titles. "Maybe the People Would be the Times or Between Clark and Hilldale?" LOL, guess you can pick, but it's got a great hook and a rather accidentally commercial appeal. Very nice Spanish guitar picking.

"Live and Let Live:" "The snot has caked against my pants. It has turned into crystal?" Umm, maybe some of the low reviewers have a point here, but then, try explaining Jethro Tull's classic, "Aqualung."

"The Good Humor Man He Sees Everything Like This:" Visions of that temporary Utopia, but so beautifully portrayed. Love the guitar riffs and horns about Arthur Lee's soft, sensitive voice. This is easily my favorite track, because it is so childlike and charming that it's irresistible.

"Bummer in the Summer" is folky soul strut with an attitude, but the original final cut, "You Make the Scene" is the most disturbingly striking cut on FC. Arthur Lee's lyrics can be sometimes vague, but nobody has to guess that he is commenting on the decay of society and the bleakness of war-minded people, much less the futility of human life in general. This is such a disturbing song for me, because of Vietnam vets I have known who came home to such a hostile response, but it is more personal than that. "You think you're happy, and you are happy--that's what you're happy for." Who can actually achieve this unless they are Bobby Rydell and Diane Renay? Exactly.
"This is the only thing that I am sure of. And that's every living thing is gonna die. And there'll always be some be some people here to wonder why. And for every happy hello there will be goodbye." This song always makes me think of my brother, who died of leukemia just before Christmas of 2008, and it is hard to hear because of those lines. There are also too many references to how people barter for this and that out of purely selfish motivation.

My review has already gone on too long, and I don't like doing that to people, but the bonus tracks are also really worth your time. Forever Changes is such an underrated and glorious work of art, that it is impossible to conceive the negative reviews here! I would recommend this album to anyone who wants to hear great 60s baroque pop, but use your own judgement.

More than the sum of its parts (July 2, 2010)

I was 13 when this recording was released. I didn't get into it until at least 20 years later, and at first I wasn't thrilled, though I did like it. Then when reading that Arthur Lee thought he would soon die soon after this was released, it started to make more sense. The music isn't incredibly complex, but it still can challenge musicians with its varied influences, from blues to Mariachi, to psychedelia to Dylan to classical. The lyrics are often leaning toward the bizarre, and I am pretty sure many are drug influenced. (eg, "the snot has caked against my pants") Yet the music is often pretty, and the string arrangments of "The Red Telephone" and "You Set the Scene" are some of the best I have heard in a rock setting. The album has some political overtones; Lee is obviously wrestling with his demons and yet trying to remain ultimately hopeful. I was able to see him months before he died where he played most of Forever Changes, and he sounded really great and focused that evening. He grabbed at his shirt when he sang, "And the things that I must do consist of more than style," and he said something that I have heard at many concerts over the years. He said simply, "Love one another." Usually I toss that aside as a cliche, but for some reason that night it felt like it was truly meant and it grabbed my heart. Not knowing that he had leukemia at the time, it makes more sense now, just like the recording itself, once you allow yourself to explore it.

Among The Greatest Albums Ever Recorded ! (April 15, 2010)

1967 was the year of some very influential releases, for example The Beatles' Sargent Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Moody Blues' Days Of Future Passed.
To those and other landmark albums I recommend you add Love's Forever Changes.

Originally 11 tracks, this remaster contains another 7 and they really take it on to another level.

Like The Beatles and The Moody Blues offerings it presents as much more than individual songs, although to get into the mind of Arthur Lee and asertain where is coming from is another matter !

The musicanship is top class on just about everything, but special mention for Alone Again Or, Andmoreagain and You Set The Scene.

Of the bonus songs there are 2 versions of Your Mind And We Belong Together, the first are tracking sessions highlights with Arthur impossible to satisfy.
The second shows that Arthur was right to insist on the highest possible standards, it's a belter !

Give it a try whatever type of music you prefer !

A masterpiece of composition and orchestration that rocks! (February 16, 2010)

This album,one of Rolling Stones' 500 best all-time recordings, is considered to be one of the three greatest rock recordings of all time by many critics. I believe it surpasses the other two(Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and Smiley Smile) in several ways. Firstly, the orchestration, with strings and brass become part of the songs, not merely a sonic, sound-track like background; the string parts both support and echo the words and the feelings expressed in the tunes they are utilized in. The brass parts don't sound like they're just rococo fillagree to the tunes they are in, they variously become cavalry charges, hunting calls and even Mariachi-like outbursts without sounding like Herb Alpert(too much).
Arthur Lee's beautiful, touching word-play gives many of the tunes a singer-songwriter piquancy that is hardly matched by the maudlin sentimentalism of Brian Wilson's effort, and the band can, and does , rock harder than either the Beach Boys or the Beatles when they need to.
This is an incrdible, seminal album that has never gotten it's due; like Bach, someday in the future people will finally realize what a wonder this group has produced.

Love; Forever Changes (January 20, 2010)

This lp had no hit singles and if your unfamiliar with it, it is a strange sounding album at first listen. But after some repeated listens I found myself liking it more and more. It is very hard to catorigize. Not quite rock, not quite soul, not folk, yet it has all these elements within it. Although you can tell this lp was recorded in the late 60s, it has a timeless quality to it that makes it very revelent today. I would re3commend this album to anyone. My only advice would be to make sure you listen to it quite a few times. It has a strange hypnotic quality that grabs after repeated spins