http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wKRhxgGaXM
Back around '83 I played a standing-room-only gig @ the Troubadour with my band Noizey Walker, on the bill with Odin, the young band that was later featured in the Decline of Western Civilization II movie.
During one of the intermissions, famed Troubadour owner Doug Weston came on stage to announce a surprise appearance by Arthur Lee, accompanied only by an acoustic guitarist & a conga player. The crowd went almost completely silent...I think I was almost the only person there who was excited to see him.
The Troubadour audience practically ignored Arthur, & then some even booed him for not being "Metal"...with most of the crowd being completely oblivious to who he was, & the importance of his old band Love...which had been one of the biggest draws on the Sunset Strip, only 15 years earlier.
I remember thinking how fast times change, & how short a memory many rock fans have...& I felt down-rite sorry for this guy, who was one of my high school era heroes, now playing to an almost hostile crowd.
About the same time, I owned Visions Music, a guitar shop across the street from the Hollywood Post Office, on Selma & Gower. Bryan MacLean (who wrote Love's biggest hit "Alone Again Or") used to come in & buy guitar strings & various supplies. He looked really run down, somewhat of a drug casualty. One day he had to write a check, for a very small purchase, because the guy was low on cash. That’s when he pulled out his I.D., & of course I recognized his name.
Bryan brightened up noticeably when I told him how much I respected Love, since I was a kid in high school. Bryan told me how he was surviving primarily on his meager royalties from the ‘60s, & that he had turned to Christianity, & that he was trying to write with his kid sister Maria McKee, who had some success with Lone Justice in the ‘80s.
By the late ‘90s, Bryan was dead; he never really reconciled with Arthur. And of course, most people know that Arthur has had a lot of problems, both legal, physical, & mental.
Now Arthur is gone, sooner than he deserved. It’s not a very happy ending to a story that shined so brightly in the ‘60s.