Danny Brown and Johnny Echols on Love's Forever Changes

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey everyone, today we're closing out Black Music Month by celebrating one of Rick Rubin's favorite albums of all time, Forever Changes, by the band Love. Love was a groundbreaking in LA group formed in nineteen sixty five. While their name isn't usually mentioned alongside popular California psychedelic bands like The Birds or The Grateful Dead, Love's influence is vast. They were the first interracial rock band, predating even signing the Family Stone up in San Francisco. Their charismatic, fashion forward black frontman Arthur Lee inspired Jimmy Hendricks's look, and in the mid sixties, Love was the hottest band in a Hollywood. They lived together in a castle and played sold out shows on the Sunset Strip, where diehard fans like Jim Morrison came to see them play. In nineteen sixty seven, the band recorded their third album, Forever Changes. It was the last album for the original core of the group, with guitarist Johnny Ecles and co writer Brian McLean. The album ushered in an entirely new sound for the band, combining baroque sounding instruments and horns with folky instrumentation and poetic lyrics. On today's episode, we'll hear some of Rick Rubin's conversation with Detroit rapper Danny Brown, who, like Rick, places Love's album Forever Changes at the very top of his greatest albums ever. Then we'll hear Rick in conversation with Loveslely guitarist Johnny eccles about the intense turmoil surrounding the recording of Forever Changes. Ecoles, who grew up straddling both black lay and the psychedelic Strip, explains how Love was responsible for getting The Doors the record deal, only to be quickly overshadowed by The Door's mainstream success. Echoes also recalls first meeting the Beatles when they were an opening act for a Little Richard. This is broken record line of notes for the digital age. I'm just commission before we jump into Rick's conversation with Johnny Echos, Let's first hear from the one and only Danny Brown. Of all the music you listen to, where do you put Forever Changes in your very change? My favorite album? I've heard? Number one album? Yeah, because I still, like I told you, I still hear, I still hear new things to this day, and I still haven't understand I don't understand still what I'm listening to. I just know I'm not listening to it with my brain, like because I know a lot of time I hear music and I love it, and then three months later it's like your brain tricked you to like that. You know what I'm saying, because feeling wise, it does nothing for me, you know what I'm saying, But forever changes, no matter like how much a lot of the shit I don't even understand, some reason to just stick with me emotionally beautiful. But I guess the first thing that caught me about the album was that I didn't know it was black, like hearing some music like that, because it was like I don't never want to put race to music and stuff, but you know, growing up in Detroit almost have like a Motown feel to me in some sense to it. But he was like doing stuff other like black artists wasn't doing at the time, you know what I'm saying as of his ram in some sense, but even listening to it nine like coming on my way over here is so California too, like like I get that viab like I know that's meaning the sixties, but it's like it's like a sound tractor here almost and and and I know music plays a big part for me when environments like me like growing up and being like a big Naves fan and like Illmatic was like, but my first time, you know, seeing Queensbridge projects like this is the and do you know this is the scene that this ship was painted to you know what I'm saying, absolutely? And I guess you know drugs too, because there's a lot of Like I said, I got questions too about the album, Like the only song I can figure out that means something is the And the titles too, are so all over the place, the one about them, you know, the snot drying up on these pans and stuff and all that, Like I feel like that song is about war obviously, you know, about going into service and stuff. But after that, like all the songs are like open for interpretation for I think a lot of different people. You know what I'm saying, absolutely, How does the music of it strike you? That's the one thing that I think is the big deal too about it. Like as good as the songwriter Arthur Lee was, I think everybody was like at the top of the game far as the instrumentation, and then other thing too. They did it in four months, Like like you talk about me, someone that take years and stuff making albums, Like what the fuck am I bullshit? Like how did they do this four months? And didn't with they working on the reels and stuff like that, and we have pro too, He's just pressing the button he could just do know, So it's like they had no room for error, especially when you're dealing with Okay, you already have a full band, you know, and then you want to add in horns and you want to add in string arrangements and stuff like that. It's like it's so hard to make them make stuff like that fluttered like you know what I'm saying. So it was like certain parts like he didn't have drums or but when he did, it was always like kick ass. Though it wasn't like nothing that just set there to just hold the tone, you know what I'm saying. Everything was there to stick out, which is so cool about you know, production and ship too, because a lot of times, you know, you can just fall back on the song writing. And as strong as those songs was that he's writing, it's like, yeah, you could have just never really been that shit could have just been acoustic guitar. Next year, we still would have knew those were amazing songs and the like, But the go that fucking her production wise is like what And then it just to hear like the cost of the album at that time, it's like fuck man, Like for that album to come out, it didn't sell any records. It wasn't like a fucking big deal or anything, like you know what I'm saying. But now we're sitting here in twenty nineteen and talking about it, you know, so that gives me, Yeah, it gives me hope, Like you know what I'm saying, Like, good music never dies no matter what you know, how long ago was it that you first heard it. I always judge stuff by, um, what I was listening to at the time. I was listening to Jay Dillar Donuts. So when Donuts came out two thousand and six, yeah, that's a long time for an album to hold you. And same for me. I probably started listening to it in the early two thousands and still anytime I fly, that's what I listened to on an airplane always because it has a subtleness to it too, because like you know, playing music, it's a different thing you want something you can sleep too and still wake up and not freak you out, you know what I'm saying. So I think for Every Change is a subtle album that has that, but I get so caught up in the lyrics of it, like the only other album I can like compare Forever Changes too for me and some sense it's like a mad Villain like to me, like I can just take the album just read it, and I think I would still feel a personal connection just from the lyrics, just from reading it. And that's why I can compare it to him. It because like I had went to m I had did like a year in county jail, and you know, with being in jail, you don't have no music or nothing. So I would have my brother like praying out and doom lyrics for me. Yeah, and that was the way And like I connected with Mad Villain just reading words. So and I feel like Forever Change, It's genuitely has that same type of peal because I had to read those lyrics too. Make sure to keep an eye out for Danny Brown's new joint album with rapper producer Jay Peg Mafia when it drops later this year. Now, let's see Rick and Johnny eccles talk through the making of Loves Forever Changes. I want to understand why this beautiful album is so unique. Okay, should we go through song by song? Sure, we can do that. Whichever was I'll put them, I'll bring them up and we can listen to a little bit of each song and you can just tell me who did what, or what was going on at time or what what? What memories come up when you hear it. Okay, let me let's start with this all the time. What do you think about? What do you remember about? Okay? This was a song that Brian wrote, call Alone Again. Arthur added the oar to it. Yes. Now, when we first started working on this song, it the introduction on him doing the fingerpick of Spanish guitar. Yeah, it was meant to be a banjo so the song was a different song. It was a blue grassy kind of song when he first wrote it, and we were young and naive and thought, well, we play guitar, we can play banjo too. So we rented banjo's and we came into the studio and we tried doing the introduction and playing banjos. Well, banjo's entirely different instrument instruments, yeah, and so if you don't know how to play it, you can't play it. So we were at the verge of just nixing that song altogether. And I was sitting in a corner warming up. So I'm just playing that. They're not flamenco. There's just Spanish riffs, you know, and David Angel here's that. So why don't we just kind of transfer those kinds of riffs to Brian's song and do it that way. And so he went over and talked to Brian. First, Brian was against it, but he says, well, if you want the song on the album, from what I understand, you're going to have to do something. And so Brian said, okay, let's do it that way. And so we changed the feel of the song to a Spanish song, and the mariachi trumpet in the middle of the song was done by David ANGELI came up with that part because initially I was doing just Spanish runs and nets. What you hear playing behind the trumpet is what would have been there. But then I was playing certain runs and the trumpet basically followed those runs, and so he played what I had played on my guitar as a trumpet solo. Amazing. Yeah, it is really fantastic the way it turned out. I listened to that and thought, boil, this is really a good song where it's really good. Before it was kind of a you know, a so so song, a throwaway song basically because you know, we were basically trying to put the song together with a totally different feel, and this was it was just perfect for the song, the Spanish feel. How did it end up being the first track on the album? That was done by the record company. They put together and mastered and the order of the songs I was totally done by Jack Holsman. It was a bold decision because based on everything we know about love at that moment, and now here's the new album and you put that on, you wouldn't know it was the same group. No, you wouldn't. And the fact that Brian's song is opening the album. Had Arthur been involved in that, it wouldn't have been that way understood. And if you notice on this song there are different versions of this the same music, but there are different versions and some Arthur his voice because he see Arthur wasn't even at the studio when we recorded alone again, and he comes in later and he hears it and he likes it, and so he sings harmony with Brian, all of us sing harmony, and later on Arthur he says he didn't do it, but I don't see who else would have done it. He put his voice ahead of Brian, so you hear more of Arthur than you do with Brian on some of the releases. They re released the album just recently and they remastered and then you can hear the way it's opposed to with Brian's voice more prominent. It still sounds almost the same, but you just hear Bran. It's different. Balance. Yeah, okay, next song, You're just a thought that someone somewhe somehome fields you should be And so basically acoustic songs again, which is coming from what we've heard before from Love shocking. Yeah, it is shocking. This song has a very interesting backstory. We were playing up in San Francisco. The place at the time was called the Warehouse, wh our house, and Janis Joplin was build with us, and she is really really loud, and our dressing room would have been right behind the stage, and so we decide that there's back Then they would break up clubs, and there would be section where people that are under eighteen could go that they didn't serve alcohol and they could be there. And on the other part of it is where the adults went and naked buy alcohol. So we went to the adult part, even though at that point I was still, you know, probably nineteen or something. Wasn't supposed to be in there, but we go over to that section just to get away from the screaming of Janice. I'd loved her. She was a good friend of mine, but she could really really get your ears vibrating. So we're sitting in this place and some guy just walks up and he sits down at the table where Arthur and me and Brian are sitting, and he puts a big, huge gun on the table, and so he's what's going on, and he starts to telling us about he was an a wall soldier from Vietnam, and he tells us about blood mixing with mud, turning gray, and he's talking about all these things. You can call my name is where one of the soldiers would be hit and the Vietnam or whatever would booby trap that soldier and so he would be screaming all night long, and the people couldn't, his comrades, his buddies couldn't come and get him and rescue him because he had been booby trapped. And so he's telling us all of these stories and all of that, and you know Arthur's mind, we're listening to it, fascinating. His mind's working entirely differently. He's got those lyrics and he's doing poetry with this Vietnam vets and that turned into a house as not a motel. Incredible, And did the did the music come first or did the words come first? And then you put music to the words came first? This was basically poetry, and then Arthur would sing it and he started Arthur not only did he write the words, but he wrote the melodies to his son that he just didn't have the ability to put music to it. But and when he would say if he would sing you a song, would it all be in one key? Like? He would he sing it like as if there was music to it already. Sort of sometimes he would meander as far as the key is concerned. But and sometimes as once we started putting music to it and actually playing it would change a bit. You know, the melody phrasing and to work with the music. Yeah, so he would do that. But this started out, as I said, as poetry. So would you say all the songs started as poetry before the music. Yeah, basically all of them as a rule. Yeah, fascinating. Yes, I would say less music is made that way as well. Yeah, that's why it sounds different because the music kind of compliments because we got to hear how the poetry went in here. So it's almost like you're scoring the poem basically. Yes, that's what we're doing, and it means you know, any thoughts about the music and that one the direction of the music, how it how it evolved. Again, that was interesting because there's two guitar solos. Yes, when I'm playing the first one the ear phones, the head phones are working great and I can hear the backing track and I'm laying down the solos. When I'm ready to do the second one, something goes wrong and there's a glitch and I can't hear the first guitar solo. So there was a plan to do the two guitar solos. Yeah, they were going to play off each other. I would play off myself and when we were playing backing track back in the first guitar solo, I couldn't hear it, and so we're gonna nix that song too, because well, you know, maybe you're not gonna do the second solo. But we figured out. Arthur and me talked and Arthur was in the booth and we thought of me going in the booth and playing it. But I needed the amp to be really loud in order to get the sounded it because I didn't use pedals. Everything he saw was the amp, or you heard from me was what was there, and so what was the equipment just so that was a vox Ac thirty yes. And then I'm playing a give some Less Paul nineteen fifty two goal top with p ninety pickups. So I'm trying to do it, and Arthur comes up with an idea. He says, I will give you signals from the booth. So I'm there and I can't hear it. I can hear the backing track, but I can't hear my other guitar, and so he's tells me when to go up and when to go down. And that's what basically how I did the second part of it, and it fits amazingly when I listened to it, but I'm trying to follow him, and so I'm not really concentrating on playing. I'm more concentrated on what he's doing. Yes, and that's why that probably made it more. Yeah, it's probably some of the best guitar I've ever done. And it's amazing how that works now and amazing also how it works not by planning but almost by working around a problem. That's exactly what happened there was like the universe wanted that song done, beautiful way right, Yeah, let's do the next one, and you don't know much. It's fascinating and it sounds so again, unlike anything else, even guitar stylistically, it just feels like another It's coming from another world. And that was another song. Aren't many of other songs are about this particular lady Anita Billings. He called her pretty and the song and More and the first album this is and More again, so speaking about the same lady Nita Billings and Arthur I think his whole life because he really loved her and she was his high school sweetheart, and her mother found her diary and she had obviously bared her soul in the diary. And the mother made her not see Arthur anymore, and so basically the rest of his life he's pining for really, for real, for this lady. And he got to see her one more time when we're at the castle. She comes there and he had that's the song I See your pictures in the same old for him speaking of her again. Wow, you know at the Castle. So many of our songs are about this lady. Amazing. Anything else you could think of about the song. This one of Billy Strange is that there's the guys on the Reagan Crew. Remember they played on two songs on Daily Planet. That's Hal Blaying playing drums and Billy playing the guitar with me and Brian, So Billy's playing with us. That's Brian, Me and Billy Strange playing the guitar parts on that. And the arrangement that David Angel did is just really, really beautiful. The song sounded great without because he showed us the arrangement after we had played, because we're initially going to leave it alone and just leave it without the strings, but then when we heard what his arrangement. Yeah, it's so interesting that that little guitar moment right where we stopped. I think of it as a string solo, even though it's not. You know, it's just this, but the strings make their entrance and it feels like, oh, that's what's happening, but it's really just a backup report part. Yeah, that's he really doesn't get the credit he deserves, David Angel, but he would was able to insinuate the violin strings into that. Yeah, yeah, really great. Okay, watching Dieu Magnificent, that's a very dark song, you know, speaking of the times in which we lived back then. But again that's poetry put to music. You can just listen to the poetic. And then we went to see a was at the Art House because Murat saw it. It was about the people in the mental institution. They're locking them up today. There was a line from that that film, and so Arthur was able to put that together into this song. And it also makes sense now that talking about the way the songs came about why the Doors would have been so influenced by love because Jim basically a poet, yes, a poet with a band. Yes, now we were you know we still because we couldn't blame them for their success. Of course, we that upset with the record company. But we were always tight with them, and we you know, even after not playing anymore, Jim and I often talked, We're going to put together, you know, group and stuff. Of course we never did, but we were good friends and always really we felt kind of proud of them because we knew had it not been for our just tenacity rather and the doing the things the way we did with Jack, there probably would have been no doors because they were on the verge of going their separate ways until they got a record contract. And also I had spoken to him, and I think one of the things that helped keep them together is rather than having to continually want to receive credit I did this or I did this, and people loggerheads, they decided that if whoever wrote the song, they would all split, would always be yes so. And that worked perfectly for them because they didn't have to argue with each other who got credit for what, you know, they all got credit. It's beautiful. Oh the snot has caked again, small pens, it has turned into crystal. There's a blue but ranch. Anything about the lyrics or the poetry again, it was poetry, and it was shocking poetry in the beginning the snot has caked against my pants. You know, you can get the image of that. That one is jarring in that the lead guitar player lead guitar is rather out of place. That's you got a soft, really orchestral song and all of a sudden you've got to kind of really rock us a guitar. And that even the style of the vocals seems like old English, you know, like, h do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, some of the songs, and especially in Dacampo, had that feeling and yeah, which really uh helps diffuse the lyrical content because of the sort of formality of the way it's being delivered. Yes, the words are easier to take and and it's so clean the way it was done, you know everything, Like as I mentioned earlier, we started out as roc as wanting to have distortion to a very clean and even the guitar solo there, that's just the vox Ac thirty without anything at it. That's just the way it sounded. Yeah. Well, I remember when a thing about possible good for you we used around around around me. It's really interesting. Yeah, Bummer in the Summer, Yeah, yeah, that was the one Don Randy's playing the piano on that and it. David Crosby had told us that music was going to be changing and country was going to be very influential, and so we kind of did a little country is Bow Didley country kind of song, that's what that is, and coming out of the Bo Diddley into the more classical like just the way the pieces go together and the counterpoint of Brian's guitar. Gus, there's actually two guitars, Brian Doom Doom Doom, Da Da Doo doo and I'm playing Day, so they kind of mixed together as those one guitar, but that's two guitars playing off of each other and almost reminds me like the kind of energy of like in the context of The Wrecking Crew, like Glenn Campbell's kind of driving guitar vibe related in pop music. He was great. I learned a lot from him because before Love we were assigned to Arthur Mee. Arthur was the songwriter and I played sessions with Bob Keen at Delphi Records, and so Glenn Campbell worked there as a studio guy himself. Learned a lot from him. Yeah, it definitely feels like related. You know, it's beautiful. Okay, we have one last song. Okay, if you won't shit, bring you water. If you don't will little backstory here. This was three separate songs that we started working on and never finished, and Kenny, on his own initiative, put those songs together and got them in the right keys and made this into one song. Much of it is talking about Anita Billings. You know, I see a picture in the same old frame, and that was we meet again, was him meeting her at the castle and it not being the same as he expected it to be. You know, they've both grown up by then and they were That also has a little bit of the country feeling are playing as well. Yeah, yeah, And it was difficult to beginning because I would and uh finger pick the first da da da da da da da, and I was continually missing a beat, so I had to do that with a pick in order to get it to come out right. I see. And that was probably one of my favorite songs to play on stage because it goes through all of these changes. Let's go by the time put yourself. It's incredible, it's incredible. Was this prior to or inspired of David David axel Rod's music, because this feels very I don't know what came first though, I'm not sure which came first either, but this, as I said, these were unfinished songs put together into one and then the arrangements that again, I have to give credit to David Angel because he was able to seamlessly put these things together a beautiful and so it was. It was meant to be that way. It was meant to be this album because had it had the other influences, I don't think it would have had the same impact that it has. Because everything every song on this album fits. It seems like they were meant to be there. And the order. Then again, Jack Holsman, they did a great job of putting the songs in the proper order. So even after the frustration of it not being the double album, when you finished this, we pleased with it. Yes, yes, And everybody involved was feeling good about it. Everybody was feeling great, and we thought this was our magnum opus and this is going to be it and it's gonna take us to the next level. Yes, And the record company for some reason still wasn't you know. We had a billboard there for a while, but we weren't getting the kind of promotion that we felt it we deserved, the song deserved. But then again, the song was a bit yet because at that point in sixty eight, you know, this isn't Martin Luther King is assassinated, Bobby Kennedy and so much is happening at that time that I think the song just kind of got lost because people were more you know, interested in protests and the Barry McGuire's stuff and you know, understood. So I think that had this been released just a little earlier, it might have done better. Yes, and it did well in Europe, especially in the UK. It was when just shot up the charts. It's just here. It did okay, but not nearly as well as it shit. Maybe those events that you're talking about that were a distraction here, maybe there was weren't felt as strong. They weren't. And so because at that point we were having a lot of turmoil happening, you know, riots in the streets and people burning shit down, and so it was it was a tough time. Normally most of our music reflected the time, but it took a while. You have to listen to this album, it's not one that you just put on and danced. You really have to sit back and listen to it, and you have to listen to the words because they have meaning, you know, the whole album. And as I said, people were ready for you know, just loud rock, us in your face stuff, and this was a very subtle and it told a story and it told it in a way that was not in your face the way some of the music was at that time. So it was something you listen to in your introspective and you say, wow, that's that's right, or you know, it gives you a different perspective than what was happening. You know, people were really uptight. You know. The best wagon put it is just you look at the sixties as all peace and love and harmony, and you know there were sometimes like that, but then there were other times that were just you know, really really raw. We have to pause for a quick break, but we'll be right back with more Johnny Eccles and Rick Rubin. We're back with more from Rick Rubin's conversation with Johnny Eccles. There have been other great albums that have come along that in their wake will may have started a whole new movement and for whatever reason, this beautiful album is well loved everywhere in the world. Yet it's the only one. Nobody continued the path. And I've been thinking about it as someone who helps support artists make music, and I don't know who could even make it, Like, I don't know who else knows how to make it. It's such an unusual thing. We have to go back to the beginning days of the recording and then you can kind of see how it progressed and how it actually came to be what it was, because it initially was meant to be an entirely different album. Arthur was a premiere vocalist and wordsmith. He wrote wonderful poetry, but he wasn't a musician. He kind of played a little bit on keyboards and that was it. But Arthur would sing the songs, and I mean we always would hear him singing every We lived in a place we called the Castle, so we lived together and all day long, Arthur would be singing these songs, right, And so Brian and me put the music to these songs. And once we started recording the first album, everyone received their writer's credit and it was cool. The second album, even though the method was still the same. Brian and I put the music to Arthur's words. Now they were giving Arthur credit for this, and it was pissing everybody off because that's, you know, there's a lot of money, first of all, besides the recognition and publishing and songwriting that actually that's where most of the income comes from. And so we were upset and we were Brian and I were talking about just splitting up and going our own ways, and Arthur convinced us that he had spoken with Jack Holsman and that we would do a double album Forever Changes, which it was called to Get Simony Project. In the beginning, what was it called Get Simony right? And you know what do you know why? Well, there was a lot of chaos going. Get Simony is where Jesus was basically betrayed. And so we were looking at ourselves as being betrayed by our friend. Because when we started out, we were all together. We were friends. As I said, we lived together, work each other's clothing, dated the same chicks. So and then all of a sudden, once love was becoming successful, we noted a change. And then one person is being singled out and given all the recognition, and we were not happy with that. So Arthur had convinced us that we were going to have a double album as I said, and Brian would have one side and I would have one side, and Arthur would have the other two sides, so basically four sides. And so we agreed to that. And we had been working on these songs for months and months, and when we got to the studio everything changed. We were told that it was too expensive. But the Doors had broken and they were selling, you know, quite a few records, and so the Doors were label mates. Yes, yes, and so they Electra said that they were doing a new project with the Doors and it was too expensive because when we started, Electra was a very very tiny folk music label. And the reason we signed with them was I was a friend or my parents were friends of Little Richard, and Little Richard would say, always own your music. Don't let anybody take the copyrights our own in mushit. So Jack Holtzman was the only one out of all of the record companies that wanted to sign us that allowed us to own the publishing. And so that's why we signed with him, even though we were offered much much more money to sign with other labels. And so we did so thinking that, you know, after we went to Canners and had to talk with him and he seemed cool, so we decided to sign with him. So now I get to the point where we get to the studio and they decided that it's going to be a single album and we'd do the other part later as a second totally a different album. Well, now everybody's pissed off Brian, especially because you know, Brian is really a gifted songwriter and he wanted this stuff heard and he was only getting one song here, two songs there, and so he decided that he would lay back on Arthur's stuff, in other words, instead of doing the little things that he did that made this stuff sound really cool and like, oh, he would just lay back and have Arthur tell him what he wanted to play. Well, Arthur, not being a musician, didn't know what to tell him. So it was kind of chaos, Dick, when we were in the studio after getting this information from Bruce Botnick. And then the day we get to the studio, there's Neil Young there and Neil is our friend. We hang with him, smoked ope with him, you know, and Bruce tells us that Neil is going to produce the album. Now we were not. You know, that was funny. So we all started laughing and stuff, because you know, we're not gonna listen to Neil. Neil is one of us. So they Bruce calls back to New York and speaks to the record company and then so we all of a sudden are on the outs with the record company because they had had this Whose idea was it for Neil to produce it? That was Bruce Botnick. Bruce was Neil's friend also, and Neil was broke at the time. I mean he was getting kicked out of his apartment or house, I guess, and so the money from producing the album would have really helped a lot, and they had given him an advance. Bruce was sold, you know, into him doing it, that he'd managed to get him in advance, and when he realized that it wasn't happening, that we were not going to do that. Arthur had been slated to produce this album, and Arthur knew what his song sounded like, he knew what our sounded like. So we thought that's cool because basically we all would do that together anyway, and Arthur would just be the one out front. The record company designed it that they wanted to have an adult in the room, so they brought had Bruce, who normally was our engineer. They had him act as producer even though he produced nothing, but he was still part. He was already part of your team. He had or engineered the first album. The second album he had nothing to do. Well. Interesting, yeah, so we were not that pleased, as I had I had mentioned before, because the first album didn't turn out the way we wanted it too. You know. We were a hard rock at that time, a hard rock driving group, and we wanted it to sound like that, yes, and it didn't to us, So we weren't happy with him. So the next album we went to our cia and Dave Passenger, who had worked with The Stones and many other hard rockers, was the engineer. So Bruce was kind of on the periphery. We knew him, but we were not all that enamored with him, you know. So anyway, they work it out and he's going to act basically as the adult in the room and we start the album. Brian and me are both still pissed off, and so, as I said before, Brian lays off and he just kinds of phones it in and it's not happening. Everybody can see that, Wow, this doesn't sound like a completed record, which it wasn't. You know. It was just you know, stuff that Arthur had written and you know, the words, as I said, And normally we would really get behind it and do the best we could with the music, and this time that wasn't happening, and so it sounded really not very good initially. So the record company brought in the guys from the Wrecking Crew and they were going to lay down the basic tracks and then we would add the flourishes and our little things that made us sound like love. And so they came into the studio and started to play, and it was soon realized that they sounded nothing like us. They were fantastic musicians, but they didn't sound like us, and that wasn't gonna work. So after a lot of back and forth, we took a break and decided to go back and work on these songs and do a little bit better. And I said, Brian, is this how this may very well be our last album? Is this how you want to be remembered? It's how you want to go out? And he said, no man, and so let's let's just do it. So we started rehearsing and we put the music together for Arthur's words, and the album is what you hear, and we all along knew that it would be a different album. So we're going to do strings. Rock and roll at that time wasn't necessarily heavily involved with strings and horns and stuff, so we decided that we were going to push the envelope a bit. And the Beatles were a huge influence on us, you know, the Sergeant Pepper and how they'd put all of that together, so we thought we would go in that direction. How recently was Sergeant Pepper released? From the time you were making your album, Oh gosh, a little bit before we actually got to the studio the first time to start, just maybe a month or two. But we had been working on these songs, but they sounded different until we decided we were going to do strings and horns and have astand more of an eclectic feel. And so I had I'm very much into blues, old school blues, so my things were going to be in that vein. And Brian dug folk music and Broadway shows and stuff, and his things would be in that vein, and Arthur would be Arthur, you know, the the amalgamum of all of us putting our musical abilities together to come up with the sound that was recognizable as Love. And so that's basically what we did. We went into the studio and laid down the basic tracks, but this time we were doing it with purpose and decided to do it right rather than phoning it in. How did it end up being so acoustic based considering the fact that, as you described, Love previously had been a really hard driving rock band. This album has a much softer side to it does because back then, if you listen to the radio, everything was eclectic. You could hear Frank Sinatra, and then you would hear the Birds or Bob Dylan or very saddler. You know, you'd hear different kinds of music. So that's what we were trying to do with the album is reflect the times in which we lived. So the album sounds the way it did serendipity, it was meant to sound that way. It was meant to be a very eclectic, as I said, album. Yeah, so we get to the studio and this time, as I said, we're doing it right and We have David Angel, and we didn't know him at the time, but he was about in the same age group as us, and the man was a genius. He could just listen to little parts of stuff and just weave it. And it sounds as though it was all a cohesive thing that was meant to be that way. But you know, when we started it, even though when we initially were putting the music together, we didn't know if the record company was going to follow through because they had already burned us by not doing the double album. So we were leaving room for strings and horns without knowing whether or not they would actually be on the album. So that in itself was difficult to do, and I think it turned out. It's very interesting. I love the previous love albums as well. It's it's just interesting how different this one is than the ones before it, and again just that question of why does this thing stand in time all by itself, and it's it's interesting. Yeah, And as I mentioned the singularity, the universe seemed to just at that point decide that it was going to do that because all of these things, if you the chaos that was going on, the hard feelings, the darkness that was happening, the fact that the album really was very close to not being done at all, and for it to come out that way with all of these things going against us, Yes, and to turn out that way because had it been the album that we initially envisioned, it would have been entirely different, and I don't know if it would have had the impact that this one had. By the time Forever Changes was finished, and we were basically at each other's throats, you know, we did tour, but we were starting to trust each other and because of the way that went down, you know, because we felt we were being played. We felt that they had lied to us, telling us we were going to do this. And was Arthur equally upset with the no double album or no, he was that that was the thing. He was fine with it because yeah, we're playing about this stuff. He got stuff his way and then but you don't think that he politicked to get it that way. I don't know. I at times think that he may have because he had friends, sycophants, hangers on that were telling him how grade he was, and they didn't know the inner workings. They didn't know that m Arthur wouldn't know a suspension chord from you know, a hole in the ground. So he had, you know, as I set sycophanse, who would would continually uh burnish his ego and tell him he's called that LSD lead Singer disease. Yeah. So Arthur by this time, you know, is thinking that he doesn't really need the rest of these guys. So that's the attitude that he's kind of projecting to us. And then we find out that Brian, unbeknownst to any of us, had worked out a separate arrangement with Electra in order for him to finish his parts on Forever Changes. They were going to give him a solo deal to release a solo okay, but we were gonna still keep love. But he would have done that, and they offered us the same kind of arrangement. So Brian calls me and tells me about it, and I said, wow, that's great. Let's go chat with Arthur bound and see what he thinks. And Brian says, Arthur, I've got a record deal with the Elector I'm going to release a single and all of that, And Arthur says, wow, Brian, that's fantastic. You're fired so that was the end of basically Brian's involvement forever. Just like that. Wow, would you say as a rule, was Arthur an unreasonable person? Arthur was becoming more and more. He was becoming a kind of a caricature of the Arthur that I knew because he was Arthur in success. Yes, the success was affecting him. And he also was an attention hawk. He loved to be the center of attention. So Arthur would in the summer, he'd wear a fur coat on stage, you know, and it stuff like anything to get attention he would do. We'll be right back after a break with more from Johnny Eccles and Rick Rubin. We're back with the rest of Rick Rubin's interview with Johnny eccles. What was life like in love pre putting out even the first album? Okay, well, pree, we go back now, Okay, from high school. Billy Preston and I were in high school together, and so is Marilyn the coup of the Fifth Dimension in ron Town and was the janitor at our high school. So Billy and I had the first group. So Billy Preston and Henry Vestein later of Canned Heat was a friend, and so we had a group and we played bar metzvahs and funerals, weddings, whatever you know, to get paid. So we played those, and Arthur came to one of the assemblies in high school and he saw the group playing. Now Arthur at that point was into sports. And I had known Arthur my entire life. Our families go back to before we were even born, before our mothers were even born, how far they go back, And so I had known him all my life. And I knew Arthur, you know, poetry, but I had no idea he could sing, yes, and was because he couldn't play an instrument. He learned accordion, and then he switched over to Oregon because there was a guy that was going door to door in our neighborhood selling music lessons, and so Arthur took accordion lessons, and my father was put on the hook for a three hundred dollars guitar, which back then was an absolute fortune. Yes, And so I started playing, and I took lessons from Adolf Jacobs, who was in the Coasters. He was a friend. And so my uncle managed a place called the California Club, and all of these acts. It was on the Chitland circuit. So that's how we knew Little Richard and Adolf and many other musicians. Even though my parents were not musicians per se. My father was. He just loved music. And so anyway, with Billy Preston and Henry, we did frat parties every week and who Billy obviously played keyboards? You played guitar? Did Billy sing? Oh yeah, Billy? Because at one point we see we were different groups. We were Billy Preston and the Soul Brothers, And that was when we played Cinnamon Cinder and all of these frat parties and stuff up and down the coast. Well, Billy had a gospel thing happening and it started to take off, so he was going to split and leave the group, and Arthur had asked if he could join. Now, not being a musician, the guys and oh man, why are we gonna have him? He doesn't play anything, So we put him on bongo drums. Arthur played bongos and conquo drums, and when Billy left, Arthur kind of moved over to trying to play Oregon and his parents bought him a little whirlitzer or something and he played that so Arthur now as part of the group, and Henry left because he wanted to do blues. He was really into blues as well. So now it was Arthur and me and John Fleckenstein who later was with the Standals. He was a friend of ours two and so he joined that. He played the bass, and then Don Conka was our drummer, and that was the We named ourselves the Grassroots, and we were the first Grassroots and we were also the American four and I think we called ourselves after we heard the Birds. We were the weirds with the y. Why so when you first started, tell me a little bit about the music scene then, like, what would you hear on the radio in that time when you were just forming, Well, we were a cover band, as everyone was, because this was sixty three sixty four. I'm in high school and just getting out of high school. Then what would be some of the songs you'd coll oh, gosh, twist and shout or shout. We would do yeah, Lesley Brothers things and so whatever was on the radio that time, whatever rocking songs, we would do those. And little Richard was going on tour, and there's guy Jimmy James who was later, Jimmy Hendricks was going with him as his basically his golfer. He was Richards driver and his chauffeur and all of that. So Billy and I were part of that initial tour and we went to England to Liverpool and we at these guys the Quarryman, and later we find out that these guys are the Beatles, but you know, we didn't know that at the time. We just you know, met these guys. And I had to come back because a grandmother had died, and so I had to leave. So I didn't tour that much with him. I just met these guys and went back to Los Angeles. The quirement opened for little Richard, didn't they? Is that? Yes, I feel like I've seen that poster. Yes, they opened for a little Richard And basically they followed him around like little puppies. They loved him, and you know, and so Richard was being Richard and so he would you know. And Jimmy, as I said, was the Gopher. I had met Jimmy earlier. Jimmy wasn't playing in the band. Oh yeah, he was in the band playing as well. Yeah, he played as well. Books when I first met him, he I think he was with the Eisley Brothers in auditioning for a job with the Old Jays, and we were kind of Billy and I and a couple of other people in Michael Boliver was a huge jazz guy. Now we were part of the backing band, and so we would the house banders, so to speaking, we would played behind Zz Hill or bb King or whoever Sam Cook. They were performing at there, and we were part of that. So that's how I first met Jimmy James. So as I said, when I had to leave and come back to Los Angeles. So a couple of months later, Billy and I are playing at a place called a Nightlife, and of all things, there was a telegram sent there because they knew we were playing there. So it's a telegram and Brian Epsteins and I didn't know Brian, but Billy did. He said to be on the lookout. There was a package coming for us, and so I wonder, what the hell is this. So a few days later, sure enough, the package comes and Billy opens up and there these passes backstage passes to the Hollywood Bowl. And we hadn't figured it out yet that those guys that we met in England. I allowed Richard around were the Beatles and then it says the there'd be no way to know, Yeah, there'd be no way to know. Yes, So we get to the Hollywood Bowl and we see these are those dudes and all of these chicks and scream in. It was just amazing, and that's when we decided, hey, we're going to do this or you know. And so Arthur and I he came along too, and we decided to go in that direction. So basically love started that night we were at the Hollywood Bowl. Incredible, and that's when you decided to write your own songs. Yeah. Up till then it was only cover, Yeah, basically only cover. And so we would write our own songs. Fleckenstein had started writing songs and so he would add to it. And so we were probably maybe ten percent of our songs were original and the rest of them were covers. And we carried on like that, and then we get a job at a place called the Brave New World. Now, the Brave New World was initially a gay bar, and the owner of it wanted to switch over because I think they had found a new hangout and so his place wasn't in place anymore, and so he brought us down to play. And we used to go over to place called Ben Franks in Hollywood and where everybody hung out. So we went on sunset, yeah, on sunset, and so we went to Ben Franks and we saw David Crosby and the Birds and these guys are holding court at Ben Franks, sitting and all everybody's going back and forth from their table. And we met. Yeah, this would have been the sixty five or sixty six, I think sixty six, And we met Brian and he was fascinated with us, because it doesn't appear that way now, but at that point, Hollywood was fairly segregated, so you didn't see black people that often in Hollywood. So Brian sees us and we're kind of wearying the you know, the hippie outfits, and our hair had grown long and so and so he just came over and set at our table and wanted to chat with us because we looked interesting to him. You know, he was a gadfly kind of guy. That was this thing. He just knew everybody. Was he in bands as well? He was a roadie for the Birds. I didn't know that. Oh yes, yes, So he introduced us to David Crosby, and we invited them to come down to the Brave New World to hear us. And David didn't come, but Brian did. And Brian asked if he could sit in with us, and so of course we let him sit in now at that time, which maybe he didn't know. Bobby Bussle, who later of the Manson thing, was part of that group. He wasn't getting paid. He would just come in and sit in with us. And when Brian came, we asked Brian to join the group and told Bobby he wasn't needed any longer because Brian just fit right in, you know, he had. So Bobby was in the group prior to then Brian replaced Ban replaced him, and so they had hard feelings, but I didn't see why, because he just was right the right. Yeah. And so when Brian and came, he brought with him the people that came to see the birds. This was Veto and Carl Franzoni and the guys that ended up following the mothers followed us first, and so we go from having a reasonably good crowd to having an overflowing crowd just within a couple of days of Brian joining the group because he brought all those people with him, and that's when we decided that that was the direction that we were going to go. You know, we were going to be a kind of a folk rock Birdsy kind of group, and so we started playing that type of music and Brian, he basically influenced the transition for us, and he was a major influence on how we behaved in all of that, because you know, we looked up to him and thought it was cool, and we came from a different area, so we started dressing more and more like they did, you know, in that area. And as I said, the fire marshal was they were just about every night because there were too many people in the club and so we basically took off from that point. From there, it just, uh, it just continued to go. So at this point, the Birds were still still making music and still popular. So just so we have the landscape, what else was going on? Like if you were to go out one who would you be excited at that era of the band? Who would you have been excited to go out and see who was playing around? Time Iron Butterfly We would see them and during that period, this is when everything kind of melted. We'd see the Buffalo Springfield they were we all lived up in the canyon basically, and the Turtles and Turtles Lay Yeah, Laurel Canyon. Yeah. The Turtles were basically one of the first groups that we would see and go out. And Turtles the whole band or really just the two singers, now they were a full band. They were a full Yeah. And the people that later became Red Bone Patent Lally Vega, they were friends and we'd see them. And the Whiskey Uh, basically was kind of a square club. We'd call it straight that's what the term was. And Johnny Rivers was performing there and the lady that booked the plays, Ronnie Herron, who was a friend and she used to come and hear us at We moved from Brave New World to beat Doledos and Betledos was in Cosmo's Alley, which was near Wilcox between Hollywood and Sunset. It was in that area, and so we had been offered an opportunity to play there, and so we left the Brave New World and because we would have been the first group, we were the first group to play there, so they allowed us to basically set up the sound system. You know that that kind of was the way we wanted to sound. And anyway, so Ronnie having met her at Beatoldo's, she was the booker at the Whiskey and whisk. He had a horrible reputation for not paying musicians then, so she asked us to come and play, and we said, hell, no, we're not gonna pay because those guys are We all thought that they were mafia. That's what everybody thought, those guys are a mafia. Is that it might have been. I think they were okay. But and in those days, how long would you play for? Like what would what would a night's entertainment? We would play basically four or five forty five minutes sets per night. So we'd started Would they be the same songs over now over? No? No, no, no, we played different songs. So we had a repertoire league, so you could play for three or four hours, all different songs. Yeah. And again at this time it's mostly covers, yeah, just ninety ninety percent covers. And then we started playing, um some adding a few of our own stuff in. Would people dance, Oh yeah, they try, they would saying packed in there. Yeah, that's that's what it was dance, and as I mentioned earlier, was kind of blues jazz oriented. So right across from us with Shelley's Manhole, it was the back of Shelley's Manhole was the front of beat Aledos. And so these musicians, they see all of these people and they would come back. So I met Paul Horne and Miles Davis and Coltrane and stuff, and so on our breaks we would go and listen to them, and Charles Lloyd. I'd known Charles Lloyd also, he was one of the band directors in high school. So anyway, we noticed that these guys would take these long, extended solos, and so we did a song we titled john Ley Hooker that later became Revelation, and we would play this one song sometimes for a whole hour. That's just the whole set, and you know, trying to emulate the jazz musicians. Now, so we would have been probably one of the first jam bands, and people started coming just to hear this us play one song the whole set. And as I said, the jazz guys would come in and every now and then Charles would sit in with us or gobores the bowl would you know, sit in on one of the songs. So we started getting a reputation among musicians as well as the hippie crowd. Was it unusual also that it was an integrated band. Yes, it was because at that point I think we were I believe the Rising Suns may have been mixed race. I think of Taj Mahal was part of that, and then there was Ray Couder and then but but I think that was probably the only other mixed race group. And so that again was a calling card. And being that we were a mixed race and we're dealing with people that you know, consider themselves enlightened and you know, and it's it's hard to describe this, but they wanted to come. You know, they couldn't go over to the other side of town without necessarily getting into trouble or having some problems. So meeting and black musicians and was something that was a huge calling card for us, as having people meet us and the fact that we basically spoke the same language. We were relatively articulate, and they could speak with us as you know, we weren't talking streets lang that nobody could understand. And really the common language was the music, right, that was the real correct and being that we were safe, dangerous, you know, these young girls from the valley would come to see us, and you know, and and so that's how we got this huge crowd. At one point, they would block off the street. Cosmos Alleys was basically a private street and they'd block it off at both ends, and then they would charge at mission for people to come in, even though they could never get into season, almost like a block party. Yeah. Basically, yes, you didn't see the band, but they put these huge Voice of the Theater speakers out there, and uh yeah, so it sounds like a sounds like a great event. It was fun to come to. This was really fun, and as I said, we were starting to get a reputation amongst musicians because all the jazz guys came to see us and wanted to do something with us. So we had basically taken off and then we moved to the Whiskey. You know, we still stayed at the beat Alides, but we played at the Whiskey and then later the trip and we played there the first night. I think we played there with the Velvet Underground, and I think we played once with the Birds. I believe. I'm not sure if they played there with us, And we played many gigs with the Doors, of course. So that's basically when that whole music scene in Hollywood started. Because then, as I mentioned before, the Iron Butterfly and the Electric Flag. So there are many many groups and we all lived basically in Frank Zapple have done the same street, and that that's something that probably will never happen in life again. And all of these houses in Laurel Canyon, you could rent a house there for sixty dollars a month. Would you say that it was a sense of camaraderie with the artists, Yes, less about competition and more about friendship, right, And there was kind of a friendly rivalry and that everybody wanted to do his best that they could, especially when we started making records, everybody wanted to kind of do a little bit better than the other guys. So and then I'll mention how we got the Doors, Yes, Okay, after Love had become quite a popular in Hollywood. Of course, Jim Morrison became our friend and he would come every night. Is still pre recording. No, this is after we've done the first Love album, and by then we'd really taken off now and so we're playing much much larger venues around Hollywood. And Jim, as I said, became our friend. He was mostly my friend and Brian Arthur didn't particularly care for him, but anyway, he was an interesting person. He was also a poet and that was his big desire in life is to have his group become as big as Love was. And he had mentioned to me several times that he wanted us to introduce him to our record companies to get him looked up. And of course we didn't want to vouch for Jim because Jim was a handful of Jim was. He was full of drink all the times he was. That was his thing is drinking. So we got an offer from MCA, which was a rather large record company back then, and since we weren't happy with Electro because of the way the first album turned out, and they weren't able to promote us because they just didn't have the money at the time, and they were also mainly folk labor how tote this, that's the thing. They didn't have the experience. So when MCA came us and they offered us like fifty thousand dollars signing bonus, which would be about five hundred grand now, and so that was a humongous sum of money back then. And so we had spoken to Jack Holsman about leaving. We didn't tell him it was MCA. We just told him we weren't happy when to leave, and of course he was having none of that. So we came up with a brilliant idea. He said, if we hooked him up with the Doors and he has a rock group and he has he's still in the game, he'll let us go. And MCA offered to buy us out of the contract, and no such luck. So he came down the first night and heard the Doors and he hated them, and we managed to talk him into coming back to see him the second time, and he hated them even more, and he was kind of getting pissed off at us for wasting his time. So a month or two goes by and Jack us here for something else, and we speak with him and we said, place come back and see these guys one more time. We're still working him, trying to get him in the cut us loose, and this time we brought Paul Rothschild with him, and Paul had just gotten out of prison. Paul had gone to prison for grass and so we thought that was so cool that, you know, street cred. Yeah, he had street krebs. So he came down again and he with Paul, and this night Dar in Butterfly was on the bill with the Doors at the Whiskey, and he came back that that third time, and Jim was on his best behavior. It wasn't drunk, and he did the songs, you know, properly. And Jim was a very charismatic, good looking guy, and he could see the attention that the young ladies were paying to him, and he saw what we saw, and so he decided to speak with Ronnie or she had become our manager by then, and she hooked him up with the Doors and made the introductions and they signed within a day or so of meeting them, and we thought, cool, now he's gonna cut us loose and let us go, which no such thing. You know. Basically, what we did was we shot ourselves in the foot because the money that would have been spent promoting us now was spent promoting the Doors. And we were so proud that we had this huge billboard outside of Chateau Merma, and within a few days they had the doors was right cross from us, so and now we've got a rivalry amongst friends, and they were doing really, really well. They were selling records and so more of the record company's attention was focused on them. Now of course it would be these guys are you know, they've got a number one song with like My Fire, and they are much more malleable than we were. You know, as far as listening to the advice of Jack Holtzman, because wasn't there also an issue with touring. I don't know the details, but I've always heard that Arthur didn't want to leave Los Angeles. We'll see that that was kind of a misnomer. Back then, being a mixed race group, there were most more places in this country that we couldn't play them we could. We could not play the South at all. We did play a Texas once. Other than that, we couldn't play the South and much of the Midwest and Middle America. We were off limits there as well. Fascinating so even though you know, music was our livelihood, that's how we survived. So of course we wanted to tour and play, but we played where we could, and Los Angeles we were getting bookings and bookings, and it turned out because the record company didn't back us the way and promote us by sponsoring tours the way they did for the doors, it was rather than like we could play in New York and Chicago and Detroit and places like that, which we did later. But initially we found it better to play here because we made more money staying here and not having to pay the travel expensive. And you were in great right and we were in demand here. So after Forever Changes was finished, they did sponsor to our Electra did and as I said, we went to Detroit, Chicago, and Cleveland and New York and just about anywhere on the East Coast we could play. We played Boston in so many different places. And how were those experiences? Those were great because it was basically the same. It was like going from here to San Francisco was the same same type of people. They looked the same, dress, the same talk, the same So it was basically the same type of people. There's a question I don't know the answer. Did Jimmy Hendrix look like Jimmy Hendrix before Arthur. No, he looked like he would wear these cardigan jackets and real skinny ties and the processed hair, the pampadour, that's how Jimmy looked. That's the Jimmy James that I knew. He looked nothing like that. So he basically coopted some of Arthur's style. Yes, you know, and because he was just so impressed. Because love. It's hard to over or exaggerate how huge that group was just in Los Angeles, Hollywood, So everybody was looking up to us at that point. And we didn't even know when we first heard of Jimmy Hendricks, we didn't know that he was Jimmy James. And we were coming down from pre internet. Everything was information was hard to get, that's correct. We came from San Francisco and a friend of ours name's Johnny, also said, then there's just dude, Jimmy Hendris. He's playing at the Whiskey. You guys should go and see him. So we came from San Francisco and we went to the Whiskey expecting to see somebody that we didn't didn't we see and Arthur says, man, that's that dude from the California Club, and he was entirely different. He's dressed in fullar galia and now he's doing all of the old Chitland circuit tricks, you know, playing behind your back. You know, people think that that Jimmy invented that, but that was just an old staple of Johnny Guitar Watson and people like Classy Blue and those guys did that all the time. And Albert Collins they always played behind their back or head or you know. So that was new to the people in Hollywood, but it was old hat as far as we were concerned. He was playing stuff and he just you know, he goes from being a journeyman guitar player, just the Soso guy playing guitar, to being this monster. And I always say, man that you must have taken a trip to the crossroads man something, you know. So we would laugh about that often. But and I still wonder how in the space of a little over a year he goes from being just a soco guitar player to being God. Basically, what do you think and you think, I mean, as a guitar player, was your perception while he went from soso to unbelievable? Yes, not just the perception, but in reality and what you saw as a musician. Yeah, in reality, the way he played music, the stuff that he did you know, was different than anybody else at that time. I'm not talking about the flashiness, but talking about the way he played was different, and he was using effects, you know, because they had given me one of those things before they did Jimmy. We were signed with Vox and Thomas Oregon and so Kenny and I went down and they gave me this thing. It was called a Wawa tape and this pedal. I still have the pedal as a matter of that. And it was supposed to emulate the sound of a trombone, you know, wa wa with a mew nun. I never knew that's what it was interesting, and I thought, a hell, if I wanted to do that, I would play the trombone. I don't you know, I'm trying, not trying to emulate a trumpet or trombone and a guitar player. So I put the damn thing in the closet and never never bothered with it. And Jimmy gets the same thing, and you know, he turns it into you know, I never thought about it before, the idea that that part of Jimmy's breakthrough involved using new technology. Yes, that's exactly fascinating with a fascinating point. Without that, there would have been no Jimmy Hendricks. Jimmy was the effects. That's what made him sound different. That's what made everybody look because he didn't sound like every other guitar player. He sounded different and it was because of those effects of that. He embraced the technology. The technology, he knew how to use it, and he made it his own and he was so identified with that that that's who he was. But he also, you know, had the foresight and the musicianship to use it properly because I saw the same damn thing, and you know I didn't do it, so he did it. So I have to give him his props for what he did. So we saw him and Arthur and him started hanging together because you know, they were closer than because I think Jimmy, well, there was a song called My Diary that Arthur had written that Rosalie Brooks recorded, and I think that was one of Jimmy's first recording gigs as playing on that. So they were closer than the two of us were, but you know we were friends. Jimmy look up to Arthur, Yes he did, he did. Yeah, And at that time it was as the doors the Doors had the number one record in the country, but they were deferential to us and that they played second billing, you know, and they have a number one record. Normally, when you got a number one record, your top billing. But you would see some of the old posters who would be love and huge letters and then the Doors and their number one hit light My Fire underneath it. So yeah, yeah, And so Jimmy had basically the same kind of deferential attitude toward the crew because we were able to, like, you know, we could play the Hollywood Poll or the Latium or any place and out draw just about anybody, and people that had you know, records out so couldn't. Yeah, they couldn't do it even if they had hits. They county because you do it, you had really built up a grassroots following from the beginning. Wasn't based on a song. It wasn't based on the song. It was based on the persona of the group, the fact that, you know, the lifestyle and the fact that we lived in the castle so we you know, and we drove around jags and sports cards and stuff around, so you know that it just kind of set us apart from the other musicians, and so they were all trying to emulate that. Yeah, beautiful. Thank you so much for coming and doing this my pleasure. Thanks to Johnny Echoles for taking us back in time to talk about the creation of Forever Changes. You can hear that full album, plus some of our other favorite love songs and I playlist at broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced Helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, beent Holiday, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafe. Our executive producer is Minia Lobet. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content an uninterrupted ad free listening for four ninety nine on a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you'd like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richman,