Arthur Lee News

Arthur Lee, the eccentric singer-guitarist and driving force behind the 1960s' cult psychedelic rock band Love, has died. He was 61.

According to his manager, Mark Linn, Lee lost his fight with leukemia Thursday at Methodist University Hospital in his hometown of Memphis.

"His death comes as a shock to me because Arthur had the uncanny ability to bounce back from everything, and leukemia was no exception," Linn told Reuters. "He was confident that he would be back on stage by the fall."

With its multiracial lineup, Love mixed R&B, garage and folk rock and even symphonic music and proto-punk into a sound that confounded critics and helped usher in the mind-bending psychedelic rock scene so popular in that turbulent decade.

Lee, who referred to himself the "first so-called black hippie," originally named his band the Grass Roots, but was forced to drop it because another act had the same moniker. As the story goes, he chose Love above alternatives like Poetic Justice and Dr. Strangelove after polling the audience at a club gig.

Despite changes to the lineup, Love went on to release three pioneering albums, beginning with its 1966's self-titled debut, which included the Hal David-Burt Bacharach-penned "My Little Red Book. The band followed up with 1967's Da Capo, which featured the single "7 & 7." But it wasn't until later that same year that Love reached its creative zenith with Forever Changes.

After an initially weak debut on the charts, the album gained an underground following and has since come to be regarded as a classic, ranking 40th on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 best albums of all time.

Born Mar. 7, 1945 in Memphis, Lee and his family moved to Los Angeles where he learned to play a variety of instruments. After a stint writing surf songs in the early '60s and working with a then-unknown session musician named Jimi Hendrix, he went on to found Love in Los Angeles in 1965.

Lee's sardonic, humorous lyrics combined with Love's thunderous sound is credited with influencing generations of bands, ranging from Led Zeppelin to Echo and the Bunnymen to Siouxsie and the Bankshees.

Lee's increasingly erratic behavior onstage and off took their toll on Love. After Forever Changes, the members went their separate ways and Lee tried his hand at a solo career which never quite took off.

The 1980s saw several aborted attempts to reunite Love, but eventually the volatile frontman dropped off the music industry radar. It wasn't until the release of 1992's Arthur Lee & Love that the singer returned to the spotlight.

But the comeback was short-lived. In 1996, the rocker was convicted for illegal possession of a firearm and ended up spending six years in a California prison.

After getting out in 2001, Lee resumed touring the U.S. and Europe with a new version of Love billed as "Love with Arthur Lee" that culminated in the release of a live CD and DVD in 2003. Two years later, he quit the band and was diagnosed with leukemia, for which he received a bone marrow transplant last May.

Lee is survived by his wife, Diane. Funeral arrangements are pending.