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By Sean Elder

"If I don't start crying it's because that I have got no eyes." -- "Seven & Seven Is"

May 22, 1999 | It's a long drive from where we are to where we're going so let's play one of those time-wasting, miles-eating, desert-island games. Tell me, what was California's greatest psychedelic band? The one with the loyal, nomadic following? The one Oliver Stone made a film about? Or one with a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? What if it was none of the above but rather one with few modern fans, no merchandising and hardly a song your average radio listener would remember? What if California's greatest psychedelic band was Love?

This isn't really a very radical theory. "Forever Changes," the Los Angeles band's third album, makes a lot of top rock album lists and Love has been the subject of at least one tribute album. A strong return on the part of front man Arthur Lee in the '90s caused some critical reconsideration, with Rolling Stone calling them "the missing link between the Byrds and the Doors." Lee is also considered an influence (sartorial, at least) on the early Jimi Hendrix: black hippies on the acid-soaked mid-'60s L.A. music scene.

Race is just one factor that set them apart: Before Jimi's Experience and Sly's Family Stone, Love was an integrated rock band, its sound the result of some odd musical cross-pollination. Though Lee grew up emulating crossover artists like Nat King Cole, he was struck by the chiming sound of the Byrds and the foppish pose of such Brit bands as the Kinks and the Stones. "Lee wanted to bring in very traditional folk elements, very light almost 'white' tones,' " producer Harvey Kubernick told the L.A. New Times in a recent piece on Love. "He wasn't making dance music for your feet or body, he was making dance music for the mind."

Dance music for the mind. That's probably as good a description of psychedelic music as you'll find. That Love and the minds behind it shattered like a bottle only heightens the group's claim to the title of greatest California psychedelic band, for psychedelia ain't supposed to last. But there is sadness lurking behind much of Love's sound -- sadness, confusion and sometimes anger.

"Their name should be Hate rather than Love," Peter Albin of Big Brother and the Holding Company groused at the time, and it's obvious that Love's edgy attitude didn't play in San Francisco's would-be utopia. But how authentic was that city's peace-and-love vibe? The Dead hung out with Hell's Angels and the Airplane were spoiled rich kids. Love was like a ticking time bomb; in any case, today Lee is doing a minimum of eight years in a state penitentiary and two of the band's original members are dead. The explosion at the end of "Seven & Seven Is," two minutes and 15 seconds of punk apocalypse, may be the punctuation they were looking for.

"I started playing guitar when I was about 17," Lee told the New Times, "but I started playing on washtubs at the age of 3 or 4." After fronting for a few garage bands, Lee saw the Byrds perform and that was all she wrote. Hooking up with former Byrds roadie Bryan MacLean, Lee founded Love and married Roger McGuinn's circular guitar style to his own pained lyrics. It was like shadows on a sunny day ("Can you find your way/Or do you want my vision?/It's dark there they say/But that's just superstition"), and some say the tension in Love's songs came from the chemistry Lee forged with MacLean. A handsome blond rich kid from Beverly Hills, a kid who dated Liza Minneli in high school, MacLean was Love's unsung hero. To his utter frustration, the group only recorded four of his songs (including the hypnotic "Alone Again Or") but his playing and singing are everywhere.

The impact Love had on Elektra music founder Jac Holzman was immediate. Though Elektra was a folk label (Judy Collins and Tom Paxton two of its big names), they were on the prowl for something electric when Holzman heard Love's cover of "Little Red Book." The song, taken from the film "What's New, Pussycat?," was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David and was only hip in a square way (who the hell had a little red book?); it was Love's pulsating beat -- the descending bass line, the tambourine -- and Lee's strangled vocal that brought the song to life. "Five guys of all colors: black, white and psychedelic," Holzman recalled in his autobiography. "My heart skipped a beat."

Love's first album, "Love," had the Byrds stamped all over it: chiming guitars, plangent vocals, choir-boy harmonies, most in service to radio-friendly ditties (a huge hit locally, "Little Red Book" only went to No. 52 nationwide). But there was something unique here too: a sense of childlike loss and yearning in the heartfelt "A Message to Pretty" ("I go slip-slip/You go slip-slip/Away"), a realistic depiction of junkie life in "Signed D.C." (named after a former band mate) and bad vibes abundant. Lee sang of "little children dying in an age of hate" on "Mushroom Clouds" and brought down lots of listeners. The songs were rife with drug references, and not the nice kind. "Don't force your smuggled drugs my way," he sang on "My Flash on You," "Cause I cleansed my soul and that's how it's going to stay."

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