Reuters reports the death of Love mainman and psych-punk pioneer Arthur Lee.
And the Los Angeles Times runs an obituary.
"This was a revolutionary band, way before Jimi Hendrix. No black man had crossed over from 'soul music' into rock before Arthur. I desperately wanted to be in this band. Arthur clearly had tons of talent and charisma, a quality that our singer, Jim Morrison, hadn't developed yet."
Doors drummer John Densmore offers an appreciation in the Los Angeles Times.
"Lee was in that rarefied class of musical mentals--Brian Wilson, Roky Erikson, Syd Barrett, Skip Spence--whose derangements, compounded by hallucinogenic intake, placed them on the very edge of musical and cognitive reality, enabling them to snatch the rarest, strangest birds of inspiration along with fistfuls of dead, pretentious air. For a moment, each was able to not just catch the bird but coax out its songs."
Devin McKinney in The American Prospect places Lee in context.
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