Love (Love album)

Recording

Twelve of the album's fourteen tracks were recorded at Sunset Sound Recorders in Hollywood on January 24–27, 1966. The remaining two tracks ("A Message To Pretty" and "My Flash On You") come from another, undocumented session.

Love is a folk rock, garage rock and psychedelic rock album. One of the first rock albums issued on then-folk giant Elektra Records, the album begins with the group's radical reworking of the Burt Bacharach-Hal David song "My Little Red Book." It features a guitar line that Syd Barrett altered considerably (although not unrecognizably so) in writing his own "Interstellar Overdrive", released on Pink Floyd's album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The album also features "Signed D.C." (allegedly a reference to one-time Love drummer Don Conka), and the poignant "A Message to Pretty".

Sales

The album sold about 150,000 copies.

Legacy

The stark instrumental "Emotions" is used uncredited in Haskell Wexler's 1969 film Medium Cool as a recurring theme.

"My Little Red Book" was featured over the final credits of the movie High Fidelity in 2000, and the Beverly Hills, 90210 episode "Alone at the Top" in 1995.

Track listing

All tracks written by Arthur Lee, except where indicated.

2001 CD reissue

The 2001 CD issue presents both stereo and monaural mixes and adds as bonus tracks an alternate take of "Signed DC" and "No. Fourteen", the B-side to the "7 and 7 Is" single.

Personnel

with:

According to the box set Love Story, the tracks "A Message To Pretty" and "My Flash On You" may feature John Fleckenstein on bass and Don Conka on drums in place of Forssi and Pfisterer.

Singles