Love with Johnny Echols "Forever Changes" at Shepherds Bush Empire London July 20th 2024

It's not often you get the chance to see one of your favourite albums performed live at your favourite venue but last night I was lucky enough to witness Love with Johnny Echols perform "Forever Changes" in it's entirety and it was every bit as wonderful as I could have wished for. This was the second time I'd seen this line-up, the first being at the Garage in Islington a couple of years ago where I was right down the front of the stage, the gig was standing only and it was a great hot and rollicking Rock 'n' Roll show. Tonight was more civilized, seats had been installed in the downstairs stalls of the beautifully ornate Shepherds Bush Empire and I was up on the second floor balcony. I asked the security guard at the door why there were seats downstairs and he replied "it's because it's an older audience and we thought standing for three hours might be a bit much" - bloody cheek! "I'm offended by that remark, I'm not that old" I told him with a smile - although I was secretly happy to take my gin and tonic to the comfort of my seat in preparation for the show. Love these days consist of Rusty Squeezebox on lead vocals and guitars, Mike Randle on guitars and backing vocals and drummer David Green. All three were in the excellent Power Pop band Baby Lemonade who had impressed original Love vocalist Arthur Lee so much, he invited them to be his backing band for a new version of Love in the mid-'90's. This culminated in an appearance at the legendary Glastonbury festival in 2003 and a full-on orchestral performance of "Forever Changes" at London's Royal Festival Hall in the same year. Sadly Arthur passed away in 2006, leaving original guitarist Johnny Echols to take on the mantle and a change in bassist a few years later saw James Nolte replacing David Chapple. Tonight, the band are augmented by Nick Frater on keyboards, Nathan Thomas on trumpet and French horn and the Parallax string quartet, who all brought those wonderful orchestral textures on "Forever Changes" to life. In the hands of these excellent musicians, the album sounds utterly timeless and as fresh and vital as ever. 

 

You can see just why Love and the "Forever Changes" album in particular were and in fact still are, such a huge influence to this day. The complexity of the song writing, those unexpected chord changes and twists and turns, the intriguing lyrics all topped off with memorable choruses and riffs. The powerful Garage Rock freak-outs, soulful ballads, touches of Bossa Nova and Latino exotica, beautifully arranged orchestration and strung out Psychedelia, Love really had something for everybody. The first set is the album played through in that familiar running order, opening with the classic "Alone Again Or" once covered (pretty poorly it must be said...) by one of my favourite acts The Damned. Talking of favourite bands, I can never hear second song "A House Is Not A Motel" without thinking of Mick Head and his brother John from Shack. The Liverpool legends also backed up Arthur Lee for a live recording of a show at the Academy Liverpool in 1992 which is available as an album and is well worth getting hold of. The musicians of Liverpool really took Love to heart and Mick Head must be one of their biggest fans, often sporting a Love T-Shirt and he even closed the set at a recent gig with his new outfit The Red Elastic Band at Earth in Hackney with a blistering "A House Is Not A Motel". Actually, if you check YouTube here you can see Mick joining Johnny and the band at Leaf in Liverpool a few years ago for a superb run through of the same song and Mick looks chuffed to bits to be there on stage next to one of his musical heroes. Then on "The Daily Planet" I'm immediately reminded of yet another of my favourite bands, Sweden's Soundtrack of Our Lives, whose orchestral Psychedelic Rock 'n' Roll owes a debt to Love's music, just listen to their "Lone Summer Dream" back to back with "The Daily Planet" and you'll see what I mean. As "The Red Telephone" draws to a close, Rusty approaches the mic "can you turn the album over to side two now?" So, side two, track one and it's one of the highlights of the whole night "Maybe The People Would Be The Times Or Between Clark and Hillsdale", with Nathan Thomas' trumpet particularly outstanding. The set closes just as the album does of course with two of my favourite Love songs "Bummer In The Summer" and "You Set The Scene".

 

The second set didn't just contain the obvious crowd-pleasers - as Rusty said trying to make sense of the numerous crowd calls for various favourite numbers - "sorry, we can't play all our songs!" In fact, the "Forever Changes" outtake "Wonder People (I Do Wonder)" was a personal highlight, it would have made a perfect 1960's Californian Summer single rather than an obscure hidden gem and "Feathered Fish", a track Arthur wrote for Sons of Adam was a storming Garage Punk rocker that wouldn't be out of place in the set lists of most of my favourite contemporary bands that I play in Retrosonic Podcast. "Always See Your Face" from the often over-looked album "Four Sail", was fantastic as was "Your Mind And We Belong Together". The heart-wrenchingly beautiful "Orange Skies" was wonderful with Nick Frater expertly replicating the flute on the keyboards. There's a wonderful chemistry beween the band members on stage, they look like they are all having as much fun as we are, and this means a lot to an audience. Love fans really seem to have taken to each band member, Mike and Rusty handle the complexities of Love's guitar lines perfectly, Rusty proving to be a mighty fine vocalist in his own right. He's a genial and engaging frontman that pays his respects to Arthur Lee and Bryan MacLean, nicely acknowledging the legacy and history of the band. Him and Mike make great guitar sparring partners and along with the excellent rhythm section of Dave Green and James Nolte, not forgetting the additional musicians on stage tonight, they all do that legacy proud. Of course, there's Johnny - super cool and laid back - the audience strike up the football chant refrain "Johnny, Johhny, Johnny f**kin' Echols!" It raises a smile from the legend himself. His guitar playing is something to behold and he's equally adept on maracas too. On an emotional "Signed D.C." Johnny takes over on impressive lead vocals, ending the last line of the song with "signed J.E." which was a nice touch. Then it's a raucous blast through the Sixties Garage Rock nugget "Seven & Seven Is" which explodes into come-down guitar motifs and the band can put down their instruments to lap up the applause and standing ovation from a thoroughly satisfied crowd. What a show. I've been going to gigs for 43 years now, and in that time I've been fortunate enough to witness some very special musical happenings and tonight was up there with the very best of them. On the excellent 'Love Revisited' Facebook fan's forum (please join here...), someone posted at the start of the tour "my friend says this is the farewell tour, say it isn't so..." and Mr Johnny Echols himself replied "your friend doesn't know what he's talking about, we shall keep playing as long as people want to see us!" That's what we want to hear and I'm sure all at the packed out Shepherds Bush Empire certainly want to see them play again. Johnny Echols for President!

Love with Johnny Echols are half way through their UK tour now so please check out their web-site for details on the remaining tour dates and how to book tickets. You can check out more videos from the show at our Retromanblog65 YouTube channel here.