WE DID IT FOR LOVE continues

WE DID IT FOR LOVE continues

Robert and BP last worked together on a show in August 1979. Then, Robert sang with Led Zeppelin and BP was their publicist, had been on and off for seven years. Led Zeppelin did two ginormous shows at Knebworth, mega to the max. So big that for the second gig, one their support groups was Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards’ band The New Barbarians. And then not long afterwards Zeppelin’s magnificent drummer John Bonham died and the group broke up and Knebworth became Led Zeppelin’s last-ever British concert...

Arthur Lee was the psychedelic black prince of rock’n’roll even before his chum and pupil Jimi became experienced and before Sly took us higher. One of the main cats in an LA scene that bubbled effervescent with McGuinn and Crosby and The Byrds, Young and Stills in Buffalo Springfield and that new guy Jim Morrison and his Doors who supported Love at The Whiskey. One of Love’s guitarists Bryan MacLean was both Keith Richards and Brian Jones to Arthur the frontman, this Byrds ex-roadie with blonde Brian hair cut just so and strange and lovely songs that challenged Arthur’s amazing compositions. One minute Love were a snarling punk group bathed in the dead petals of flower power going wrong, next minute they were elegiac dreamers casting gentle yearning spells where everything is possible.

And we fell in love with Love.

In Ireland, BP Fallon would sing the Love song Signed DC – the harrowing tale of ex-Love drummer Don Conka’s battle with heroin - with the fledgling Dublin band Skid Row while the group’s lead singer Phil Lynott twitched at the side of the stage. In England, Robert Plant worshipped at the altar of Love in his cornucopia of pre-Zep bands. Young Robert, he adored the West Coast groups like Love and Buffalo Springfield and Moby Grape.

And now some twenty-seven years after Knebworth, Plant and Fallon are re-united in a concert to raise funds for Arthur Lee’s horrific medical expenses. He’s in hospital in Memphis, about to have a bone marrow transplant. When invited to do the gig and told his flight to New York from England, his hotel, would be looked after, Robert insisted on paying his own plane fares and for his hotel and flew over on his own with a travel bag and rehearsed with the band for two days. BP just got in a cab.

Robert Plant and Johnny Echols BP and Johnny Echols share a dressingroom together. It’s a honour to be quartered with this man who played guitar with Arthur in Love and before. Lately, he’s been working as a councillor to priests with behavioral problems towards children and his eyes mist over as he whispers of the savage sadness he has seen.

Johnny, he played in an early LA band with Arthur Lee and Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Miles and he talks softly of how someone gave him a musical gizmo that was used on trumpets and he tried it on his guitar but couldn’t get anything happening with it so he gave it to Bryan Maclean. And Jimi Hendrix spotted this gadget in Bryan’s car and asked to borrow it and linked it into his guitar and managed to make this weird thing sing, this thing designed for trumpets, thing called a Wah Wah pedal…

BP tells Johnny Echols he used to sing Signed DC many full moons ago and how delighted he was when he mentioned this to Arthur Lee awhile back in Dublin and Arthur had said “Don’s clean now. He’s coming back on the road with us next year” and Johnny, those eyes of sadness piercing through the sanguine, he sighs and says “It was too much for him. Don Conka ODed”. Fuck.

And later Johnny Echols backed by Yo La Tengo takes the stage to play guitar and sing Signed DC and you swear you heart could break and with maestro Echols still there they play Luci Baines, a pre-Love song from The American Four who included Lee and Echols. Nifty. Nils Lofgren opens with a crystalline explosion of Bryan MacLean’s classic Alone Again Or and thrills too with Because The Night. Ian Hunter – like Robert Plant, another escapee from the BP Fallon Press Office when BPF represented Mott The Hoople – started getting the joint insane with his full-on All The Way To Memphis and the stirring almost-hymnal All The Young Dudes.

Robert Plant + Ian Hunter And now it’s Robert Plant and The Beacon Theater goes fucking bonkers. The band backing him – who’ve just backed Nils and Ian – are exemplary. Drummer Steve Holley from Wings, bassist Tony Shanahan from The Patti Smith Group, one Andy Burton on keyboards with the twin twanging of Andy York from John Mellencamp’s band and James Maestro from The Bongos and The Health And Happiness Show. Kinda an old fart vibe but good God these cats can play.

And Robert, the rogue, he’s opened with Zep’s In The Evening and the punters lose their collective marbles and then he’s into Love’s Bummer In The Summer and Zep’s What Is And What Should Never Be and the two guitarists are flying and now it’s Bryan MacLean’s delicate Old Man and Buffalo Springfield’s rallying cry For What It’s Worth. Robert, t shirt with MAROC written on it and loose jeans, he’s got charisma and dignity and humility and humour and warmth and now and again he does one of his wild rock’n’roll movements, legs and arms flailing in a blur. Excellent. He brings on Ian Hunter and the pair of ‘em have a warble through The Everly Brother’s When Will I Be Loved. Then it’s more Love in the exquisite A House Is Not A Motel and a doff of the cap to Elvis with a splendid Can’t Help Falling In Love that would’ve made Ral Donner beam. Music. And Robert’s putting his heart into tonight’s celebration of Love and Arthur Lee, feeling his way on this one-off adventure. Love’s 7 And 7 Is is stunning and by the time we get to Zep’s Ramble On the audience has gone completely bananas and it can’t get any higher than this. Or can it? Robert returns smiling and puts his head back and starts singing “If the sun refused to shine, I would still be loving you, if mountains crumbled to the sea, there would still be you and me…” Complete mayhem from the punters! Thank you, Mr Plant.

And earlier, Robert had sung Hey Joe, saying how Arthur helped Hendrix and how Love did the song before Jimi. The venerated Village Voice writer Robert Christgau describes it thus:

“Highlighted was Hey Joe - a perfect Zep-Love link, misogyny and all. And into the middle of a psychedelic fantasia - based on his own 2002 revival, not Love's peppy single or Hendrix's psychodrama - Plant inserted Nature Boy, an inspired evocation of Arthur Lee the LA eccentric even if you didn't know its composer was an LA longhair when there were no longhairs and its hit version a turning point for black pop pathfinder Nat Cole. At 57, Plant no longer had his high end. But because the music was new and the occasion felt, he was singing fresh. This wasn't the somewhat automatic mastery of great Springsteen or Stones. It was a lesson in charisma full of near misses and intricate meshes, the most life-affirming thing I witnessed all month”.

Thank you, Mr Christgau.

BP Fallon with The Beatle BandAides And afterwards, friends of olden days re-meet having gone mad magically in earlier daze.

“I’ve a surprise for you after the show” Robert had told BP earlier, adding “Some people are here to mark your card”. Seeing the startled look on BP’s face, Robert had roared with laugher. “Don’t worry. It’s good”. And now from Boston and LA here’s Gill and Vanessa who traversed America and magnificent madness with Led Zeppelin and Peter Grant and BP on Starship. Brilliant.

And BP being a hospitable chap, he now extradites three girls from the rain outside and brings them to meet their golden god. They’re from Delaware, Danni Yellow and her sister Miss Dollyrocker and their pal Miss Jackie, call themselves The Beatle BandAides and announce they’re friends with Miss Pamela who a few days later says on the phone from West Hollywood “They’re here now, staying at The Hyatt House. No, they’re not wild now but they will be. And they’ve got a 15 year old girl with them whose parents don’t mind”. God.

Oh - and the night’s DJ? BP played Love magic like My Little Red Book and Alone Again Or and the unreleased I’m Good And Evil and The Everlasting First with Jimi Hendrix on guitar and Rosa Lee Brooks’ My Diary written by Arthur with Jimi guitaring – Jimi’s first paid studio session - and early Lee and Echols with the Booker T And The MGs vibe of The LAGs. Fallon spun his Who Do You Love mix that embraces Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Jesus And Mary Chain, the song’s writer Bo Diddley, The Misunderstood and a twisted rampage though ? And The Mysterians 96 Tears by Primal Scream. He spins the glorious Love song She Comes In Colors and follows it with She’s A Rainbow - the Stones magnificent rip-off of Arthur’s composition - and The Byrd’s pointed Wasn’t Born To Follow. And before our Electric Slim finishes with the poignant solo Arthur Lee record Everybody’s Gotta Live, the audience is singing along to four geezers from Liverpool telling us All You Need Is Love...

All you need is Love.

Forty days after Robert Plant left the stage at New York’s Beacon Theater in the wee wee hours, Arthur Lee died peacefully on August 3 at Methodist Hospital in Memphis, his wife Diane by his side. His manager Mark Linn said in an email “His death comes as a shock to me because Arthur had the uncanny ability to bounce back from everything, and leukemia was no exception. He was confident that he would be back on stage by the fall.

"When I visited with him recently, he was visibly moved by the stories and pictures from the NYC benefit concert... He was truly grateful for the outpouring of love from friends and fans all over the world since news of his illness became public.

"Arthur always lived in the moment and said what he thought when he thought it. I'll miss his phone calls and his long voice messages but most of all I'll miss Arthur playing Arthur's music".

God bless Arthur Lee... and Bryan MacLean and Don Conka and Love bassist Ken Forssi...

Photos: Arthur Lee at The Speakeasy Club London 1970 courtesy Rhino Records; in the audience to see Love that night were Robert Plant, BP Fallon, Jimi Hendrix, Roy Harper, Dave Gilmour and Eileen Webster | Robert Plant & Johnny Echols by BPF | Robert Plant & Ian Hunter by BPF | BP & The Beatle BandAides by Radek | The Big Hug: BP & Robert by Radek

BPF uses Fuji Finepix S9500

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