Love, Revisited

Love Revisited

The Jazz Café, London

June 29th 2016

View: Standing at the back

Love Revisited is a combination of Baby Lemonade, Arthur Lee’s last and best backing band, and Johnnny Echols, the charismatic lead guitarist from the original Love line-up. Together they did the songs of Arthur Lee and Bryan Maclean justice in front of a vocal and enthusiastic crowd. The presence of Echols is key: when he left the stage for a couple of numbers only a competent Love tribute band remained. By my reckoning Echols is now 69. He doesn’t seem to do much – his right hand barely moves over the strings – but it was enough to recreate his coruscating guitar solos on A House Is Not A Motel and Live And Let Live.  Both sides of the great lost single Your Mind And We Belong Together / Laughing Stock were despatched with a vigour that I doubt Love in their late 60’s heyday could have matched. Over their lengthy 22 song set the band strayed beyond Love’s first three LPs only once for the first encore of August, before an Echols-sung Signed DC and a rousing 7 And 7 Is finished the set on a triumphant note.

And here’s Record Collector magazine’s version of the above: