Love: Love (transparent red vinyl) [ELEKTRA]

Why you'll love it

This is the 2026 reissue on transparent red vinyl, remastered and in stereo. Love was the first rock album Elektra ever issued, and it opens with Arthur Lee's radical rework of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's 'My Little Red Book.' The band's take on 'Hey Joe' is on here too.

This edition

• Transparent red vinyl
• Remastered, in stereo
• Part of Rhino's Rocktober reissue series

About the album

Arthur Lee grew up in Memphis, moved to Los Angeles at five, and by 1965 had decided the city needed a band that married the Byrds' folk-rock jangle to his own rhythm and blues. He found Bryan MacLean working as a roadie for the Byrds, added fellow Memphis native Johnny Echols on lead guitar, and changed the band's name from the Grass Roots to Love when another group got to the first one. Ten of the fourteen songs were cut at Sunset Sound in Hollywood over four days in January 1966.

What came out is a garage record with folk rock in its blood and a first taste of psychedelia: the Bacharach cover turned inside out, the slow burn of 'Signed D.C.,' and 'A Message to Pretty' as tender as anything coming off the Strip that year. It sold around 150,000 copies and set Love on the road to Da Capo and Forever Changes, so this is where the story starts. Not bad for a band that had to settle for its second-choice name.

Tracklist

Listen

Out October 16, 2026 on Elektra (cat# RCV174001), a reissue of the 1966 album.