Love Guitarist/ Songwriter Bryan MacLean Dies

12/29/1998 4:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(12/29/98, 1 p.m. PST) - Bryan MacLean, a guitarist and singer-songwriter in the seminal '60s rock act Love and the half-brother of former Lone Justice singer Maria McKee, died of an apparent heart attack on Christmas Day. He was 52.

Love was the first rock act signed to Elektra Records and inspired the Doors, who also emerged from the mid-'60s Sunset Strip club scene in Los Angeles. In fact, Jim Morrison has been quoted as saying that he initially hoped that the Doors could some day be as big as Love.

In the band, which mixed folk-rock with psychedelic sounds, MacLean's talents were often eclipsed by the group's singer-songwriter Arthur Lee, who wrote most of the group's songs, including its only top 40 hit, "7 And 7 Is."

It was MacLean, however, who penned "Alone Again Or," which is still one of the band's best-known songs. The song has been covered by such unlikely acts as hard-rockers UFO and old-school punks the Damned.

"Obviously Arthur Lee's songs were wonderful, but Bryan MacLean brought real magic to the group. He was like the McCartney to Lee's Lennon," said Kevin Delaney, a 23-year-old Pittsburgh native who moved to Los Angeles earlier this year to write a definitive history of the band, tentatively titled Between Clark And Hilldale: The Oral History Of Arthur Lee, Bryan MacLean And Love. "He brought the real sweetness, melodicism and professionalism to the group."

Delaney not only interviewed MacLean extensively, he became a close friend of the musician. He was with MacLean at a Los Angeles-area restaurant when the musician suffered the apparent heart attack and died.

"We spent the day together on Christmas and we had a great day," Delaney told myLAUNCH. "He was his happy, profound, usual self and then suddenly he died. I'm assuming it was a heart attack."

Following the release of Love's third album, Forever Changes, which myLAUNCH critic Dave DiMartino has called "an absolute masterwork [and] a priceless relic of the '60s," McLean left the group. Solo material recorded for Elektra and Capitol after his departure from Love was not released, and MacLean opted to quit the music business in 1970.

Although he rejoined Lee in a reconstituted version of Love for some live shows in the late '70s, MacLean found his greatest prominence as a songwriter, penning "Don't Toss Us Away" for Lone Justice, a band that was fronted by half-sister McKee. Lone Justice struck a chord with critics, but was not a commercial success. However, the song became a top country hit for singer Patty Loveless in 1989.

In 1997, Sundazed released a solo album by MacLean, who had become a born-again Christian. The collection, titled Ifyoubelievein, consisted of demos recorded during 1966-67 when he was still a member of Love, as well as some material recorded in the '70s.

More recently, MacLean recorded a Spanish-language version of "Alone Again Or" for a compilation album, Delaney said. "Bryan was planning to go into the studio and record some more songs from the '60s that people have never heard before," the author said. MacLean was also planning to record an album of "worship songs," which Delaney describes as "Enya meets contemporary Christian music."

"It's funny, because in the last year of his life, he had gotten back in touch with his former bandmates and people he hadn't seen in a long time. It was very exciting not only to witness it, but help facilitate it," Delaney said.