Pegasus Epitaph: The Story Of The Legendary Rock Group Love

★★★★

Michael Stuart Ware EXTRADITION/CADIZ PUBLISHING. £12.99

Riveting memoir by the drummer from Love’s golden era, first published in 2003, now revised and updated.

Michael Stuart Ware’s story hits its stride in his vivid descriptions of the mid-’60s club scene on LA’s Sunset Strip when he was playing in The Sons Of Adam. He then joined Love, despite their already “ominous” drug reputation. The band were led by the charismatic Arthur Lee, whose creativity he admired, but who could be duplicitous, manipulative and cruel. He seemed in control, but his cavalier attitude towards the music business bordered on self-destructive, and he began to lose his way, having sacked the band after Forever

Changes. There are many amusing reminiscences – particularly Lee angrily remonstrating with a tripping Jim Morrison for “grossing out” the band’s neighbours by lounging naked by their swimming pool, and the author rattling Lee by finding a book, How To Write A Song, in his house. But the overriding feeling is of Love as a talented, volatile group who achieved brilliance but soon became dysfunctional. And once heroin entered the picture there would be no happy ending.