The news that Arthur Lee had died last week was not exactly a shocker. The former Love front man had been cheating death for nearly 40 years it seems, and word last year that he had been diagnosed with leukemia was followed by a number of benefit concerts, including one here headlined by Robert Plant, which were meant to defray the costs of his treatment.

I wrote about Love for Salon back in 1999 and judging by the responses I got at the time, a lot of people already thought he was dead. Since the disintegration of the band in 1968, following the release of Forever Changes, Lee had haunted Sunset Boulevard, hitting up strangers for spare change and then explaining that he was off to jam with Jimi (no one believed him then, though the recordings survive — unlike Arthur and Jimi). As the prototype for the “black hippie,” Lee carried several grudges: he didn’t get enough respect from blacks or hippes, he felt, in part because he and his band were so unmellow. “They should have called themselves Hate,” Peter Albin of Big Brother and the Holding Company said at the time and for years Lee seemed determined to live up to that reputation. His last arrest, in 1996, came after he fired a gun off and kept him off the streets until 2001.

But in the mid-sixties, Love was a sensation, at least in LA. The Doors were seen as but pale imitators of their love-and-death trip music, without all the weird jazz-pop friction. A former colleague of mine wrote to say that as a kid in LA at the time, she made up a song about him to the tune of “Mr. Lee” by the Bobbettes: “One, two, three/Look at Arthur Lee/Three, four, five/Look at that man jive.” He swung when hippies were starting to twirl to endless raga like solos — though at its worst the band could sound lame and defanged (Dave Marsh said Love sounded like the soundtrack to a porn film).

My friend Stephanie Zacharek took me to see Lee and a reconstituted Love at Town Hall in 2003. Though it was billed as the Forever Changes tour, a recreation of the album ala Brian Wilson’s Smile concerts, Lee took the stage (after a long wait, and with his leg in a cast) and began with an obscure number from an earlier album, Da Capo. Steph and I looked at each other with concern, which iturned to alarm when Lee chatted incoherently with the audience. But when the band finally kicked in with the album’s opener, Alone Again Or, Tex-Mex horns colliding with classical guitar and a string quartet and the song’s oddly lovelorn lyrics, we were all transported. The string section looked like it had been pulled from the student body at Juilliard and I recall one long haired cellist, dressed in a formal black dress, rocking out as Lee wheeled about on stage swinging his cane.

“Served my time,” he sang later, his voice sending chills through the crowd, “served it well/I made my world/a cell.” You’re free now, Arthur. God rest you, scary gentleman.