The record
At a glance
- Artist
- Love
- Released
- December 1970
- Album
- Sixth studio album
- Original tracks
- Ten
- Label
- Blue Thumb
- Production
- Arthur Lee; engineered by Gary Kellgren
Why it matters
A road-tested Love meets the harder edge of 1970
False Start records Arthur Lee refusing to preserve Love as the acoustic and orchestral group associated with Forever Changes. The 1970 band works through amplified rhythm, guitar distortion and direct vocal force.
The opening collaboration with Jimi Hendrix is historically striking but deliberately bounded. Hendrix plays lead guitar on The Everlasting First; his absence from the remaining nine tracks makes the character of Lee's working group easier, not harder, to hear.
Gary Rowles, Frank Fayad, George Suranovich and Nooney Rickett give Lee a flexible electric unit. They can drive a riff, lean toward funk, loosen into a concert performance or contract around a brief song without pretending to be the original Love.
The album follows the sprawling double set Out Here with barely half an hour of music. Its ten compact statements make sequence and contrast central: a jam-like opener is answered by concise verses, a live reprise, country inflection and a final extended groove.
As Love's sixth studio album and second for Blue Thumb, False Start marks the end of one sustained phase rather than the end of Lee's recording career. Reel to Real would return the Love name to a studio album in 1974.
Love in 1970
After Out Here, a changed guitarist and one famous guest
By 1970 the lineup that made Love, Da Capo and Forever Changes had dissolved. Lee had already rebuilt the group for Four Sail and Out Here around a heavier electric vocabulary.
The group toured Europe early in 1970. During that period Lee recorded The Everlasting First with Hendrix at Olympic Studios in London; the resulting album track preserves Hendrix's contribution to that song, not a hidden joint LP.
Gary Rowles replaced Jay Donnellan as the principal lead guitarist. Fayad and Suranovich continued as the bass-and-drums foundation, while Rickett added rhythm guitar and backing vocals on the body of the album.
Arthur Lee wrote the programme and produced it, with Gary Kellgren credited as engineer. That authorship concentrates responsibility while the arrangements retain the identity of a performing band.
Stand Out had appeared as a studio recording on Out Here. False Start uses a live performance, turning an earlier composition into evidence of the current band's stage weight.
Blue Thumb issued the album in December 1970. Its catalogue position after Out Here explains the harder continuity, while the shorter form prevents it from functioning as a second volume of the double album.
The False Start lineup
Lee, the touring group and a one-track Hendrix appearance
Lee sings with a rougher, more overtly soul-derived attack than on the 1967 records, but he still interrupts confidence with hesitation and strange turns of phrase.
Rowles must follow the album's most famous guitarist without copying one performance for an entire side. His wah-wah colour and sharper fills become a recurring voice from Flying onward.
Fayad often supplies the forward motion that the guitars decorate. His lines help the funk accents feel structural rather than cosmetic.
Suranovich alternates square rock emphasis with looser pushes around Lee's phrasing; the live Stand Out makes that responsive role especially audible. Rickett thickens the middle register and reinforces responses, allowing Rowles to move away from chordal duty without emptying the arrangement. Hendrix's role is exceptional and local: his lead guitar expands the opener's scale, then the sequencing asks the regular group to establish its own identity.
Hard rock and funk
Wah-wah, clipped riffs, soul attack and sudden compression
False Start is built from dry drums, prominent electric bass, distorted rhythm guitar and leads that frequently use wah-wah. The sound is denser than Forever Changes but less sprawling than Out Here.
Lee's melodies still resist ordinary hard-rock symmetry. Verses can stop abruptly, refrains may arrive as commands, and short bridges change the emotional temperature before a groove has fully settled.
Soul and funk enter through vocal attack and rhythm rather than through large horn arrangements. Keep on Shining and Feel Daddy Feel Good depend on repeated encouragement, but their bands keep shifting accents under the words.
The Everlasting First has the widest guitar conversation, with Hendrix answering Lee across an arrangement that feels open-ended. The later tracks generally compress the exchanges into shorter, sharper forms.
Stand Out contributes room sound and live elasticity to a mostly studio-built sequence. Its applause and extended performance should not be mistaken for evidence that the whole album was recorded in concert.
The final Ride That Vibration restores length and repetition after several concise songs. Its sustained pulse makes a deliberate endpoint rather than merely another example of the opener's guitar drama.
Track guide
Ten short pieces, not a Hendrix collaboration album
The Everlasting First
Lee and Hendrix begin with a spacious guitar exchange before the rhythm section locks the song into forward motion. Hendrix's lead phrases stretch and answer the vocal, while Lee keeps the composition grounded in repeated declarations. The track announces a collaboration, but the album immediately closes that special personnel chapter.
Flying
The regular band enters with a tighter scale and a more clipped rhythmic frame. Rowles places terse guitar responses around Lee's vocal, while Fayad keeps the verses moving. The song's title suggests release, yet the arrangement feels controlled and earthbound after the opener's wide guitar space.
Gimi a Little Break
A deliberately compressed plea turns impatience into form. Stops, repeated words and quick guitar punctuation make the request sound less relaxed each time it returns. Its brevity prevents the album from settling into extended-jam expectations.
Stand Out
This live version revisits a song first issued on Out Here. Audience presence, a broader drum sound and flexible pacing change it from a studio item into a statement of stage identity. Lee's command is answered by a band that can stretch accents without losing the refrain.
Keep on Shining
A brighter, partly country-tinged surface offsets the heavier first half. The encouragement in the title is carried by group responses and a springier pulse, though the guitar edge prevents uncomplicated optimism. Its placement opens breathing room after the concert performance.
Anytime
Lee shapes availability as insistence rather than softness. Bass and drums hold a firm repeating base while guitars create small changes in pressure. The performance demonstrates how the group can build intensity without extending the duration.
Slick Dick
The album's most pointed character sketch uses a blunt title, angular riffing and a vocal that alternates observation with confrontation. Rhythmic breaks keep the target off balance; the satire comes from timing as much as from the words.
Love Is Coming
At little more than a minute, this is a transition with its own complete gesture. Repetition turns the band name and the promised emotion into an arrival signal. The tiny form clears space between the sharper Slick Dick and the heavier affirmation that follows.
Feel Daddy Feel Good
A broad soul-rock refrain gives Lee room for exhortation. Fayad and Suranovich keep the groove physical while the guitars add abrasion around a seemingly affirmative title. The result is communal in sound but still idiosyncratic in phrasing.
Ride That Vibration
The closing track sustains a circular riff and turns motion into instruction. Rowles's guitar works inside the band's established field rather than recreating Hendrix's opener. Repetition accumulates force, allowing the album to end on the working group's own extended statement.
Ten situations
Motion, self-command and unstable confidence
False Start is not a continuous story. Its unity comes from verbs of action and command: fly, stand, shine, feel and ride.
The title can be heard against a career of repeated rebuilding, but the songs do not narrate the band's history literally.
Confidence is rarely stable. Requests become demands, encouragement carries abrasion, and apparently liberating motion remains bound to a hard pulse.
Love itself appears as promise, band name and performance energy. Lee keeps those meanings productively unresolved rather than offering a single romantic message.
The movement from a famous guest to the regular group's closing groove gives the sequence an implicit argument: outside attention opens the door, but the band must sustain the album.
Blue Thumb BTS 22
A fractured title for a shifting band
The Blue Thumb sleeve presents the title with a directness that suits an album built from short, forceful pieces. False Start is a racing term and a useful image of interrupted motion; the music repeatedly starts, stops and redirects without becoming a literal concept narrative. The package belongs to Love's Blue Thumb period rather than the Elektra visual system of the first four albums, making label and catalogue details important for identification. Later digital covers preserve the album identity, but listeners should use track count and order to distinguish the original ten-song sequence from compilations.
December 1970
Blue Thumb, December 1970
Blue Thumb released False Start in December 1970 as Love's sixth studio album and the group's second original album for the label. The ten tracks run for roughly half an hour, a substantial contraction after the double album Out Here. The Everlasting First became the immediate point of attention because Hendrix plays lead guitar, but contemporary and later assessments also identify Rowles's work and Lee's forceful singing across the remaining programme. Stand Out is the sole live performance and the sole returning composition from Out Here; the other nine titles form the new studio body.
The album did not establish a stable long-term lineup, yet it should not be reduced to failure or epilogue. Lee later issued Reel to Real under the Love name.
After Forever Changes
A neglected late chapter rather than an imitation
False Start is often approached through Hendrix, a valuable entry point that becomes misleading when expanded beyond one track. The album preserves Love as a touring hard-rock band, correcting any idea that the name ended with the chamber textures of Forever Changes. Its mixture of riff rock, soul singing, funk accents and abrupt miniature forms anticipates the harder eclecticism Lee pursued in the 1970s.
Rowles's contribution matters historically because the regular guitarist carries the record after an almost impossible opening comparison. Placed between Out Here and Lee's later work, the album becomes a compact document of transition rather than an isolated curiosity.
Original programme
Keep the ten-track border visible
Begin with the ten tracks in order and stop after Ride That Vibration. Credit Hendrix only on The Everlasting First; hear Rowles as the main lead guitarist thereafter. Recognise Stand Out as a live remake rather than a duplicate studio master.
Compare the compact sequence with Out Here's breadth without merging the two albums. Choose a transfer that keeps Fayad's bass and Suranovich's drums present beneath the bright wah-wah guitar.
A listening path
Follow the band after the guest exits
- Hear The Everlasting First for the Lee-Hendrix exchange, then reset expectations.
- Use Flying and Gimi a Little Break to identify the regular band's compact method.
- Compare the live Stand Out with the studio version on Out Here.
- Follow the rhythmic turn from Keep on Shining through Love Is Coming.
- Let Ride That Vibration answer the opener with the touring band's own extended groove.
Research trail
Sources and further reading
- False Start tracks and credits — AllMusic
- False Start digital catalogue — Apple Music / UMG
- Love artist discography — MusicBrainz institutional database
- False Start digital release — Qobuz / UMG
- Love artist history — AllMusic
- False Start contemporary critical record — Robert Christgau