An American singer, guitarist and songwriter, most known for his work with the influential rock band Love. Some of his famous compositions for Love include Alone Again Or and Old Man. Arthur Lee is thought to be the main creative force in Love's music, but Bryan MacLean influenced many of Lee's songs and the band's arrangements.
His father was an architect to the Hollywood stars and his mother an artist and a dancer. Neighbour Frederick Loewe, of the composers Lerner & Loewe, recognised him as a melodic genius at the age of 3 as he doodled on the piano. His early influences were Billie Holiday and George Gershwin, although he also confessed to an obsession with Elvis Presley and was strongly influenced by the Beatles. His first girlfriend was Liza Minnelli and they would sit at the piano together singing songs from The Wizard of Oz. He learned to swim in Elizabeth Taylor's pool and his father's good friend was actor Robert Stack.
MacLean started performing professionally in 1963 at the Troubadour club in West Hollywood, playing folk and blues guitar. It was there he met the founders of the Byrds, Gene Clark and Jim McGuinn when they were rehearsing as a duo. Bryan became good friends with Gene Clark. During that time Bryan also became friends with songwriter Sharon Sheeley who fixed him up on his first date with singer Jackie De Shannon. MacLean also became good friends with David Crosby when he joined Clark and McGuinn and the new trio named itself the Jet Set.
By 1965, the group, now called the Byrds, went on the road to promote their first single, Mr. Tambourine Man, with MacLean as equipment manager. By the time the Byrds left for their first UK tour, MacLean was exhausted and stayed behind.
After an unsuccessful audition for a place in the Monkees, MacLean got into a car on Sunset Strip that Arthur Lee was driving. Lee’s band, the Grass Roots, was the house band at a club called the Brave New World. Lee knew that the scene that had followed the Byrds would follow MacLean, so he got MacLean to sit in with the Grass Roots at The Brave New World and persuaded him to join. The group then changed its name to Love, and MacLean contributed several songs to the early albums, including Softly To Me (on Love) and the critically acclaimed Orange Skies (on Da Capo). He also contributed the Byrds' arrangement of Hey Joe, which he performed live.
MacLean's Alone Again Or was the opening track for their third and final album, Forever Changes, and is widely regarded as a classic.
MacLean was offered a solo contract with Elektra after the dissolution of Love, but his demo offerings were rejected by the label and the contract lapsed. Subsequently, he wrote a film score that was not used. Thereafter he tried without success to record an album for Capitol Records in New York.
He then turned to religion and joined a Christian ministry called the Vineyard, that was the same church that converted Bob Dylan. He gradually assembled a catalogue of his Christian songs and opened a Christian nightclub in Beverley Hills called The Daisy. When it closed in 1976, Bryan considered going full-time into the ministry but decided once again to devote himself to music.
He played an unsuccessful reunion with Arthur Lee in 1978 on two dates but wasn't paid, so he turned down an offer for a UK. tour which was to have been billed as the 'original' Love. Ironically the Bryan MacLean Band got a gig supporting Arthur Lee's Love at the Whisky in 1982.
In about 1996, his Love demos were discovered by his mother Elizabeth in the family garage and were finally released by Sundazed in 1997 as the album ifyoubelievein, which was critically well received. MacLean then completed a spiritual album of Christian music and was about to record another album, when he died in Los Angeles of a massive heart attack on 25th December 1998, while having dinner with a young fan who was researching a book about the band.