| A House Is Not a Motel | |
| Type: | single |
| Artist: | Love |
| Album: | Forever Changes |
| A-Side: | Alone Again Or |
| Recorded: | September 10, 1967 |
| Genre: | |
| Label: | Elektra |
| Producer: | |
"A House Is Not a Motel" is a song written by Arthur Lee and first released by Love on their 1967 album Forever Changes.
The song was likely inspired by the song "A House Is Not a Home" written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, given that Arthur Lee was a fan of their work. It features a descending/ascending psychedelic melody and a folk-rock rhythm.[1] Lee's vocal performance has been described as snarling.[2] According to a friend, Lee got the line about blood mixing with mud turning grey from a Vietnam War veteran.[3]
The song begins with a 12-string guitar playing a riff in E minor. An electric guitar comes in after the second verse, playing a phrase on the top two strings. After the third verse, there is a drum break and twin guitar solo with strange vocal noises. It is one of the most sparsely arranged songs on the album.[4]
AllMusic's Matthew Greenwald called "A House Is Not a Motel" " another one of Arthur Lee's meditations of his own personal world, and it's both beautiful and brutal at the same time." He praised the "acid-magnified imagery" and considered it to be one of the standouts on the album.[1] Considered to be "wonderfully dark" by The AV Club's Kyle Fowle, he wrote that it was "the most rock-oriented song, complete with blazing guitar solos that underscore the lyrical exploration of the chaos and inhumanity of war."[5] David Barker considered the song to be an inversion of "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones and believed that the house Lee was referring to was a church while the motel symbolised the decrepitude of the world.[3]
Treble magazine ranked the song as the 13th best song of the 1960s, calling it "an increasingly escalating series of apocalyptic visions sandwiched between folk-rock plucks and a fiery electric freakout."[6] The German magazine Musikexpress ranked "A House Is Not a Motel" number 429 in its list of the 700 best songs of all time.[7] Uncut listed the song as one of its 50 essential songs from the Summer of Love.[8] The Spanish magazine Hipersonica ranked the song 23rd best of the 1950s and 1960s.[9]