He also began writing songs again, including s everal hits for country-tinged performers such as Debby B oone and Patty Loveless. MacLean briefly led a band bearing his own name in the early 1980s which included his half-sister Maria McKee, but when she formed the critically acclaimed Lone Justice he was invited to contribute only as a writer. In recent years there has been more interest than ever in the work of Love and its former members. MacLean is the second original member of Love to die within a year, after Forssi's death from cancer last January. He never married and is survived by his mother and a half-sister.
Variety reports that the cause of death was an apparent heart attack.
He was 52 years old. After his departure, he embarked on a brief solo career, then fronted the Bryan MacLean Band in the '70s. He and Love singer Arthur Lee reunited in the late '70s to play in Los Angeles. They become the first rock band to be signed by the expanding Elektra Records, just beating the Doors by a whisker. Their debut single was Burt Bacharach and Hal David's My Little Red Book, in a different form from the way the writers imagined it.