Live

You’d think that after almost a year of non-stop touring on their last opus, The Distance To Here, Ed Kowalczyk, Chad Taylor, Patrick Dahlheimer and Chad Gracey would be ready for a little R& R. Not so. Fresh off a world tour, the group that calls itself LIVE still forgo time off to hunker down at a Los Angeles recording studio. Three and a half weeks later they emerge with a near-finished record.

Kowalczyk explains further, “The Distance to Here world tour was just an unbelievable experience. That record is just so uplifting and seeing the looks on people’s faces all over the world for fourteen months was enough to inspire me for decades. I was writing music in hotel rooms, tour buses, bathrooms, everywhere and constantly!”

LIVE approached record making in a way that proved unique to past adventures in hi-fi. Case in point, tracks “Call Me a Fool” and “Flow” were both written in the morning in co-producer Alain Johannes’ front yard and recorded that afternoon and evening. This was palpably unusual for a band that’s sold over 17 million albums worldwide and is used to taking six months to make a record. Nonetheless, it has suited them just fine being a rock band that has seized moments of inspiration and, with this, the band’s fifth offering appropriately titled V, have broken through expected molds.

V embodies the same sense of youthful urgency as in LIVE’s debut release Mental Jewelry (1991). It features the same impressive songwriting as breakthrough smash Throwing Copper (1994)– an LP that pulled in 27 platinum albums in 6 countries, (selling 12 million records worldwide) and boasted classic radio hits “Selling The Drama” (#1 on the Alternative charts that year) “I Alone,” “All Over You,” and “Lightning Crashes,” prompting Spin and Rolling Stone cover stories, a Saturday Night Live appearance (complete with standing ovation), and a legendary MTV Unplugged event. The experimental spirit of ‘97’s #1 record Secret Samadhi and the sensitivity of the most recent platinum long player, The Distance To Here is in check, too.

The new record re-exposes the fiery spirit of LIVE like no other. V burns hot with a battery of spiraling, fast-paced rockers like “Deep Enough,” (a remix of which can be heard over the front title sequence in the #1 film The Fast And The Furious and is a bonus track on the record), and the Kowalczyk/Glen Ballard-penned “Forever May Not Be Long Enough,” the theme song of box office smash The Mummy Returns. The unrelenting and uplifting kick-off track “Simple Creed” features guest Tricky, who, in-turn, enlisted Ed to sing on his current single, “Evolution, Revolution, Love.” That said, the band’s knack for memorable melodies is not lost on this long player as demonstrated on tunes like the soulful “Transmit Your Love” and “Nobody Knows,” complete with a luxuriant chorus and a neat whistled reprise.

An obvious sense of experimentation is also harnessed. This, being in no small part, due to the chemistry between the band, Johannes (also of the band Eleven, who’s most notably worked with Chris Cornell) and co-producer/keyboard whiz Michael Railo, who employed and encouraged the use of loops, samples and synths throughout. Kowalczyk says, “The coolest thing about this record is that we’ve been really conscious of not losing the band’s rock roots in the midst of experimenting with new sounds.”

But Kowalczyk is quick to point out that while the experience of making the record has been a transcendent one, LIVE’s fans are what’s important. Ed explains. “All anyone has to do is stand in my shoes on stage for five minutes and look out there. The sheer joy that is being communicated back and forth is enough to make you explode.”

Live frontman Ed Kowalczyk sits at the dead end of a table amongst peers and strangers at a press conference to kick off the Tibetan Freedom Concert =9299. It is the rural dairylands of southern Wisconsin deluged by a seasonal rainstorm which threatens, by day’s end, to become quite electric. Well, deja vu. It was just about this time last year that the band powered through an undeniably charged set at the same occasion in Washington, DC. About one hour after performing a most inspired rendering of their big radio song, “Lightning Crashes,” lightning does indeed crash. The rest is history.

Back to the present, and Kowalczyk is called upon by the press conference panelists to offer some feelings about his band’s participation in this year’s most auspicious event. And he says something like, “The pinnacle moment of any artform, including rock and roll, is that instant when the artist inspires the audience to a greater vision of life.” Later, the band will play their beautiful and inspiring rock music to a sea of restless and soggy children. But by the time Kowalczyk and his conspirators guitarist Chad Taylor, bassist Patrick Dahlheimer and drummer Chad Gracey leave the stage, the sun has broken through the clouds. This wouldn’t be the first time Live has pulled through bad weather.

Time has seen these four gentlemen, still in their mid-twenties, through much good and some bad. From their beginnings in York, Pennsylvania making trouble under the name Public Affection to covers of Spin and Rolling Stone, not to mention Saturday Night Live and MTV Unplugged appearances, millions of records sold to the departure that was Secret Samadhi and on to their current, and perhaps most powerful work-to-date, The Distance To Here, Live has done what many rock bands fail to do after nearly 15 years together– survive without losing their relevance.

Asked about the current status of rock music, Kowalczyk says, “Rock and roll has been a haystack with few needles over the last five years. Hopefully, the pre-millennium tension will ignite the tradition of rock back to its glory ala 1969 for 1999.” Some of us are looking for the glory while the rest of the musical world rambles on trying to define their favorite strain of electronic music. Not to begrudge those creative stalwarts doing cool stuff with machines, but it’s truly refreshing to know that there is still a handful of artists out there upon which we may bestow the term ROCK BAND. And isn’t rock still about personality and flying in the face of convention?

Live is a rock band that still embraces this conviction wholeheartedly. And it is this confidence alone that renders their very existence dangerous business. But today, it is what fortifies their importance and it can be heard in Taylor’s wide-as-the-sky, sharp-as-a-razor guitar playing, Dahlheimer’s articulate, multi-dimensional bass playing and Gracey’s dynamic drumming. But it also often lies within the lines of Edward Kowalczyk’s masterful poetry. Lyrics like “I’ve got to learn to live until no end/But first I must learn to swim all over again,” from “Pain Lies On The Riverside” off of the 1991 debut LP Mental Jewelry and “It’s the sun that burns/It’s the wheel that turns/It’s the way we sing that makes ’em dream,” from “Selling The Drama” from 1994’s seven million-selling smash Throwing Copper have always been a vital thread running through Live– as important as the voice with which those words are sung. Kowalczyk attributes that lyrical thread to a dedication and devotion to the great mystery of life itself; says Kowalczyk, “I have never been able to separate, nor have I wanted to, my personal love and desire for truth, passion and understanding from my lyrics. I’ve always been into asking the big questions; I’m the last guy out the door at closing time cuz I was sittin’ around ’til the wee hours with the other ones who were asking the same things. That’s what it’s all about for me.”

The latest album The Distance To Here, the band’s fourth for Radioactive, makes no exception. All of the elements that make Live a truly great rock band are in place. As a recent UK show review in Kerrang! raved, “Live’s new album is already shaping up as one of the great rock records of the year, perhaps of the decade.” Melodies soar like never before, evident on standout tracks like “Run To The Water,” “They Stood Up For Love” and “The Dolphins Cry.” In addition, Jerry Harrison reunites with the band as producer, having manned the helm for both Mental Jewelry and Throwing Copper, and last but not least, mixmaster Tom Lord-Alge does his magic on the whole of the new offering.

Kowalczyk ruminates on the new record, “The message of The Distance To Here is no secret. It is a message of love and an invitation to myself and to those who want to come along to ask the big questions and not feel uncool doing it.”