Our Lady Peace – Interview[2001]

Our Lady Peace: Operation Raine!

Spiritual Machines may explore human spirituality and tinker with the ideologies of man against machine from Ray Kurzweil’s book The Age of Spiritual Machines – When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, but after talking to lead singer Raine Maida of Our Lady Peace, I discovered something deeper about the new record. While the band was in the studio testing these themes they discovered the most important lesson of all: how to gel into one of modern rock’s great bands. Raine openly expressed the band’s love for Spiritual Machines and how in making this record the band found their niche as musicians. Hip currently caught up with Raine just shortly after the band completing sound check for an upcoming show. Here’s Raine with his thoughts on Our Lady Peace.

I caught the show opening show in Buffalo the other night. What a great show! How is Duncan (Coutts, bass) doing?

He’s doing well. He’s starting to workout and get strong again. It’s just when the doctors cut the muscles in the stomach, they…

What was his condition?

Doctors found something in his pancreas and they did not know what it was. If it’s cancerous then there is not much they can do with it.

Sometimes they can scope the tumor.

What it ended up being is just scar tissue. They did not remove his pancreas, but they did remove his bile duct. It’s just when they made that incision it just takes a while to recover from the operation. He should be back in April.

Who is the guy filling in on bass?

His name is Rob Higgins, he’s Geddy Lee’s nephew (Rush). He used to play in Change Of Heart and they have toured with us a while back. He’s a friend and we knew Rob was a really good player.

Is he in any bands now?

Rob is in a band out of Toronto called Rocket Science.

Speaking of injured band mates, Jeremy (Taggart) banged up his knee during the recording of the new record. How is he?

It was a big deal only because it happened on a Thursday and we scheduled Brendan O’Brien to mix the record in Atlanta that coming Wednesday. If Jeremy would have had three more days to heal he would of have been fine, but Brendan was leaving Atlanta soon. We only had two days to record the two songs. I had just written the songs two day before. Jeremy could not do, so whom do we get? Thank God, Pearl Jam happened to be in town and Matt (Cameron, Soundgarden, current Peal Jam drummer) was able to do it.

I thought maybe Brendan O’Brien may have recommend Matt because they have worked together in the past.

We also were thinking about Josh Freese of A Perfect Circle to help out, he’s a good friend of ours too, but it just happened that Matt was in town. It was truly amazing because we asked him to come over that day and record with us. We really had to rush stuff.

Did he pick up on what the band was trying to capture?

Matt is one of the most incredible drummers. Matt has a photographic memory, and for a drummer to have that it allows him to go through the song once and he knows all the parts.

Last couple of months the band has received remarkable achievements with Clumsy receiving Diamond Certification, which is amazing because the songs from that record are still in heavy rotation with radio stations.

I know. That’s weird.

It’s weird because that record came out ’97, which is not that long ago, but in the radio world it actually is.

That was like four years ago and we have put out two records while Clumsy is still strong.

Then the band took home Juno Awards and won awards with Much Music…

For the band it’s really hard to focus in on any of that stuff. I think it’s great and people get mad at me because I really do not care about that, I’m just really focused on this record and playing it live. I love this record.

Since the summer you guys have been busy as hell, it would seem that the band turning into a machine itself. The other night I noticed a few of the songs turned into different breeds live, songs that come to mind are “If You Believe” and “Everyone’s A Junkie”.

Yeah, I just got sick of the whole cycle of you going on the road, touring for two weeks, and going home. It’s a weird thing because you have success in America and you end up touring for a long time. Before you know it two years have gone by, you are off the road and it’s time to make another record. I just do not buy that philosophy anymore. I have studio in back of the bus, studio at home, and I’m constantly writing, not everything I write is for Our Lady Peace, but of all the songs I had, we picked six of them and recorded them really quickly. We called them demos because it was right after we got off the road touring with Happiness. I knew they were not really demos, but we did not want to tell the record company that we have been recording. Then we recorded those six songs, went out and did Summersault, then did another six songs in two weeks. Then we said to the record company, ‘Here’s our new record.’ That’s just the way it has to be with recording and touring as a band. I think as long as you are writing while you’re out on the road and able to record and demo on the road, when you get back you do not have to chump and freak.

Were you surprised how quickly after Summersault the record was completed?

No, I co-produced this record but basically the work I was doing in my basement I was producing as I went along just trying it get my ideas out. They were finished songs, and when I played them for the band they started to put their own feeling into it. Now as musicians the band knows where they stand and it was a simple transition.

Going back to the last record (Happiness Is Not A Fish That You Can Catch), do you think that the record got lost in the pop sensations and crap metal explosion?

We made that record for ourselves. We spend a lot of time putting layered parts and weird sounds, and for us it was an artsy record. I think any who lived with the record dug it, but the radio stations gave us no chance. I think that record will be really special later on because people who know that record will feel like they discovered it themselves.

On Spiritual Machines it seems that the band was trying to focus in on bottling up that live, organic sound.

You are exactly right. It was about jamming a song and getting that tingling feeling on the back of your neck and trying to get that on tape, and that’s exactly what we did. Once we thought we had the song nailed we did not fuck with it. With Happiness we did that, but the difference is between now and then is that we would spend days doing guitar parts or trying to get that perfect sound for the bridge.

There are numerous contributions to the new record. One, Ray Kurzweil’s book (The Age of Spiritual Machines – When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence) made an obvious impression on you first, but when did all the sound bites come into play?

Spiritual Machines was never to be a concept record. It’s more of a theme idea. I was telling Mike (Turner, guitarist) about how the book led itself to some of the lyrics and the author inspired me. We were trying to think of a name of the record, first we though “Kurzweil” because it was such a weird name and we use his keyboards. Duncan and Jeremy were like, ‘Fuck you guys. We are not calling this record Kurzweil.’ Anyway, we asked our manager about it and he said that we were going to have to get Sony legal to call Kurzweil Inc. to get the use of the name approved. We thought that the process was a drag. We noticed an email address on the book for Kurzweil so we emailed Ray asking for permission. Mike types up a little note and in the morning Ray replied, ‘I would love it. My kids love your music.’ Then we finally discussed the title of the record as a band and decided on Spiritual Machines. As we were in the studio one day I got a thought of picking some of the songs and going through the book pick out some excerpts and he see if Ray would provided the sound bites. We emailed him again with all the info and he replied that he was interested. Two days later he sent us MP3 files of the different excerpts that we asked for.

The track away at the end is that an actually excerpts from the book? It sounds like a conversation about modern music.

That’s an excerpt.

The conversation mentions moshes. I thought the tone was directed at modern music.

No, moshes are what they are going to call people later in the future. That is Ray’s voice on the record reading passages straight out of the book. The sound bites are done in his real voice. That particular passage is like a play of sorts of a woman talking to a man with Ray doing the dialogue. Mike took the dialogue and we have this computer program in the studio, and Mike took the voices and split them. When the girl was supposed to be talking Mike transposed the voice into a woman’s voice.

One of my favorite quotes from that book is ‘new music for old minds.’ Another contribution came from longtime friend and producer Arnold Lanni. What was his role this time around?

He had more of a hands-off approach to the recording of the album this time around because the demo songs were virtually finished in my studio. I’m very into production, and by doing work in my studio at home I’m able present a song to the band and the get it to the band right away. Arnold let me go with it. Then having Brendan O’Brien mixing the tunes, he’s just awesome. He makes drums sound amazing. The thing about Brendan O’Brien is that most producers have their signature sound written all over it but with Brendan he’s done Rage, Korn, Pearl Jam who all have different sounds.

Early rumors were that Billy Corgan might help out.

Yeah, I do not know how that surfaced. I think probably because the Smashing Pumpkins did Summersault. I think people were just trying to speculate his next move.

I was pissed that the Smashing Pumpkins broke up. I truly believe that the media destroyed that band’s career.

It’s too bad. I’m pissed at them because they were on Summersault and I thought it would be amazing to have them go on last and it being their final shows, but they played all new songs that nobody knows. Why would you do that? It’s your final shows. Give the people who bought your records what they deserve. That’s why I dig Pearl Jam so much is that if you go to a Pearl Jam show, they play the hits.

The only thing that bothers me about that is you know what song we are going to play next. I like bands that mixed it up night to night. Any plans for Summersault 2001?

No, cannot do it, we are too busy touring.

Canadian tour?

We are doing ten weeks in the States, and then we are going to Europe, Japan, and then back here.

I see your wife (Chantal Kreviazuk) and you are involved with War Child Benefit. I know The Tragically Hip have done benefits to raise money. Will you be doing anything this summer?

We’ll see. (with a big smile)

Solo record?

No. I might do something with my wife. I’m always recording shit. If I did something with my wife, it would be way different. Our Lady Peace is just going to try to make records quickly. It feels much better to get out there and start playing. Most of the time you make a record you have to do a video, press, and it like six months before the record actually comes out. With Spiritual Machines, we were out touring as soon as it came out.

What’s next?

We just finished the video for “Life” and it will be on Mtv soon.

It was good chatting with you.

Thanks. I’m glad you enjoy the record.

+ larry sarzyniak