 |
WAR and MUSIC
"I was done. I was done. I was done at that point," reveals Raine Maida on the time he almost walked away from his long-time rock band, Our Lady Peace, during the making of its sixth studio album, Healthy In Paranoid Times.
He, bassist Duncan Coutts, drummer Jeremy Taggart and guitarist Steve Mazur had happily returned to Hawaii to work once again with Bob Rock, producer of 2002's Gravity, and cut 12 songs live off the floor, "everything just bleeding into each other to get that really honest rock & roll thing." But then something happened - the band went on tour in America that summer of 2004 and returned with perspective.
"We felt like 'there's some great moments, but we need to further this'," Maida explains. "We went back and did another ten songs, spent another month. So that was the first time we had that kind of liberty to go back and do another ten, so we just kept exploiting that. And then the record company kept paying for it."
But it didn't end there. The lack of a deadline gave them even more perspective, and the band kept working. "We ended up recording like 45 songs and it just got really stressful," says Maida, the agitation coming through in his words even as he speaks about it now. "Every session was very different from the session before. The first thing we did was really exciting, but we said, 'Okay, at the end of the day this s**t's not good enough. This isn't great.' So there was a session we did in Malibu for a month and that was f**king brutal. We had basically broken up, fired Bobby, quit. It was just one of those times. Dark. Very dark.
"There was nothing that positive coming out of those sessions and we just felt like 'Holy s**t, we're getting further away.' Now this is like four months into the recording and we're into song number 30, and when you get to that point and you feel like, 'We don't have a record yet', you feel like, 'Jesus, what are we trying to do here?' So the tension starting to rise."
That's why Healthy In Paranoid Times sounds like a whole other band, one that pushed itself in private, made complete albums, just never put them out. The lead track, 'Angels Losing Sleep', exemplifies it, from Maida's voice (smoother, less nasal, but still earnest), to the music (less bombastic, kind of eased up in its approach). From the slow and atmospheric 'Picture' and 'Apology' to the effervescent bounce of 'The World On A String' and lilting 'Don't Stop', the process, while gruelling, allowed OLP to arrive at a sound and statement significantly beyond Gravity.
But it wasn't just time and perspective that led to the development. Maida, of all his bandmates, had become heavily involved with Canadian-based humanitarian aid organization War Child, which provides assistance to children of war-affected countries. Maida initially went to Iraq with wife Chantal Kreviazuk, and later to Darfur and Sudan. Suddenly, being in a rock band and the troubles they were experiencing didn't seem so monumental.
"That causes stress. That causes, um (pause), I guess distance, on a spiritual level, and that really translates into a musical level as well," reflects Maida. "I felt like I really had to balance. I'm in a band. There's things that I would do and things that I would say if I was just doing it on my own, but I can't do that because I can't risk the future of this band on my personal selfish thoughts.
"Our Lady Peace, lyrically, except for a few songs, has always been a little bit on the ambiguous side. Kind of tried to keep things universal. As soon as I came back from Darfur, my whole thought process had changed. I didn't want to be that type of artist anymore. I wanted to just say what I wanted to say, and if Clear Channel didn't want to play a f**kin' song because it had lyrics about Bush, then too bad. But at the same time, I'm in a band and it's democratic, and it's really selfish to put that pressure on that record. It's just really not right to do."
So Healthy In Paranoid Times does contain songs about Bush, such as 'Wipe That Smile Off Your Face' and, to some degree, the single, 'Where Are You', which addresses America's lack of conscience and soul. Maida and the rest of OLP are at a place they never could have arrived at without their own internal war. Why didn't he quit?
"At no point did I want to do that," he says, his voice softening. "It was more like you're fighting with your brother - you know you guys are going to get back together at a certain point and I think we all knew that in our hearts. You've threatened that it's going to end, and you go through those emotions. But really, at the end of the day, you know somewhere in your subconscious that it's not going to happen."
source accessmag.com 05
Back to Main interveiws
Back Main
Send E-Mail to: warandmusic@webspawner.com
Copyright © 2005 . All Rights Reserved