I was watching Rick Beato’s video about how nu-metal killed 90’s alternative rock and one
of the band’s he highlighted was Live. He also discussed third eye blind who I’ve already done
a video on. The link is down below. After watching Rick’s video and looking at my video request form
which people can submit ideas on, Live kept coming up again and again.
So, it’s time that I answer the question. Whatever happened to 90’s alternative rockers Live?.
Stay tuned for the full story.
Made up of singer and guitarist Ed Kowalczyk, guitarist Chad taylor, bassist Patrick Dahlheimmer
and drummer Chad Gracey. The roots of the band dated back to 1984 in York Pennsylvania, where
all four members grew up and met. Their musical beginnings started in the 8th grade when Gracey,
Taylor and Dahlheimer played in an instrumental band called First Aid. Ed Kowalczyk was the
last member to join after being encouraged by a junior high school teacher to form a band for an
eight grade talent show. Kowalczyk originally wanted to join the band as just a guitarist,
but they already had someone who played lead. The band knew he could sing and talked him into
becoming the singer and rhythm guitar player. His audition would consist of him belting out
a Duran Duran cover tune. Taking the stage name Public Affection, they developed into a competent
live cover band those early shows saw band play sets consisting of songs by Psychadelic Furs,
Violent Femmes, REM, U2, & Bryan Adams. Kowalczyk would tell the LA Times “We all learned a lot from
a book about U2,”, referring to the book “Unforgettable Fire” while guitarist Chad
Taylor would add “We related to U2 so much,. “Reading the biography was in many ways like
reading a story about ourselves, except with different names.” By 1987 the band started writing
their own material and Rockstar fantasies weren’t far from the members minds with Chad Taylor
telling the LA Times Ed and I would sit in the back of our classrooms, and instead of working on,
like, calculus, we’d think about the kind of tour bus we’d have.”
While school may have afforded the members a place to daydream, it was also instrumental to
their success. The members would credit several music teachers with helping them learn song
arrangements, orchestration and music theory that they would rely on to craft their songs.
Another piece of the puzzle was their hometown of York, Pennsylvania. A working
class town where Harley Davidson and caterpillar factories employed a lot of the town’s faithful,
it served as an inspiration for their music., One of the first gigs the band had
was at the inaugural dance at the temple beth israel in York. The band followed it up with
another gig at the temple selling tickets at $4 a piece. Before they knew it, 400 people paid
the ticket price to see the band play and some people had to be turned away at the door. That’s
when they knew when they were onto something. The band was soon booking gigs at local venues
and landed them a manager in David Sestak who initially refused calls to work with the band.
It wasn’t until Chad Taylor’s father phone Sestak and according to Spin Magazine told him ’ either
you’re going to listen to the band or you’re going make the biggest mistake of your life.”
Sestak liked what he heard, but he told the band they needed an album so they could go
to record labels and try to get a contract. The band proved to be business savvy. They
raised $5000 in cash from junk bands who they sold to family and friends who bought
shares in their debut record at $100 a piece. . That seed money would help the band release
their record 1988’s “The Death of a Dictionary. Under the monicker Public Affection. It would be
released on their own label and sold at shows and local record shops. It’s estimated they put out
about 2,000 copies of their debut record. If you can get your hand on one, they are
probably worth a lot of money. In 1989, during their senior year the band was at a crossroads,
do they continue to pursue music or go to college. The band would given themselves two years to
make a career in music or go back to schoo. Their first release according to the washington
post would peek interest of a local journalist who would predicted the band would and i quote
have "the potential to usurp the progressive-rock territory staked out by U2 and R.E.M."
Soon enough the band's manager started booking the band to play shows at New York CBGB’s
and 9:30 club in washington D.C. It was these gigs that got the band the attention of an outfit named
Giant Records, which helped them produce their first demo with producer Jay Healy who worked with
John Mellencamp and their rock heroes R.E.M. While the demo left the label disappointed, they allowed
the group to take the tape and shop it around to other labels. That would lead them to signing
with radioactive records. Soon after they changed their name to Live after drawing it out of a hat.
The label would enlist Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads fame to produce the group’s first album
1991’s "Mental Jewelry.” The album would prove to be a modest success selling around 500,000 copies.
The album was helped by college radio and MTV who heavily promoted the single "Operation
Spirit” which originally made the network’s buzz bin program. The song would go on to
peak at number 9 on the modern rock charts. Mental Jewelry would be heavily inspired by
an Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti. For a band that was in their early 20’s,
it was surprising to see the group singing with such philosophical depth. Kowalczyk would tell
Spin Magazine how he discovered philosopher revealing “I picked up Krishnamurti’s you are
the world in some kind of new age bookstore when I was 18 when i was surrounded by all this baby talk
philosophy and i read it and thought damn this is so unique. So what did the philospher Krishnamurti
believe? Well he was was against idolizing people and arguing that real revolution in one’s mind
couldn’t be brought about by external factors in one’s life, but rather one’s self.
Kowalczyk would tell Loudersound how he approached lyrics on the album revealing It was just a
straightforward questioning of everything – the traditions you grew up in, automatic things that
you just take for granted,. “There were a lot of light-bulb moments, one after the other.”
But critics were lukewarm to Mental Jewelry album labeling the group as young and naive and the LA
times stating in 1992 review “Mental Jewelry,” Live eventually wears out its welcome with
constant earnest wheedling about great existential and spiritual questions.” To support the record,
Live would hit the road with public image ltd and blind melon to support the album.
As the band turned their attention to their follow up record they looked to their hometown
for inspiration. Kowalczyk would tell Spin magazine “ we decided to go back and take a
look at where we came from, our town, our friends our roots...We wanted to slow down, take a break
and not be so theoretical in the new songs and talk about what we’ve experienced in our lives.”
The band’s roots even show up on the back cover of the album as the picnic area was an old stomping
group for the band. The picnic area is Located just off route 25 in airville, pennsylvania
Unlike hopelessness or nihilsm which were popular lyrical themes during the early 90’s,
Live focused on the themes of love, religion and life. Rolling Stone Magazine would perfectly
summarize the band’s approach to music saying “Kowalczyk is not only willing to believe there’s
beauty and meaning in this alienated age, he’s also bold – or foolish – enough to try to figure
out what it is, pointing the way for an audience that welcomes the possibility of transcendence.”
A perfect example of this was the song Lightning Crashes which finds beauty
even in tragedy by celebrating the transcendence of life in the music video which dealt with the
death of a women and birth of a child. After the song was written, Live would dedicate the
track to a schoolmate named Barbara Lewis who was killed by a drunk driver in 1993.
Kowalczyk would write the song in his parent’s house just before he moved
out.he would tell Loudersound "One thing was that we wanted to make things more dynamic. We were
really into that chinky-chinky rhythmic guitar thing, but I was thinking about how we could
sell things even more emotionally. And you need big guitars for that. So we plugged in" he'd say.
Despite the success of Mental Jewelry, Live's label allotted only several weeks
for their follow up to be recorded. The band would reconvene at Pacyhyderm studio
the same space where Nirvana record in-utero in Minnesota. The group would credit producer
Jerry Harrison who returned the second time around for helping them take their song
writing to the next level and providing lyircal inspiration as Kowalczyk would tell Loudersound
Me and him would have these really deep conversations about spirituality and philosophy.
He was really into the lyrics I was writing. He really inspired me in a lot of ways" he'd say.
Released several weeks after Kurt Cobain’s death, Throwing Copper catapulted Live to a
new level of stardom getting them gigs on “MTV's Unplugged,” David Lettermen and they appeared on
the cover of magazines. Not to mention the hours of attention on mtv and rock radio.The
band would tour with PJ Harvey and Veruca Salt.
By the way I’ve done a whole video on Veruca Salt’s career. Link is down below!
Even though mental jewelry was well received by MTV the band’s label was a little weary of getting
too much exposure on the network as a label spokeperson would tell billboard magazine the band
had a credibility problem after Mental Jewelry. The reason Mental Jewellry had a credibility
problem was because MTV first embraced the band back in 1991 but a lot of radio programmers
according to billboard magazine weren't fans of the band and felt pressured to play operation
spirit on rock raido. To combat this they released Selling the Drama as their first single because
the label didn’t have much crossover appeal and heavily worked college and modern rock radio
rather than pushing MTV early on. The song ended up topping the modern rock charts and the label
was wrong as the single did have crossover appeal peaking. Despite the early success, Throwing
Copper took almost a year to top the billboard charts, peaking at number 1 for the week of May 5,
1995. But what was the moment that pushed the band over the edge? The band released four singles
from the record all of which faired pretty well The band played the 25th anniversary of woodstock
in september of 1994. Then tragedy struck in April of 1995, the oklahoma city bombings that killed
over 100 people. Following the tragedy a local radio station DJ mixed the song lightning crashes
with speeches from president clinton, newscaster tom brokaw as well as ambulence and fire truck
sirens and it soon caught wildire.. You can hear that remix on youtube.
At that time America was mourning and as the band’s drummer Chad Gracey would tell pennlive
"It sort of became the de facto song [for the bombing]," Gracey said. "It was definitely very
bittersweet and surreal and strange to see this impactful event in our country and then have a
song that we wrote be associated with it." The tragic events pushed Throwing Copper to the
top of the charts. And lightning crashes stay on the pop charts for 26 weeks peaking at number 6.
It would be ironic that label executives hated Lightning Crashes and reportedly told the band
the song would never become a single. Live's label thought the song was too long and too
different from what modern rock radio stations were playing and almost refused to release it.
As the touring cycle ended for Throwing Copper the band suffered from two major problems,
overexposure and some critics still din’t give them their due. Loudersound pointed
out one review in 1995 that popular rock journalist Robert Christgau journalist wrote
“On stage, this intently mediocre young band is U2 without a guitar
sound,” w “On record, it’s R.E.M. without songs.”” Regarding the overexposure,, their manager would
tell LA Times in 1995 We make decisions based on the long term, I’m not interested in Live
being the biggest thing in 1995. I’m interested in Live being around for 20 years.” Following
a gruelling 18 month tour the band took some time off before reassembling for their follow up album.
According to the washington post Groupies supposedly scouring south central Pennsylvania
including the group's hometown of. , York-- in search of Ed and his bandmates. Fans even
located Ed's Mom' even though she has a different last name now. and they would leave letters for
her in her mailbox. Not only that but record labels started to scout the area too with some
people thinking pennsylvania would become the new pacific northwest.
The band wanted to emulate REM by not repeating their past sound and the quartet
retreated to Jamaica renting a mansion for several weeks to work on their next album.
Kowalczyk would tell MTV news in 1997 I thought we were going to go down there and really mellow out,
and write really mellow songs, and we ended up going down there and rocking,".
"It was like this totally unexpected surge of energy, but those songs in particular have a
sexier sort of feel. You just can't help it when you're in the sun and you're baking under it,
and you're just there in the whole island thing" he'd say.
Released in early 1997, Secret Samadhi topped the billboard charts and went double platinum,
but it only sold only a quarter of the copies of its predecessor. The album saw a band
coming to terms with their new found fame with Guitarist Chad Taylor telling guitar world in1997
"Secret Samadhi is less a record about who we were in the past than about who we've become.
Throwing Copper was sort of about small town life in York, Pennsylvania, and about
how we escaped that and were looking back on it. Now, it's hard for us to relate to the people who
wrote Throwing Copper. We're immensely different now, leading different lifestyles. I don't think
this record comes from a place like York; it comes from playing in front of 30,000 people
and traveling around the world" he'd say. The band followed up Secret Samadhi with
1999’s The Distance to Here which produced the radio friendly hits The Dolphins Cry
and Run To The Water which peaked at number 3 and 14 on the modern rock charts. If Secret Samadhi
represented the great upheaval in the member’s career following their monumental success in
the mid 90's,, The Distance to Here was an album that showed a band a little more comfortable with
where they were at. Kowalczyk who would now be married had a different perspective on life and
would disappear into the desert for several weeks with his guitar to write material for the distance
to here. Gone were the up-tempo tracks were replaced with Kowalczyk mid-tempo songs.
In 2001 the band would release their their fifth album appropriately titled five,
but the band’s chart success seemed to fade with the record only peaking at number 22 and not even
going gold. Radioactive Records was now gone and the band was now dealing with MCA and their
relationship with the label quickly went south. There were disagreements over album artwork,
whether to release a single and music videos al of which lead to the album almost getting delayed
by a year. Released a week after 9/11 1 the song Overcome received a lot of airplay following the
tragedy and according to Kowalczyk the band gave the song away for free on their website
and soon enough it was picked up by rock radio. According to guitarist Chad Taylor the material on
Five was never supposed to be released revealing "The goal was to prepare songs for the next studio
session. MCA got a hold of the material and pushed us to call it an album." Taylor
would also reveal in the same post that their label was having a lot of success with No Doubt
and they pushed Live to change their image. The band would release two more albums 2003 Birds
of Prey and 2006 Songs From Black Mountain before the group took a hiatus in 2009.
But one year later 2010 it was announced that Kowalczyk had left the band.
Kowalczyk embakred on a solo career and an ugly legal battle ensued between him and his
ex-bandmates . His ex-bandmates would sue him for breach of contract relating to their publishing
agreement and touring using the name Live and he in turn counter sue. Kowalczyk contends it
was done maliciously because his bandmates were jealous he was going to pursue a solo career.
In 2014 his ex-bandmates would talk to Louder Sound with Chad Taylor revealing
“Yeah, on the past three records, we were basically just Ed’s backing musicians, trying to
hang on in there. Kowalczyk's former band members would claim that the singer would want more of
the incredible history we have with each other.” And in 2018 the band put out their latest release,
an EP titled Local 717 and the following year in 2019 they teamed up with Bush and our lady peace
to go on to celebrate the 25th anniversaries of Throwing Copper, Sixteen Stone and Naveed.
That does it for today's video guys thanks for watching. Be sure to hit the like button
and subscribe and we'll see you again on rock n' roll true stories.Take care.