Three years of madness over

Our Lady Peace hits the road and puts nightmare recording session behind

By JENNY FENIAK, SPECIAL TO THE EDMONTON SUN

After a tumultuous few years, Our Lady Peace has found calmer waters. Healthy In Paranoid Times, the album that took 1,165 days to finish, was finally released last August and OLP is back on the road and hitting the stage at Edmonton's Capital Ex tonight.

Longtime member, drummer Jeremy Taggart, speaking from his home just north of Toronto, gives a comical and bluntly honest recap of the events surrounding their last recording.

"It got ridiculous, like Francis Ford Coppola s---, you know. You can't go that far with music sometimes because you have problems internally from the madness," Taggart says of the project that took almost three years to complete.

"It had some Poseidon Adventure-type drama. There were some moments where we were grasping a little bit and a little bit scared of what the hell was going on. With the creative process, we had been treading water for a little while and we didn't know how long we were going to be doing that and we didn't have a money tree or anything like that. So we got a little stressed and a couple of tempers flared."

And asking if this is the way things usually happen with OLP, Taggart replies, "Tempers flaring - yes. To this extent - no. I guess the next step would've been strangulation. We didn't quite reach it, but it would have been fun to watch."

Like with their 2002 release Gravity, OLP turned to producer Bob Rock (Metallica, Cher, The Tragically Hip) and he, too, was not exempt from the chaos.

"He at one point was ready to go home. Everybody was reaching that pinnacle of, 'I'm gonna jump,' " says Taggart. "Bob was kind of just like us. He'd never quit anything in his entire life and he wanted to finish just like we wanted to finish and when cooler heads prevailed, everybody let it go."

But with the discontent and upheavals, OLP actually broke through with new methods of recording and even working together as a band. When something's just not working, sometimes it takes a whole new approach to succeed with a goal.

"We were kind of continually pushing ourselves through different doors where we'd never been. Almost like, on the con(trary), we've never been that pissed off at ourselves and each other, but by doing that we got to a place where it was pretty interesting because it was almost to the point of zero egos because it didn't matter what was put on tape - two days later someone was going to hate it and that was it," explains Taggart.

Since Naveed, its first release in 1994, OLP has put out six full-length albums with a sales total of more than four million copies. It's an incredible feat for a Canadian group and one that has had almost as many member changes.

Prior to 1992, singer Raine Maida joined a band started by Mike Turner called As If. They soon changed the name to OLP and Taggart replaced the original drummer the week the band signed a deal with Sony.

"I turned 18 right around the time in 1993 when we signed the deal. Zip-a-dee-do-da, Jed's a millionaire," chuckles Taggart. "I think I got 150 bucks. I mean that first deal we signed was like; 'You mean we get some wax paper and crackers.' It was real low-budget.' "

Turner eventually left in 2001 and today, Maida is the only original member left in the group.

Taggart, who been through the majority of it, recalls many, many axes being pulled through the years.

There's a lot of heads around. We like to keep the skulls, you know. Keep the skulls to make sure everybody knows they're in their place when we replace them."

Guitarist Steve Mazur was the last to join in 2002 and since then, they've stuck through the thick and thin of it all.

"We're all just kind of playing and writing individually. We're all doing stuff on our own," say Taggart, who's working on his own radio show.

"Music isn't just Our Lady Peace for us. It's just kind of anything we want it to be."

---

DOWNLOAD

Gig:

Our Lady Peace with Armchair Cynics and Maurice

Venue:

Capital Ex's Ed Fest

Vitals: Our Lady Peace has released seven albums and gone through five member changes. Singer Raine Maida is the only original member.

Detailing: OLP released its last album Healthy in Paranoid Times last August. It took just over three years, and everyone at some point quit the project.
Previous story: Rare glimpse of Suri Cruise
Next story: Polley to get world premiere treatment