Our Lady Peace – Burn, Burn
July 29th, 2009 - Written by Admin—
Article written by Jenia Schukov & Melissa Payette
On July 15th, Our Lady Peace (OLP), one of the most influential rock bands of the 90’s, came to Montreal where they held a private show for contest winners and the media, in order to showcase a few tracks off of their latest release: ‘Burn Burn’. CONFRONT Magazine had the opportunity to sit down with drummer Jeremy Taggart.
We met up with Jeremy outside Café Campus and ended up doing the interview in a dark stairwell inside the venue. It was obvious from the start that he was a very laid-back and easygoing person; joking with us about how the stairwell was secretly his office and the mini vending machines were his only food source.
As a veteran in the music industry, Jeremy started by explaining to us what makes OLP work so well as a band.
“By being a musician you pick the people you want to play with and we all got lucky in the sense that we found musicians that were good to work with creatively.”
So how did these four musicians find each other, exactly? In 1992, guitarist Mike Turner placed a ‘Musicians Wanted’ ad in the newspaper; Raine Maida, a university student at the time, was the first to respond. Together they began playing shows with two of Turner’s friends, at which time they were discovered and signed to Sony. In 1993 Jeremy Taggart joined the band, replacing Jim Newell on percussion, followed by Duncan Coutts in 1995, who became the official bassist when Chris Eacrett left, stating that musical differences between the rest of the guys was the cause of his departure. The final addition to OLP came in 2002 when guitarist Steve Mazur replaced Mike Turner. The name ‘Our Lady Peace’ comes from a Mark Van Doren World War 2 poem.
The band’s first album, ‘Naveed’, was released in 1994 on Sony Records. The singles “Naveed” and “Starseed” became hits in Canada as well as the United States while the band toured across the country. Their second album entitled ‘Clumsy’ came out in 1997. According to the fans, his second album is said to be OLP’s best work and includes hits like ‘Clumsy’ and ‘Automatic Flowers’.
The third album, ‘Happiness… is Not a Fish That You Can Catch’, features a collaborative piece called ‘Stealing Babies’ with 1960’s jazz drummer Elvin Jones. During our interview with Jeremy, we asked him who the band’s musical influences were. He went back in time a little and brought up Jones’ name when he said:
“Those are the kind of musicians that I keep pushing and try to get to. I love modern music and tons of new bands; but when I’m trying to learn I find myself having to dig backwards into history and I find I learn more.”
Studio album number four was titled ‘Spiritual Machines’. It had less success then the other albums however it did have the famous single ‘Life’.
The biggest controversy to surround the band came with their fifth album, ‘Gravity’, which was said to be too mainstream and differed from the band’s original sound. However, despite the fans critical reactions, Gravity’s singles – ‘Somewhere Out There’ and ‘Innocent’ – became the biggest hits in OLP’s history.
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