The former frontman of Live, Ed Kowalczyk, tells Scott Kara about going it alone
Ed Kowalczyk can't say too much about the demise of Live, the band he started 20 years ago with three of his schoolmates. Let's just say it all ended badly last year when a two-year hiatus became a permanent split because of what his former bandmates called Kowalczyk's "inappropriate actions".
Apparently Kowalczyk wanted a sizeable lead singer bonus, the publishing rights to Live's songs - of which there have been many heavy rock hits including I Alone and Lightning Crashes - were also being disputed, and now court action is pending.
So while Kowalczyk, on the phone from his Southern Californian home ahead of his first solo tour to New Zealand next week, is limited to what he can say about the split, he is standing tough on where he's at.
"Notwithstanding all the stuff everybody would have read on the internet, the fact remains for me I came to a point where I had to make a change and every day some new form of validation inspires me to keep going."
He says that, following the release of Live's last album, Songs From Black Mountain (2006), he felt the band had reached the end of a "chapter".
"The routine had set in, and there was a lack of excitement. It was around 20 years at that point with the same band, the guys doing it the same way. It was the 20-year-itch. And I thought, 'Let's change it up and do a solo record'. I grabbed my acoustic guitar and went out and did something different. As soon as I started thinking that way, that's when the songs started to flow. It was a very natural outgrowth for me as an artist."
The result is Kowalczyk's first solo album, Alive, which is as equally dramatic and anthemic as Live but with more of an intimate singer-songwriter feel to it.
"When I knew it was going to be Ed Kowalczyk and not Live I think there was a feeling and a subtle shift in the the intimacy, and the conversational approach of the lyric in a song like Grace. I've always done that in a way, but this got more intense and more direct."
The songs were all written in the past two years and perhaps the biggest change is with the singer's Christian faith coming to the fore. There are songs like Soul Whispers, with the line "My stained-glass heart lay shattered on the floor of the church"; first single Grace is about repentance and moving on ("every saint used to be a sinner ..."); and for Kowalczyk, a song like Rome is not only his tribute to the city's beauty but a homecoming of sorts.
"I have ventured back into the Christian faith of my youth, and I was brought up in a Roman Catholic Christian background, so going to the Vatican and St Peters, the depth of that heritage was really in a way coming home for me because I grew up with it in a such a strong way. It's a very full circle spiritual moment, and very powerful."
LOWDOWN
Who: Ed Kowalczyk, former frontman of Live
What: On tour playing classic Live songs and solo material
Playing: October 28, Powerstation, Auckland
Debut solo album: Alive, out now
See also: Live - Throwing Copper (1995)
-TimeOut
