Time And Place: A Summer Spent Waiting And Live's 'Throwing Copper'

As Live prepare to hit the UK for a show at London's KOKO - with new vocalist Chris Shinn in tow - Simon Ramsay rewinds the clock to a time when he was wrapped up in the band's 'Throwing Copper' album, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.

We all have albums in our collection that are extra special. They're the ones that transcend their initial purpose to become part of us, soundtracking key periods of our lives to the point where, decades later, just a few notes from them can whisk us back to the emotional landscape of the time. The year was 1996, and Live's 'Throwing Copper' had assumed that role in my life.

Released in 1994, at a time when the alternative rock scene was thriving in the US, the band struck gold with a sophomore effort that was an unexpected bolt from the blue after an average debut, 1991’s 'Mental Jewelry'. 'Throwing Copper' exploded, selling eight million copies at home and turning the quartet from York, Pennsylvania into superstars courtesy of five singles and constant airplay on MTV and radio.  

In the UK, though, the album loitered around the lower reaches of the top 40 and its singles fared no better. I hadn't even heard of Live until the drummer in my band handed me a tape of 'Throwing Copper' so I could learn the vulnerable but raging I Alone.

Life-changing records resonate with our mental and spiritual circumstances. At that time I was an 18-year-old hard rock guitar freak with ridiculous hair. I'd just finished my A-levels, and had been provisionally accepted by Leeds University to study broadcasting. All I needed was two As and a B to get in. Shit.  

Now, I was reasonably intelligent, but knew that would require a superhuman effort. Thus, revision sessions were nearly two months of waking up early and going to bed late, stopping only for food, basic necessities, and the occasional mental meltdown.

Following those exams, the potentially stressful three month wait for my results was easy. Not because I'm cocksure, but rather because I’m a stereotypical British man and therefore wonderfully adept at suppressing my emotions. I simply told myself that – bar not eating or sleeping – I couldn't have revised any more, and it was now in the lap of the gods.  

And yet, such a life altering scenario - where I was effectively in limbo between a disappearing past and uncertain future - was festering and fermenting in my subconscious, with the potential to leap out and render me a nervous wreck at any second. I needed escapism. I needed an outlet for all that repressed terror. I needed something like 'Throwing Copper'.

I don't recall when I first heard the record in its entirety. The earth didn't move. If anything, it was a sonic stealth attack, slowly taking up residence in my brain and the stereo of my shitty maroon Golf, to the point where only an industrial vice could have pried it from either.

As the ghostly opening strains of The Dam At Otter Creek begin, it's like being transported into a space and time that has a mythology of its own, carrying us into an elemental tempest of religious questioning, mortal frustration, suicide and torment. Reality falls away, the foreboding picking starts, and the voice takes hold.

Sounding like a vengeful, dangerous, angelic and disturbed Michael Stipe, Ed Kowalczyk is a stunning singer, whose ability to convey his anguish is every bit as impassioned, uncompromising and intriguing as Kurt Cobain or Eddie Vedder.  

He can switch from seething croon to screeching roar in the blink of an eye, as epitomised on that opening track, where he wrestles through intimate whispering, pained eruptive bursts and howling screams. The band are equally potent, complementing his bruising quest for catharsis with primal power and soulful textures across the album's dynamic 14 tracks.  

From the defiant Americana-folk of Selling The Drama, with its lilting country verses and soaring, angst-ridden hook, to the bludgeoning Stage with its neck-breaking metal riffage, to the shimmering epic Pillar of Davidson, I was mesmerised and fascinated by every second. It was varied but cohesive, different yet familiar, tangible but out of reach. Like a new love affair, I had to experience it over and over again, solve its mysteries and unlock its secrets.

I adored hooks and melody, and 'Throwing Copper' excels at both. The catchy guitar back-slide and propulsive drum pattern on TOP, All Over You's weeping cherub refrain and the subtle wordplay of Waitress are but a few examples of its infectious detail.  

All these elements come together on the album's most famous track, Lightning Crashes. Building from a low-key confessional prayer, the loping chorus is solitary and sparse first time around, but gradually becomes more passionate with each pass as the tune reaches boiling point. Its lyric, about the confusingly cruel cycle of life and death, is gorgeously spun.

I hadn't lived those experiences, or grown up in the oppressive 'Shit Towne' Kowalczyk sings about. But his feelings are archetypal and whether fighting authority, struggling for self assertion or coping with traumatic loss and complex love, they're intrinsic to the human condition, irrespective of geography.

I connected with it because of what I was going through and, looking back, 'Throwing Copper' acted as something an emotional enema for me, flushing out all my suppressed anger, fear and uncertainty as well as tapping into the inevitable loss and sadness within. Whatever the outcome of my exams, the first chapter of my life was ending, and a new one was about to begin.

Fast forward to 2014 and 'Throwing Copper' is celebrating its 20th anniversary, making it a great time to revisit the album for the first time in a decade. After a few spins and a barrage of nostalgic montages, I realised that, even when divorced from that pivotal period of my youth, it's still a strong album that stands up to scrutiny well.  

But, with so many years and miles on my clock since the first time around, it doesn't have the same effect on me as it used to. There's an ingrained familiarity that will never allow those songs to be separated from the emotions of the past in order to become as meaningful in the present. But I can reap fresh enjoyment from it on other levels.

There are plenty of things I didn’t spot before;  influences on the band from different decades and genres, the power of its sequencing and the way its unflinching expressiveness is a direct descendant of Pearl Jam's 'Ten' and a sibling of Counting Crows’ introspective 'August and Everything After'.

What's really fascinating is that the complete record is much stronger than the sum of its parts. Taken on their own, songs like TBD, Top and Iris are decent fillers, but when heard within the context of the album's aesthetic, they form an essential part of an overarching journey, like chapters in a larger story.

There's a timeless quality at work here too. Although classed as alternative rock, its range of styles and themes allow it to exist beyond any particular scene or period. That's undoubtedly helped by Kowalczyk's idiosyncratic singing as, apart from a few animalistic cries that ape Vedder, he wasn't imitating his era-defining baritone like every other vocalist at that time.

Most importantly, I've realised it struck a chord with me all those years ago because, pre-internet, there was a mystery to the band. I didn't know their names, how many of them there were or what they looked like. I'd read no interviews and – unlike American audiences - hadn't been over-exposed to their music or, admittedly horrendous, music videos on MTV.  

It made those songs deeply personal, allowing the record to remain a pure, undiluted experience that felt like mine and no one else's. I like how it will always remind me of a time where possibility, disaster, and the big wide world loomed large. As lost and troubled as I was in those days, it was actually the happiest time of my life and I never knew it. Listening to the record takes me back, and it's a nice, somewhat bittersweet, place to be. And in case you're wondering, I did get the required grades for uni. And no, I didn't end up in broadcasting after all. It's a funny old world.

Live Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:

Wed November 05 2014 - LONDON KOKO

Click here to compare & buy Live Tickets at Stereoboard.com.

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