Being on the road celebrating Our Lady Peace’s 30th anniversary has rekindled a lot of memories for frontman Raine Maida. Some better than others.
There was, for instance, Robert Plant reaching out after hearing “Starseed,” the Canadian group’s second single, during the spring of 1995.
“(Plant) heard our song in his limo in New York,” Maida remembers. “We were playing some small club in Boston called the Middle East and our tour manager ran in; ‘You’re not gonna believe this, but Robert Plant just heard your song on the radio and he literally wants you guys to not play tonight and drive to Chicago and open for them!’ and I was like, ‘Oh, but we have our first sold-out show in Boston…’ (laughs)
“I was kind of fighting it a little bit, but our tour manager just started tearing down the drums and I was like, ‘Oh, I guess we’re leaving.'” Our Lady Peace actually made it to Indianapolis to play on April 26, with Page and Plant, then opened their April 28-29 shows at the Rosemont Horizon in suburban Chicago.
Watch Our Lady Peace Perform ‘Starseed’
“It was incredible,” Maida says. “There was something about Zeppelin’s crowd; they were so giving of their ears and their hearts and time. They loved us. It was like, ‘What the hell — this is crazy!’ No one even knew us. It wasn’t like we had a big hit at the time; we had just literally put ‘Starseed’ out. But that’s the kind of fans they have. They’re music fans, ’cause (Led Zeppelin) was such a musical band.”
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As a bonus, Maida adds, “I had some incredible conversations with Robert Plant, which was such a gift so early on in a career, y’know? It’s Zeppelin! He watched our sound check and came up to me after — I almost s— my pants.’ He just shook my hand and said, ‘I’ve had a chance to live with the Naveed album. I like the vibe of it.’ Obviously he connected with the Middle Eastern theme, but he knew lyrics to the songs, and I’m like, ‘Are you serious? You really listened to these songs!’
“I felt like if this dude could be that generous and humble…it just kind of set the tone for me in terms of, ‘You’ve got to keep it together.’ I know there’s a lot of big egos in the industry; it just showed me that if a guy like Robert Plant can be like that, there’s no reason for me to get outside of myself. I’ve really tried to keep that in my heart. That was such a great example early on in my career.”
A more challenging experience came a few months later, however. Our Lady Peace was booked to open shows on the summer leg of Van Halen’s Balance tour; the quartet wound up playing 27 dates between July 16-Sept. 14, some with Skid Row also on the bill — despite Sammy Hagar’s wishes.
“I love Eddie (Van Halen). I love Alex. For whatever reason, Sammy and I didn’t get along,” Maida remembers. “Sammy kicked us off that tour, basically, one night. We were nervous. We were playing in these sold-out amphitheaters in the summer, and the fans, unlike (Page and Plant), really didn’t want to see us. We had a couple hits at this point, but they didn’t care about us. They were there to see Van Halen. I would have guys in the front row giving me the finger the whole time, which is…whatever. I’m fine paying my dues.
“Sammy’s just a different performer than me; he came up to me a couple times and said, ‘Hey, this is supposed to be a party. You’ve got to get the crowd pumped up more.’ And I was like, ‘Respectfully, Sammy, I totally get that. You’re an incredible singer. I love what you do. But I’m a very different performer, I guess. I’ve never seen myself as an entertainer, really. It’s not what I do. So I apologize. I don’t know if I’m a guy to get out there and treat it like it’s a party.’ And (Hagar) was like, ‘Eh, OK…’
“And I guess one night he was really frustrated and he had his tour manager, who we’d actually made friends with, come up to me and said, ‘I’m sorry, man, Sammy says they’re gonna make a change for the opening act.’ ‘What? Are you serious?!’ I went back to my tour manager and said, ‘Holy shit, I think we just got kicked off this tour.’ He went back to the production office and came back on the bus, and was like, ‘Oh my God!’ and I’m like, ‘Holy shit! What am I gonna tell my mom?! This is awful…’
“Then we get this knock on the door and it’s the (Van Halen) tour manager again and he says, ‘Hey, Alex and Eddie want to see you.’ We’d become really good friends with Alex; he and I both had back problems, so we bonded over that. I went into their dressing room and Eddie and Alex said, ‘Don’t listen to Sammy; he doesn’t have the power to do that. You’re not getting kicked off the tour.’ My head was spinning. I ended up talking to Sammy again; it wasn’t a great vibe, but Eddie and Alex saved us.”
Maida adds that, like Plant, Eddie Van Halen provided another kind of good example for a musician in the early days of his career.
“Eddie just showed you what it takes to be a master musician,” he says. “He would come into catering with his guitar on, he would start sound check an hour and a half earlier than the rest of the guys. He wasn’t a guitar player; it was like he was the guitar. It was just an extension, like another limb for him. That’s why he was so great; forget 10,000 hours, we’re talking a million hours. He was the instrument. He needed to be his best every night, and he put in his work to do that. I was blown away by how talented he was, but always working. That was so inspiring.”
Our Lady Peace’s 30th anniversary tour continues through April 4, with some festival dates later in the year. The group is making a documentary focused on a New York superfan who’s frequently at shows, and in May it will return to the studio to work towards its next album producer Nick Raskulinecz (Rush, Foo Fighters, Korn, Evanescence).
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Gallery Credit: Matthew Wilkening
