I would hope they can regain their edge without personal tragedies. Rush had to take a long break because Neil Peart's daughter and wife both died within ten months. In the long run, it did breathe new life into their work. Vapor Trails (IMO) is the deepest and rockingest album Rush has released since Grace Under Pressure in 1984. But still, art derived from tragedy is sad.

I meant maybe Chad Taylor, Patrick Dalheimer, and Chad Gracey could all throw in their ideas, as opposed to Ed writing the whole album himself. Just a thought..

I understand, but why the "maybe"? Why is there any doubt that the entire band should be involved in the writing process? Isn't that what a band is supposed to be?

I think there is just such an inkling of hope that someone besides Ed will write a track that it comes across as "Chad Taylor ... maybe the whole band? ..."

Who knows? It might be a mess if they all equally wrote their own parts for the album, and it might cause friction in the band if Gracey is adamant that it's brilliant while the others are adamant that it sucks. I think a lot of bands have 1 songwriter, and the other bandmembers just give their input on how the song should sound after the lyrics are written. Ed's a great songwriter, but I agree it's time for the others to be more involved in the songwriting process.

Weren't they all involved in the writing process on the first few albums?

I'm not sure. Does anyone else know? I believe they all worked on Secret Samadhi together while in Jamaica smoking weed by the pool. I think all the lyrics for TDTH were written by Ed alone in the desert with his dog. Don't know about the others.

I don't think the possibility of disagreement is a good reason to keep the other members of the band out of the writing process. Also, I don't think Ed is even close to being a strong enough of a musician to be composing pieces all on his own.

I think he is a strong enough musician/lyricist to write all the songs. TDTH is proof. After the songs are written, CT, Pat, CG, Ed, and his brother, could then work together to make the songs come alive with energy to a level we haven't heard before. With that said, they might as well all work on the lyrics together too.

I think they all did a bit with TDTH, I definitely know Taylor and Pat are credited with some songs on TDTH .. don't know about Gracey though.

V, BOP and SFBM have been total Ed solo projects it seems with the other guys having little to not much imput, or at least not enough to warrent being credited with anything, they all seem like Ed solo projects, and are all a drop in quality compared to when they wrote as a band so I really hope that along with a new producer that album 8 isn't just written by Ed.

So far this thread has been pretty noob-free. You're really starting to noob it up, though.

Sad but true, many of the greatest works of art were derived from dark phases of people's lives, first hand experience or as influenced by others.

McPheezy should produce the next Live album.

Hope he is not serious, but what he wrote was still a bad joke.

A normal everyday life has enough ups and downs to write intense music about, I don't need the big drama filling the sensational press...

This post has been edited by silentsinger: May 31 2006, 3:51 pm