Chad Taylor makes fun of Ed lyrics, New Facebook post Options

[i_live_life]

New Facebook post by Chad T:

"I just saw an old Ed lyric and had to laugh my ass off. "Does he run it deep enough for you?" Seriously? And this guy wants back in LIVE? I can hear it now..guys, here's one I wrote about water, "the dolphins make me cry" ...oh shit... That's Hootie!!"

What the hell? Ed makes shitty music and now Chad T acts like a giant douche. I just gave up on my favorite band.

Even though there is no doubt that Ed has done a lot of things wrong it will never justify this kind of behavior. If Ed wants to get back in the band, Chad T could politely tell him to go fuck off, but never post it on Facebook and at the same time mock his lyrics... They act like a bunch of teenagers.

This post has been edited by i_live_life: Oct 1 2012, 10:03 am

[FishOutaWater]

I just revisited Chad's blog "AllThingsChadTaylor" written back in July 2010. I re-read some portions that really hit me. Maybe it is worth reading this again:

I made a personal resolution to let Live in Ed’s hands. I no longer responded to emails and I limited my participation in every way possible. I would try and be a professional musician. Show up, play my 12 notes and return home with as little drama as possible. We filmed Live, at the Paradiso in two nights. When I saw the magic that was on camera, I was overcome by emotion. We had documented the energy and efforts of a 20-year career together. The photographs captured it too and they are some of my favorites. When the album artwork showed up with Chad, Patrick and I in black and white and Ed in color it shot pain through my veins but I held back.

For some reason on that tour Ed would complain about the tuning of my guitar each and every night in the dressing room following the show. He would call Patrick at all hours of the night asking if we sounded okay. I had long talks with the techs. I begged someone to give me anything tangible that I could work on or fix. The board tapes sounded fine but the constant complaining was driving me mad. It was sucking the life out of me on stage. Ed demanded that we return to having a keyboardist, as it would be easier for him to sing to “solid” notes. I agreed and suggested a few options. At this point I was reaching for anything that would change the tension and heal the dynamic between Ed and the band....

We decided to have a very rare band meeting to discuss keyboardist options. Ed had suggested that Michael “Raylo” Railton make a return, as we had little to no time to rehearse with someone who didn’t know the material. We had all heard that he had cleaned himself up and was sober after a long bought with crystal meth, the main reason he was no longer with us. Chad Gracey flipped out and said absolutely no way...

The tour ended and we headed home for break but for the first time in years there were no more plans to work on anything new or even tour for that matter. In one tour we had lost Matt Gracey and for the second time Raylo. We had a few European shows to play in the near future but no heavy touring.

While in The Hague, just before we were ready to go onstage Ed pulled me aside and asked me if I had seen the email he had sent out. I told him I hadn’t and he said we had to have a serious talk. It turned out that he was looking at my MySpace page and noticed that when the song “Heaven” began to play it said it was “by Chad Taylor.” He was enraged. He told me that for years he had been hearing stories about “my” songwriting and that I had even told a few people that I was writing “his” lyrics. This was maddening as I had no idea what he was talking about and knew I had never written “by Chad Taylor” on the MySpace page. I told him that I loved him and would never do anything to hurt him but he clearly wasn’t ready to hear me. We hit the stage in front of 50,000 Live fans and Ed and I ignored each other the entire show. Now I was pissed off too.

After the show, I went to my room and checked the MySpace page and sure enough in the player under the title “Heaven” it said “by Chad Taylor.” It turns out that the MySpace page defaults the song performance credit to the page holder’s name. In my case Chad Taylor. I was livid. Why didn’t he just simply call me or walk over to my room and ask me what was up? I sat in the hotel bar with Patrick, Chad and Bill Thompson as I tearfully held back my rage. This was insane if not pathological. Why was Ed coming at me so hard? Why couldn’t he give me some fucking space? Why was he snooping around on my MySpace page anyway?

I addressed an open letter to Live and our management declaring that I had never written a single Live lyric in my life. Frankly, I don’t even know the words to most of the songs. I could tell you the drum patterns and melodies but I’ve never had much interest in writing lyrics. I told Ed in this letter that my original passion for writing songs was as a canvas for his words. They were outside of the box, just like my music. Why now did he want to re-credit the entire catalog of past songs? Live was never his alone but he was sure acting like it. A close friend of mine gave me some very good advice. She said, “If you can give something and you won’t, you have to ask yourself why you won’t give it.” I knew in this case that she was right so I told Ed and the rest of the band it was theirs to determine the future and past destiny. I knew no effort to reclaim the past would change the vision that our fans had as of as a foursome. We were and will always be equals no matter who says differently or what the liner notes read.