interview by ashley m. burkholder (thanx to jeff h. /pa)

fly:so what do u think is the message behind this album, compared to the others?

taylor: well, i think the central theme to every live record has always been love. and i think that we've always made- strange as it may sound- a conscious attempt "not" to be conscious about our music. which means that we let it grow, and let it evolve, and let it change as we grew, evolved and changed as people. I think dat this record is the most aggressive record we've ever recorded. of da 14 songs in the record 10 of them r "rockers" if u will. i think our last two records are sort of mid-tempo. this record sounds really youthful. it was interesting when i read comments of the kids online, and they were saying it sounded like we recorded it in someone's garage. and i love that. i love the fact that they said it. they said it sounds like its not even produced at all, which is fabulous. and that was not a conscious effort, it just came out dat way. but i think raw sound is something that live helped to invent back in 1995. there seems to be a lot of people doing that same type of music. i think we just wanted to come back and show everybody how its "really" supposed to be done.

photo dowloaded from www.friendsoflive.com

fly:can u imagine your life without live?

taylor:you know, i dont know who i am without live. live has clearly define who i am, just ias i have defined live. it's sort of become one and the same. i know that there coulb life without live, i know i could move on and go beyond it. but the truth is, trips like the one we took this weekend (yo LA), thast the proof we can still exist as a group of friends, which is important. but i think is really, really important to make great music. if you are not making great music, then don't move on, don't keep doing the band. and we still haven't done a sold-out stadium tour in america...somewhere in the back of my mind , id like to see us doing that.

fly: do you see yourself producing for bands in the future?

taylor: i've actually, at this point now, produced a lot of records. but rarely do i have the time to get into producing a whole project. i just love music so much. and yeah, i love to produce. and its not necessarily just listening to music. i love the process of creativity and then the initial idea or spark thats gonna become a song. and the group of people who get involved around it, the team,and sort of making that team to perform that initial spark as well as what they can. it's really exciting. and thats the band experience, thats what i do in live. and so , therefore, it's very natural for me to gravitate into a producer's role, wheer i have to bring that out of other people.

fly:any personal great achievements?

taylor:...the most successful day of my life was the day i decided to commit myself 100 percent to this band. its defined everything...i mean ive know ed since kindergarden, and the rest of the guys since sixth grade. so there was a friendship and a bond there that you dont just...that's something you find rare and unique throughout the rest of the music industry.

fly: retirement ever crossed your mind?ever think of stopping?

taylor:i think i define retirement as a financial status not a creative status. to me, i'll never retire. i'll always create music...and an integral part of music is that artists that have a chance to grow and to go past their prime really hit a creative freedom and i'm looking forward to that. i'm looking forward to no pressures of live, no pressure of selling tickets, or living up to whatever we've done in the past. i think thats why i concentrate so hard on just being in the moment, which is a bit haphazard because i really dont worry about the future either, and thats the dangerous part of my personality. and so, if retirement is a financial status, then i guess i'll be retired whenever i like it.

fly:do you still feel as if you have the same "mission" , toof putting out the same music as when you started?

taylor:yeah...i guess if we were sports cars, we'd be genetic freaks. somehow at a very young age, we all gathered around the idea of making music that brought people together, and odd enough now, after 10 years of making records, we're still a group of guys that get together to try and make music that people will literally get together and celebrate with us. i think live has always been a celebratory experience. i think it always starts at a very personal, self-centered level, as is "are we evolving as people?" and it just so happens that there are an awful lot of other people in life that are going through the same experience of trying to better themselves, of trying to better their situation in life. live just happens to write the soundtrack for that.