If the last five years have taught us anything at all, it is that the mind is a pliant thing. The cumulative and in some cases simultaneous effects of 4chan, 8chan, Reddit, IG algorithms, deep fakes, psychedelics, pandemic anxiety, isolation, alienation and political extremism have—to put it lightly—tested our mental defenses. But the softness of our brains is not a new thing. After all, it’s precisely why we have a cranium. And it’s what John Lydon has been warning slash teasing us about for nearly fifty years.

While Lydon was likely aware of our mental pregnability before he became a Sex Pistol, he earned his masters degree as “Johnny Rotten.” Johnny Rotten’s performance art was not obtuse like Andy Kaufman’s. No, his was the same, unambiguous joke told over and over again. It went something like “I’m going to goad you and you—love it or hate it—will not be able to not respond.” Egged on by Malcolm McLaren, Rotten’s provocations culminated on January 14, 1978, at The Pistols’ disastrous final U.S. date, wherein he closed the show by snickering, “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” After much practice, his trick had become his superpower.

Eventually, that superpower became his brand—triggering audiences while pulling one over on them while belittling them while profiting off of them. Four years after that Winterland Ballroom show, Lydon nee Rotten was back in The States, performing with Public Image Lt.d. at The Ritz, in New York City. There in support of “The Flowers of Romance,” Lydon elected to stage the entire show behind a forty foot tall video projection screen. Suffice it to say—and despite the crowd being comprised of avid fans—things did not go well. First, Lydon narrated against a prerecorded track. Next, the band noodled their way through some improvisation. All the while, the restless crowd was lathered up into a frenzy, demanding that P.I.L. lift the screen. And when P.I.L. did not oblige, the crowd began to pull at the stage tarp that the band’s equipment was resting on. The tug of war—psychological and physical—escalated quickly until Lydon, in a nod back to the Winterland show, asked what kind of “fuckers” would pay twelve dollars for this experience. Soon enough, he pulled the plug, announcing, “The show’s over!. The show’s over!”

By the time I reached my teens, Lydon’s shenanigans were the stuff of legend. I was not yet four at the time of the Winterland show and was six when P.I.L. shut down The Ritz. But in their aftermath, during that latent period—before Green Day popped and when Hardcore was hard core—I’d become extremely interested in The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Buzzcocks, X-Ray Spex, Wire, The Slits, The Au Pairs, Gang of Four and pretty much anything else that could reasonably labeled “Punk.” Which is why, on April 21, 1992, at the ripe old age of seventeen, I purchased tickets to see Public Image Ltd. and Big Audio Dynamite live in concert at “The New Ritz,” located forty blocks north of its original namesake—ironically in the former home of Studio 54.

The prospect of seeing John Lydon, of The Actual Sex Pistols, and Mick Jones, of The Actual Clash, live was almost more than I could handle. I was convinced that if my parents learned of my plans, I’d be done with. I was doubly convinced that if the door person asked me for ID, I’d be done with, unaccepted from college and probably arrested. In the days before the internet, when all I had to go on was a small, black and white ad in The Village Voice, I had no idea when the bands would actually be performing. And so, with two twenty dollar bills earned from my math tutoring gig, one ticket and zero ID on hand, I made my way up to midtown, averted the gaze of the door guy and entered the once historic venue that was now a sequel to another, slightly less historic venue. On my way in, I clocked the marquee, which featured “P.I.L” and “Big Audio Dynamite” in huge letters, along with three additional words in a smaller font beneath the headliners. “Blind Melon” was right below Mick Jones’ band. And, beneath that, at the very bottom of the sign was one final, simple word: “Live.”

Naturally I assumed that the word “Live” was merely confirmation that the three aforementioned bands were, in fact, appearing “live” that evening. But, once inside The New Ritz, where posters adorned the walls, I was surprised to learn what was actually in store. First, I saw pictures of P.I.L., who were in a mid-career downturn, and whose lead singer looked so much older than what I had imagined—less seething and sneering and more comically mad. For his part, Mick Jones seemed to have aged better, if not more bizarrely. The ex-Punk was pictured wearing a white denim duster jacket on top of an outfit that I could only describe as “Nike Cowboy.” It was not a style I was familiar with, but also, in 1992, it was not a style I was opposed to. Then, smaller and more scattered, were posters of Blind Melon, who looked almost exactly like The Allman Brothers reborn in Nineties Seattle. And, finally, there were a smattering of posters for “Live,” who I realized were a band in addition to an adjective. They were four guys, seemingly around my age, stuck between talent shows and frat shows. That was it. Just four, totally normal, not weird, not bohemian, not cool dudes.

At 8pm that night, when Live—Ed Kowalczyk, Chad Taylor, Chad Gracey and Patrick Dahlheimer—walked onto the stage and kicked off their set, I sensed that many of my assumptions were correct. They looked young, closer to my peers than to college grads. They wore tshirts, jeans and sweaters that leaned more Gap than Grunge. They sounded unpolished—all energy but barely songs. In retrospect, it was possible that I really did not like them. But I was seventeen and wanted to feel older, cooler, different—something. And so, despite their spasmatic performance and lackluster reception, I walked away that night thinking less about P.I.L., B.A.D. and Blind Melon and much more about the generically named, unknown band from York, Pennsylvania, who—for reasons I cannot altogether explain—I concluded were going to be positively huge.

That conviction was less on the basis of evidence and more a matter of my impregnable brain. In the same way that Johnny Rotten had convinced the world that his terribleness was his greatness and that his misanthropy was his art, Live had convinced me that their conviction was their consecration. For while their name was forgettable and their style was banal, their insistence was astounding. Live out-tried all the other bands that night. They worked harder. They played faster and louder. They had exactly one song that I would call listenable (“Pain Lies on the Riverside”). But that was besides the point. What they had—unlike Blind Melon but not so far from P.I.L.—was a lead singer who would not be denied. He was pure intensity—evidently inspired by Michael Stipe and Bono, but more tenacious and less charming than either. In the same way that I was certain that Tom Cruise could fly planes and hang from the side of mountains, I was confident that Ed Kowalczyk would prevail.

Yes, my mind was malleable and—yes—Kowalczyk had changed its shape. As I entered college, and though I very rarely returned to Live’s debut album, “Mental Jewelry,” I waited for their inevitable world domination. As it turned out, I didn’t have to wait long. In the Spring of 1994, Live returned with “Throwing Copper,” a record that effectively took the baton from Pearl Jam and handed it to Matchbox Twenty. It was a weirdly, imperfectly perfect record for a similarly weird time. “Throwing Copper” produced five top forty Modern Rock radio hits and sold eight million copies in the U.S. alone. Three years removed from that night at The New Ritz, Patrick and the two Chads looked mostly the same, save perhaps for some extra facial hair. But Ed was a different guy. Dagger stare. Shaved head. A braided rat tail. If there was a Hare Krishna fraternity at Penn State, Kowalczyk would have been its president and its mascot. In the videos for “I Alone” and, especially, in “Lightning Crashes,” Live’s frontman took Michael Stipe’s pinched warble, Bono’s universal grandeur and Eddie Vedder’s brooding intensity, added a stepped on dash of George Harrison’s Buddhism, mixed them together, and infected the brains of half a generation.

In the same way that Live had burrowed into my head in 1992 and then into the heads of millions of young Americans in 1994, Kowalczyk’s noodle had been reshaped. First, by his heroes. But, increasingly, by Eastern philosophy. No matter how ridiculous his monastic Grunge look seemed in 1994, it looks exponentially more so now. However, in the days of Stipe and Vedder, what we observed was not that Kowalczyk seemed temperamentally manipulable but that he seemed intensely committed. We believed him because he believed him. All those partially philosophical, more so nonsensical lyrics worked on us because of his devotion to the bit, which—to be clear—he did not consider to be a bit.

Eventually, and like John Lydon, the bit became his greatest feature. Released in early 1997, “Secret Samadhi” was the doubly intense, doubly Buddhist, triply underwhelming follow-up to “Throwing Copper. ” According to Brittainica.com “Samadhi is a state of profound and utterly absorptive contemplation of the Absolute that is undisturbed by desire, anger, or any other ego-generated thought or emotion. It is a state of joyful calm, or even of rapture and beatitude, in which one maintains one's full mental alertness and acuity.” The album’s first single, “Lakini’s Juice,” was a hard turn away from the Bubblegrunge of “Lightning Crashes.” It was—even for Lollapaloozans—a bridge too far. We could take it from George Harrison. We could take it from Perry Farrell. But, when Kowalczyk started singing about the seven chakras, many Modern Rock radio fans called bullshit. That’s the thing about impregnable brains—pregnancies don’t last forever.

Though it still managed to sell over two million copies, “Secret Samadhi” was the beginning of a long, strange end for Ed, the two Chads and Patrick. It’s unclear where exactly things soured—there were whispers that Kowalczyk started making “lead singer demands,” which begat legal maneuvers, which begat a hiatus in 2009, which begat the beginning of Kowalczyk’s solo career, in which he released an album entitled “Alive,” a word which sounded a lot like “Live,” which created confusion in the market and further discontent in the band which, in 2011, begat Ed being fired from the band by the two Chads and Patrick.

Then came the fallout from the firing. Lawsuits got filed. Then countersuits. Then, in 2014, one ill-fated, dead on arrival Live album with Chris Shinn on vocals. Then, slowly and unsurely, a settling of suits, a re-cutting of the financial pie in favor of Kowalczyk, a reunion tour and a smattering of singles. But just when it seemed like Ed, the Chads and Patrick—four lifelong buddies—had finally buried the hatchet, things got weird. Real weird. It turns out that several members of the band—notably Chad Taylor and notably not Ed Kowalczyk—had gotten into business with an entrepreneur who was maybe also a svengali and who definitely turned out to be a crook, a thief, and possibly much worse. Finger pointing led to name calling which—in the Summer of 2022—led to Kowalczyk relieving Chad Taylor of his duties. Then, in the Fall of that same year, he fired Gracey and Dahlheimer. Thirty years after I saw them open for P.I.L. at The New Ritz, Ed Kowalczyk was the sole survivor—because Taylor and Co. believed the promises of a con man. The story of Live is the story of highly pregnable brains—theirs and ours.

Today, Live is Kowalczyk plus paid studio and touring musicians. There’s been no album since the Shinn debacle, but they tour regularly and Kowalczyk—now a fifty-something, rat-tail-less, father of four—charms fans on Totally Nineties tours and delights deejays on retro adult radio formats. In between “Alive” and his return to Live, however, Kowalczyk put out another solo album—a commercial failure and a critical “nope.” Accordingly, fifty year old me had zero interest in this record. But seventeen year old me—the me who was still a work in progress, who was so open to new things and who’d convinced himself that Live were cool and deep and important—felt otherwise. That version of me admired Kowalczyk’s quarter baked philosophy. That me didn’t mind the rat tail braid. That me was prepared to avail himself to,“The Flood and The Mercy,” the second and (to date) final solo album from Ed Kowalczyk.

So—yes—in reaction to my hardening, middle-aged arteries, I chose to dignify seventeen year old me. After a couple false starts, I finally sat down and spent a few hours with my old pal, Ed. By 2014, he’d traded in his skater Gap vibes for all black, gothic youth pastor energy. Similarly, he’d swapped his Buddhism for New Testament fare. But, for as much as had changed, even more remained the same. Kowalczyk’s quivering, deep feeling, Michael Stipe finding his religion tenor was in fine form. Appropriately, for “The Flood and The Mercy,” Kowalzcyk enlisted R.E.M.’s Peter Buck to handle much of the guitar work. And alongside Buck, albeit tucked further back in the mix, is Rachel Yamagata’s unwavering harmony. Aside from those notable names, however, “The Flood and The Mercy” plays it straight. If you asked yourself what Ed Kowalczyk might sound like in 2014 if he were performing in mega-churches instead of stadiums, and with Peter Buck and Rachel Yamagata in his band, whatever you are hearing is likely not too far off.

Which is by no means an indictment. “The Flood and The Mercy” is full bodied and highly professional, bolstered by Buck’s electric jangle and by an abiding sense of drama that never left Kowalczyk. On “The One”—the album’s ostensible single (not that radio seemed to notice)—he trades spirituality for religion, but steers clear of the vapidity of Creed, Daughtry and other faithful modern rockers. The guitar carries a lot of weight, but never so much as Kowalczyk’s instrument, which remains nervy and fearless at once—a trick that he pulls of as well as anybody not named he Michael Stipe. Like “Lightning Crashes” and “I Alone,” the best stuff on “The Flood and the Mercy” employs a time-tested formula—quiet, then loud, then louder. That was always Live’s gift, an oversimplification The Pixies and Nirvana—formal predictability framing unpredictable energy. Live never did it better, but they did it simpler.

If the acoustic first and second verses into an electric third and fourth were indisputable features of Kowalczyk, his lyrics were always the bugs. Back in 1994—even while we sang along—we still winced when he infamously proffered:

Lightning crashes

A new mother cries

Her placenta falls to the floor

The angel opens her eyes

The confusion sets in

Before the doctor can even close the door

Lightning crashes

An old mother dies

Frankly, it got worse before it got better. Ed’s penchant for sub-college poetry, borrowed from hackneyed religious tropes, is the stuff of legends. It’s the thing that separated him from Stipe, Bono and Farrell—his inability to navigate the line between personal and universal. It’s the aspect of his music that most induces cringe, that makes you stop and think, “Wait, what? What did he just say?” And though Kowalczyk grew up, swapped out his band and traded vague Buddhism for clear Christianity, his achilles heel never healed. On “Angels on a Razor,” which is, incidentally, one of the best songs on the record, Ed risks his artistic credibility with lines like:

Standing in a daze at the edge of time

Into the garden a child wanders

Innocent one what did you find?

Where did you go?

And on “Holy Water Tears” (detecting a theme here), one of the album’s few truly tepid affairs, he’s sinks deeper into cliche:

Made whole again

I found peace in your valley

From the war in town

I found my holy water in your tears

Graciously, Kowalczyk is his own best savior. “Supernatural Fire” is high end Power Pop that verges on Pop Punk. It’s a song that no one outside of Live die hards will ever hear, but will quietly survive as a testament to Ed’s knack for melody and spectacle. And the album’s closer, “Cornerstone,” is a lovely, steeple-shaking ballad that insists: “don’t let the builder refuse / we’ll always be the head cornerstone.” Eleven songs after he began, Ed Kowalczyk still sounds like Ed Kowalczyk. But his band and their music are born again.

For three hours—four full spins of the record—so am I. Or rather, so is seventeen year old me. Meanwhile, fifty year old me assumes that he’ll never listen to “The Flood and The Mercy” again. Which is no affront to teenage me or—even really—to the record. “The Flood and The Mercy” drips with feeling and craft. It’s an above average record from a well above average artist. And while lacks the mind melting intensity of 1994 Live, I confess that—days later—I’m still thinking about it. And I’m still wondering whether that is because of some extraordinary talent that Kowalczyk possesses or some nostalgic pull that Live still holds over me or, simply, the pregnable nature of the human mind.

by Matty Wishnow