50 years ago (May 1969), as the Vietnam War was in full swing, Suite 1742 of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel was host to the most famous couple of the times.
John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Bed-In for Peace was forever etched into the history of our city as a peaceful protest that gave us the song “Give Peace a Chance.”
Chantal Kreviazuk & Raine Maida (Our Lady Peace) wanted to commemorate the 50thAnniversary with discussions of love, peace, and harmony.
Montreal Rocks had the opportunity to join in the discussion and hear the song “I Can Change” in one of the most intimate settings one could imagine.
We spoke about how best to implement peace in our day to day lives. We spoke about the raw and uncensored documentary they filmed to accompany the Moon VS Sun album. We spoke about relationships, raising kids and the partnership that is marriage. We spoke of the creative process of making music and how art imitates life.
While this might seem like a long read…it’s an important one. If you are a couple…you need to read this. If you have children…you need to read this. If you are single…you need to read this. Basically…if you are 120 years or younger, you need to read this. Hey…if you are over 120 years…nothing we said is going to change your ways.
If you really don’t’ want to read…just skip to the bottom to see Chantal and Raine sing a bed-in version of “I Can Change.”
As we saw the suite door, we couldn’t help feeling tingles. In the history of music, a few hotel rooms have been iconic, but usually for the wrong reasons. This room was vibrating positivity.
We made our way to the end of the room corridor and noticed to the left of us, the famous bed, draped in white, with Chantal and Raine sitting comfortably within its covers.
The windows behind them would have those 4 words: “Hair Peace” and “Bed Peace”
In a corner, a retro TV is playing scenes from the event 50 years ago in a loop.
Chantal and Raine, under the name Moon VS Sun, are touring their album “I’m Going to Break Your Heart” which is the movie soundtrack to a very intimate look at both the creative process, and the raw emotions between a husband and his wife.
Filmed in the isolated island of Saint Pierre & Miquelon, the couple shared their story without the filter of the perfect life.
All of this would come full circle during our discussion as I sat at the foot of the bed.
NOTE: I was going to shorten the piece but considering the depth of the conversation and the importance of the topic, I decided to present you the full interview.
Annette (Montreal Rocks): I listened to the album and found it so intense, raw and emotional. I’ve been married almost 27 years and I find marriage very hard.
Raine: Not for us!
Chantal: He’s kidding.
Annette: How do you feel exposing yourself so much? That’s brave.
Raine: It’s very confined to the process. The whole concept behind the documentary was us writing songs together. We’ve never done that before. In 20 years of partnership together, we’ve never made an album together. We finally did that. In recording the process of writing together, you can’t omit how we get along together because we have been married for almost 20 years. That’s a very intrinsic part of being creative, how we are as partners. It would have been inauthentic to omit that. At the end of the day, when you see the documentary, it’s about that. It’s not reality TV.
Annette: It’s personal.
Chantal: Because we are in this bed, this room, we want to shine a light on why John and Yoko were here. They were here to shine a light on peace. When I realized it had been 50 years since they had been in this room, that was sobering to me. I feel they were trying to talk about peace, more of at a macro level. Maybe where there is some synergy here, is that Raine and I are trying to talk about, in our music, peace in your heart, peace in your mind. The mental health we get from our relationships.
Raine: Vietnam was an issue back then. John Lennon was such a massive figure. Yoko as well. They had this voice to protest something big like that. I don’t think we would take something like that on, but I think we realize, living in a culture of violence, that we can be here, 50 years later, in the same room, talking about the same thing.
Chantal: Not much has changed.
Raine: What we can do, as humans, as parents, is make sure that peace starts at home. That’s the way we can change things.
“Make sure that peace starts at home. That’s the way we can change things.” – Raine Maida
Chantal: Being in this room has triggered some incredible thoughts. It’s very moving. It’s hard not to cry being in this room.
NOTE: There is a reel to reel player on the side table, a TV with footage of John & Yoko in this very room. A relic rotary phone which plays interviews on a loop…you are really transported back to the end of the 60s.
Chantal: We couldn’t even sleep in the bed. We had to go in the other room.
We seem to put peace in a box. We say that peace is for children and we protect them. We make sure children behave a certain way. But then, it’s OK in adulthood, in business or in war. Peace is not something that exists in everything. That’s the inconsistency.
Here we are, 50 years later. Perhaps if peace was the goal from the beginning, how we live together in our homes and when we left our homes, and how we treat each other, we would maybe have more success.
Sometimes we are nicer to someone we see once a year than we are to our own partner.
Raine: I just think it’s a different approach. For us, to start at home, I think we have a better chance. What they (John and Yoko) were trying to do was very difficult.
Annette: Basically, start at home and teach your children.
Raine: Yes. Let them be the advocates and evangelists for peace out in the world.
Chantal: Raine and I love the idea of getting help from an expert like a marriage coach, a family coach. We’ve heard that how the mom and dad are, the couple, is actually far more effective than thinking it’s how you are with your kid.
Annette: Because they are observing everything, all the time.
Chantal: That’s it. For us, it was a simple message to come here today and remind people: Just be nice to each other.
Randal (Montreal Rocks): Since the 50 years have gone by, what were the things that stuck with that message and what are the things we need to be reminded of?
Chantal: There is still peace in music, I feel. People can express themselves in music.
Raine: I know the cliché of make love not war. Make art, not war is still powerful. When I think of a protest song, I think of John Lennon and obviously Dylan. The natural evolution of that was probably Rage Against the Machine. In modern times, I don’t think there’s been a band that has stood up for human rights in that powerful of a way. Now, 20 years later, we are still looking for that beacon.
What the creative mind does to the outside world is art. There is something so peaceful about art.
Chantal: There is a safety in it, right?
Randal: There’s a vulnerability.
Raine: Yeah, there’s a vulnerability. That humility of being an artist just lends itself to a more peaceful path.
Randal: Yoko Ono was very misunderstood.
Chantal: Wasn’t she?
Randal: She was a creative genius who gave a lot of power and inspiration for John to do the work. It was a collaborative work, especially the Imagine album. So, who in the relationship is the Yoko?
Chantal: Me! I am!
Raine: This is a very important question because I think there is something generational, obviously back then. Where we’ve progressed through is that of collaboration and equity. We are collaborators.
Chantal: Yoko was just given the credit on the song Imagine. (2017)
Randal: You can see her in the footage actually writing the lyrics along with John.
Chantal: Actually, she was doing a project called Imagine the dream or something. He was inspired by it.
I’m sure any married couple can attest to the fact that you are around each other, watching each other, borrowing from each other, evolving together and growing together. What I think is amazing is that Raine and I have a chance to not have to hide behind any roles. We get to just be who we are, support each other equally and have an equal voice.
Randal: You mentioned (in an interview) that you heard Raine playing something and you got inspired, joined him and collaborated with him on the spot. Is that something that is just natural now?
Raine: We do that in every aspect of our lives, whether it’s parenting, music or going shopping for food. It’s very natural to us. In the film, you see that it’s a struggle, right? You are trying to find that balance. We have three boys. It’s really important that they see that and grow up and see that there needs to be equity in this world.
Chantal: There needs to be some restraint. It’s that macro and micro-message. I don’t like everything he (Raine) does, he doesn’t like everything I do. We say it in our music. We can’t forgive everything…but so what? On a macro level, in the world, we need to start showing that.
Randal: Different ways to think. Different ways to do things. Different cultures.
Raine: Absolutely. Collaboration on any level is never perfect. It’s not supposed to be, right? It takes work. It takes compromise.
Randal: Some of the best songs are the imperfect ones.
Chantal: That’s it.
Randal: A broken heart saying a message. It’s not a perfect life. I think that’s why people can relate to it. What you are doing here, this message of peace…I don’t think there is a better time to relate to this.
Chantal: This is why I could not believe 50 years have gone by. I truly thought to myself: Wow…we should be all over this. This should be something people are continually talking about. What does the new peace look like? To us, it looks like peace starting at home. How you treat your community. How you treat your partner.
Raine: I think we are finding, making that link now with community and peace at home, that it is mental health. Everyone uses mental health on this grand scale, but the micro of it is so vital to what you put out in the world. It really does start at home, bringing up the younger generation with awareness of what is out there.
Chantal: So much stimulation.
Raine: No matter what, we live in this culture of hyper-violence. The only way to combat that is to have some sort of peace and control at home. You can’t get away from it, you need to balance it out.
Chantal: I will often hear in the news: This was terrorism. This was a mass murder. They try to put it in a category of violence. Then I think to myself: Well, no one was in a good state of mind when they did that. Someone felt really badly about something that they reacted with such intense violence. Right back to the beginning of where they lived, where they were loved or not loved…that’s where something went incredibly wrong. I do think that the message of starting peace at home is incredibly powerful.
Even if John and Yoko were talking about peace in Vietnam and peace in the world, they had their son in the bed. They were loving each other. They were close. They were gentle. Caressing each other.
Raine: Smoking their faces off! (laughs)
Chantal: They were in love. They were embodying love. There weren’t perfect, but they tried to show love to each other.
Steve (Montreal Rocks): That mental health thing came around to ending his life.
Chantal: It did. Chapman was sick.
Zac (Stingray): For artists today, maybe the young artists who are obsessed with clout, followers and likes…being attractive to everybody. What is the most important thing that other artists can do to help promote love, peace, and acceptance?
Chantal: We can’t control what everyone does, except our own self. I was just saying to Raine today, John had all this money. He was the dopest mofo on the PLANET. He jumped into bed with his wife for a week in Montreal. Think of a homey right now that is dedicated, at the height of their career, where everyone in the world knows them like Jesus or something…and they turn around and say: No, I want to talk about peace.
Raine: When I think of this culture of violence, throwing social media in there is definitely a component of it. It is this war you have to wage on the difference between what you want people to think your life looks like, compared to what it really is. The mental health factor in there is so twisted.
Chantal: So twisted. Perception, perception, perception.
Raine: That could end up being the biggest proponent of the decline of mental health in our society over the next 15 years. We are seeing it already.
Chantal: Raine always says, keep it simple. No matter what’s been going on in our life as musicians, keeping it close to your love is healthy.
Raine: You see the cultural trends, right? Farm to table. That is about simplicity with our food source. I think we need to get to something close to farm to table with our personal relationships.
Chantal: Don’t give so much energy to what the masses think of you. Be in the wonderment. Be in your moment. Doing the best with the people around you is healthier. That’s been the greatest gift in my life, nurturing the closest relationships.
Annette: On that note, you have three teenage boys. How do they feel about this film you made? Are they in it at all?
Raine: Not really. We definitely didn’t want to exploit that side of our family life. They will probably learn more from it because they don’t see the process. They hear us bicker and actually do work, even in the house, but you really get to see the process in this film. OK…they are committed to sitting down and doing that work. It’s not easy, right? You have to be really vulnerable.
Chantal: And you have your peaks and valleys. Our kids know that. I think that all children need to feel that they are safe and trust that their parents are OK. If their parents are OK, they are OK.
We are a really tight, tight family. We spend a lot of time together. We all love sports, art, and music. They are pretty cool kids because of that time we spend with each other.
Annette: They have cool parents.
Chantal: If that’s what being cool is…
Randal: Staying grounded.
Chantal: Yeah.
Raine: It’s about that safe communication. In terms of mental health, the old adage is: When one person is sick, the whole family is sick. As long as you can keep that at bay, and keep that safety in the house, then everyone’s OK.
Chantal: You have to give them space too. Raine and I are good at policing each other and saying: OK, that’s enough. Take a minute…
Raine: We read this interesting thing. For a teenager, your expectations are that they act like an adult, but they don’t have the independence of an adult.
Chantal: They want autonomy, but nobody gives them that respect, right?
Raine: So, it’s a very unfair proposition.
Chantal: It’s a tough transition.
Randal: It’s like a spring. If you hold it too tight, it’s just going to fly off, but if you can let it go gradually, that’s how you can give them that respect and independence.
Raine: Yeah. It’s all a work in progress. At the end of the day, the idea is having that safe communication, no matter what’s going on.
Chantal: Keep it calm!
Raine: It’s hard to do, right? I’m Italian, it’s brutal. (laughs)
Chantal: We are all very fascist. You learn that when you start to dive into why so many of us are damaged, broken, and don’t have healthy love and healthy minds. There has to be an equity. Like Elliott (in the room) is a kid, but he feels everything for real. So, who am I to dismiss or disrespect what is going inside of him at any given moment? That’s real to him.
The idea that we try to work into this context is: OK (speaking to the child). Why don’t you invest in how we are going to make this right? I don’t agree with how you want it, but maybe we can find a middle ground together, that we can both live with.
In the dictatorship style, there is always a winner and a loser. In peace, no one walks away a loser.
“In peace, no one walks away a loser.” – Chantal Kreviazuk
There’s no bully. If there is a bully and someone won, then everybody lost. That’s what we have in our marriages. That’s what we have in at home: The opportunity to create respect. The idea that everybody deserves respect. No one chooses where they are born in this world. We don’t choose who we are born to.
Raine: Yeah. The thought of a child feeling invisible in their own home is just a heartbreaking proposition.
Chantal: It’s devastating.
Raine: When you talk about mental health, at the core of it, people just need to be heard. Really heard.
Chantal: Listened to. They need to matter. Some children now are afraid to go to school. There might be violence at school, someone comes with a gun. Where are the adults? Why are we not coming in and protecting our children’s safety? These are the questions, right?
(NOTE: I believe Chantal is referring to the adults of the troubled teens. What more can be done to raise a child that doesn’t do an atrocious act?)
Zac: It’s so easy to show someone negativity, anger, and sadness. It’s a lot harder to show happiness and love sometimes. What’s the simplest way you show each other love on a regular basis?
Chantal: You have to actually plan it and put it into practice. It’s the same way you put your tennis swing in practice or your yoga in practice. You have to plan it a bit. It’s a commitment.
Raine: I can’t even believe I’m saying this. Chantal is very proactive and embraces this new communication. I don’t fight it, but I’m a little slower to come to it.
This is very new, but we have a Podcast and we’ve been interviewing other couples that collaborate, such as musicians, and films writers. We interviewed this couple that started this couple’s therapy/coaching. They talked about this one thing they do as part of their group sessions. Every night, before going to sleep, give each other 3 affirmations. It’s so hard sometimes. (laughs)
Chantal: It isn’t though.
Raine: It isn’t, but it is.
Chantal: It’s not hard to think of something you love that your spouse did that day. That’s not hard. It’s the: OK, I’m going to say this right now…because I’m supposed to.
Raine: It’s like the pressure of having to pull that out. The pressure of: Is this the right thing I should be saying to my partner? But, you literally do it in bed. I swear to God, I sleep better. It’s the synapse that happens in my brain directly after…I fall asleep.
Randal: You can do that with children too.
Chantal: We do it with our kids!
Randal: What are the three things you are grateful for today? You will get way better answers than if you asked: What did you do in school today?
Zac: It’s a lot easier to say to your kids: “I love the way you…” The relationship with my child is an unconditional love. The relationship with my wife is not the same. It’s just the way it is.
Chantal: You are hitting on a really big thing here. I know this sounds really hippy-dippy, but we are all in each other’s care. We are all each other’s kids.
“We are all in each other’s care. We are all each other’s kids.” – Chantal Kreviazuk
I think: If it’s good for a kid, it’s good for a person. If I read a bottle and it says: Do not use on infants. I’m like: I’m not putting that on my skin! If you wouldn’t put it on a baby’s skin, why would I put it on mine? It’s the same with how you should treat people. Why do we treat kids a certain way?
I need Raine to tell me if I look good or I’m cute. I do.
Zac: You look good. (laughs)
Chantal: Who else am I getting it from? I only want it from him. I love it from my mom or my friends. It’s sweet, but that’s (Raine) who I want it from, right? So, we are each other’s kids, for sure.
Randal: Try to impress the people that love you, not those you don’t even know.
Chantal: THOSE YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW!
Randal: That’s what the social media pressure is.
Chantal: How empty are our buckets when we want it from people that are not even in our sphere?
Zac: That’s a natural feeling. If my wife says: You look really great today…you look hot today. Ahh…thanks. If a stranger on the street stopped me and said: You look hot today. (laughs)
Raine: You would blush.
Chantal: And you dismiss it.
Raine: What you are talking about, that social media modeling. It’s so twisted.
Randal: It’s not a good pattern.
Chantal: And it’s never going to get better. The OS (Operating System) hasn’t changed. We are still human beings. I don’t think it will ever get to where it fills your bucket. The only one that is going to fill it is at home.
Randal: I’m looking at the four words behind you. Hair Peace, Bed Peace. Well…there are three words, one repeated twice. But HAIR. Her (Yoko) hair was a mess. It wasn’t perfect. That’s part of the whole thing. We don’t have to be perfect.
Chantal: No.
Randal: We talked about social media and everybody wants to be perfect. Everything has to be the perfect life.
Annette: Filters, filters, filters.
Randal: Let your hair go.
Chantal: Yeah! Let your hair down!
Raine: Not to bring it back to our doc, but that’s the redeeming quality for me. That’s why we are comfortable putting it out there. In an age of Reality TV where it’s not…it’s scripted.
Chantal: There is nothing real about Reality TV.
Raine: It’s all treated afterwards. Everyone looks perfect. It’s all sensationalized. What we show in our documentary is the imperfection that is parallel to art. At least the art that we like, we grew up on. It is Lennon. It’s Dylan. It’s Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, and all these incredible artists…where it was never about perfection. It was about…
Chantal: Truth.
Raine: …the authenticity of their voice and what they wanted to say.
Chantal: Yes. Art is truth.
“Art is truth.” – Chantal Kreviazuk
Raine: We lost that.
Chantal: Art is not just entertainment. That’s the circus. It’s a different thing.
Annette: It’s money, money, money.
Randal: Some of the best albums were not written to please a million people. They were written to please 5 people, 10 people.
Raine: As an artist, you are pleasing yourself. Your feeling you have…
Chantal: Catharsis.
Raine: Yeah. You use it as some sort of cathartic journey. It just so happens that if it’s authentic, you are going to find that other people connect to it.
Chantal: Oh yeah. People insert themselves into truth. We are all not that much different.
Raine: The ambition is really to just sit down with a guitar. Even Chantal and I went to this island, just to get away from life and everything. To sit and write these songs together, for us. We happen to film it, but it was just that journey. It was something we needed to do for us, in a very cathartic…we are going to talk about things…
Chantal: That matter.
Raine: …that matter to us and we will drive our relationship forward.
Randal: I’m not impressed by fame. I’m impressed by what people do with their fame. What you guys are doing is very admirable. You are taking the lead in being vulnerable. If more people, within marriage, within life become more vulnerable…it’s a good contagion.
Raine: Thank-you.
Chantal: Thank-you for that. I’m so surprised that we have not started to talk about this earlier. The truth about the challenge of relationships and knowing how to be great at them. It’s an incredibly important conversation and it might be the beginning of actual, actual action.
Randal: We teach our kids how to calculate, how to memorize, but we don’t teach them how to live, in school. It’s our responsibility.
Raine: I think some of it has to do with semantics. When you talk about sports, learning how to code, or all these other things we are going to take out there into life and help you be successful…learning and coaching are two of the headers that we use. When we talk about relationships, it’s therapy. That has negative connotations.
Chantal: Yeah…it’s just learning.
Raine: For us, what really changed was when our therapist…
Chantal: He doesn’t call himself a therapist.
Raine: He’s a relationship, a communications coach. For me, there was definitely a little stigma. As soon as you put it on that level…it’s coaching. Like sure!
Randal: Every athlete has a coach.
Chantal: They don’t just watch the game, they watch the practice.
Raine: They film everything, right? So, you are watching tape before and afterwards. On a relationship, if you can get better at those skills…why not?
Chantal: Look at what the kids are watching. What’s modeling to the kids? What tape are they rolling back?
Raine: They are watching you, obviously.
Chantal: They are watching us, but they are watching their screens. We teach them the Math, the sciences and all that…but we don’t teach them how to love…life skills…to give them the tools to love and live. Maybe we just assumed they had them. Maybe we made a mistake and assumed we were showing them that. When was the last time we were actually reminded, corrected or brought into an awareness of it? That consciousness is super powerful. Bringing the children to learning self-awareness, coping mechanisms and boundaries when they are really little. These simple things are just going to go so far when they become the vernacular of our society.
Raine: There is connection we have gotten closer to, where we bridged that gap. We understand the critical mind. It’s all Mathematics and languages because your parents want you to grow up to be doctors or lawyers. Now we understand you also have to be creative. We need more Steve Jobs or Elon Musk…people that are going to save the world.
Chantal: Innovative.
Raine: You need that balance. There is an emotional intelligence now that we are realizing is also important. We have to look for more of this kind of trifecta.
Chantal: There is a Math in relationships too.
Randal: It’s not 50/50. It’s 100/100. You have to put in 100% for both of you.
Raine: Yeah.
Randal: I’m married too…almost 27 years…happily married for 15. (laughs)
Zac: Not in a row either! (laughs)
Chantal: A 75-year Harvard study just came out. It said that of the Harvard graduates who all went on to be the greatest scientists, doctors, legal mind, politicians, etc. They’ve come to the conclusion, from the study, that none of the happiness was derived from any of their outward successes. It was all attributed to the love relationships in their life, to their mate, and what they were giving and getting back at the end of their life.
Randal: You will not be on your deathbed and say: I wish I would have spent another day at the office.
Chantal: It’s an arc, right? We have to be more conscious of the whole story, not putting it in a box over there.
Annette: I’m curious. How do you perform on stage on days when you want to strangle each other? Like a June and Johnny Cash…
Chantal: The other night, I said to him before we walked out on stage: I’m miffed. Do not bring it up on stage. I mean it! I was serious and he knew I was.
Zac: You (Raine) did bring it up.
Raine: Of course. (laughs) I did right away. She wouldn’t even look at me. It was the first song, so I thought…OK…we have to get this out.
Chantal: You know what’s funny? John Lennon said people have all these ways they think they are getting it. How they want it. He said we are not doing it like that. We are doing it with peace, and we are doing it with humour.
Annette: Humour helps.
Chantal: There is nothing like humour in music, at all. Those are the medicines of life, for sure.
Annette: In marriage, you really need humour as well.
Chantal: Oh…humour.
Raine: Getting over things really quick. That’s been the biggest challenge for me.
Chantal: The measurement of a healthy relationship is how quickly you get over things.
Randal: Take a 1-hour walk, half an hour before any argument.
Chantal: Before an argument? (laughs)
Randal: That’s the secret.
Chantal: You are a genius.
If there is one message, we can all get from John and Yoko, and this room: Let’s think about our love relationship more. How much it means to us. What are we giving it? What are we getting from it?
Annette: Empathy.
Chantal: Yeah! Forgive each other more.
Randal: Maybe listen to your album when you are in bed.
Chantal: …and listen to your own album when you are in bed. (laughs)
Zac: When is the first-time you guys wrote a song about the other person?
Chantal: I must have written “Until We Die” on my second album Colour Moving and Still about Raine.
Zac: You say must have?
Chantal: I think that was it. I remember he as on tour and I had just written it. I had a show at Molson Amphitheatre in Toronto. I said, if you get home in time, there is an envelope on the counter, bring it with you to the show. Open it when I signal to you. I made him open the paper with the words on it. It was me proclaiming that I wanted to live my whole life with him, in the song.
Raine: It’s a tough one.
Chantal: I know. When I sing it now, I’m like…Oh my God, I was amazing. (laughs) Just kidding.
One of the most beautiful Our Lady Peace songs, to me, is “Apology”. The words in the song…I can’t listen to the song without crying. I can’t. The kids know if we are in the car and it comes on the iPod, Ah…mom’s crying again. It’s so beautiful.
Randal: There is one song you wrote: “I Can Change.” You refer to it as conceiving a song.
Raine: Yeah.
Randal: You conceived three boys. What’s the difference between giving birth to a song and giving birth to children? Hopefully one is not as painful.
Raine: It’s funny you ask that because that’s the one song in the film that you see the birth of a song. Form the very first start of the piano riff, to writing the lyrics, working out the melodies and we recorded in that hotel room, on this little island.
Chantal: And that’s what’s on the album.
Randal: That take?
Raine: It was all done in three or four hours. That process is something that is…
Chantal: It’s sacred.
Raine: It’s so fulfilling, creatively…to be in the moment. And then, to have it documented, to be able to watch it back. I’ve watched a lot of music docs. I’m a music fan at heart. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen THAT.
Randal: That spark.
Raine: From the inception of the idea to being recorded in a small time frame…yeah.
Chantal: It reminds me of when they put the camera in the beaver dam. The first time you got to see the beavers. You go: Holy crap! They clean the nest every night? New nest! It’s so cool and you get to see that. It’s not something that’s exposed very often, beginning to end, you know?
Raine: That song started from an argument.
Chantal: Oh yeah, we were not in a good place.
Raine: It started from tension, so it shows you this cathartic journey that heals everything at the end of the day. We are lucky. We are told that you have to find what your music is.
Chantal: The metaphor of music together is that we collaborate, make harmony with our really different voices. Raine has this deep sound. We share a couple of similarities, we jump to our falsettos and various things, but when we get together, we complement each other. We do that by blending, we do that by listening very carefully to the other person and harmonizing. Finding pitch.
Raine: That’s the key thing in what you said. In life, it’s listening. You said that before.
Chantal: Paying close attention.
Raine: In this dynamic with Moon VS Sun, we listen, more than I’ve ever listened as an artist before in my life.
Chantal: If we can use that as a metaphor for life: Listen a bit more. Be respectful of the other person’s attributes and qualities. Design around that.
Randal: That goes to being heard.
Raine: Definitely.
Chantal: Yoko said: We dream alone? No. We dream with someone else. That’s where we get a resolution. That’s where change comes.
Raine: That’s beautiful.
Chantal: We are stronger when we are two. I’ve always loved being an artist alone, but sometimes, when I think about my career, almost 25 years…I feel like I wasn’t doing anything. When I’m with him, I feel like that was like a waste or something. Doing it together, oh my God, it’s so much better than doing it alone.
Randal: There’s a guitar…are we going to hear something?
Chantal & Raine played an intimate song in an intimate setting. 50 years ago, John and Yoko asked to give peace a chance. I’m afraid it wasn’t given a fair chance.
But leaving the macro, and focusing on the micro, “I Can Change” is the new anthem of our generation.
Change can come if everyone changes the way they find fulfillment. Forget about buying things you don’t need, to impress people you don’t know. Focus on those who care and love you.
It’s a message that is so simple, yet more powerful than you could imagine. Making sure our loved ones feel heard. Making sure we create music with our mate, maybe not literal like Chantal and Raine, but the harmony of two different voices coming together.
Having the perspective that getting help is not a sign of failure. Every athlete has a coach.
I always say: You can’t read the label when you are inside the jar. Having an outsider’s perspective can be a powerful advantage, and who doesn’t want an advantage?
I left the room feeling that I can change. I can be better with my relationships. I just need to work harder, not at work, but at home.
Raine said it best: “Make sure that peace starts at home. That’s the way we can change things.”
Interview: Randal Wark is a Professional Speaker and MasterMind Facilitator with a passion for live music. You can follow him on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
Interview: Annette Aghazarian
Photos: Steve Gerrard
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