Soul Searching Collective Soul’s New Album Lashes Back At Ex-Manager After Long, Nasty Lawsuit

Imagine selling a combined 6 million copies of your first two albums. Imagine also scoring five hit singles, opening tours for Aerosmith and Van Halen, headlining MTV’s Spring Break, and performing on the “Late Show with David Letterman” four times and the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno” twice.

Then imagine coming home and having your assets frozen by litigation, forcing you to move in with your parents because you have no money. You then retreat to a cabin in the woods to write songs and purge the anger from your system.

This all happened to Collective Soul, a craft-conscious pop-rock band that had to wait years for success and then had to wait another nine months to get paid while a nasty lawsuit broke out with its former manager.

“We were working in a small cabin not by choice,” Collective Soul singer Ed Roland says of his Georgia-based band. “We were in a legal bind that grounded us.”

Legal binds with ex-managers are not uncommon. And Collective Soul still managed to persevere, producing the aptly named “Disciplined Breakdown,” a new album that’s out this week. It already boasts a hit single in the panoramic “Precious Declaration,” with its blunt verse “Yours is yours - and mine, you leave alone now.”

Could these sentiments be aimed at ex-manager Bill Richardson, with whom Roland cites “differences of opinion”?

“It’s not aimed at any one specific person,” says Roland, who’s normally a turn-the-other-cheek sort and is the son of a Southern Baptist minister.

“We’re very optimistic people … and we try to find the good in everything,” Roland says of his guitar-driven band, which first burst upon the scene with the uplifting “Shine” three years ago.

“But I honestly feel at the time (of making the new album) that we had a kind of physical and mental breakdown. Somehow we kept our sanity because we want this career and want to stay together as a band. But it’s tough when the first thing you do each day is talk to lawyers.”

Roland doesn’t wish to elaborate on the lawsuit, but says it’s now settled and the group has found a new manager in Arthur Spivak.

The new disc still stresses the mainstream-inspired guitar rock that lay behind earlier hits “Shine,” “December,” “Where the River Flows,” “Gel” and “The World I Know.” The new single “Precious Declaration” even has a riff reminiscent of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way.” Notes Roland: “Any band that says it hasn’t been influenced by Aerosmith is lying.”

The new album, which has a welcome rawness compared with past efforts, has several other songs dealing with anger, such as “Blame” (“You lay me out in hopes I’d wilt away”), “Listen” (“If only your heart could open”), and “Crowded Head” (“All of your madness is crowded in my head”). But there are also songs of turning the corner and rediscovering faith, such as “Forgiveness” (“All I really want to learn is forgiveness”), the poppy “Link” (about a “link of love”) and “In Between,” with the verse “We long for healers.”

“Now that the (lawsuit) is over, we just want to move on,” says Roland, who at age 33 is nine years older than any of the other Collective Soul band members. These number his brother, Dean, on rhythm guitar; Ross Childress on lead guitar; Shane Evans on drums; and Will Turpin on bass.

Why the age difference? “I wore through the guys in my generation. They went out and got real jobs,” says Roland, who formed Collective Soul in the early ‘90s after playing in two other Georgia bands, Marching Two-Step and the Siren.

Roland, whose group will tour the United States in May, has paid his dues since attending Berklee College of Music in the early ‘80s. At that time he was a big fan of the Boston band the Cars. He says he once saw Cars singer Ben Orr at an airport, “but I was too scared to talk to him.”

Roland cites his love of acts such as the Cars, Elton John, the Beatles, Aerosmith and Van Halen for convincing him that melody is still the key to lasting rock ‘n’ roll.

“I would like to think that we learned something from the masters,” he concludes.