Two years after releasing their first album, The Death Of A Dictionary, under the name Public Affection, the York, Pennsylvania, alt rockers issued Mental Jewelry with their new moniker, Live. Many of the tracks, including "Operation Spirit (The Tyranny Of Tradition)," were influenced by the writings of Jiddu Krishnamurti, reflecting lead singer Ed Kowalczyk's fascination with Eastern religions that would inspire his lyrics for years to come. Kowalczyk told Spin magazine how he discovered the Indian philosopher's work: "I picked up Krishnamurti's You Are The World in some kind of New Age bookstore when I was 18 when I was surrounded by all this baby-talk philosophy, and I read it and thought, 'Damn this is so unique.' ... His basic philosophy is that all knowledge is limited, so no matter how elite you are in the world of knowledge, even if you were a saint, as long as your idea of God or truth or whatever is projected from that limited source, then it is essentially not true."
Kowalczyk recalled how the song came together in a 2017
Guitar World interview: "I remember sitting in the practice loft of Chad Gracey's garage and Chad Taylor was there playing this rhythmic groove. I was following his rhythm and started doing a chant over that. There are only two or three more chords but there was enough to get an emotion across. Then you add Gracey's drumming and how energetic the song is. We wanted a song that would grab people's attention right out of the box. It definitely did that."
Taylor added: "At the time, I had no idea I was even writing a song. I remember Ed telling me to keep playing and then he started singing overtop of it. That's actually my first memory of a collaboration with Ed. The other funny story about that song is because it was one of the first songs we had written, I remember telling our manager that I didn't think it should be on the album. I have to laugh at that now because it came out of the box and was the signature thing that started to build the band. But again, we were young and blissfully unaware of the business and were just trying to put our best foot forward."
The music video, directed by George Seminara (the Ramones' "I Believe In Miracles"), finds the band performing in front of a raging fire on a beach. Kowalczyk remember being scared of the inferno, but thought it was a great metaphor for the young band's career at the time. He explained in a 2004 interview: "It's so representative of how we felt, which was like on fire with youth and this new band, this new ability to kind of like put songs together and actually get through a whole show." The band's manager had the idea of a Lord Of The Flies-type concept, with the guys getting primal on the beach with their shirts off. Instead of asking them directly, he had the attractive female camerawoman ask the band to go shirtless so they'd be more likely to comply.
The song got a big boost when MTV put the video in rotation. Kowalczyk recalled: "I'm 20 years old, I have no hair on my chest, and I'm singing to you on MTV. And you're going to listen whether you like it or not, because MTV said so. I mean, literally, we made a $5,000 video, bunch of kids from York, Pennsylvania, and they put it smack dab between Michael Jackson and Madonna."
The single peaked at #9 on the Modern Rock chart.
Kowalczyk, a lapsed Catholic, takes a dismissive stance on Western religion, singing:
Heard a lot of talk about this Jesus
A man of love, a man of strength
But what a man was two thousand years ago
Means nothing at all to me today
But, eventually, the singer had a change of heart. After he left the band in 2010 to pursue a solo career, Kowalczyk re-emerged as a Christian and released the spiritual album Alive, which reached the Top 10 of the Christian Albums chart.
The album was produced by Talking Heads guitarist Jerry Harrison, who reunited with the band for their next album, the smash hit Throwing Copper.
