BAM interview from BAM (Bay Area Music magazine) Jan 11, 1991 by Chris Morris YOUNG MEN'S BLOOZE The Black Crowes Shake A Tired and True Sound The Black Crowes' pre-Christmas homecoming in their hometown of Atlanta is a combination of the lunatic and the mundane, the slightly off-center, and the utterly homely. And that, I suppose, is how it should be. A year ago, the Crowes played the Cotton Club, one of Atlanta's leading rock venues, for free, and didn't draw flies. But things have changed since those lean days not too long ago. In the intervening twelve months, the band released its debut Def American album, Shake Your Moneymaker, which turned into one of the hit albums of 1990 (by December [1990], it had sold a million copies [current sales over 5 million worldwide- D.F.]). The record's first single, "Jealous Again," became one of the most played tracks on album radio. The group toured relentlessly, both here and abroad, following opening stints for Heart, Aerosmith, and Robert Plant with a two-month, soldout tour of clubs and small halls; they'll begin another two-month swing opening for ZZ Top in the East this month. Nearly unknown and often reviled on their home turf months before, the Black Crowes are coming back as the biggest thing to hit Atlanta since Sherman's army. Things crackly more than a little on the boards at the Center Stage, the one-thousand seat, amphitheater-like concert hall where the Black Crowes are playing three nights. On the two evenings I witness, the five-piece band (augmented for the occasion by ex-Allman Brothers keyboardist Chuck Leavell, who recorded with the Crowes on Money Maker) stomps tight and hard through rocket-like sets of its Rolling Stones/Small Faces-derived blues-rock. Fist fights erupt with frequency in the audience. ("Craaazy muthafuckas out there tonight," lead singer Chris Robinson remarks. "This ain't the Persian Gulf.") As the crowd screams, yells, and dances maniacally, the Steadicam-wielding members of a moonlighting NFL Films crew take it all in; footage from the shows will be used in the Crowes' fourth video, a six-minute live version of the ballad "She Talks To Angels." Offstage, the Crowes keep up the sometimes nearly killing pace. Bassist Johnny Colt gets slugged in the mouth during a post-show expedition to the Gold Cup, an Atlanta topless joint much beloved by the Crowes' producer, George Drakoulias, and Def American chieftain Rick Rubin, both self-proclaimed tit hounds. On a less violent note, Chris Robinson and the three highly inebriated members of Burning Tree, the LA band that has opened the Crowes' club tour, jam with bluesman Luther Johnson at Blind Willie's, a tiny local club catering to roots music fans. But, for all the drunken madness that attends the Crowes' return to Atlanta, it's still home, and the band is back for the holidays. It's cozy. Hometown pals and and the girlfriends of Chris Robinson, his brother Rich (the group's rythym guitarist and, with his elder brother, its co-songwriter), and guitarist Jeff Cease settle in backstage. Visitors include drummer Steve Gorman's mother, and the Robinson's parents, Stan and Nancy, who number themselves among the Crowes' biggest fans. Every so often, a local fan wanders in shyly with a Christmas present. The group's road crew members tinker with their gifts to the Crowes- two tiny go-carts. It's in this strange atmosphere- highly charged and laid-back all at once- that I ask the Black Crowes to reflect on a year of loud music, exhausting touring, and sudden fame. Not surprisingly, I find them exhilarated, a little dazed, proud of their accomplishments but still charmingly humble, and full of fire. "You know, when you're on tour, and you're in the bus- like living in a little tunnel- you go in the gig and out of the gig, and there's people outside," Johnny Colt says, shoveling a vegetarian meal into his slightly bruised mouth in a restaurant in Five Points, Atlanta's boho/rocker district. Around the corner is the record store where, just a year ago, Steve Gorman worked as a counter clerk. Johnny continues, "The only thing that's different is a lot more people ask you for your autograph when you get off to eat, you know what I mean? Or down by the 7-Eleven counter in the middle of North Carolina, [they know] who you are. Other than that, so fars I haven't seen the results." The other members of the band will echo these statements. After a year in which the band has done over two hundred shows, the fact that the Black Crowes are one of the biggest-selling new acts in the country still hasn't sunk in, even with a gold record in hand and a platinum one on the way. But the grueling road work has paid off for the band, Johnny adds. "I think that we've improved so much over the year, playing every night," he says. "When the headliner takes a day off, we play clubs, and fortunately, our singer can singe many nights in a row, which is amazing, the way he sings. You'd think he'd tire out but he's strong. He's a skinny little motherf---er, but he's strong. And I'll hand it to him. A lot of singers complain they can't do two or three nights. One time Chris did fifteen nights, took a day off, then did eight." So why, after almost ten months of solid touring, did the Black Crowes undertake the agony of a two-month club tour? "We wanted to play the clubs," Johnny says matter-of-factly. "You go out, you're in arenas, and all of a sudden you're playing for other peoples audiences. We wanted the people to be able to see the band up close and personal. We wanted to be in touch. "To see our set, with our new songs in it, the long set- it's our show, the way we want it to be. We owe people that. Granted, on the club tour, it was pretty much chaos- always fights, people getting thrown out constantly. The promoters oversold all the shows." While the Crowes' diamond-hard hits- "Jealous Again," "Twice As Hard," "Hard To Handle"- still make up the core of their club set and garner the biggest cheers, the band is hauling out several intriguing new songs (including a dense, bluesy, ten-minute number sardonically nicknamed-in honor of the Allman Brothers- "Mountain Jam") at the Center Stage. "We want people to be able to digest a more complicated arrangement as becoming the norm, as opposed to your normal pop tune," Johnny says of the new material. "What we want is more intricate all the way, a heavier groove, much more funky. It's just a natural progression. I'm proud of everybody in the band for coming as far as they've come." I note to Johnny that from the beginning, the Black Crowes have been something of an anomaly- a classically oriented hard rock band working in a musical mainstream clotted with routine dance-pop and glammed-up demi-metal. Does he think the success of the Crowes will spur other bands to take a leaf from their book? "It's like a double-edged sword," he says. "Obviously, you want to have impact, you want to change things, you want to hear more of what you like. I want to find more records I can go look up and get excited about. I can't. I have to search for old rare Humble Pie outtakes so I'm excited about a song. Of course, I'd like there to be other bands out there that excite us. "But then at the same time, you don't want to really feel responsible for being the start of something new, because usually in retro it looks, not gimmicky, but it gets confused, and it gets away from the point, which is the music. You don't want to necessarily feel responsible for something, cause you're really not, even if the press makes you out to be." I tell Johnny that I'm gratified that the rock audience seems to have caught on to the almost anachronistic simplicity and gutsiness of the Crowes' music, even though it took the better part of a year for the band to get over commercially. Johnny replies, "The people, at first they didn't know what to make of us, and they've come along with us, and started to see our vibe and our world, which is very different than what seems to be going on nowadays. Now they're getting even further into the soul, the heart, where it's coming from. It's a slow process- when you fu--, you don't just fu--. There's foreplay. You start somewhere, and then you work your way into it. At least I'd like to think so." Later in the evening, just before the last night of the Crowes' Center Stage stand, I corner Chris and Rich Robinson in a backstage kitchen. It turns into what I've learned from earlier experience is a typical interview with the brothers: Chris, the voluble, dark- haired, hawk-featured singer, does most of the talking (and sometimes it's hard to get him to stop), while Rich, the reticent, blond- haired baby of the band, looks on in deferential, almost cavernous silence. I ask the Robinsons why they believe the Crowes finally made it with the American rock audience, which still shows a marked tendency to gravitate to pop pabulum. "People get sick of the shit," Rich says with typical terseness. "Like I've said before, we offer an alternative," Chris explains. "Here's Kip Winger, here's Mark Slaughter." He makes a gesture that includes himself and his brother, and laughs. "Here's the Rotten Twins, you know what I mean? And maybe just because they haven't heard anything with any soul in a while, it just freaked 'em out and they went, 'Cool.' "I talked to Steve Tyler two nights ago, and he said, 'Look man...'" Chris pauses momentarily to sing snatches of "Walking the Dog," the Rufus Thomas song covered by Aerosmith, and "Hard To Handle," written and originally recorded by Otis Redding. "Look man, we ain't doing shit except tellin' some people who don't know, and it's all about one thing, and that's the groove, that's the soul.'" Chris, who has a tendency to talk messianically about rock 'n' roll, the blues, and music in general, is on a roll now. "It's a divine spark," Chris continues. "I was talking with a friend of mine the other night, and we were discussing why I can do something someone else can't. Why does a skinny white kid from Atlanta, Georgia, sing the way I do, and no one else is doing it my age? I want to meet 'em if they are, because I feel like I'm alone. I don't have any dudes to hang with, except those fu--in' dudes [he jerks his head toward the band's dressing room next door] and this guy [he jerks a thumb at his brother]. And Rich is the same thing. What 21-year-old kid said, 'My guitar will sound better if I tune it to open G?' What kid said that?" But, I ask, won't your music spur other musicians to hop onto the Stones/Faces/Aerosmith/Crowes-stype hard rock bandwagon? "Now people are going to say, 'We're going to be a rock band that sounds like the Black Crowes,'" Chris says, adding emphatically, "Well, you're not us. You don't want to sound like the Black Crowes. You can go out and be the bluesiest motherfu--er that ever walked the earth, but don't try to be a rock band like us if that's not what you want to do, because we sold a million records or whatever. "I think it's a nicer atmosphere, because what we've done has opened a lot of channels and maybe made people jump back and say, 'Whoa, you mean you can be good musicians and good songwriters and good performers and look good and put on a good show, and have integrity at the end of the day?' Whoa, you might as well drop acid. That's like opening the fu--ing floodgates." I ask the brothers when they plan to record the follow-up to Shake Your Money Maker, which as been selling 100,000 copies a week in the last month. "Next fall," Rich says. "We want to take a long break." "We're on our terms, man," Chris adds, growing gradually more heated. "I'm not a commodity, we're not product. Fu-- you, I make rock music. And I get in trouble for saying that. I hear people in the industry saying, 'I hear product,' and I put my foot in my mouth and say, 'Well, between you and me, I make records.' You want product, make toaster ovens or Pop Tarts or something. I make music. I want to stir the soul, or at least mine. As long as we know what we did makes people go, 'Woooo...' You know what I mean? That's what it's about. The quality of the music the Black Crowes make is the bottom line, Chris is quick to explain. Searching for an example, he segues to talking about Robert Plant, for whom the Crowes opened and whom they openly idolize, and Keith Richards, the major Crowes icon. "Those are the dudes who are the granddads," Chris says. "I've seen their fu--ups. I'm not a fool. And some of my favorite bands, their fu--ups have hurt me. 'Cause that music's that important. Like 'You motherfu--ers! You don't know!' To music fans, to hear the thing that blows you away, it blows you away every time you hear it." Chris Robinson is no longer speaking like the head singer for the Black Crowes- he's talking like the 23-year-old kid who worshipfully keeps a picture of bluesman Robert Johnson on the table next to his hotel room bed when he's on tour. He wraps up his spiel with the ingenuous enthusiasm that is his hallmark, and the hallmark of his superb band. "Music's like a drug, it's like jonesin', man. If I'm jonesin', I"m gonna put on whatever I want to hear, whether it be the Doors or Public Enemy or Bob Marley or Aswad or whatever. Every time, it blows you away. That's what it is." ------------------------------------ (intro to article about the author) There seem to be two mindsets regarding this issue's coverboys, the Black Crowes. Some people think that the Crowes are bringing back the blues-based, raw-edged rock 'n' roll that was originally popularized by bands like the Stones and (later) the Faces. Other people seem to think that the Crowes are simply a substitute for those who missed albums like "Exile On Main Streed" and "A Nod Is as Good as a Wink to a Blind Horse" the first time around. Whatever your take on the band, you still gotta admit that it's refreshing to hear a classic line-up rock 'n' roll band take an Otis Redding tune to the top of the charts in this synthesized, lip-synching era. Chris Morris was probably the first person I heard singing the praises of the Crowes way back when the band was nothing more than an advance cassette from Rick Rubin's Def American label. (The only real buzz at that point was that- other than some of the tracks for the "Less Than Zero" soundtrack- this was to be the first "traditional" rock production from the rap/thrash metal master.) Anyway, Chris [Morris]- whose forte is classic blues, thanks to his Chicago roots- predicted that the Black Crowes were going to be *big*, so as the album approached platinum status, we thought he was the right man for our cover story. .... Morris and rock photog Robert Matheu made their way to Atlanta for the band's recent holiday homecoming show. (Interestingly enough, the Crowes were never appreciated in their hometown before their rise to fame- it's a recurring theme in the story of rock- and Def American publicist Heidi Robinson informs me that the Robinson brothers and mates will probably be making their home in Los Angeles from now on, that is, when they finally need a "home" again, seeing as how they've been on the road non-stop for most of 1990.) We also though the Crowes would be a perfect feature for our annual NAMM Show issue, since this is a band that actually plays its own instruments and needs real microphones to do its thing. Enjoy! -Bill Holdship -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back to Articles Menu Back To Crowes Homepage