Request interview

  from Request
  July 1992
  Minneapolis

  Submitted by:
	Chris Henne

   (comments by Rod Stewart were taken for an issue of 'Q'
    an English magazine)

     Even though it's 70 miles north and has one-tenth the population
of Atlanta, Athens, Georgia, casts quite a shadow over its sprawling
neighbour's music scene. Poke your head into any Atlanta club, and
chances are you'll get an earful of mumbled vocals and jangling
guitars inspired by Athens' most famous musical inhabitants. Turn on
your TV in the wee hours of the morning, and it won't be long before
R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills is on the screen in a tasteful public
service announcement for the Nature Conservancy of Georgia. One
Atlanta band, however, has managed to escape R.E.M.'s pervasive
influence by wrapping it self in the dusty gear of a previous
generation of Dixie icons, Dark, dirty, and dissipated, the Black
Crowes provide a much-needed dose of bad juju in a city so clean
you'd swear its municipal government was in the vacuum cleaner
business. As the town's standard-bearers of old-fashioned rock, the
Black Crowes have a very different idea of what constitutes a cause
worthy of support, and on a gorgeous spring Saturday, they contribute
their own live-action version of a PSA by headlining the Great
Atlanta Pot Festival, a benefit for NORML, the National Organisation
for the Repeal of Marijuana Laws. "Everyone thinks if you smoke pot
and drink beer, you'll be floundering in a sea of hard liquor and
morphine," scoffs Chris Robinson, lead singer of the Black Crowes, as
he polishes off a double- barrelled aperitif of Red Stripe beer and
Jamaican combustibles. "And that's just ridiculous. But it's not a
new concept. I'm sure in Paris, in the 1920s, James Joyce and
Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound all sat around and talked about how
oppressed they were. Whether you call people bohemians, beatniks,
hippies, punks, they're all just people, people who didn't want to be
oppressed. It's not a '60s thing. People say hippies were the first
to get high, Please. This has been going on since the dawn of
mankind. "Why would I quit smoking pot? Because the government tells
me to? A government who'd send me to the desert to get shot as a
glorified rent-a-cop for a gas station? I'm not here to be the
world's mall security, and that's what we're saying by playing
something like the Pot Festival." The show that the Black Crowes
(recently expanded to a sextet with the addition of full-time
keyboard player Ed Hawrysch) put on in Piedmont Park is an impressive
affair, one that older attendees compare favourably to the Allman
Brothers played here a generation ago. Concent rating on material
from its sophomore effort The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion
(plus a long, loving version of the Allmans "Dreams"), the band keeps
the crowd of 50,000 o its feet for more than an hour with a
galvanising blend of rock-star glamour and blues hound raunch The
scene is a far cry from just two years ago when only 50 Black Crowes
diehards straggled in (the Cotton Club for a hometown record release
party for Shake Your Moneymaker, despite a massive promotional
effort and free beer. Chris Robinson, barefoot, bell-bottomed, an
more laid-back than his manic onstage demeanour would ever lead you
to believe, stretches out on; rehearsal studio couch and assesses the
Black Crowes' sudden ascent to hometown-hero status "We left Atlanta
years ago in a lot of respects," he says with a shrug. 'The scene
offered us nothing but walls. It's really, really nice to have that
man! people come out and get into what we're doing, but as far as I'm
concerned, it would be equally great wherever it happened." Chris
Robinson's younger brother, Rich, who's not only the band's lead
guitarist but its behind-the scenes leader (everyone around the group
regularly refers to the Black Crowes as "Rich's band"), is less
diplomatic. "The problem we've always had in Atlanta isn't with the
people, it's with the industry the obnoxious little f--s who think
Atlanta is it," he retorts. "I'm not talking about everyone, but
there's a definite element who resent anyone succeeding and no
one gives a shit for them outside Atlanta."The Black Crowes' rocky
relationship with their hometown stems from a period in their history
that, considering the band's propensity for blues references, can
best be de scribed as its Robert Johnson period. When the Robinsons,
still in their teens, started the band in the mid-'80s (then called
Mr. Crowe's Garden), they were as slavish an R.E.M. approximation as
any Peach State combo. While building up a follow ing by touring the
Eastern seaboard, they developed a harder country-rock veneer that
caught the attention of George Drakoulias, then an A&M executive, at
a New York gig in 1988. Though A&M passed on signing Mr. Crowe's
Garden, a year later Drakoulias was working for a new label, the
fledgling Def American, with a propensity for taking more risks.
(Minor ones, at least:Its original contract netted the band a mere
$5,000 advance.) And then Mr. Crowe's Garden disappeared into the L.A.
smog. When the band returned, it was a different creature altogether.
Drakoulias changed the group's name (graciously allowing the
Robinsons to choose the new name from a list that included the
Confederate Crowes, the Stone Mountain Crowes,and the Black Crowes),
their look(adding the retro-glam chic), and, according to some,
masterminded the very sound that made them triple-platinum hit
makers.
What exactly happened when they went down to the crossroads? A source
close to the band recalls Chris Robinson attending interview school
with Professor David Lee Roth, whose management company took over the
Black Crowes' affairs around that time. Another recalls the glee with
which the band members trawled local clubs beaming about "being paid
to grow our hair for the next nine months."One band member was
rumoured to have been dismissed for reasons rang-ing from,
ironically, pot smoking ("They thought only hippies did that,"one
Atlanta musician recalls) to sexual preference, a charge Chris
Robinson angrily denies. "I think some homosexual couple who gets
pleasure out of their relationship is a better example of what
masculinity can be than Ted Nu-gent killing a bear in the woods. I'm
for less guns and more play."For the record, plenty of anti-Black
Crowes snipes are prefaced with, "I re-member when they used to open
for us," which lends credence to the Robinsons' insistence that
jealousy is at the core of the initial Atlanta backlash. But the
disingenuousness with which the Robinsons insist their jangle-pop
roots were an aberration, or a logical stepping-off point for their
current sound,is puzzling. "It's totally a natural progression,"
Rich Robinson insists."Lightning didn't crack the sky, and a voice
didn't come along and say, 'Get heavier' or 'Write pop songs.' We
just got better.""Totally natural," Chris Robinson agrees. "I never
even consciously sat down with my brother and said, 'Let's write a
song.' He came in one day and played me a piece of music, and it
moved me to write some words. We wanted to be free is what it was. We
wanted not to be disposable. We wanted this to be euphoric and kill
us all in the same slit of the throat." Ted Selke, who spent two
years as bass player/business manager in Mr.Crowe's Garden, is
amused at the revisionist history that's spread in the wake of the
Black Crowes' success."When I joined, all they listened to was jangly
Southern stuff," Selke says. "I'd spent three years in a band called
Arms Akimbo, who always got accused of sounding like R.E.M. I was
intent upon this not being another R.E.M. sound-alike. So I brought
more country into the picture. That's what we were playing when
Drakoulias saw us and suggested we 'try to write some Rolling Stones-
type songs.' Maybe it was his coaching, but pretty soon they started
the open tunings and taking rifts from the Stones and rewriting
them."Some folks insist the producer did more than just give advice.
A columnist in Creative Loafing, Atlanta's local arts weekly,
rebutted Chris Robinson's announcement that Bob Dylan wanted the
Black Crowes to join him for some recording with a snide, 'Give them
Brendan O'Brien's number, since he played all the guitar on [Shake
Your Moneymaker].' O'Brien, an Atlanta native who joined Def American
as staff engineer and assisted Drakoulias after the Black Crowes'
signing, is credited on the album with "a potpourri of
instruments.""That writer is this weeny little guy,who, to be honest,
I think is in love with Chris," Rich Robinson sneers."And Chris
didn't pay enough attention to him. So he sits there, a bitter old
man, and any time we come near Atlanta he writes lies about us.
'Since when did Chris Robinson ever listen to the blues?' Well, since
when did he hang out with us? It's funny in one way,but in another,
stupid little things like that make things difficult."What makes it
difficult to dismiss the Black(Crowes is that they've grown into one
of the most potent forces in main-stream rock. When Shake Your Money-
maker climbed to the Top Five in a year when not a single rock
album hit No. 1,it helped restore some ballsiness to a genre long
considered emasculated.And while the band's sound could never be
called progressive ("If you want to talk about progression and
regression," Chris Robinson says, "I could sit here all day and show
you neither exists, because music is so ancient"), the Black Crowes
managed to walk the rarely navigable line between deference and
spontaneity with more grace than most.They also show an encouraging
fondness for biting the hand that feeds them. Attacking corporate
sponsor-ships from the stage got the band dismissed from the opening
slot on ZZ Top's Miller Beer-sponsored tour last year. "Whether you're
making 10 bucks or 10,000, it's prostitution," Chris Robinson
insists. "If you can give me a reason other than money to accept
sponsorship, I might listen. But I have to answer to governments and
record companies, I'm not going to put myself in a situation where I
have more restrictions placed on me by somebody who's just paying for
some posters." Even Def American, which seems to have given the band
more than its fair share of support, isn't immune to such barbs."To
me, record companies--all of them--are equally pathetic and hypo-
critical in their workings," Chris Robin-son says wearily. "They shake
my hand and say, 'We love your rock 'n' roll, except for the parts
with the four-letterwords,' and the next day, Joe Rapper goes in, and
they shake his hand and say, 'We love your rap music, except that
part about the bitches.' It's all the same. The only way to remove
myself,though, is if I quit this, which is a very real possibility.
No matter how much money the Black Crowes make, the record company
makes 10 times that,and if we get to a point where everyone is f--in'
with us too much, we'll just f--in' quit, won't we?"In lieu of
submitting their resignations, the Black Crowes have followed their
debut with a far more uncompromising album than a casual listener
might have expected. The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion walks
it like Shake Your Moneymaker talked it, fusing a much dirtier blues
at-tack with an aching melodic subtlety that belies Rich Robinson's
fondness for everything from the Cure to Nick Drake. The swampy, evil-
sounding"Black moon Creep in' " so upset a session singer that she
walked out on the band. "She called later and said, 'I'm pray in for
y'all. You need it,' " Chris Robinson cackles."Most of the great
happenings on earth go by without us noticing them,"Rich Robinson
says. "To me, obviousness has nothing to do with what we do; it has
no place in a creative medium. See, a lot of people would like to
turn the whole record industry into Pop-Tarts. We're just Pop-Tarts
who happen to have won a popularity contest.""Art, and I'm using
that in one of the more general definitions of the word,would,
if the industry had its way, be-come a service-oriented
industry,"echoes Chris Robinson, who waxes enthusiastic about Kafka,
Kerouac, and Jim Thompson, in addition to his well-publicised jones
for Bob Dylan and admitted role model Steve Marriott."How about we
stop calling people artists until they start creating art? Be-ing
true to yourself doesn't mean safe earned dollars and security, which
has nothing to do with art. It's bad enough that we live in a society
that removes art and puts in a building where it can be analysed;
whereas in Eastern cultures, art and life are inter woven
everyday."The basic tracks for The Southern Harmony and Musical
Companion were laid down in just eight days, with Drakoulias again at
the board. Augmentations like Hawrysch's soulful organ, reminiscent
of Chuck Leavell's work on Shake Your Moneymaker, and the gospel
backing vocals don't sound particularly studied. If this band were a
car, it wouldn't be a sporty little roadster like Right Said Fred, or
a sensible, fuel-efficient box-on-wheels like most AOR monsters.The
Black Crowes would be a '61 Caddy, lumbering and loud, guzzling
bodacious amounts of life- sustaining fluids and teaching fear to
anyone in its way.Both brothers, however, deny that it was the
success of their more mannered debut that allowed them to go out on a
limb this time out. Rich Robinson insists the band "just couldn't
play well enough to do a live record last time."'this record is a
more serious gesture, much more militant and aggressive in drawing
lines," Chris Robinson says. "But, I mean, this is what we do.Rich
and I have been doing this for awhile, moving our music--not
necessarily forward or backward or sideways--revolving, maybe. Just
because rock 'n' roll has become such a silly commercial thing
doesn't mean you have to buy that. It doesn't mean the formula is OK.
"Another conspicuous change in the band's sound comes in the guitar
work, which is considerably more complex,thanks to the addition of
guitarist Marc Ford, a fluid, tasteful player with a bent for Hendrix-
inspired leads. Ford, formerly of Burning Tree, an L.A.-based power
trio that opened for the Black Crowes on a leg of their seemingly end-
less world tour, replaced Jeff Cease just before the band entered the
studio."We threw Jeff out," Chris Robinson says without a trace of
remorse."There's no love lost there. We weren't interested in having
him be a subtraction to our music. We were looking for an addition.
It really wasn't about me,though I love Marc Ford. It was the Black
Crowes, and the meter of the band, which is Rich. It's his sound that
drives the band. He writes the music,and it being his band, it's up
to Rich.  Marc is the only player he's ever seen that he had immediate
respect for.""He made the songs warrant second guitars, because he
could actually play his instrument, which we didn't have last time
around," Rich Robinson says. "Jeff didn't want it. He didn't give a
shit; he didn't want to play better. No one wanted to get rid of
Jeff,but we wanted him to pull his weight.I wasn't about to sit down
and write his parts for him again and baby his ass along."It's
refreshing to hear such a tact- free telling of the yawn-inspiring
"musical differences" story. And it serves as evidence that, whatever
other goals they might have, the Black Crowes go out of their way to
restore some rebellion to rock 'n' roll."It's funny. I think you
have to get to the essence of the word 'rebellion,' "Chris Robinson
muses. "I don't know how much music can really affect change. I do
see bands like the Stones becoming safe--parodies, ghosts of
themselves. I see people scrounging for the fountain of youth. Well,
I don't wanna be Ponce de Leon. I never dug any graves, never robbed
any."We're living in an age of Why can't I be young?' and 'We better
keep him sober so he can pump out three more records and make the box
set a little fatter.' Any other kind of artist is free to do his own
thing. No one cares if an artist goes bald and the little girls won't
buy his paintings any more."The Robinsons, however, have a good grasp
of what the little girls understand. Even though their Atlanta show
takes place on a humid 85-degree-day, show time finds Chris Robinson
resplendent in red velvet trousers and assorted glam
paraphernalia."Maybe it would be more comfortable, but it'd be a
breach of rock 'n' roll etiquette to wear shorts onstage," he says
the next day, still clad in the requisite faded glam glad rags. "You
might as well be in C + C Music Factory if you're gonna do that."It's
got nothing to do with recreating anyone else's thing, though. It's
not like we come offstage and change into our golf shorts. Every time
I read someone in the straight press calling us a wannabe band, I
just think, 'You're the f--in' wannabe. You wanna be young again, you
wanna care again.You f--in' can't, so just get out of the way!"And
with that, Chris Robinson dons his floppy hat and ambles off into the
Atlanta afternoon as his entourage scurries to make sure the
apathetic and old never cross his path.