Rolling Stone- August 1994


  Rolling Stone
  August 25, 1994
  #689

  HARD TO HANDLE

  The Black Crowes Throw a Snit And Toughen
  Their Sound on the New LP

  by Steve Hochman


  IN the time-honored rock & roll tradition of Don and Phil Everly
and the KInk's Ray and Dave Davies, the Black Crowes' Chris and
Rich Robinson weren't speaking to each other as their band worked
to complete Amorica, its third album.  "We could sit in the same
room, but all you'd get out of Rich would be 'Fuck you'- not to
you but to me," says the bell-bottomed Chris, sitting in a beanbag
chair in a San Fernando Valley, CA studio.

  "Brotherly love, you know?" he says, shrugging between tokes
of a dark hash from a 3-foot-high bong.

  When asked about the rift, Rich- in another room- refuses to
elaborate on the nature of their feud.  So it's not all Southern
harmony for the Atlanta group, though it's hard to say whether
that tension has anything to do with the toughened sound of the
new recordings.  Where 1990's Shake Your Money Maker and 1992's
The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion were marked by the
Stones, Faces and Allman Brothers influences, the Crowes' October
release has added hints of Santana, Sly Stone and others in a
harder, more complex mix.

  "High Head Blues" and "A Conspiracy" reveal a taught sound but
one with sudden, precise shifts of rhythm and texture.  The
dark, hazy "Feathers" offers another new mood for the band, 
while a version of "Chevrolet" (which the Crowes learned from a
Taj Mahal album) goes back to folk-blues influences, the way soul
covers exposed those roots on the band's first two albums.

  Some of the new directions may come from the presence of 
co-producer Jack Joseph Puig, but mostly they seem to come from
growth.  "It's the first time that the sound meets the way the
guys in the band play," says Chris.  "And lyrically, it's the
first time I really could sit down and say, 'This is how I feel.'"

  The brothers' rift hasn't impeded the creative flow of the Crowes
either- in two sessions the band recorded more than two dozen
songs.  The overflow may come out as a double CD; there's even
talk of holding some for a follow-up album that would be released
during the band's 1995 world tour.  There are also plans for a
home video of performance footage and scenes from a recent, 
psychedelics-fueled Beyond The Valley of the Dolls-like studio
party.

  One thing the brothers are definitely united on is their feelings
about people who dismiss the band as retrorockers.  "We get really
defensive, because this isn't something we fabricated to make 
music," says Chris, pointing to R. Crumb's KEEP ON TRUCKIN' poster.
"This is where we live every day.  I have Grateful Dead posters
at my house."

  Says Rich: "I hate the '60s and '70s.  I hate hearing about it."
Adds Chris, with anything but a '60s love vibe: "This record to us
in a big way is 'Fuck you.  If you don't like it, well, we're gonna
make the biggest rock record we've made yet.'  It's sort of the
thing where the people who hate us, we hate you more."