Rolling Stone- January 1991 Rolling Stone January 24th, 1991 #596 AS THE CROWES FLY A real rock band wings its way to the upper regions of the charts by Kim Neely In the lobby of the Paramount Hotel, In New York City, it's easy to forget the grimy parade of hookers, dope dealers and con men just half a block away on Eighth Avenue. In fact, the Paramount, a ritzy art nouveau fortress, seems almost too clean. Its smiling Ken-doll doormen, angular furnishings and cavernous ceilings lend it to a sterile, forbidding air. The ambience changes markedly, though, on the ninth floor, when Chris Robinson- lead singer, lyricist and chief soapbox orator for the Black Crowes- opens the door of his suite. As cloud of incense- amber, maybe- swirls around the Robinson's gangly frame. Robinson's girlfriend, a stunning blonde, putters around the suite in baggy gray sweat pants and a lopsided polytail, tidying things up. Even Robinson's greeting- "You don't mind of we just kind of hang out, do you?" - conveys an unguarded warmth. Robinson collects a tray of shrimp and fresh fruit from room service, and settled with his dinner spread out before him, he appears so content that it seems cruel to start firing questions at him. Asked if he'd rather the tape recorder remain off until he's finished eating, he shrugs. "It's up to you," he says, smiling, "But you never know- some flash of genius could fly out." Fly out, indeed. Earlier today, over tea in the hotel's restaurant, Robinson's twenty-one-year-old guitarist brother, Rich, the Crowes' co-founder, mentioned that the two seldom do interviews together, and now it becomes apparent why. The reserved, younger Rich would never get a word in edgewise. Conversation isn't just a casual undertaking for Chris Robinson. He goes about it with the zeal of an evangelist, raising his voice to make points, dropping it to a whisper to underscore them. He punctuates his sentences with long pauses and exaggerated hand gestures and ends nearly all of them with a benevolent smile, as if he were pleased to have presented you with that particular idea. Once Robinson gets rolling, it's difficult to shut him up. Provided, of course, the subject is one that interests him. "I have a bad reputation right now as far as radio goes," Robinson says. "This radio station got upset that I didn't answer the questions. They thought I did it in a snotty way." He pauses, running a hand through his hair. "I'm twenty-four years old in ten days, and I am NOT fucking Kip Winger, okay? You want to talk about rock & roll, I'll sit there all day, as long as someone's buying the drinks. But don't expect me to be like everybody else. If you want an amusing anecdote, talk to Mark Slaughter. I'm sure he'll say something like, 'Yeah, we had a couple of lite beers and ran down the hall in our underwear. Whoooooo.'" During the conversation that follows, Robinson will fearlessly hurl barbs at several big-name rockers. But because the individuals that arouse his ire are invariably prefabricated pretty boys or lip-syncing buffoons, the opinionated Robinson seems more a crusader for Rock & Roll authenticity than a boasting young whippersnapper. The worst one could say about him is that he seems enviably well adjusted. ("I'm not here because I'm lucky," he says. "I'm here because I'm very good at what I do.") Robinson has every right to feel confident, given the Crowes two-year flight from relative obscurity to the upper ranks of the Billboard charts. Chris and Rich Robinson finalized the band's lineup in 1988 and snagged a record deal a year later. After the release last February of their debut album, Shake Your Moneymaker, the Crowes found themselves in constant demand as an opening act. And by December- propelled by massive airplay for the band's raunchy cover of Otis Redding's "Hard To Handle" and the Crowes' breakneck touring schedule, opening for arena headliners like Heart, Aerosmith and Robert Plant- Shake Your Moneymaker has gone platinum. Doors, at first glance, seemed to have swung wide open for the Black Crowes. "What do people think- we were a bunch of kids who all of a sudden got lucky?" ask Chris. "Fuck that. I busted my ass." The Robinson brothers grew up in Atlanta, getting a home-study course in music appreciation from their father Stan, a musician who enjoyed a Top Forty hit ("Boom-a-Dit-Dip") in the Fifties. Both sons credit their knowledge of early blues to the elder Robinson and his diverse record collection ("I couldn't tie my shoe until I was nine," says Chris, "but I knew how to work the stereo.") In 1984, when Chris was eighteen and Rich fifteen, the brothers made their stage debut in Chattanooga, Tennessee, as a punk band called Mr. Crowes Garden. (Punk, explains Rich, was all they knew how to play at that point. He refused to divulge the significance of the word 'Crowes', intimating that to do so would bring swift and horrible punishment.) The fifty-dollar paycheck for that first show bounced. Undaunted, the two continued pestering area club owners for gigs, fiddling with their lineup and honing their skills. After the younger Robinson discovered the open-G tuning favored by one of his idols, Keith Richards, and drummer Steve Gorman joined the fold, the band settled into a swaggering, blues-based groove. By 1988, when bassist Johnny Colt and guitarist Jeff Cease were inaugurated, the Black Crowes had a firm handle one their sound. The typical first reaction to that sound has become a constant source of irritation for the Crowes. The songs on Shake Your Moneymaker- jagged, bloozy barroom stomps; winding, emotional R&B wailers- have prompted more than a few critics to dismiss the Crowes as Rolling Stones knockoffs. And Chris Robinson's gut-busting vocals invariably draw comparisons to a Faces-era Rod Stewart. "It's bullshit," says Rich. "There's no new music ever, period. It's all an interpretation of music that's come before. I interpret Keith Richards in the same way that Keith Richards interpreted Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry. If anyone's going to accuse of of ripping off the Stones, they'd better listen to a couple of Chuck Berry records first." Another guaranteed feather ruffler is to refer to the Black Crowes as a Southern band, although, technically, they are on. Barring geography and Allman Brothers veteran Chuck Leavell, who supplied keyboards on Shake Your Moneymaker, the Crowes have little in common with rebel rockers like the Allmans, Lynyrd Skynyrd or the Georgia Satellites, yet many journalists, playing up the good ol' boy angle, insist on invoking those names when describing the band. "I mean, I was born in the South, and I'm very proud of that," says Rich. "But I'm not waving a rebel flag, you know?" "This guy at MTV got all upset because he read an interview where I called Ronnie Van Zant a redneck," adds Chris. "He goes, 'Ronnie Van Zant was a great man.' I said, 'Look, I didn't say he was an asshole, I said he was a redneck." Stones comparisons and Southern stereotypes notwithstanding, the quickest way to induce a stream of vituperative commentary from either Robinson is to bring up the current state of rock & roll. Chris, who spends a great deal of time nosing around in record stores (see "Adventures in the Vinyl Trade", below), is particularly indignant on the subject. "Don't sit around and complain about how shitty the music is if you're putting up with it," Chris says. "Who said that all these bands that headline arenas are allowed to go out and sing to backup tapes? Aerosmith did it- I love Aerosmith to death. I respect 'em, I grew up on 'em. But you bore me when you sing to a backup tape. Heart, Robert Plant, they all did it. If you're an entertainer and you take it seriously, you entertain with your natural abilities. You go onstage and take a chance like everyone else. People say to us, 'Man, I heard some bad notes in your set tonight.' Well, fucking-A right you heard some bad notes. You saw a real band tonight, didn't you?" Chris pauses, then swoops down on another pet peeve: "I don't put lots of chicks in our videos with their tits hanging out, because I can sell my band. What a novel fucking concept. I mean, I dig looking at chicks like anyone else, but if you can't be stimulated by what I do, then I'm not gonna fool you. You don't like it? Turn it off. You like it? But the record or wait for the next one. Come to see us when we come to town. That's what it's all about. That's what rock & roll was- not 'Well, we'll bring in a stylist and bring in Desmond Child and Bruce Fairbairn to put a bunch of "oh, yeahs" on your record.' "You know," he says almost sadly, "there are people out there who really care and who don't call records product. A Pop-Tart is a product. I make music. I don't want it to be a fucking product, I want it to be a piece of your life." Half an hour later, Robinson, temporarily purged of demons, dives into a closet and emerges with a rough-hewed wooden crate. It looks suspiciously like it might house a small mummy. If one were to believe all of the stories about the Black Crowes, the concept of Robinson's harboring a bandaged bogyman in his closet wouldn't seem far-fetched. Several interviews, perhaps stumped by the Crowes's reluctance to server up tales of female conquest and drunken debauchery, have gone beyond the call of duty to entertain their readers. One masterpiece in a well-known rock magazine implied that the Crowes were engaging in clandestine voodoo rituals before their shows. Chris says the trouble started when the writer of the piece asked him what he was reading, and he happened to be immersed in a tome about voodoo. (Robinson says he typically leans toward Beat novelists and "really good pretentious things" by writers like Franz Kafka.) During the interview, Chris also casually mentioned that band's habit of burning candles onstage and the Tibetan human-bone jewelry and gris-gris pouches collected by some of the band members. The finished piece made much of the band's "voodoo obsessions" and hypothesized that it's "an avid fascination with black magic that keeps these Crowes flying." Chris, who contends that the Crowes' interest in voodoo paraphernalia springs from nothing more than a love of the exotic, says he found the article funny. Some, however, didn't find it so comical. The piece spawned a panicky rash of LP-and-concert-ticket bonfires organized by alarmed Christian parents in Texas and Virginia. Naturally, Robinson is eager to share his views on that sector of society. "Jesus Christ loved everyone," he says bluntly. "Jesus Christ probably loved Satan. I mean, I don't believe that God and Satan are real, but if your're a Christian, then you love everyone. And if you're a Christian and you think I'm fucked...then fuck you." His frustrations vented, Robinson lowers the box to the floor and begins undoing the catches. And though the object inside does turn out to be something that was once alive, it wasn't, sad to say, a human. It was a gourd. Robinson proudly holds up an elaborately carved, beautifully shaped sitar. Earlier today, he was gone on a hush-hush shopping expedition in Greenwich Village. The instrument is Chris's surprise Christmas present for his brother, who is, by this time, snoozing in his own suite down the hall. "He's going to freak out," says Robinson gleefully. "There's a side of me that wants to go wake him up and say, 'Rich, look what I got for you.' You know, because I love him so much." "Me and Rich are much closer," he says softly. "We've gotten closer this year than we have in a long time." He takes up the sitar and examines its separate networks of heavy and fine strings. Gingerly he begins to pluck at it, eliciting a succession of eerie, keening notes. "I have no idea how to play this fucker," he says finally. For the briefest of instants, Chris Robinson actually appears to be unsure of himself. _________________ ADVENTURES IN THE VINYL TRADE "It's a monster," says Chris Robinson of his record collection. "Everything from John Coltrane to the Dammned." Here are his favorite places to dig through the racks. WAX N' FACTS Atlanta, Georgia The ultimate used-record smorgasbord. Great blues selection, imports, new and used records of all kinds. Very resonable prices, alternative-minded, snotty clerks. (Our drummer, Steve, used to work there.) Great for Seventies rock & country records, but wait in line for the Cure, R.E.M. and Joy Division. (P.S. Home of db Records and the store where the Crowes sell the least.) THE GREAT ESCAPE Nashville, Tennessee Rockers, rednecks, punks and comic-book geeks, rows and rows of everything, cheap. Don't go unless you have days to dig. Lots of books, comics, posters, old magazines. A friend went in, and we never found him again. LAST PURCHASES: Rose Tattoo; the Rolling Stones' Metamorphosis; Peter Tosh's Legalize It; old Seventies Circus magazines. FINYL VINYL New York City Small store, mostly blues and R&B. My favorite. Great guys behind the counter, always good conversation about blues. Best store for hard-to-find Delta-blues stuff. Feel-good store of the year. LAST PURCHASES: John Lee Hooker's Live at Sugarhill; Muddy Waters's His First Recordings; the Louvin Brothers' Satan Is Real; and the Roots of Robert Johnson. ELUCID RECORDS St. Louis, Missouri Small, alternative-minded store, and very cool guys working there. Good low prices. Bootlegs and rare imports. (They also knew who I was, so that's a big plus.) LAST PURCHASES: both Back Street Crawler albums, featuring Paul Kossoff; a Ron Wook-Ronnie Lane soundtrack; and Ian Hunter's first album on CD. SOUNDS New York City Crowded madhouse, rude clerks. Check your bags at the door or be shot in the foot for being a "wise guy." All of this aside, a great store wit hplenty of imports and a great R&B section. Everyone who works for the labels takes promos there to sell, so you can always find new releases cheap. (P.S. I found no used Crowes albums the day I was there.) SCHOOLKIDS' RECORDS Chapel Hill, North Carolina Very cold to the Crowes, but that's because one night we got drunk and chaos ensued at a party where some of the store employees lived. Que sera sera. Still a very good store, and I love Chapel Hill. LAST PURCHASES: The Rolling Stone's Aftermath and a cool New York Dolls postcard (P.S. Sorry for the rucus.) CUTLER'S RECORDS New Haven, Connecticut Big store, something like a supermarket. Great people, very accommodating to me and my fellow band mates. Great reggae CDs. LAST PURCHASES: The Harder They Come soundtrack; Peter Tosh's CD Wanted Dread or Alive; David Bowie's CD The Man Who Sold the World; and Free's CD Fire and Water. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back to Articles Menu Back To Crowes Homepage