Rolling Stone- November 1994 Rolling Stone November 17th, 1994 #695 THE BLACK CROWES by Steve Hochman The so-called Generation X has been described by some- not flatteringly- as a scavenger culture that gathers music, art and fashions from recent past generations rather than creating its own. And of the prominent young rock bands, few have been charged with recycling the past as much as the Black Crowes have. With the release of the band's third album, Amorica, singer Chris Robinson has no quarrel with the charges, wearing his bell-bottom jeans as proudly as he sings his band's bell-bottom blues. He finds it difficult to define his generation. Yet for all this affection for the past and its musical and literary heroes, Robinson has no great love for the original participants in the counter-culture he still feels part of; in fact, he holds a strong disdain for the onetime custodians of the ideals that supposedly went with the music that influenced the Crowes. YOU GET ACCUSED AS MUCH AS ANYBODY ON THE ROCK LANDSCAPE OF- DEPENDING ON THE PERSPECTIVE- EITHER BORROWING FROM, HONORING OR LIVING IN THE PAST. DOES THAT BOTHER YOU? No. Past generations don't own the rights to anything. People still read Don Quixote. I understand why you would initially criticize: "What? You can't! No! That was me! That was mine!" But, no, you gave it up. The thigns that I"ve loved, the things that I've hated, the things that have been questions and answers and mysteries to me, maybe they were some of the same things to you. But it's a different time and a different place. Don't get so wrapped up with your youth. The worst thing the Black Crowes did was we never really cared about our contemporaries. We wanted to compete and make music and get our musicianship to a level that our idols were. Our idols happen to be really cool people- and we're just talking about musical ones, not ones like [director] Sam Peckinpah and Houdini. DO YOU FEEL THAT YOU'RE PART OF A GENERATION, OR DOES THE IDEA OF BEING PART OF A GENERATION APPEAL TO YOU? Maybe it would appeal to me if my generation really thought about what that means. But it seems that the only people who are really interested in my generation are people from other generations who are trying to categorize it. There is something in reality called the counterculture. There still are things called the drug culture. A lot of these things are woven together by something that is still- regardless of what you want to call it- rock & roll music. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU HEARD THE TERM "GENERATION X"? All I can think of is the band with Billy Idol and the guy in Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Punk rock! Gee-whiz. What a brilliant idea- let's sell punk rock again. If a million kids didn't buy it the first time or the second time, a million kids buy it this time. I don't want to call this Generation X because who started that? Someone like Kurt Loder, who's so far removed from someone in their 20s- people wo still think Madonna's an artist. Like, great! HOW AND WHY DID KURT COBAIN AND EDDIE VEDDER, SYMBOLS OF A GENERATIONAL DEPRESSION AND- TO SOME EXTENT- HOPLESSNESS, BECOME HEROES TO YOUNG PEOPLE? I don't know. I"m 27, and it makes me feel old. I mean, there's so many obvious things, but, I'm sorry, I liked Cobain's records, but did he ever have the madness or depression that Kafka had? And look at the amount of work Lafka left behind. I just don't know. Of course the world sucks. Who ever said that it wouldn't? No one will ever be able to get into Kurt's head. You'll never be him. But Eddie Vedder complaining and complaining about how shitty it is...don't tell me you didn't know what was in store. It's a fuckin' lie. It's an easy way out. It's a nice persona to make it all seem real. SOME PEOPLE THINK YOUR GENERATION HAS IT PRETTY GOOD AND HAS NO RIGHT TO COMPLAIN AT ALL. [Sarcastic hippie voice] "Well, you don't have Vietnam, man." Well, fuck you, I"d rather get shot at by the Viet Cong. You didn't have AIDS, so we'll have a fuckin' give-and-take, how's that? We can't be sexual beings anymore. We die because no one knows what it is. There! How's that for a nice trade-off? I know that hopelessness. It's horrible. The anxieties of your time. And waking up some mornings, there are some days when the whole world could just cease, and you don't know how long tha feeling's gonna last...I would put a gun in my mouth, too, if I didn't have my music. People get upset at the littlest things. I bet the Depression was harder than this. People lived through that. People lived through the Holocaust. I mean, my mind could be sent reeling about it. What about that? People, you didn't have to live though that. YOU WERE ONE OF THE FIRST COMING OUT OF THE JUST-SAY-NO YEARS TO STAND UP AND SAY, "JUST SAY NO TO SAYING NO," WTH YOUR OPENNESS ABOUT POT SMOKING. Just say no to lying. Once I got into rock & roll for real and saw people doing anti-drunk-driving commercials and don't- do-drugs commercials, and they're fuckin' wasted- it's like "Man, you're a fucking' pussy." I would never take drugs with me on airplanes, and I would never tell you to do them. But I don't own a gun, and I don't hate anyone, so leave me alone. WHO ARE YOUR HEROES? Jerry Garcia, Neil Young, Keith Richards, Townes Van Zant. NO ONE CONTEMPORARY? Uh. [Long pause] Well, there's people like Gary Louris from the band the Jayhawks and all the Jayhawks, really. They're the kind of band who make music for loftier goals- you know, other than being famous and getting free stuff. Those guys really love what they do. WHOM SHOULD YOUNG PEOPLE LOOK UP TO OR LOOK TO FOR GUIDANCE? IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE? I don't think it's politicians, although I'm a big FDR fan. I think your history and art that affects you is where you find heroes. For me, personally, whether it be Bob Dylan or Edvard Munch or Thelonious Monk, I look for my inspiration in those things, going to museums. DO YOUNG PEOPLE CARE ABOUT WHAT'S GOING ON IN THE WORLD? DO PEOPLE CARE ABOUT THE HEALTH-CARE PROGRAM OR ABOUT RWANDA AND HAITI OR THE RAIN FOREST? Yes and no. It's naive. I care about the rain forest. Who can't? I recycle our bottles and shit. But at the same time people get so upset about cigarette-tobacco companies. Well, fuck tobacco companies. IF you got as mad about the educational system keeping people down as you did about someone smoking around your kid, then I would want to listen to you. If you cared about how the media perpetuates racial tensions and hatred because the government basically controls the media, then we'll have something to talk about. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU FLIP THE CHANNELS ON THE TV? WHAT DO YOU SEE? Shit. Except for The Larry Sanders Show. I wish my manager was more like Rip Torn's character! And Janeane [Garofalo] is a friend of ours. WHAT ABOUT MTV? IS THAT A GOOD THING? No, not culturally. MTV exists for me because I can turn it on and see what I never want to do. It's a very heavy learning tool. But was radio that good? Anything that is formatted doesn't seem like it would be very good. But I did grow up with MTV- the '80s were my teen-age years. I didn't get to see '70s bands like Marshall Tucker and Wet Willie and the Allman Brothers. WHAT ABOUT THE RECENT WOODSTOCK '94? Woodstock was a total joke. I think if you went there and you think you really had an amazing time, hey, you're fooling yourself. At the original Woodstock, you see, there wasn't an angle- there was a gig, and people liked to go to gigs, and it just turned out to be a fucking amazing gig. You can' re-create that. Something like that will happen again sometime to some people somewhere. But it's OK if you missed it, and it's OK to want to have it again, but you can't force it. WOODSTOCK SEEMED PLAGUED BY OVERANALYSIS; SO MUCH WAS WRITTEN BEFORE IT EVEN HAPPENED. IS THAT SYMPTOMATIC OF WHAT GOES ON THESE DAYS? It's symptomatic of technology, too. I mean, now there has to be so much information to fill up so much time on so many channels, and it's so easily available now. I think technology... it's why every time I go back home, there's less and less of a South- because of television, all those things, faxes and all the modern things, taking away people's regional identities. THE AMOUNT THAT WILL PROBABLY BE WRITTEN ABOUT YOUR ALBUM AND TOUR IS PROBABLY MORE THAN WAS WRITTEN ABOUT THE ROLLING STONES IN THE ENTIRE '60S. There are two pictures of Robert Johnson. You know how many pictures there are of us? I mean, just my band? It's insane.