This text initially appeared within the Might 1994 difficulty of SPIN.
“I used to be form of hesitant about doing this interview,” pronounces Counting Crows‘ dreadlocked frontman Adam Duritz, “as a result of I didn’t suppose anybody at SPIN favored us. I don’t realty care about that notably, however I didn’t wish to take part in my very own execution.”
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Duritz’s Charlottesville, Virginia, lodge room resembles that of a rookie touring salesman. “My life is a lot extra sophisticated since I grew to become a rock star,” he jokes, gesturing on the mess sprawling from his suitcase. I guarantee him I’m not right here to do a hatchet job, however he’s near the mark about nobody at SPIN liking his band. Not that the Counting Crows want our endorsement: Their debut album, August and Every part After, has rocketed up the charts, transferring from the underside half of the Billboard Prime 200 to the Prime Ten in a matter of weeks, fueled by an look on Saturday Evening Stay and heavy MTV airplay of their video for “Mr. Jones.” As VJ Lewis Largent requested not too long ago by means of introduction to the clip, “May this Counting Crows album be any huger?”
So what’s to not like? Absolutely not the Crows’ well-crafted, tasteful, stable, earthy, Ikea rock. Absolutely not the band members themselves, all of whom have toiled in obscurity for years within the Bay Space music scene, beating their heads towards all of the acquainted struggling-musician partitions (apathy, poverty, jealousy) earlier than corning collectively lower than two years in the past to type Counting Crows. Since then, issues have kind of taken off — signed to DGC inside six months, after a heated bidding warfare, for an advance so giant native wags have been dubbing the combo “Accounting Crows.” Rave opinions, fixed touring, together with stints with the Cranberries, Suede, and presently. Cracker. And now, the specter of imminent full-fledged pop stardom.
What’s bothersome concerning the Crows is that the band’s sudden success appears to indicate a form of musical conservatism on the a part of the listening public that we’d somewhat not need to acknowledge. Even followers of the Crows level to the band’s sturdy traditionalism, and it actually is dependent upon which aspect of the old-fogey fence you sit whether or not these things attracts or repels you. This division was obvious nicely earlier than the band had risen to its current empyrean heights; again within the Crows’ Bay Space stomping grounds, San Francisco Weekly critic Eric Weisbard reviewed the band’s debut album as “a sound solely growing old rock critics might discover novelty in,” however, as Weisbard is the primary to confess, apparently he was incorrect. Dirk Richardson of the Bay Guardian, with whom Weisbard had a testy trade in print across the similar time, describes the band as “an up to date model of traditional rock. For me, I’m 44, and I don’t thoughts it in any respect. There are issues they’ve in widespread with bands like R.E.M. and U2, however additionally they have an actual stable basis, clearly, in Van Morrison and the Band.”
Duritz himself approaches the comparisons with practiced aplomb; it’s clearly a query he’s getting used to answering: “I assume they’re superb with me. I certainty love these guys, and I’ve taken classes from them and a number of different folks. You change into extra cautious of all these misrepresentations of your self, as a result of they assume a lot bigger proportions as we get larger. It’s exhausting to not be nervous about them, even when they in all probability will all fade away. In a yr and a half I don’t suppose I’ll need to take care of the Van Morrison factor anymore. All I can say is, it simply looks like me to me.”
“Right here’s how large I’m,” says Counting Crows drummer Steve Bowman, sitting together with his bandmates of their tour supervisor’s lodge room. ”Dave the guitarist and I are sitting in considered one of our two vans, and a woman walked up. She caught her head in and checked out us and stated, ‘Are you guys the crew?’ And Dave stated, ‘Yeah,’ and she or he stated, ‘Nicely, you guys depend, too.’ We’re her favourite band, and she or he doesn’t even know what we appear like.” Bowman’s anecdote underscores the journeyman side of his comrades, who regardless of their present prominence nonetheless journey by van, nonetheless open each night time for Cracker, and nonetheless (except the mop-headed Duritz) can’t get acknowledged by their very own followers.
The band members (in addition to Bowman and Duritz, there’s Matt Malley, bass, Charlie Gillingham, keyboards, David Bryson, guitar, and Dan Vickrey, guitar) vary in age from 27 to 32, and are largely Bay Space natives with lengthy résumés within the music scene there. After years of kind of disappointment, they discover themselves reborn as profitable working musicians, a title that eludes most of their mates again house and has them feeling fairly rattling juiced, though in a mature kind of approach.
“Being older makes you much more nonchalant about success,” says Gillingham ”As a result of we’ve all had mates who had good file offers after which acquired dropped, or been in nice bands and been dropped or it didn’t work out, or individuals who have been sensible, sensible, sensible, however simply couldn’t appear to promote information in any respect. So after some time hanging across the similar metropolis and being in the identical scene — success doesn’t appear so candy. Being a pop star isn’t that vital.”
No matter your sentiments regarding the Crows’ music, there isn’t any questioning the wellsprings of sincerity and integrity from which it flows. Baltimore-born Duritz, the son of a health care provider, spent most of his younger life transferring round (Boston, El Paso, Denver, Houston) earlier than settling within the Berkeley space. “I don’t have any actual roots,” he says. “Probably the most settled I’ve ever been is with this band.” He started writing songs in his freshman yr on the College of California. Wanting again, Duritz says, “I can see why [our current success] occurred now as an alternative of after I was 21. I might see the place there was potential, however I’d have needed to have made 5 albums that sucked.” Counting Crows’ ascent is not any triumph of selling — the truth is, Duritz intentionally tried to place the brakes on the star-making equipment. “I’ve tried all the things to maintain it a sluggish factor,” he insists. “We didn’t launch a single, we simply went out and toured, and saved the file firm off of it. I simply thought that was the easiest way to do it.”
Form of just like the R.E.M. principle of improvement?
“Precisely. I used to be basing this complete factor on what it was wish to develop up as an R.E.M. fan. At this level as we speak R.E.M. can do no matter they need, as a result of they’ve such a core of people who find themselves into them for being R.E.M. and their information. Not for a success. That is what I used to be attempting to do with this band, simply to, like, set it up with the touring now, not alienate lots of people by turning into some huge pop phenomenon. I haven’t performed something that I remorse.”
Later that night time on the native rock membership, a capability crowd of clean-cut, low-key collegians sways and claps politely to the Counting Crows set. Perhaps it’s simply the chilly medication, however I discover myself zoning out midway by way of the efficiency; the band saws away with well-honed chops and apparent zeal, and Duritz is a riveting singer whose considerably studied mannerisms belie a deep dedication to his wordy, conversational lyrics (“I feel my songs are accumulations of particulars; issues folks truly would say — that I’d truly say,” says Duritz). It’s simply not translating, to not me, anyway. I perk up together with the group when ”Mr. Jones” begins up; not solely is it essentially the most acquainted tune, however it could be the closest factor to a “rock” tune within the band’s mild, somber repertoire.
Stay, Duritz performs with the tunes and lyrics of a lot of his songs, however none so drastically as “Mr. Jones,” whose melody is almost unrecognizable tonight and lots of of whose lyrics have been radically altered. It’s as if Duritz needs to distance himself each from the phenomenon of a “hit” file, and from the sentiment of the tune itself, which initially involved the (patently silly) longings of a annoyed musician.
“‘Mr. Jones’ actually has undergone a change in tone,” Duritz explains later. “It’s change into extra about somebody who’s satirically trying again on his desires than it’s about somebody simply having the desires. See, the time schedule’s modified for me, too. As of as we speak we’re No. 10 [on the Billboard album chart]. So the road, ‘All of us wish to be huge huge stars however we acquired totally different causes for that,’ is now ‘All of us wish to be huge huge stars however we had no concept what it means to do this.’ I’m additionally singing, ‘When everyone loves me, I’m nearly as fucked-up as I may be.’ And ‘Each time I activate the TV, I gotta see myself staring proper again at me.’”
I seen, too, that as an alternative of the road, “I wish to be Bob Dylan,” Duritz sang, “I wish to be Alex Chilton,” which modifications the main target from eager to be an enormous star to eager to be Large Star.
“A variety of the modifications have been semi-unconscious, it simply began taking place over the course of the final month,” continues Duritz. “In the future I noticed, ‘Why am I singing about Bob Dylan? I don’t wish to be Bob Dylan in any respect. I meant it to be humorous on the time — it’s important to perceive after I wrote that tune, I didn’t actually have a band. There was no Counting Crows. It simply wasn’t taking place. I used to be by no means going to be Bob Dylan. Now I don’t know who I’m going to be.”
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