AP Newswire Article
By John Rogers
Associated Press
May, 1997


NEW YORK (AP) - When the Black Crowes roared onto the music
scene some half-dozen years ago, their history seemed to have
already been written.

Another hard-playing, hard-drinking, hard-living rock 'n' roll
band.

They'd sell a ton of albums like ``Shake Your Money Maker'' and
``The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion.'' They'd put on
fast-paced, full-volume, high-energy shows that would be talked
about for as long as - well - for as long as one person who'd been
to one remained alive. And in between they'd fight with each other
and anyone else who got in the way.

Then they'd be gone, the result of death or self-destruction.

But somewhere along the way the Black Crowes changed the script.

Now, says drummer Steve Gorman, ``Half of us are over 30, the
other half are right behind, and we're starting to see for the
first time that as long as this still feels right we can just keep
doing it. Whereas before, we were just trying to make it to the
weekend.''

Thus the band is poised to return to the road again this summer,
as the headliner on this year's Grateful Dead-sponsored
``FurthurMore'' tour. Then it's back to the studio in August to
record their fifth album.

The group's six members began tossing around song ideas earlier
this spring. But first and foremost the Black Crowes is a stage
band. So what winds up on the album will likely be what works best
on the tour, Gorman said.

It's a free-form approach that has made the Black Crowes all but
impossible to define.

``People in the music industry, the media, people like you, they
have to label everything,'' Gorman says from his home in Atlanta.
Then, with unfailing Southern politeness, he quickly adds:

``Well, maybe not you specifically. But you know how people develop
labels? Someone says, `I don't like country music. I've never
listened to it, but I know I don't like it.' It's a difficult thing
for people, after they latch onto one musical thing, to try
another.''

Thus the Black Crowes have tried never to latch too hard onto
anything. They are friends with the Grateful Dead and they also
listen enthusiastically to everything from New Wave to Motown to
R.E.M. to Jason and the Scorchers. Gorman, 31, cites his own first
influence as the Beatles.

``Starting at age 5,'' he recalls. ``And by 10 I had every
Beatles album there was. I lived in a Beatles world until I was 13.
Then I discovered everything from Earth, Wind and Fire to Devo.''
On tour, the Black Crowes have appeared on the same bill with
such diverse acts as the Neville Brothers and Metallica.

``As funny as that looks on paper,'' he adds, ``you get people
together who really care about what they're doing and why they're
doing it.''

The group, originally punk rockers, was formed in the mid-1980s
by brothers Chris and Rich Robinson of Atlanta and were known as
Mr. Crowe's Garden.

Gorman, who had dropped out of Western Kentucky University, came
aboard in 1987, when the music changed to rock and the name to the
Black Crowes.

``I was going to do sports broadcasting, that was the plan. But
the bulk of my time there,'' he says of college, ``was spent
playing basketball and listening to records.

``So,'' he adds laughing, ``I decided it was time to get serious
with my life. I quit school and joined a band.''

A friendly man who talks in rapid-fire, drumlike cadences,
Gorman's voice bears no traces of the South. Perhaps that is the
result of spending the first 10 years of his life in Detroit,
although he insists, ``My accent comes and goes. After I've been
drinking you can hear it.''

He moved with his family to the ``pseudo-South'' of Kentucky,
then on his own to Atlanta, where he quickly fell in with the
Robinsons.

``I was the first guy who said, `I'll commit to this. If you're
looking for a permanent drummer, I'm in.' Now we had to find a
permanent bass player, a permanent second guitar player. ... As
soon as we found everybody, we made a record.''

That was 1989, the record was ``Shake Your Money Maker'' and it
was in stores more than a year before it really found an audience.
But then everybody seemed to buy it, and suddenly the Black Crowes
were famous, when all they really wanted to be thought of was good.
What's more, being famous led to immediate comparisons with the
Rolling Stones and the Allman Brothers, something that was said to
annoy Chris Robinson. For his part, Gorman says, the comparisons
were flattering but misguided.

But as to just what the Black Crowes, with their odd but
infectious mix of Southern rock, punk and Delta blues, really are,
Gorman can't say. Neither, he says, can the others.

``We can't discuss the music, we wouldn't know how to do that,''
he says. ``We can discuss how important it is in our lives.''
They stopped doing even that for a time, putting a moratorium on
interviews after they saw themselves coming across mostly as
outrageous.

``Chris was always good for a quote, and people got so they
wanted to see if they could rile him up or make him say something
crazy,'' Gorman chuckles. ``After awhile, we finally just said,
`Why are we doing this?'

``Now,'' he says, ``it doesn't make for great headlines when
you've worked through all your personal problems and have started
to like each other. No one is slugging anybody or getting arrested
these days. At least not very often.''

So when people now press him to define the group, whose every
member stands over 6 feet tall, Gorman has a ready answer:

``We are the tallest band on Earth,'' he says, laughing again.

``When people ask me to describe us, I say we are cumulatively over
37 feet tall. If any other six-member band can beat that, I'd like
to know who they are.''