The Black Crowes:  Guilty!
By Matt Snow
Q
August, 1991
 

Guilty of making music that was going out of style in 1973. Guilty of flying
the tattered flag of rock'n'roll idealism. Guilty, indeed, "of never kissin'
anybody's ass!" The Black Crowes admit it all — and America loves them for
it. "We're rocker hippies," they tell Mat Snow. "We don't live by other
people's rules."

IT IS A BALMY WEEKEND EVENING IN Los Angeles, and as the swiveling
searchlights pod-mounted outside the open-air Greek Theater probe the navy
velvet sky, tonight's attraction, the Black Crowes, crank down a gear so
that singer Chris Robinson might share a few thoughts with the capacity
crowd.

"The Black Crowes," he testifies, "are playing their rock and motherfucking
roll mu-u-u-usic." Vowels stretch and bend with Southern-style fervor, and
6,000 voices heartily cheer. "And because of you, we gotta to do it our own
way!" More cheers. "And what a rare thing that is in this day and age!" The
audience hoots its lusty agreement.

"Cos let me tell you, sometimes the bullshit stacks up so high in record
offices that I can smell that shit in Atlanta, Georgia!" Ecstatic clamor.
"But before we go-o-o-o tonight, we're gonna let you in you in on one small
thing..." Expectant hurrahs. "YOU wanna know what it is?" Whoops of
affirmation. "You wanna tell me you wanna know?" Whoops rise to a shriek.
"The Black Crowes are guilty!" Baying mayhem. "Guilty of what?" The tension
mounts. "Never kissin' anybody's motherfuckin' ass!!!" A bellow and a crash
as the band weigh in to underline his point with drum rolls, organ fanfare
and climactic guitar chords. "And you don't wanna kiss anybody's ass
either!"

Pandemonium piles on pandemonium. "Hey man, check it out!" The clap-o-meter
has rocketed the roof. "I know where we are. I know we're in Los Angeles!"
Chris informs the fevered throng. "But if you're too fuckin' cool to have a
good time with us, maybe you should go back to college!" The mere mention of
higher education sends the crowd into further paroxysms. "Do we understand
each other?" Singer and crowd outdo each other in a frenzy of raucous
self-congratulation. "Aaaaal-rah'! Come on let's groove a little bit!!!"

And with that, we do.

*

CHRIS ROBINSON HAS BEEN refining this rap up and down America for 18 months, while the band's Shake Your Money Maker has grown from low-profile debut cut on a $5,000 advance to an album heading towards three million sales, blazing an old-fashioned rock 'n' roll trail in a chart dominated by hi-tech rap and
dance sounds. Graduating from we-try-harder support to Robert Plant, Heart,
Aerosmith and ZZ Top (and thereby hangs a tale) to headliners in their own right, they have sold out – according to Chris's business-minded younger brother, guitarist Rich Robinson – 80 to 85 per cent of their shows in a very soft tickets market. With the proverbial cover of Rolling Stone as proof, the Black Crowes are rock's flavor of the year. But what year that might be is the subject of some conjecture.

Rock genealogists have a field day with the Black Crowes, calculating the proportions of 1972-era Stones to Humble Pie circa 1971 or 1973-period Faces that goes into their brazenly retro (and hugely enjoyable) casserole of humbucking cock-rock and rhythm'n'blooze, delivered with all the smokin' roar that Messrs Gibson, Fender and Marshall can provide. Aged 24, Chris Robinson is keen to acknowledge his debt to Aerosmith, AC/DC, Free, Steve Marriott, Rod and Mick, but keener still to stress that if it sounds like he's singing from the same hymn book, that is because he too is a scholar of rock's ancestral voices in blues and soul. He will name-check Robert Johnson, the Reverend Gary Davis and Mississippi Fred McDowell with the zeal of the recent convert.

And, fan that he is of yesteryear's sounds, Chris Robinson is an unabashed rock 'n' roll reactionary. The very mention of the word "product", meaning record, empurples him with rage, and he has developed a fundamentalist outlook that puts "the music" first, second and third, and shares Bob Dylan's axiom that money doesn't talk but swears. It is a view that Chris will vigorously expound at length, and if he were not already so refreshing a blast from the past, his trousers — drainpipe-tight jeans of the kind Neil
Young's cowgirl spent most of 1970 patching — proclaim where their owner's head is at before he even opens his mouth.

"Well, we're not gonna lie," amiably drawls this hyperactive cross between Aerosmith's Steve Tyler and comedian Emo Phillips, "We see pictures of Aerosmith from around 1973 and we think that looks much cooler than bands now in Spandex. This girl in New York makes me and Rich's clothes, and people give me clothes — I have a really bad habit of meeting girls who dress well and going to their house and raiding their closet. Sure, I'll give it back, hahahaha!" he chortles winningly.

"But I know what year it is. We're not dressing up like we're in a play or a movie. We're like rocker hippies, and we'd like to see the music getting back to the grassroots. I don't see the Black Crowes as wanting to change the world or being part of a movement, I just see us as being the kind of band you can wrap yourselves up in like a blanket. It is a lifestyle now. We don't live by other people's etiquette or rules. There's too many things to taste and feel and see."

*

FROM ATLANTA, GEORGIA (home of Coca-Cola), the Robinson boys were born into a musical household. Father Stanley — "a Bobby Darin figure, a very talented
guy" — enjoyed a small hit with 'Boom-A-Dip-Dip' in 1959 and opened for Bill
Haley and Phil Ochs. Now a sales rep, his record collection ("Johnny Guitar
Watson to the Modern Jazz Quartet, Earl Scruggs to the Yardbirds") bedrocked
his kids' taste.

Though he attended an almost all-white high school ("There was like six
black kids — and me, hahaha!"), as well as the aforementioned rockers, Chris
cultivated his own yen for such funkateers as Parliament, Funkadelic, Sly
and the Family Stone and Prince. A budding poet and still an insatiable
bookworm, Chris kicked college into touch in order to sing in a band – a
band initiated by his 15-year-old younger brother Rich's acquisition of a
guitar for Christmas ("My father neither encouraged nor discouraged us. All
he said was, Good luck — it's hard").

Now 22, the almost stonily immobile Rich's funky riffing is not so much
School of Keith Richards as University, PhD and Nobel Prize. A fan of Nick
Drake ("What he plays on one guitar most people can't play on three; same
thing with Jimmy Page's acoustic"), Rich will concede his debt to
Keith 'n' Ron, and "Mississippi Fred McDowell used to play really cool slide
things, and Duane Allman was amazing." Though they share a fondness for
hippie chic. Rich is as guarded as his older brother is verbal. A
self-taught player, he provides the music to Chris's words. "He's always
writing lyrics, but I write songs in spurts. I just write 'em when I'm
inspired. He's the passionate one, but I think more."

Rich attempts to analyze the creative tension reputed to fuel the fraternal
creative powerhouse: "I think more about everything, know what I mean? The
reason I'm quiet is because I'm thinking all the time. Or whatever."

And what, pray, is Rich thinking about?

"Anything, from like, er, what a beautiful day outside it is to, I need to
write some songs, to, I'll listen to some music and think how great it is.
Just anything, like a huge spectrum. I'm constantly thinking, 'cos he always
talks. Which is cool. He's talkative and I'm not. I don't like to speak
unless I think there's something that needs to be said."

Formed in 1984, the Robinson's' band was named Mr Crowe's Garden after a
fairy tale, a suggestion made by, in Chris's quaint archaism, "this chick —
and we threw the 'e' in just to fuck with people more. We were really into
the Dream Syndicate, the Rain Parade, Green On Red — all those Paisley
Underground bands, so we wanted a psychedelic name. When we changed, we kept
the Crowes because that's what people called us anyway. The crows in our
logo are like a caricature of us, how we used to cut our hair, like Keith
Richards, 'cos I thought it looked cool."

Playing their first pro gig (except the club owner's $50 cheque bounced) in
Chattanooga, Tennessee, Mr Crowe's Garden spent their early years concealing
Rich's youth from the attentions of the authorities, attempting to draw
crowds that exceeded two figures.

"We used to do Love's 'My Flash On You', and a Velvet Underground song,"
Chris recalls. "I always felt uncomfortable in the alternative scene. If you
played a Led Zeppelin record at that time, you were just a fuckin' stoner,
redneck idiot. Led Zeppelin was kids' music. I'm like, hey! You call this
kids' music? That's a heavy, heavy band. Out in the suburbs the kids were
into the MTV bands of the time — Loverboy, Night Ranger, Van Halen and Quiet
Riot, music I don't even know about except I don't like it much. I guess
while most kids were listening to Ratt, I was listening to Blonde On Blonde.
My parents musta dropped me on my head somethin' hahaha!

"And I was really heavily influenced by Gram Parsons. Oh man, that song
'$1000 Wedding' makes me weep if you catch me with the right amount of
drinks on a good night. And being a Southern person like Gram, he's a pretty
good role model. The people who have really touched me musically — Gram
Parsons, Alex Chilton, Steve Marriott — all basically lived the same way:
uncompromising towards the music industry. That's how The Rolling Stones are
influences too, and Guns N' Roses: they're nothing but a big fuck-you to
everyone, we'll do it our way. And R.E.M. — they did it their own way. And
they lived only 60 miles up the road. But I never liked the Southern stuff
like Lynyrd Skynyrd. I wasn't even into the Allman Brothers until a couple
of years ago (the Black Crowes include a superb version of 'Dreams' in their
set). I realised that this is not Southern rock; it's just heavy music.
We've tried so hard to stay away from Southern connotations. It's bullshit —
I've never had a Confederate flag."

The Black Crowes' line-up is now completed by lead guitarist Jeff Cease and
Johnny Colt, whose lank locks, Pigpen beard, tattoos, leather trousers and
bad-guy black hat denote a rocker if anything even more trad than the
Robinsons. He is the band's seventh bassist; Steve Gorman is the fourth
drummer. Their predecessors? "We fired 'em," Chris briskly explains. "They
weren't in it for the same reason we were. My brother was 15 years old. How
many 15-year-old kids make a heavy, heavy commitment to their music?"

The big break came when they were spotted by A&R man George Drakoulias, then
of A&M Records, who discerned in Chris a natural front-man and in Rich a
rockin' plank-spanker, despite the college circuit fodder they were then
peddling to a small audience. When Drakoulias got a job with the newly
formed Def American record company — Rick Rubin's breakaway from the Def Jam
rap-rock label he co-founded with Russell Simmons — he signed the Crowes and
bunged them into the studio with former Allman Brother and Rolling Stones
touring keyboardist Chuck Leavell colouring the band's guitar-heavy sound
with his finger-licking piano and Hammond organ. (Eddie Harsh, Canadian
sideman with bluesers James Cotton and Albert Collins, now tickles the
ivories on a semi-detached basis, the unofficial "sixth Crowe".)

*

AS THE WELL-HEELED patrons of the Greek Theater promenade in the gloaming in
search of light refreshment, they might be struck by the handwritten
placards prominently displayed all over the auditorium: "The Black Crowes
have no association with any venues sponsors, so feel free to put all your
attentions to having a good time. Peace & Soul, The Black Crowes." This is
what has cemented the band’s fame in America this year. They have very
conspicuously said no to what most rockers find it all too easy to say yes:
sponsorship. By just saying no on this issue every night from stage, Chris
contrived to get the band thrown off the support slot of ZZ Top's American
tour — which just so happened to be sponsored by the gaseous beverage they
call Miller Lite.

"We were asked on to the tour, and we were fans of ZZ's, so why not?" Rich
explains. "ZZ is sponsored by Miller; we weren't. They knew we didn't agree
with sponsorship when we started. We got no money from the sponsor; we got
money from the door because we drew people. Chris would say every night,
This is brought to you commercial-free. Miller said, You don't say that, and
if you do, we'll throw you off the tour. We said. Hey, we don't have a
contract with you; we thought we were going on tour with ZZ. If you wanna
throw us off, throw us off. And they did. Miller faxed ZZ saying get rid of
them cos we don't want this press. ZZ had no idea themselves; it was their
manager Bill Ham. He sees Miller giving them millions of dollars, and then
sees those millions being pulled away if he doesn't do something. So we were
thrown off the second week of a tour supposed to last for three months."

Miller deny putting such pressure on ZZ Top's management, who so far have
refrained from comment. Chris, however, now questions ZZ Top's rocking
credentials root and branch: "OK, I'm guilty of just one thing — having
different priorities. I'm 24 years old, and this is the first year I've been
doing it. We're still angry and we're still sexy and we're still dangerous
and still trying to prove something. When I'm ZZ Top's age, I'm sure
there'll be different things in my life."

Rich is just as vehement about just saying no. "We're doing it, so why can't
everybody? It infringes on the creative process. U2 went on tour with an
elaborate set and a lot of trucks, but did they take sponsorship? Did Bruce
Springsteen, Prince, Neil Young or Robert Plant? Did Aerosmith? No! We go on
tour to play; we don't have anything to do with this bullshit. It would be
one thing if the people who got sponsorship lowered the ticket prices, but
they're still up there."

So determined are the Black Crowes now on this issue that refuse to be
associated with sponsorship at all; when they heard their support act
Maggie's Dream endorsing Miller Lite on the radio, the hapless band were
summarily fired. "We're not naοve, foolish people," Chris declares. "We know
that money makes the world go round, it's just not that high up the list. I
have made a great deal of money — I don't know how much, hahaha. I work very
hard to get the money to buy records — I don't call record labels and have
them sent round. But these are just our thoughts — and we have an abrasive
sense of humour. I've become a more mellow person. I'm not as angry as I was
because people are hearing my songs."

*

IN ROCK'S COMMERCIALLY CONTROLLED climate, the smallest sensation can make
headline news, as The Black Crowes found out at a gig in Denver, Colorado.
First, the Fire Department threatened to stop the show on the grounds that
one of the band had lit a cigarette. Chris remonstrated with some very
forceful language, the police turned up and made threats. Chris stood by his
rights: "Your parents fornicated to have you just like mine did, and just
'cos you fuckin' say an oath and get a badge, sit backstage and drink
fuckin' free coffee I paid for, you're gonna tell me what to do?" he
unwisely baited the flatfoot, and then told the audience all about it.

Afterwards, while buying beer at the local 7-Eleven, he was accosted by a
pair of female customers. "One said, Wow, it's Chris and waved, and I was
very polite — I'm a nice person. But her friend went. Who the fuck is he?
I'm just a person waiting in line to get served, I said. You got a fuckin'
problem with me? Who the fuck are you? Well, at least I'm not a fuckin'
smelly, long-haired hippy… She looked to be my age — so attractive —
overweight with a box of fuckin' Twinkie cakes. I'll kick your ass! So I
said, You're gonna fuckin' threaten me, you cow? I think she was just
jealous of my slender physique. So I spit at her, scream some insults and
left. She told people I spat on her but I don't remember that. The next
thing I know, five men with weapons come to my hotel room to give me a
ticket for disturbing the peace and assault. This story was huge, national.
But most people thought it was hilarious.

"Rock now is so safe and generic," Chris philosophises. "You've gotta keep
everything such a secret, like it's a big deal here that we admit that some
of us smoke pot. Like wow, they've got high? There are kids who think that
is the most evil thing. I'm like, Waddaya mean, dude? It grows out of the
ground like corn. It's not a drug, unlike alcohol, where man manipulated the
fermentation process to make it. And then there are people who come out and
say they're sober, and then you see them in some fuckin' club doin' coke off
the toilet bowl. How dare they tell kids not to do drugs? That's why I'll
never do any just say no campaigns. I'm not going to be a hypocrite.

"You can love getting high. But who's in control, man?" he sniffs. "It's
mind over matter. I have a mind, and you can't let matter take over your
mind — even though they're mind-altering things. But you've always got to
ask yourself, Who's in control here? I've never missed a gig, I've never
been too fucked up to make it.

"Peer pressure to do drugs is as bad as peer pressure not to do drugs. You
should be a free thinker. Those of us who haven't gone sober feel as much a
fraternity as much as sober people. If you have fun drinking Evian every
day, good. But I don't. I live my life the way I want."

As he'd no doubt say himself, Aaaaal-rah'!