The Lizard King
By Liz Evans
Kerrang
August 3, 1996
 

No wonder Chris Robinson's laughing - his band have survived their
worst ever year and he's stopped punching his brother. The Black Crowes
main man tells Liz Evans why he's never been happier with sex, drugs and
rock and roll.

Perched on a sofa in a plush, private hotel suite off London's Oxford
Street, Chris Robinson looks like he's spent the past 15 years holed up
in a teepee in a field near Glastonbury. He's barefooted, he's clad in
psychedelic tie-dyes, and he's seemingly had a large mammal glued to
his chin.

But while he shares the sensibilities and the style of the original
Woodstock generation, The Black Crowes' singer isn't stuck '60s
nostalgia trip, and he's far too interesting to be some whacked -out
old hippy. In print, Robinson is volatile, controversial, arrogant, temperamental, opinionated, defensive and passionate. He's all these things in the flesh, too, but there's also a side-order of warmth and wit, and an amusing habit of mimicking
anyone and everyone he knows.

By his own admission, Chris doesn't identify with '90s pop
culture. He's off and away in a 'weird place' with his band, his
friends, his dogs and his family. But he's here to talk about The Black
Crowes. Which is good. Because not too long ago, The Black Crowes very
nearly didn't exist any more.

After a tempestuous run at success, whipped along by bust-ups and
communication breakdowns, The Black Crowes reached breaking point with
their last album 'Amorica'. Not only was the mood of the record
tense, angry and depressing, but the band themselves were falling to
pieces.

Chris' infamous tussles with his younger brother, Crowes guitarist
Rich, had become so serious that it looked as if they might not be able
to carry on working together. But between then and the new, noticeably
more relaxed new album, 'Three Snakes And One Charm', the clouds have
lifted.

"The last six years have been a pretty good test for us," says Chris
now, in between gulps from a bottle of Becks. "But i don't think it's
going to be smooth sailing from now on. We're going to fight and we're
going to have hard times. But the difference is, instead of waiting for
a year-and-a-half, we'll wait about 15 minutes before we apologize and
talk about it. This band is the most important thing in the world to
us. Nearly not having it made us realize that."

The Crowes hit rock bottom when Rich started traveling on his own
bus during the 'Amorica' tour.

"Everyone wanted to quit," says Chris. "We'd been close to it
before, but we'd never really been there. We were all making
plans, like, 'Jesus, what am i going to do now?'. Our drummer
Steve (Gorman) was like, 'i still want to play music. Maybe I can hire
everyone in The Black Crowes to be in my band!'.

"All it took-and it took 27 years for me and Rich - was for us to
sit down and go, 'I want to tell you I love you, that you're a talented
man, and that I'm here for you'."

So The Black Crowes survived. Just.

"I never foresee us getting back to any of that shit, "Chris
considers. "When we started i was 22 years old, I'll be thirty in
December, and I'm really looking forward to being 40 and in The Black
Crowes. I can safely say that everyone else in the band will say
that, too."

Chris and Rich's up-and-down relationship has been well documented
over the years. They're always been very competitive .When the were
kids, their Dad would give them a pair of boxing gloves and let them
slug it out in the basement.

"We f**king punched each other out all the time, "Chris recalls. "We
could be as mean and as cruel to each other as possible, but if anyone
tried to get in the way of either of us, we'd both f**king kill them."

"Our basic not-getting-along thing is just big brother/little
brother shit. I'd want to tell him something and he wouldn't want to
hear it. He's a stubborn motherf**ker. I was always like, 'I wish you'd
get your head out of your F**king ass and tell me what you
think'. That's how we used to be. Now, we laugh about it."

Which has rubbed off on the whole vibe surrounding 'Three Snakes And
One Charm'.

"The difference with the new record is that my brother has a smile
on his face, and that changes the entire world for all of us. He's such
a sensitive soul and an eccentric artist."
"Rich's a very important person in my life. I've always loved and
respected him, but now i just dig him. We talk on the phone twice a
day. He and his wife Emma, have just had a son, so i have a nephew now
too. It's awesome, man."

Growing up in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, Chris Robinson was, in
his own words, "a weird kid". While other kids were out at stadium
concerts, he was at home listening to Bob Dylan, reading Jack Kerouac
and generally feeling estranged. Like most adolescents who turn into
interesting people.

His parents were 'insane' ("Aren't yours?" he asks). They still
treat him like a little kid.

"It was okay to cry in our house, although it was very
male-oriented with me, Rich, my Dad and just my Mum," he says. "We always
hugged each other and there was always affection, but when it came to
talking about your feelings my Dad turned into a football coach. But i
think that's pretty typical. My Mum was always so busy worrying about
stuff she couldn't see past that, regardless of what we were going
through.

"They both really wanted me to go to college, so i went to Georgia
State University where I took Literature major and Art History
minor. But i never took tests or went to classes. I got an
'Incomplete', which is beyond failure!

"I just realized i was living to all these conventional standards
for all the wrong reasons. I'm not a conventional person. I knew i could
deal with it, but my parents couldn't."

When Chris was 17 ,his parents bought him a bass guitar for
Christmas. Rich was given a guitar. Mr. and Mrs. Robinson Snr now refer to
that particular festive season as Black Christmas. Because although
Chris and Rich's Dad was a folk musician, the last thing he wanted was
for his sons to take up music as a career.

"If I had been anything but a musician!" gasped Chris. "That was the
scourge. I have no idea why. It would be nice to say that my parents
supported me and, yeah, they did once we had major labels giving us
money to make demos and shit. But before that it was like, "What are
going to do, work in a pizza place your whole life? You don't got ant
talent. Blah,blah,blah...'

"I don't think it sat right with my Dad's ego, because he was
something of a local celebrity. And when we flopped into the house a
year after our first record ('Shake Your Moneymaker') had sold a
couple of million, I'm sure he was like, 'Woah! You were my kids a couple
of years ago, mowing the lawn, and now you're wandering around like a
bunch of f**king crazy people'."

To get his musical career off the ground, Chris had to leave home
when he was 18. He ended up scraping a living in squalor with Steve. But
he resisted the temptation to run home for money, even when he had no
more than $10 to last him the month. Eventually, Rich followed suit.
"My parents always thought I was the crazy, passionate one, but I
don't think they ever thought I was going to bring Rich into this
too," Chris cackles.

These days, Chris refers to his band as a family. During the
recording of 'Three Snakes...', they all lived together in the 'Chateau
De La Crowe', a residential studio in Atlanta.

Chris and guitarist Marc Ford both live in Los Angeles, keyboard
player Eddie Hawysch in Detroit, Rich, Gorman and bassist Johnny Colt in
Georgia. Being together in one place again, says Chris, made the
atmosphere absolutely communal.

"There were friends and wives and kids and dogs all around," he
recalls. "There was a lot of laughing and smiles and trust. We let a lot
of shit go. And the album's a lot more confident and positive."
Lyrically, 'Three Snakes...',although not as obviously
autobiographical as 'Amorica', touches upon all sorts of personal bits
and pieces. Notably, Chris' relationship with Lala, the long-term
girlfriend to whom he is now married.

"Since I met Lala I've been different," he admits. "We broke up for
a little bit over two years and that was weird, but you've got to work
at the trust and the honesty. I piss her off, she pisses me off, and who
knows what's going to happen? Nothing comes with any guarantees.
"It's not perfect - she's known for three years that I'm going to
have my friends round and stay up all night drinking beer and making
music, and that I have to live on the road. But I will never lie to
her, and random sexual encounters are not part of my adult agenda. I've
always told her, 'If I feel the need to go out on the road and have sex
with other people, then I don't love you any more'. But that won't
happen.

"I'm not better than anyone else, "he continues. "It's just how I
try to live my life. I like really logical, consistent, simple things, and
one thing is a lie, and one thing is the truth. And lies don't
exist, they're just holograms." Riiight.

Despite rumours to the contrary, Chris' need for the truth has
been instrumental in his perception of drugs. He's never lied about the
fact that he takes drugs, but he's never been addicted.
"I can go weeks and weeks without getting stoned, "he says. "And in
six years of living on the road, we've never gone onstage late. Drug
addicts are the most unreliable people.

"But really, I think drugs are so unimportant. A lot more people are
on legal prescribed drugs than are on legal drugs.

"I have to say that Ecstasy is the worst shit I've ever tried. I've
had it three times and I'm never taking it again. If I want a drug that
makes we want to partake in mass culture, I want to hear a
funky, syncopated rhythm, not a constant beat. But if kids dig it, let 'em
have their shit!"

With that, he's off. Tapping his feet, rattling an imaginary
tambourine, humming a funky, syncopated beat. When he tells you music is
the most important thing in his life, Chris Robinson ain't lying.