This ran in Soma Magazine, Issue number 24, fall 1993

Counting Crows edit1 9/12/95 page 1

Start Counting: Counting Crows Begin their Ascension

2000 words
Byline: Cary Tennis
Photo: 1 stock shot

Counting Crows's Geffen Records debut, August and Everything After, is full of wrenchingly beautiful, crafty, poetic rock that draws from the clear, deep bottom of the well: the Band, Van Morrison, and that mysterious supra-personal voice of American angst and exhuberance found in as disparate places as Guy Clark, Dumptruck, the Silos, Wire Train and The Jayhawks.

Signed to Geffen Records by Gary Gersh, who served as executive producer on the T-Bone Burnett-produced, 11-song CD, the Counting Crows have not only made a beautiful and stirring record, they are having some of their rock dreams come true under the tutel age and mentorship of the man who brought Geffen Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Rickie Lee Jones and Robbie Robertson, and is now president of Capitol. But of course it took singer and songwriter Adam Duritz to rhyme "Elvis" with "Jesus" and "nervous" with "circus."

"Would you like a bagel?" Adam asks as he sits at an outdoor table at Berkeley's Caffe Strada across from the UC campus. Along with a copy of Carson McCullers's The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, the university's Daily Californian, and a sheepswool-lined denim jacket, he's carrying a bag of bagels. I choose plain.

On August and Everything is a song called "The Rain King," a beautiful driving pop song with the luminous stacked up harmonies of R.E.M. in their least arty and most sonically rich moments, full of lyrics that sketch out the enormity of need, the vastness of appetite of the archetypal American man.

The title comes from Saul Bellow's novel Henderson the Rain King, about a physically imposing scion of a great American fortune and political dynasty who is tormented by a voice in his head intoning "I want! I want! I want!" and travels to Africa where he defeats a tribal king in wrestling and assumes leadership of the tribe. Duritz talks about the twin drives behind his own creativity: the insatiable personal appetites for love, affection and beauty, and the need, both artistic and psychological, to merge the self in a band that plays and thinks as one unit.

CT: How'd you meet your hero, Robbie Robertson?

AD: Gary Gersh, who signed me to Geffen, knew that he was my hero. He knew I was really into The Band. That was one of the things Gary and I had in common right off. I don't know about them being the greatest rock and roll band in the world, you know, but in the same way that the attitude that's put forth in Henderson The Rain King was what I wanted as a writer, and as a performer, as a band, the model for me has always been The Band. People playing together organically. If you want to do what we did on "Ghost Train" or "Perfect Blue Buildings," [on August and Everything After] that's where you go for that lesson. What goes on in Perfect Blue Buildings is five people as one; that's one mind having very subtle emotional changes. I mean, it's a low-key song but for me it's the finest band performance on the album. Just what goes on, the interplay between the instruments on very subtle levels, as you move in very small increments through the emotional range of that song. That's what they did in the Band. Anybody who tells you those guys weren't the greatest players in the world is full of crap. What it's all about in a rock and roll band is playing with other people. Those guys were gone! They got God every time they got on stage. From each other! So he knew I felt that way about The Band. And we were in LA one weekend, and he took Dave [guitarist David Bryson] and me to Village Recorders. And Robbie dug the record, too, he really liked the songwriting. Robbie has his own little studio there at Village Recorders in Santa Monica, a little room, there's a bed, and a desk, and guitars on the wall, it's pretty cool. And we just sat around and talked for a little while. And I was talking about the kind of sound I wanted to get out of the album and he said, you know what you ought to do, you ought to rent a house. You all could live there, and you could make a record there. And you'll learn to play together because you'll be living together."

So the band found a house in LA and recorded their album, and Robertson continued to help them out.

AD: He got us to play in the rock and roll hall of fame thing.

How it happened was Duritz arrived home in Berkeley one Sunday night with plans to fly to LA the next day to start some recording when he got a call from Gersh.

AD: Gary calls me Sunday about 6:00 and says, 'Hey, what are you doing tomorrow?' 'Oh, I'll get a flight in the afternoon.' Gersh: 'Well, listen there's this Rock and Roll Hall of Fame thing Tuesday and Van Morrison can't come and Robbie wants to know if you'll do this Van Morrison song.'

AD: I was taken aback, kind of freaked out about it. I said, 'Uh, uh,' and Gary said, 'You want to think about it?' I said, 'Yeah.' He said, 'Well, why don't you think about it for a while and call me back?' and he hung up the phone. The phone rang like 2 seconds later and Gary's on the phone like, 'You fucking idiot, what the fuck do you mean you want to think about it?' 'Ok, I'm sorry, I forgot! I forgot what I was talking about for a minute there!'

AD: The rehearsal for it was 1:00 the next afternoon. And we didn't even know any Van Morrison songs. I have never learned a Van Morrison song before. That's like hubris to me. So I had to find Dave Immergluck that night while frantically going through my Van Morrison records thinking what the fuck I should presume to sing? We flew down at 11, Bryson met us at the airport, he'd gotten an apartment down there, and finally decided on "Caravan" on the way home, 'cause I can rip it up on Caravan, and it's pretty simple musically and we'd be able to work it out. We get in the rehearsal, and there's all the Doors, and the house band: Jim Keltner, Benmont Tench, Don Was, the Memphis Horns. We walk in and the Doors are on stage and there's this kid, this little kid, they're doing "Roadhouse Blues," the kid's got his head down, I can't even see who it is, he's singing, 'Woke up this morning, got myself a ...' and fuck, it's Eddie Vedder! And they proceed to rip through Roadhouse Blues. And we're getting ready to go up there, and this guy's standing next to us and I realized, It's Jack Bruce! Oh, fuck. Ok. So then Clapton comes in. And then, of course Ginger Baker hasn't shown up yet." We really wanted to see Cream play. Because they hadn't played together in 25 years. And Dave Immergluck's heroes were Cream. That's it. And we're watching them try to work it out. They were trying to learn "Sunshine of Your Love." They didn't remember it. Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton, they're fucking it up, and as they're fucking it up it's the most awesome thing you've ever heard. You know it's easy to be my age and dis Eric Clapton, because I don't really dig the recent records. But you sit in a room with him when he plays electric guitar, and it will remind you what it's really like to be able to play that instrument with some soul. I don't like the acoustic shit either, but I have the utmost respect for the man now because I saw and really understood what he is doing. Ok, so then as we're leaving, Ginger Baker never showed up, we played basketball with Eddie Vedder for a while, and we're driving off, two-and-a-half hours later, and this limo goes by the other way, and it's Ginger Baker.

So then we had to go the next day and so we get up and do our sound check, the three of us and Benmont, and directly in front of us is Eddie, sitting with the guys in the Doors. To my right are Clapton and Jack Bruce. At the table to my left are Robbie and Bruce Springsteen. Ok? We played it, it was cool. I watch a couple of people play then I'm running up stairs to the dressing room, come'on, come'on, and I almost bowl this little guy over, he looks up at me and goes, Hey! like Hey! It was Springsteen. I said, Hi, my name's Adam. He said, 'Hi, Adam. You sing great, man!' 'Well, thanks!' 'Catch you later, man.' When I came to, he was gone.

Duritz tells it with all the humble wonder of a boy thrust into a dreamworld.

AD: When we went to play that night, the last thing they play in the video [while they're standing on stage] is the Last Waltz: "Caravan," which is the most drop-dead performance of any song ever, and it's playing right above my head, while I'm getting ready to play it in front of all these people. So Robbie gives his speech and introduces us and we gotta play it. I'm looking out there and there's Springsteen looking at me, he's sitting at a table with Gary. I can see he's getting down. He's diggin us.

Then I saw Cream play that night. I stood there with George Clinton and watched Cream. He gave me a big hi five. Cream was great! I've seen cream play! Nobody in my generation has seen cream play! That was worth everything.

Duritz's favorite song on the album is "Perfect Blue Buildings," a wrenching mantra to 4:00 a.m that rings too true to the ragged ends of decadent days for me to have anything but the most diabolical shudders of pleasure in it. I like the driving pop tonic of "Rain King," myself. But Duritz wants to explain about "Perfect Blue Buildings."

"The despair of like, the greyness, and the boredom and the malaise and the kind of like jagged irregularity of life and how like horrible and repetitive it can be. And the problem in the song is that he keeps having this, he's very seduced by this like coma vision idea, and the chorus is where he's seeing this beautiful regular simple thing, but what that is is a coma, death-vision, and he's trying to not want it, he keeps saying 'help me stay awake, I'm falling asleep in perfect blue buildings,' but ..."

"So, It's not about coming off speed at 4:30 in the morning?" I ask innocently.

"Well, yes and no. Like a lot of people my age," Adam says with rather statesmanlike care, "I did a lot of shit when I was younger. And there are repercussions from doing a lot of drugs when you're younger. I don't sleep very well. So I'm often wide awake at 4 or 5." Whereas, of "Rain King," Duritz says, "The song is not about the book so much. Henderson's a big, open wound of a person. He flows good and bad over everything. He is the epitome of the Romantic ideal. I mean the romantic ideal as a way of living, a life of emotions, ups and downs. That's what all my songs are about -- characters caught in this romantic ideal, how to live their lives, mostly disastrously for them, but in any case they are involved. The person in "Perfect Blue Buildings" is shattered by it. But "Mr. Jones" is enthralled by it. He keeps saying, 'I belong somewhere better than this, anywhere but in between.

That's where Counting Crows belong: anywhere but in between. This band will go far. Check 'em out.

You know it's easy to be my age and dis Eric Clapton. But you sit in a room with him when he plays electric guitar, and it will remind you what it's really like to be able to play that instrument with some soul.

As a band, the model for me has always been The Band.

It was Springsteen. I said, Hi, my name's Adam. He said, 'Hi, Adam. You sing great, man!' When I came to, he was gone.

I've seen cream play! Nobody in my generation has seen cream play! That was worth everything.