A Brief Chat with Adam Duritz, lead singer of Counting Crows

Gene Mahoney: So when did you guys start? In ‘88?

Adam Duritz: ‘89.

GM: Where? In Berkeley?

AD: Uh, yeah.

GM: Where did you guys get your start? At Berkeley Square? The Gilman Project?

AD: Our first gig? Um... we had a little version of the band in ‘89 that just sort of split up, I think, and then, uh... I was in some other bands all over the Bay Area and Dave and I were doing open mics just on our own, like at The Firehouse and Mad Dog in the Fog. We did one at the Paradise. Then we started getting offered regular gigs because of that stuff. We didn’t really have a big following. All our other bands had big followings. Like my other band, The Himalayans, was popular.

GM: Was that the one that sounded like late Roxy Music: the “Avalon” period?

AD: No, that was more Counting Crows. The Himalayans was more like heavy, distorted, weird guitars -- big drums. More of like an alternative band.

GM: That doesn’t sound like your influences; like Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison --

AD: Well, you can find the Sex Pistols and the Buzzcocks in there. The Dead Boys, too. People decide what your influences are, but I like a lot of music.

GM: Where are you from?

AD: Berkeley. I went to Oakland when I was ten. But I lived most of my life there.

GM: In the liner notes to your new album, Hard Candy, you thank Mohammed “the Mayor of Berkeley” Muqtar. I’m trying to think of which one he is. I know a lot of the Berkeley street people. Like, you know the Hate Man -- the guy who would heckle all the preachers in the street and wear that skirt?

AD: Yeah, but Mo’s not a street person (laughs). He’s the Associate Dean of Student Services for the Athletic Department at Berkeley.

GM: That shows you where my head’s at.

AD: At Cal he’s known as the “Mayor of Berkeley”. Literally he and I walk down the streets, and I am a well-known figure at Berkeley. I lived there for 20 years and I went to college there, and I still spend a lot of my time there, and I’m in a huge rock band. And more people know Mohammed. I mean the guy is like a saint. He is the guy that makes sure everybody stays in school, helps them get to their classes, makes sure everything works out, talks to their families. All over the world people know him. It’s amazing to me. He just touches everybody’s life. I was in Utah the other day and I was with Tom Holmoe, who used to be the football coach at Berkeley. He came out to the show and we were just talking about stuff, and Mo’s name came up and he said, “Man, if there’s one thing I’m going to miss about Berkeley more than anything else,it’s seeing him every day.”

GM: In the early ‘90’s there seemed to be a brief period when rock music got exciting again, which kind of mirrored what happened a decade earlier; punk bands like the Clash and the Sex Pistols gave way to what they called new wave bands, like the Police and U2. Ten years later grunge bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam broke and then we had bands that were more refined, like you--

AD: I think music’s always good. The only thing that ever changes is when people decide to notice it. Like, I think grunge mostly sucked. I think Nirvana was amazing. But I’m sorry, ten years of dressing in flannel and acting just like Nirvana does not make you a great band. To me we have nothing to do with Nirvana, except that we both wrote great songs. I think we’re songwriting bands. I think Pearl Jam started off really great, too. But everything else that follows... I mean, you’re good if you’re good, not because you sound like whoever that was. I love the Strokes, I dig the Hives, I think the Vines’ album is pretty good -- is everybody going to do it now? Does this mean that music is fresh because now we’re noticing all these bands, just because there’s something new for the media to get excited about?

GM: There must be pressure from the record company to sound like whoever’s popular.

AD: I think they’re looking for those bands. I don’t think they’re making some band sound like that. You can’t do it as a band either. No one is musically good enough really to pull it off. A lot of people think you are but there isn’t that kind of musical adeptness in the world. Bands come up influenced by those bands and the record companies chase those bands.

GM: I want to talk to you about the Counting Crows Trader Network.

It opens all your shows to the tapers? I never heard of a band encouraging that.

AD: My parents brought me up not to be too big of a hypocrite. We’ve never discouraged tapings at shows. One of the reasons we came out and said it is that you can have all the security meetings you want to, you can tell the people that this pass gets you back stage and they’ll still not let people back stage, you can tell them that you’re allowed to take photos and they’ll still grab it because they forget it. We thought it would be easier just to come out and say it.

GM: I guess no one really buys the bootlegs until they’ve bought all of a band’s albums anyway.

AD: I agree. That’s my impression. Bootlegs are more expensive. They’re for people who like music. To me it just makes your live shows more famous. It’s all about getting people talking about your live shows, because with the Internet being the way it is, and downloading being the way it is, the fastest-decreasing thing in the world is the amount of records we can sell. I’m pretty happy with our record right now; it’s gold. In any other year that would have been platinum.

GM: You’ve taken flak from critics lately that you’ve just been singing about how hard it is to be a rock star. But you were saying that is your life right now; what else do you know about?

AD: Yeah, the only thing I have to say about that is, “Fuck off!” Where do you get off telling an artist what he should be writing about? That subject matter is not in your jurisdiction. I write honest songs that have feeling. So this is my life right now. People chase me down the street. It’s fucking weird. I hadn’t changed at all. I was really still just the same nice, normal guy. The world was suddenly populated by a bunch of fucking idiots, as far as I can tell.

The reason why artists write about fame and how weird it is, is because everyone acts like a fucking idiot. It becomes a license to be a loon as far as I can tell, and you are the loon magnet. I accept that’s the way the world is, and critics are going to bash that thing, because it’s too easy to bash. Because even if nobody knows me they want it. They want your life without acknowledging what it is. Well, okay, you can’t have it, because you didn’t spend all those years in your bedroom practicing the fucking piano. You don’t get my life without working for it.

I earned every moment of it. Years and years of struggle. I went out and got jobs. Others got good jobs and made money and got on with their lives, and I struggled as a construction worker and a landscaper to get here. This didn’t drop out of the sky for me. I always promise my fans I’ll write honestly, so I do. If I had written an album about something else I’d have broken that promise.