When it comes to rock'n'roll tradition, the Black Crowes stand tall. Here's a 
band with soul, funk, r'n'b and roots rolled into one rockin' outfit. Mike Gee 
talks to drummer Steve Gorman.

from the Crowes Nest: http://qfg.tierranet.com/crowesnest.html



Backstage in Detroit, Michigan, the Robinson boys Chris and Rich are nattering 
in the corner, there's a smattering of laughter, plenty of chatter, and the 
alcohol is beginning to flow. But it isn't that loud. A small party, then. Maybe 
just a normal night winding down after yet another gig on The Tour Of Brotherly 
Love, which pits headliners The Black Crowes with the still-to-make-it-in-the-US 
Oasis.

Crowes drummer Steve Gorman laughs, "I'll say this. It was a good - but very 
cold - show. It is unseasonably cold everywhere in this god-forsaken country of 
ours. It's terrible. I blame George Bush for it. I blame Bush senior, I couldn't 
care a less about GW Jnr - he's just a pawn. But there's been a few of those in 
recent years. It's been like the plan since day one here."

Seventeen years after they began life as Mr Crowe's Garden in Atlanta, Georgia, 
The Black Crowes have become one of the few truly great rock bands of their 
time. No compromises here. This is a band that understands and revels in the 
heritage of the pea soup of rock: the blues, r'n'b, soul, the deep grooves that 
ruddered the '60s to their epoch in music. The Crowes celebrate rock's highest 
point while adding their own strut to the itch that can always be scratched. 
Shake your money maker.

Lions, their new album, takes the band deeper into their meld of American 
musical tradition. With the legendary Don Was producing, they pit classic rock 
(Come On) and percussive blues (Young Man, Old Man) against the soulful and 
sublime (Miracle To Me), epic and spawling (Lay It All On Me) and funky (Cosmic 
Friend and Midnight from The Inside Out). Really, it's a master class in rock 
from a band that has always delivered the raw and real, ever since their debut 
Shake Your Money Maker blasted out in 1990 - an American recording with balls 
that foreshadowed a nutcracker of equal power, The Southern Harmony And Musical 
Companion.

The roots of rock had never been better served and the Crowes' honest, feelgood, 
smash and grab harked back to the clarity of seminal US outfits such as the 
Allmann Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd while investing the future in the past 
with some classic covers such as Otis Redding's Hard To Handle and Bob Marley's 
Time To Tell.

At the other end of the time scale they ended their first decade by touring with 
Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page and producing the extraordinary Jimmy Page & The Black 
Crowes: Live At the Greek, a double set that was so incendiary a mix of 
Zeppelin, Crowes and Blues classics that one US reviewer declared it the best 
rock record of the past 20 years. In purist terms it seemed a fair statement. A 
few years earlier, the late Melody Maker declared them 'The Most Rock'n'Roll 
Rock'n'Roll Band in the World' - and there's no arguments there.

Redemption is the soul of rock and the Crowes figured that out long ago. Lions - 
recorded in an old Yiddish musical theatre (that's been converted to a studio) 
on New York's East Side - takes the process a step further.

"When we put a record out, the only thing I hope for in reviews is that they are 
either love or hate," Gorman says. "There's nothing worse than reading a review 
where somebody says 'Yeah, it's pretty good'. You want them to say it's either 
the best thing ever or the worst thing ever. Either way you got somebody's 
attention. I've seen reviews that are both ends of the spectrum: reviews that 
say 'I want this band to die'. And when I see that I go 'Okay, at least we got 
to 'em somehow.'

"I think Lions is the first record we've made that somehow brings together all 
the things that were contributing to our mindset at the time of the recording. I 
dunno, that sounds weird, but what I'm trying to say is that Lions sounds right. 
Like we wanted it to in our heads."

One of those contributing factors were the shows with Page: "Musically, they 
were very influential," Gorman says. "but it was more on a personal level that 
they really had an effect. They were just a blast. We had a great time. The 
whole tour there was no pressure, there was no thought of working an album, 
there was nothing other than enjoying the experience. For us to go and learn a 
whole catalogue of music outside of our own - as a group - gave us a new 
appreciation of each other.

"If I had gone and played with Jimmy Page, I'd have come back to The Black 
Crowes and gone 'Man, check this out'. So everybody would and they'd say 'Cool, 
you learned something new'. But when we all went and did it together , it gave 
us a chance to appreciate each other's skills. When you're in the same band for 
years, no matter how hard you try not to, you will always end up taking each 
other for granted. So doing this, and doing it with Jimmy, was just a great 
experience.

"So when he cancelled some of the tour because of his back injury we just went 
straight into the studio with a lot of energy. We'd written all the songs before 
the tour so it was simply a case of 'Okay, let's go and do this right now'. We 
were ready."

Bottom line though is that The Black Crowes are a bit like you and me.

"We're all just music geeks," Gorman laughs. "We have so much respect for those 
who come before us and we've always seen ourselves as a piece of a long flowing 
scene. We're focussed on and love what we do. But we've always been aware that 
we're a small part of the whole thing.

"Musicians who are constantly seeking new inspiration and direction by nature 
are fairly humble - at least as a musican when you sit down and play there is a 
humility. I mean, we can walk down the street and be assholess with the best of 
'em but put us on a stage and we're still in awe of the power of music. That's 
not very fashionable and not very hip but that's just what we are. "We were in 
Boston last week and a guy said something about our first record, "I remember 
when it first came out; it wasn't ground-breaking but it was good. And Chris 
went 'Well, there were lot of ground-breaking artists in the '90s and they're 
all breaking ground in construction crews now'. They're the guys wearing hard 
hats when I'm driving down the road in a bus. And that's not to demean anybody 
who's changing the face of music, who is really ground-breaking, but - to be 
honest - there are very few of those people.

"We look at music as a life long pursuit: there's no finish line and there's no 
goal. The guy in the white suit doesn't put his hands up to say 'Yes, you've 
scored.' When rock'n'roll first blew up it was based on forms that are still 
here: country, blues, jazz, folk, gospel music - it's all still around. When we 
got together and started we were the kind of guys who if we got into the Stones, 
for example, and listened to their early stuff, and found they were doing a 
Junior Wells song, we'd go "Wait a minute, let me go and get a Junior Wells 
record.' Then you'd get a Junior Wells record and go, 'Who's Sonny Terry?'. It's 
like dots on the map and you're trying to connect them all.

"When I was a college kid, I loved R.E.M. more than anything in 1983 and I'd 
read a review that would say 'it's jangly, it's got a Byrds thing' and I'd go 
'you know, I never took the time to get into The Byrds' , so I'd go pick up a 
Byrds record.

"Music is eternal. It's been going on and it's going to go on. Everybody has a 
starting point and on our first record we wore our influences on our sleeves. We 
were kids. It was our first record. We saw our album as a starting point whereas 
these days - the way the business has gone - your first album is your only 
record unless it's big. We never saw it like that. We just saw it as 'Hey, this 
is where we are as kids.' Then after two years on the road, 'Hey, now look where 
we are.' Spend another couple of years out there and 'Hey, look at us now.' We 
didn't know what we were getting into and looking back I can't believe we made 
it, but we never saw it as a short term project. This is all we've ever wanted 
to do."

Get working on those tail feathers, people.

from: http://www.smh.com.au/news/0106/28/entertainment/entertain100.html