JPG: I can see just by how you described your albums that the idea of stepping back isn’t a thrilling proposition, but on the other hand you have grown as a band and as musicians, that the tunes may have so much depth to them from what the studio album was.
RR: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We are absolutely a different band than we were during Shake Your Moneymaker, Southern Harmony, Amorica…all those records, how far we’ve come as a core. Also, to bring in Luther and Adam and to take that extra turn… really, you’re absolutely right to be such a different band and to play these songs; it’s definitely a new life into our past. So, there’s something to be said about that. Like I’ve said, we’ve talked about it. It’s a big deal. We’re like, ‘Wow. This is really a cool thing. What do you do?’ I don’t know what the answer is.
JPG: One last thing with that album because you find it with other bands, Pearl Jam being one example, that having your debut do so well it puts a whole different set of pressures than if say if “Moneymaker” hadn’t been multi-platinum.
RR: Well it’s definitely been backwards…[slight laugh] We sold seven million albums and then worked backwards. That’s a weird thing. And I remember on Shake Your Moneymaker it was funny, Chris and I got invited to the Edge’s birthday party when we were playing in Ireland and Bono was there and he said that it’s great, but it’s also really hard. I remember him saying that. And it was funny, you know, I was like 20, I’m happy to be here. When you look back, it’s definitely this thing. It’s not the natural way but in a sense, we’ve also weathered a lot. We were the interim between heavy metal and grunge. A lot of people credit Kurt Cobain for bringing metal down, but really, it came down ’92, ’93 when we came out. We were placed with Metallica. We literally did a tour with Metallica in Europe and AC/DC and AC/DC is a rock ‘n’ roll band. Metallica, Motley Crue, Pantera, and us. We were playing Allman Brothers songs and playing in stadiums and people had no idea what to do with us. When we came out the thought of these bands like Poison and these sillier metal bands started waning and there was something to be said about that.
Now grunge came out and really kicked the door open. Nirvana not grunge. I hate that word. Nirvana came out, really did shift the atmosphere for the whole thing. For two years we were on our own. And then once that horribly named genre, came into play, we were…we’ve always been an island. We’ve always just been the Black Crowes. Never looking back, never been part of this thing. We’ve just really been autonomous. It’s been good and it’s been hard at the same time. It’s easy to get swept up into this movement, if you want to call Seattle Music a movement back then, but the funny thing is, they were doing the same thing we were in a sense. We loved the Stones and Zeppelin and the Faces and the Band and they loved Black Sabbath and Zeppelin, you know what I mean? You listen to Soundgarden or listen to Pearl Jam even today; they’re a rock ‘n’ roll band today. And so, it’s just funny how just a label can do something, but we weathered it and we’re still here. And being ourselves or being an island has given us a lot more freedom to be whatever we want. Now that we’re 20 years in and we do everything on our own, it’s the most freeing thing in the world. And I think it’s one of our strengths.
JPG: I was going to bring that up because the Black Crowes do have an old school mentality for a rock ‘n’ roll band, as far as the organic nature and feel of the music and the approach. If you’re compared to the Stones it’s just because someone hasn’t looked a few inches further and notice that both acts listen to blues records.
RR: Well, they compared us to the Stones until we played with Jimmy [Page] and all of a sudden we were Led Zeppelin. It’s like, ‘Which one is it? What happened to the Stones?’ We’ve been fortunate. We toured with the Stones. We toured with Page/Plant. We played with the Grateful Dead before Jerry died. We played with Neil Young. We played with Dylan. We played with Aerosmith and AC/DC and everyone in between. That’s an amazing feat, let alone to have Jimmy in our band for a year. And when you look back, those are really amazing things to be able to do, to play with these people. Just even doing these damn shows with Levon has been so fun. I mean, they came out and played some shows with us. It’s been amazing and Chris and I will get up there and sing “The Weight” with Levon. What a treat! What an amazing thing to be able to do with your heroes.
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