Crows’ Feat With A String Of Hits From Two Solid Albums, Counting Crows Are On A Roll With Latest Tour
At the moment, Counting Crows lead singer Adam Duritz is hanging out in Kansas City.
He doesn’t have much to do this afternoon since his friends who live in this Midwest town are gone to crew practice for the day. So, he seems more than happy to spend time talking to a reporter on the phone.
During this conversation - as Duritz is apparently prone to do - he will lay his life out with uncommon candor.
“I’ll talk about whatever you ask me and then some,” he says. “I’ve got a million opinions about too many subjects.”
And indeed, the 32-year-old songwriter who penned hits like “Mr. Jones” and “Round Here” has plenty to say.
About the first time he wrote a song: “All of a sudden in this one moment … I’m talking about something that I feel and I can play it and I can sing it for you. I can translate all these emotions inside of me into something I can perform for you. And that changes everything.
“For that moment for me, this big unfocused well or miasma of feeling completely coalesces into a straight line. I mean, I know what I am. I’m not just Adam who has all of these emotions. I’m a songwriter.”
About the pursuit of fame: “At every point in your life you’re trying to poke your head out of the mob and make some sort of individual mark, trying to rise above the obscurity somehow - when you’re someone like me, when you have this habit, this addiction.”
About the precarious nature of fame: “This is what ‘Recovering the Satellites’ is about - it’s a lifetime decision. Like it says in the song, I will always get shot up in the air like a satellite and I will always probably come crashing down. Maybe never as high as the first time. Maybe never as hard a crash as that. But that’s the life.”
About the pursuit of love: “I mean obviously from my songs it should be clear I have trouble with intimacy. But I try. I’m not a louse. I’d like to be able to settle down with somebody. I just want to have something at the end of the day that anchors me to the world.”
It is such candor - both in interviews and in songs - that has won Duritz throngs of adoring fans, sold millions of his albums and handed him a good share of critics.
“The nice thing about doing an interview with me is that I’m pretty honest about things,” he says. “The bad thing about it is I’m a little open to people taking a shot.”
It is especially his frankness about the tribulations of fame - a theme throughout the Crows’ latest album “Recovering the Satellites” - combined with his unabashed desire for success that have given him a reputation for being an angst-ridden self-pitier.
“I made a straight line from my dream to where I am and I never faltered from it. But it’s weird; you get there and it’s not about what you thought it was about.” He points out that it’s “hard to have everybody look at you” and “you can’t go anywhere ‘cause everyone attacks you.
“There was a period where I could not believe how much I hated everybody.”
But, in truth, talking to Duritz on the phone, he sounds far less like an ingrate than his tone tends to translate in print.
Sure, he speaks with the self-confidence of a guy who has made it big, but at the root of it he sounds more like your talkative pal from college calling to chat about the new passion in his life. A bit pensive at times, but a good sort.
It is with appreciative tones that he praises his parents - both doctors - for raising him to think for himself, for encouraging him when, at a very young age, he knew he wanted to be a performer.
He acted, he took piano lessons. And, most importantly, he decided that he would make a mark.
“I meant to have an important life,” he says. “I just didn’t want it to be some obscure meaningless thing - whatever it took, including years of a really hopeless sort of struggling.”
He was an 18-year-old freshman in college when he became a songwriter, plucking out his first tune on a piano in the student lounge. Midway through college he suffered a kind of breakdown or panic attack that left him in an excruciating state of paranoia for a year.
“I woke up one morning and I thought I was on acid and a year later I was still on acid. I was completely unfunctional. It was very scary.”
It is something he still struggles with at times. “I’ve been in a position where I had to sing and it just wiped me out and I gritted my teeth and I made it go away.”
In 1990, Duritz and guitarist David Bryson formed the Counting Crows as an acoustic duo that played in coffeehouses and small clubs.
By 1993 they had added four more members and released their debut album, “August and Everything After” - now six times platinum.
Aside from the fortune and famous girlfriends that followed (“Friends” actress Jennifer Aniston among them) the rocket ship to fame - as is usually the case - has given them a bumpy ride.
“You can’t really imagine what it’s like to completely lose your anonymity until it’s gone,” Duritz says. “You feel naked. It’s like that dream where you show up at school in your underwear. I was walking around in my underwear all around America for years.”
A simple dinner out with friends found him fending off fans begging for autographs, handshakes and hugs. On the other hand, perfect strangers took it upon themselves to approach him in public and berate him about how gawd-awful they thought his music was.
The result was a case of writer’s block for Duritz and - for fans - a three-year wait for the next album.
It was during this time, Duritz says, that he examined his life and what it had become. And he made it OK with himself.
And in the end, “Recovering the Satellites” - an album filled with solid rockers and textured ballads - became a means for Duritz to exorcise the demons of fame.
In “I’m Not Sleeping” Duritz’s impassioned vocals rail at the loss of his innocence while “Have You Seen Me Lately?” plumbs the rigors of fame. “Goodnight Elisabeth” is the tale of love lost to life on the road.
“I don’t think I understood so much about my life and what I went through in the last couple of years until I looked at the record,” he says.
These days find Duritz far more settled with his life, and coming to the conclusion that an artist need not be miserable to make good art.
“Look,” he says, pausing to pick his words carefully. “I mean I’ve always been the kind of person who enjoys less than most people. That’s just me. I have a lot of trouble enjoying things, finding satisfaction in things. But I can live with my life and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: CONCERT Counting Crows perform at The Gorge Friday. The Wallflowers and Neilson Hubbard open at 7 p.m. Tickets are $33.05, available through Ticketmaster.