Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / [EP 421] Counting Crows: The Surprising Stories Behind Their Biggest Songs with Geoff Harkness

Transcript

[EP 421] Counting Crows: The Surprising Stories Behind Their Biggest Songs with Geoff Harkness · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Steve Bowman, the drummer, famously just hated the song, couldn't
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: get the groove right. He thought it sounded like country.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: He said, I'm not a country musician, and he was
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: very down on it, and it kind of rubbed out
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: in the wrong way. Ultimately, T-Bone Burnett made the decision,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: I'm going to bring in a session player, Denny Fongheiser.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: He nails it instantly, and it goes on to become
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: a huge hit. This also became kind of a problem
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: for Steve Bowman because he was so opposed to the song,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: and then it becomes like the signature song of the band,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: and he's got to play it every night. We're totally booked.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Rock and roll!
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Well, I think I'll leave you to your reading.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Little Hans says it's time to rock and roll. Rock
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: and roll!
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: We are totally booked. Welcome back to Booked on Rock.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Conversations with authors, musicians, and insiders revealing the stories behind
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: classic rock's greatest songs, albums, and artists. I'm Eric Senech.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Thank you to everybody who supports the show on Patreon.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Backstage past members can get Every episode in both audio
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: and video, completely commercial free, along with early access to
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: new episodes. If you would like to grab the backstage pass,
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: it's just $ 5 a month. Click the link in the
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: show notes or go to BookedOnRock.com. Now onto our show.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: From August and everything after, and recovering the satellites to
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: this desert life and beyond, Counting Crows have given us
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  Speaker 2: songs like Mr. Jones, Around Here, Long December, Hanging Around,
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  Speaker 2: and Accidentally In Love. My guest is Jeff Harkness, author
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: of The Counting Crows, The Story of Every Song. We
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: will explore the stories behind many of the songs across
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  Speaker 2: the band's catalog. Jeff, welcome back to the show.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Thank you, my friend. It's always fun to be here.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: We started with Counting Crows, and here we are talking
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: about The Counting Crows years later.
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  Speaker 2: Full circle, and you blew my mind, man. I emailed
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: you to let you know the book arrived in the mail,
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: and you're like, did you see the acknowledgments? No? No.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: So I flipped through it and there I am right
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: in there. Two thumbs up for Eric Senich. I don't
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: know if people can read that there, but what about that, man?
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
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  Speaker 1: Hey, listen, you know, thank you, my friend. Not just
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: for having me on this show so many times, but
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: also all the great guests that you bring on and
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: how much you've just done for the genre of the
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: rock bio and and all of us who write them
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  Speaker 1: and who love these books. So we really, we all
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  Speaker 1: appreciate it very much.
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  Speaker 2: And thanks so much, man.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: It's incredible to be on here. You know, like Chuck
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  Speaker 1: Klosterman was just on here. That's insane. How am I
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: sitting in this?
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Chuck Klosterman was great, man. That guy has what
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: a mind. He is so good. He is so good.
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  Speaker 1: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: So, yeah, but thank you again. And I swear folks,
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: I did not pay Jeff.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: I'll send you the invoice.
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  Speaker 2: All right. So Adam Duritz, he's talked openly about his
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: songs for years, cross interviews, podcasts, and concerts. So talk
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: about how you piece together all of those accounts to
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: write the story of each song. I mean, thankfully he's
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: talked a lot about these songs. He's not a guy
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: who wants you to make up your own mind as
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: to what they are about.
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  Speaker 1: True. He's really talked so much over the years about
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  Speaker 1: where these songs come from. He writes a hundred percent
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: of the lyrics and 95% of the music. It's really
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  Speaker 1: his creative vision. And in the early days, he had
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  Speaker 1: some things like VH1 Storytellers where he went on. He
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: didn't talk about everything, but he deep dove into some songs.
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  Speaker 1: He's always talked on stage about his songs and explained
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  Speaker 1: the origins of some of them. He did the Town
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  Speaker 1: Hall concert years later. But again, in that concert, it
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: was just August and everything after. But he's explaining the songs.
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  Speaker 1: On the Hard Candy album, he wrote a whole series
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  Speaker 1: of in-depth liner notes where he described the origins of
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  Speaker 1: each song. Very hard to find, but it was something
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  Speaker 1: he did at the time, I think, as part of
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  Speaker 1: the publicity of the album. He's also done a lot
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  Speaker 1: of social media over the years. And starting back in
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  Speaker 1: the 90s, he was on social media very early on,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: and including on the band's website and dialogue with the fans.
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  Speaker 1: They would ask him questions about the songs and he
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: would answer them online and those chats would be posted.
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  Speaker 1: So those were great source materials. Obviously, he's done interviews
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: over the years, but in more recent years, He's done
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: a lot of podcasts, including his own podcast, where he
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  Speaker 1: talks about his songs and his music and his influences,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: but also in these podcast interviews where they really deep dive.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: And so you might get a little snippet from Rolling
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Stone in the 90s about a song, whereas in recent years,
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  Speaker 1: he's on a podcast. He might talk for five minutes
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  Speaker 1: about a song that was not released. So putting all
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: of this material together and trying to synthesize it was
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  Speaker 1: really Part of the fun of writing this book, part
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  Speaker 1: of the deep diving into each song, it was the
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  Speaker 1: challenge really was trying to track down every single song.
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  Speaker 1: Because he doesn't talk about every one of them on stage.
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  Speaker 1: He only picks certain ones. Or in interviews, he's not
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  Speaker 1: always asked about them. And so some of the songs
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  Speaker 1: were challenging to really find songs. someplace where he was
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  Speaker 1: talking about it or explaining it. I wanted it to
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  Speaker 1: be his voice rather than like my voice as a critic.
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  Speaker 1: I wanted to hear the stories of where the songs
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  Speaker 1: came from from Adam. And so it was fun synthesizing
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  Speaker 1: all of that. I have interviewed also Charlie Gillingham and
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Dave Vickery from the band, not specifically for this book,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: but over the years and some of their insights and
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: insights from the producers and other podcasts like the Sullivan
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  Speaker 1: Street podcast who have interviewed members of the band or
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: their producers. All of these things were important, I think,
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  Speaker 1: in telling the story.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm really enjoying that podcast. You referred me to
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  Speaker 2: that one, which is great. James Campion, friend of the show,
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  Speaker 2: was a guest on that. But I want to mention
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: Underwater Sunshine Podcast. That's the one you're referring to that
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  Speaker 2: Adam had with James. And they haven't had an episode
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  Speaker 2: in a while, but as far as I know, just
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: looking online here, all of those episodes are still there.
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  Speaker 2: And that's That's a great podcast to listen to to
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  Speaker 2: get Adam's insight.
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  Speaker 1: It's incredible. Yeah, you really get into his musical mind.
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  Speaker 1: And he talks a lot on that podcast about his influences.
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  Speaker 1: So they do like a multi-podcast series on Prince where
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: they're just talking about Prince. And James has written a
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: book about Prince too. So hearing those two talk about
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  Speaker 1: music was also just another great source of info for me.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: The book gets into the studio albums, but also- Goes
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: back to the demos. There were demos that were recorded
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: before the 1993 debut, August and everything after. They recorded
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  Speaker 2: demos that included Mr. Jones, Round Here, Rain King. You
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  Speaker 2: described their early sound as cleaner and more keyboard heavy.
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  Speaker 2: How did those songs change when the band recorded the
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  Speaker 2: album and into the songs that we have heard so
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: many times now?
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  Speaker 1: Originally, they were more almost like keyboard heavy. They had
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  Speaker 1: kind of a Peter Gabriel, almost new wave-ish sound that
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: they were going for. And Roxy Music, Adam has described it,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: using bands like that. That really evolved, I think, when
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: T-Bone Burnett got into the producer's chair, and he really
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: forced the band to rethink their approach. And he famously
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  Speaker 1: stripped down their instruments. He took away a lot of
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  Speaker 1: the drums from the Steve Bowman and just forced the
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  Speaker 1: band to really pare down their songs to their essence
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  Speaker 1: and put in a lot more acoustic instruments and took
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  Speaker 1: away a lot of the things that they were doing.
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  Speaker 1: So I think it was his influence that changed those
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  Speaker 1: original demos from what they sounded like. And you can
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  Speaker 1: hear those online and certainly the origins of the songs
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  Speaker 1: are there. I mean, the songs are there, but He
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  Speaker 1: really chaves the band's sound. And I think that they
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  Speaker 1: described it as he sort of gave them their sound
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  Speaker 1: in some ways. They said that it was the most
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: difficult album they made in some ways was the first
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  Speaker 1: one because they had to rethink their entire approach. Once
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: they were there, it got kind of easier to move
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  Speaker 1: from that launching point.
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  Speaker 2: And then Mr. Jones was the breakthrough single. Adam is
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  Speaker 2: quoted in the book. He talks about all the crazy
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  Speaker 2: interpretations of this song. There are some wild ones, some
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  Speaker 2: that make him laugh. Can you talk about the real
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  Speaker 2: origin story? And then also the problems that they had
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  Speaker 2: with the drums during the early recording sessions, which we
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  Speaker 2: talked about on your previous appearance here. But if you
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  Speaker 2: could talk about that again and how that changes the
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  Speaker 2: course of the song. But let's start with the real origin.
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  Speaker 1: It's one of the couple of songs that are very
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  Speaker 1: straightforward in the narrative. When you listen to the lyrics
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  Speaker 1: of Mr. Jones, Adam is actually describing a night out
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  Speaker 1: on the town he had with Mr. Jones, the old
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  Speaker 1: bassist from one of the original bassist for counting crows.
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  Speaker 1: And so the two of them are, Marty Jones is
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  Speaker 1: his name. The two of them are out on the
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  Speaker 1: town in San Francisco. They're at a club watching Marty
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  Speaker 1: Jones's father, who is a flamenco guitarist play. There are
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  Speaker 1: a bunch of flamenco dancers there. The drummer from Chris
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  Speaker 1: Isaac's band was there, the San Francisco band, Chris Isaac
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  Speaker 1: and his band. the drummer was there and he's surrounded
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  Speaker 1: by a bunch of beautiful women. And Adam and Marty
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  Speaker 1: Jones are sitting at the bar, you know, envying the
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  Speaker 1: beautiful women that are hanging all over this musician and
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: wishing that they could be big stars as well. And
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: so Adam said he went home that night and basically
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  Speaker 1: just wrote out the narrative of the song. What's so interesting,
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  Speaker 1: of course, about that song is that this is someone
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  Speaker 1: who's Not famous at all. He doesn't have a record deal.
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  Speaker 1: Who's writing about what it would be like to be
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  Speaker 1: famous and how amazing it would be. And and then
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: to actually experience that himself was just had to be
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  Speaker 1: really quite quite the mind twist. He's talked also about
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  Speaker 1: how much that's on. has changed for him over the years.
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  Speaker 1: He became famous and then looking back on it 20
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  Speaker 1: years later, singing the song 25 years later as somebody
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  Speaker 1: who's been famous for a long time and how it's
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  Speaker 1: changed for him, but it's still meaningful. He says, I
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  Speaker 1: still want to be a rock star in some ways,
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  Speaker 1: even today. I want to be a rock star. And
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  Speaker 1: I still have some of those same feelings, but he's
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: looking at it from a different point of view now.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: And then the new drummer comes in or not a
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: new drummer.
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  Speaker 1: Steve Bowman, the drummer famously just hated the song. Couldn't
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: get the groove right. He thought it sounded like country.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: He said, I'm not a country musician. And he was
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: very down on it. And You know, ultimately, this sort
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: of set the stage for his departure from the band,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: because when when you're going up against the creative force
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  Speaker 1: and telling him this song sucks, I don't know how
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  Speaker 1: to play it. This is country and this is not
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: what we want to do. Well, it kind of rubbed
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: out in the wrong way. Ultimately, T-Bone Burnett made the decision, OK,
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  Speaker 1: if you don't want to play this song and you
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  Speaker 1: can't seem to get it to work, I'm going to
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  Speaker 1: bring in a session player, Denny Fongheiser. And Fongheiser is
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: a pro drummer and Steve Bowman was a big fan
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: of his. Suddenly there's this new drummer in the studio
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  Speaker 1: and he plays the song. He nails it instantly and
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  Speaker 1: it goes on to become a huge hit. And this
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: also became kind of a problem for Steve Bowman because
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: he was so opposed to the song and then it
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: becomes like the signature song of the band and he's
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: got to play it every night. He did figure it
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: out later, but I think it was kind of too
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: late for him at that point. It wasn't the only
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: time a studio musician was brought in sort of at
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: the behest of the producers. So there's another song. We'll
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: talk about it later. And this was more of a revelation.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: But the Steve Bowman story, yeah, it's kind of interesting
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  Speaker 1: because he was gone by the end of the August tour.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's funny because Adam talks in the VH1
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Storytellers about some of the stories. And he said, I've
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: heard everything from it being about some ancient bluesman who
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: taught me to play music somebody's movie fantasy. And he's
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: also heard that it's about his, his member.
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  Speaker 1: There you go. You know, which of course gets quoted
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: in Rolling Stone magazine in the opening paragraph of the story.
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  Speaker 1: Oh man. Yes.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. So before Counting Crows, Adam played in the Himalayans where,
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: where much of round here came together during the rehearsal.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: So how did that song change when County Crows recorded
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: it for August and everything after?
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: That was a Himalayan song. You can actually find videos
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: of the Himalayans playing that song live in San Francisco
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: clubs before Counting Crows. And it was a kind of
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: a heavier song. In some ways, the Himalayans, they had
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: a bit of like the kind of Pearl Jam sound
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: to them and a little bit heavier, kind of crunchier,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: heavier guitars. They had a, you know, kind of a
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: two electric guitar band approach. And I think that that
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: song was, was another one that they really liked it.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: When they were signed to Geffen, Geffen really liked that
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: song and wanted to do something with it. But it
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: again was sort of reimagined and became this kind of
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: darker and starker song that we hear today. But the
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: song itself was written almost stream of consciousness. They were
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: just jamming one day, the Himalayans, and Adam just kind
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: of came up with the words in one setting just instantly.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: And they would tape their sessions. He said, I was
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: so glad that we had it on tape because I
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: never would have remembered all the all the lyrics. But
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: that one was like written on the spot. And he says,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: you know, some of his lyric writing process is very exacting.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: It takes a long time, hours or days or months
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: to put these songs and the words together. But that
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: was one song that just sort of came out of nowhere.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: He said Along December was the same sort of thing.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: It was just it just came out of him instantly.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: And he sort of knew that it was it was important.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: And Rain King comes in about 40 minutes.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, he said he put that together really quickly.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: They struggled in the studio, though.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: Two of the songs that he had the most trouble
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: with for vocals were Mr. Jones and Rain King. And
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: he worked very hard trying to get take after take
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: after those, working on it and just never came together.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: They were famously recording in a house at the Hollywood
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Hills and did that for their first four albums. But
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: they moved to a studio in Los Angeles to work
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: on overdubs and solos and things like that. And it
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: was only after they moved that he nailed both of
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: those vocals in one night. He got Rain King and Mr.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Jones in the same session. And he was like, finally,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: after he said he must have done like 100 takes
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: before it finally came together. But once it did, it
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: was amazing. And that was another song that they had demoed.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: There was very like electric, almost a stone sounding song
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: with very crunchy guitars and And it really changed into
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: something totally different. And I think, again, you hear the
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: influence of T-Bone Burnett, really important in the sound that
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: was August.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: I told you on that last episode we did on
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: your last Counting Crows book, which by the way, it's
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: called Rain King, The Life and Music of Adam Duritz
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: and Counting Crows, that Sullivan Street is one of my
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: favorite deep tracks. So I want to try to pull
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: out some deep tracks throughout here. We want to cover
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: all the hits too, but let's talk about that one
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: because I wouldn't have ever guessed that it's about late
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: night drives with his girlfriend, right?
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: At a time while the relationship is falling apart.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Yes. Many of his songs cover relationships that are falling apart.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: And Sullivan street was one of them. And, You know,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: that Rain King book was really a story of the band.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: One of the things that I realized after the book
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: was written was that there were songs, Sullivan Street's one
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: of them, never mentioned in that book at all. Not
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: one time is Sullivan Street mentioned. That's one of the
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: reasons that I ultimately decided to do this book was
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: that I felt like There was so much more to
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: talk about. So Sullivan Street was a story really written
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: about Adam. He was dating this woman in Berkeley. Well,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: he was living in Berkeley and she lived on the
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: other side of the city across the bridge in San Francisco.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: And he would have to drive her home. her mother
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: was staying with her and did not want her to
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: sleep over at Adam's house. And so they would go
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: out for the night and then he would have to
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: drive her home. And it was this very long drive
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: across the city and across the bridge. He would drop
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: her off. She didn't live on Sullivan Street and neither
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: did he, but he just liked the way that that sounded.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: It was very evocative for him. And so he said
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: when he was Making these long drives, and especially the
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: drive home, he started to realize that this relationship just
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: wasn't going to last. And even though he cared about her,
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: it was kind of a mournful moment for him. And
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: he would reflect on these drives, especially home, this long
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: drive home, that this relationship ultimately was not going to
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: pan out. And so that became Sullivan Street, which is,
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: it's one of those real masterpieces, a deep cut masterpiece
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: on the first album.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: It is. Round Here, Omaha, Mr. Jones, Perfect Blue Buildings,
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: Anna Begins, Time and Time Again, Rain King, Sullivan Street,
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: Ghost Train, Raining in Baltimore, A Murder of One.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, A Murder of One was also, that was
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: on the radio a lot.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And then originally Geffen really wanted that to
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: be the single from the album. They fought with Adam
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: over that and they really wanted A Murder of One.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: They said it had the Jesus Jones right here, right now,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: drum beat, you know? And they thought it was real
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: catchy and would catch on. And he said, no, Mr.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Jones is the right song to do as the introduction
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: to the band. He didn't think it would be a
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: huge hit, but he thought this is the right song
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: to introduce who we are as a band. And so
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: originally Geffen did not issue a single when it first
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: came out. They just decided not to support the album
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: with the single. They fought and fought over it. Eventually,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Adam wore them down and they released Mr. Jones. It
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: became a minor hit on college radio. And then they
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: appeared on Saturday Night Live. And the whole thing changed overnight,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: literally overnight. The whole the whole band, you know, they
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: became incredibly famous.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Lyrically, this guy, what he comes up with, I walk
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: along these hillsides in the summer, meet the sunshine. I
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: am feathered by the moonlight falling down on me. I said,
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: I walk along these hillsides in the summer, meet the sunshine.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: I'm feathered by the moonlight falling down on me and
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: the way he sings it. And it's during that breakdown.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: It builds right back into the into the song. I mean,
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: the guy's lyrics are just so good.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: Incredible. Yeah, he's like I call it Adam the poet
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: because he really has this sort of poetic sense, you know,
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: and he he's talked about that, too. You know, the
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: way the light attaches to a girl, you know, he
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: talks about how he's very attracted to this beautiful woman,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: but he describes it in a very poetic way. And
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: he does that throughout his career. I think that's one
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: of his biggest strengths is as a lyricist. And you
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: see sort of, I wrote about this in the book,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: but you see these themes arise over and over again
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: in his lyrics. It's interesting when you look at a
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: band's career through just their music and just through the songs.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: how much you learn about the group and how much
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: you learn about Adam as a songwriter and as a
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: lyricist and the themes that he focuses on, they really
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: start to kind of bubble up in ways that you
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: don't get if you're just looking at particular songs or
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: at the albums or something like that. So I felt
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: like writing this book, even somebody who's such a huge fan,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: I've been a lifelong fan of this group since their
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: first first single came out. I've seen them in concert
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: a million times. I've heard their music, you know, just endlessly.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: But I felt like I learned so much about their
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: music and about him as a lyricist and as a
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: creative artist in writing this book. So hopefully some fans
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: who will read it and have the same experience.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: What's the story behind Einstein on the Beach? It's such
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: a great song, but he Adam, he kind of downplays it. Like, oh,
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: it's just a silly pop song. But man, that's a
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: great song. And if it were to be included on
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: that album, how many more copies would it have sold?
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: Because it became a hit. But what's the story behind
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: that one?
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: That's like your Eric Kosterman question. What if, you know,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Einstein on the beach had been included?
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: I love those. I love what ifs.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Right. Well, so he really said this. This is one
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: of the reasons I included some of the early demos
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: that didn't make it onto the album in the book,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: because he really said that a lot of these early
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: songs that they wrote didn't have the emotional weight, didn't
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: have the depth, didn't have the sort of feeling, the
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: depth of feeling that the songs on August ultimately had.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: And so he felt like even though they were well-constructed songs,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Shallow Days is another one he talked a lot about.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: That's kind of reminiscent in some ways of Einstein on
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: the beach. They had these songs that were they were
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: poppy and they were well constructed and they were catchy.
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: But he said that for him, they just lacked a
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: certain depth. They're like emotional resonance. They really started that
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: they were really made August what it was. And so
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: some of those songs on the demos, Einstein was one
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: of them. That was a song recorded for their original demo,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: and they completely left it off of of the album. Later,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Geffen circled back and wanted to put out this compilation
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: of different artists on their label, Nirvana, one of them,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: the Sundays, and Counting Crows. And so they, you know,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: he said, sure, you can have, you know, this song
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: if you want it. It's kind of a throwaway. He
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: didn't expect anything to come of it. but it actually
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: became a significant hit. They started playing it on the radio.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: It blew them up again. And this is at a
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: time when they were trying to kind of back off and,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: and kill things out a little bit.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: Yes. There was a reason behind that, right? He didn't,
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: what was the reason he didn't want to release too
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: many singles off of the album?
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Well, he felt cause they wanted to release rain King
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: as a music video and as a single. And he
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: was like, no, I don't want you to do that
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: because people are going to burn out on us. They're
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: too famous. Like, We've had so much success with the Mr.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: Jones song and video, so much success with Round Here
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: as a video and as a song. They were playing
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: other songs on the radio, and he just was overwhelmed
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: by the fame and by the attention. And so Geffen
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: wanted to double down and put out Rain King as
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: a single and as a music video. And he said, no,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: we're not going to do it. I'm not going to
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: do another video. We have to sort of stop things here.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: People are never going to want to hear us again.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: We're going to be like a Spin Doctors or like
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: a Hootie and the Blowfish. Everybody loves the one album
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: and then you never hear from them again. And so
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: instead they put out Einstein on the Beach as a
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: single and that blew up. And he said everybody started
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: playing Rain King anyway after that. And he said in
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: some ways it backfired that his idea that you can
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: have this kind of B-side that I don't care about,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: it became a significant hit. they did release it on
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: their Best Of compilation, Films About Ghosts. And at the
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: time it was released, he conceded that, yeah, this is
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: a pretty cool, good song. But famously, they've only played
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: it one time in concert. They do not play Einstein
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: on the Beach in concert, never have. And you got
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: to give them credit because this could be a big song.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: It was a significant hit for them. And instead of
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: chasing that, latching onto it and building their career around it,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: He knew better than to do that. And so he
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: has always distanced himself from that song. And many of
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: those early demos, he said they just for him, that
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: song was just didn't have the emotional weight and resonance
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: of the material that that really he was attracted to.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: The title was identical to a 1976 opera by American
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: composer Philip Glass. The subtitle referenced I Am the Walrus
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: by the Beatles.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Yep. The Eggman. Yeah, Einstein on the Beach is the
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Philip Glass song. And then for an Eggman, that's ostensibly
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: a reference to Eye on the Walrus.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, here we go. Adam claimed Conor Groves only performed
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: Einstein one time at concert at an early club date
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: in 1992. He said it was a disaster. So the
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: band followed the debut with Recovering the Satellites, 1996, a
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: long December, a huge hit. Grew out of the period
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: when Adam's friend Jennifer was recovering from a serious car accident.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: Courtney Cox is often associated with the song, but what
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: was her actual connection to it?
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: This was around the time that they first met and
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: that whole period, which they talked about in the HBO
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: documentary that came out last year, an interesting period for
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Adam because he was very famous. He moves to LA
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: and starts tending bar at the Viper Room. And the
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Viper Room was a private club co-owned by Johnny Depp.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: And it was basically a celebrity hangout. So he'd be
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: having You know, he'd be having, you know, serving drinks
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: to all kinds of celebrities. Christina Aguilera became his landlord
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: at the time. And he was working behind the bar
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: and just trying to not feel like a famous person
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: for a while. So Long December was written during this period.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: A friend of a friend got into a terrible car
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: wreck and they went to see her in the hospital.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: And ultimately... Her mother was there and was looking for
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: somebody who would just kind of sit in with her.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: She was going to be hospitalized for months recovering from
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: this terrible car accident. And Adam, who was hanging out
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: during the day and then recording in the afternoons and
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: early evenings and then tending bar at the Viper Room
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: that night, he said, yeah, I'll do it. I'll come
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: sit with her, even though I don't really know her.
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: I'll come and sit with her in the hospital and
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: sort of help her out. And so the two of
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: them established a friendship. platonic friendship during this time. He
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: would bring in VHS tapes and they would watch movies
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: and play board games and things like that. She was
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: friends with Courtney Cox. And so Courtney Cox was there
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: during this time too. And this is when Adam and
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Courtney Cox met. I think one reason they're associated is
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: she was the star of the music video of Along December.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: And this was later when they were dating. So people
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: think it's maybe about her specifically. It wasn't specifically about her,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: but it was definitely written during the time that he
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: met her and they fell in love and became a couple.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: And then famously, there are several songs on Recovering the Satellites,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Monkey and Mercury and Walkaways that are specifically written about
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: Courtney Cox. And so there's an interesting connection between her
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: and that album in simply in that she inspired several
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: of the songs. And I think Along December is kind
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: of one of them. If you look at the lyrics
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: of that song, again, like Mr. Jones, he's very much
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: just describing what his day is like. And so Hillside Manor,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: went up to Hillside Manor. That was some friends who
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: worked at the Viper Room. They had a house that
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: they called Hillside Manor, kind of as a joke. It
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: was like a small house in the hills and they
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: would go up there at night. And so he had
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: gone up there that night. And, you know, the smell
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: of hospitals, all of this is really just describing what
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: his day had been like. So he said he went
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: home that day. wrote the song again, it just poured
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: out of him. And he knew that it was one
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: of the most special songs he had ever written. The
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: next day, he took it to the band and they
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: recorded it that night. I mean, it was literally recorded.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: I think it was take six. That was the take.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: It was done completely live, except for some backing vocals
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: that he added to it later in the same session.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: But it was basically written and recorded in almost a
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: 24-hour period. And he said from that moment on, I
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: think they have played it at every single concert since then.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: He said it's the one Counting Crows song that I
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: will always play at every concert. To him, he's said
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: many times it's like the best song he's ever written.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's got that Hey Jude ending, the na-na. Oh, yeah.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: So good.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: You mentioned Viper Room. Have you seen their video? I
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: think you meant Christina Applegate, right? You said Christina. Oh, yeah. Yeah,
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: Christina Applegate. Sorry. But there are videos on YouTube that
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: I stumbled on. Somebody was randomly filming with a camera
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: people coming out of the Viper Room in 93, 94.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: And it's so wild.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: And the videos are basically like, which famous people do
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: you spot? It's like Leonardo and all these people. It's
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: really wild.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Tommy Lee and Yeah, it was definitely like one of
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: the LA hotspots at the time and attracted all these people.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: And Counting Crows even did a couple of sort of
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: secret shows there or warm-up shows there. So they played...
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: some songs from Recovering the Satellites at the Viper Room
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: before they recorded the album. And they did the same thing.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: They played a show there before this Desert Life, previewing
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: some of the songs that would show up there. So
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: he had a relationship with the club and the owners,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: and the band did a little bit too. They had
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: a lot of bands who would come in and do
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: a show just for the celebrities who were hanging out.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: Sure. River Phoenix, sadly, was... that was where i think
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: he overdosed and died.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: It was yeah tragically uh a terrible terrible history there
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: for sure yeah.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Another song from recovering the satellites daylight fading and i
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: wanted to ask about that grew out of the guitar
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: riff from dan vickery with charlie gillingham and adam building
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: on it what did that collaboration bring to the song.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: So dan vickery did not play on August and Everything After,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: but he joined the band for the tour. David Emmerglock
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: played on August and Everything After, and then he left
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: the band at that time. He returned later. But Dan
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Vickery joined as sort of the lead guitarist, and they
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: also brought in Ben Mize at that time. And I
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: think Adam has talked about the combination of those two
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: really changed the approach of the band. They went out
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: on tour. Dan Vickery really became like a lead guitar
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: player and you can hear his kind of signature telecaster
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: sound on daylight fading. And Adam said that, you know,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: bringing in those two musicians really allowed them to do
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: the types of material, the types of songs that you
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: heard on recovering the satellites, which was definitely a, harder album.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: It rocked harder. It had more of an emphasis on guitar.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: And again, famously, to Adam's credit, Geffen wanted them to
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: bring in T-Bone Burnett again to reproduce the magic, to
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: record September and Everything After, and basically make a clone
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: of the first album. And Adam said, no, we're going
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: to bring in the Pixies producer, Gil Norton. We're going
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: to make this kind of hard rocking album with a
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: very different sound than what we had before. And I
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: think that's to his credit. At the time, it only
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: sold two million copies and was not considered a huge
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: success like the first one. But I think in retrospect,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: people look back and have such admiration for that album.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: And I think songs like Along December, for example, has
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: become a real standard, like a Christmas classic. You hear
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: it every December. It gets played right along with White
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Christmas and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I think that the
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: album has stood the test of time. And again, it
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: just points to Adam's credibility as an artist, that he
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: wasn't willing to take the easy road like with Einstein
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: on the Beach. He wasn't willing to do that. He
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: wanted to do something different and something that would help
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: him and the band grow artistically. So I think you
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: really hear that on that album, the musicians in the
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: group being such an important part of it.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: For clarification to Charlie Gillingham, primarily the keyboardist, but multi
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: instrumentalists could do a lot of things.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that amazing. I mean, even things like sometimes he
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: plays harmonica and it's really just adds to the band sound.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: But yeah, he's the he's the in some ways, I
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: think the musical secret weapon of the group. And he's
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: been around since day one. And he's really just adds
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: so much with his piano, his organ and all of
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: the different instruments that he picks up and plays.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: 1999, we get This Desert Life, Hanging Around, started with
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: a piano idea, grew into a groove built from loops
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: and a new bass part. What turned it into, it's
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: such an unlikely Counting Crows single, isn't it?
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: I agree. And this was one of the songs that
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: I was never a huge Hanging Around fan. I'll be honest.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: It's not on my top 10 list of Counting Crows songs,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: but In researching it and writing the story of it,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: I gained a new appreciation for it that I had
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: not had before. So one, and I think this is
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: so interesting. Hopefully you're watching this on YouTube. You can
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: go YouTube this right now. But the song was inspired
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: by Steal My Sunshine, which is like this song by
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: a band called Len.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: Great song.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: One song. And this was their one hit. But it's
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: a great song. Go listen to Steal My Sunshine and
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: you will hear the roots of Hanging Around. You'll hear
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: that piano. He said he had this idea of setting
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: a piano to a hip hop beat. And that's exactly
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: what that song does. Adam was trying to sign that
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: band to his own little boutique label, which didn't pan out.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: But he says, and I quote him in the book
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: saying this, that He's like, I didn't steal that song
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: from them. I didn't want like a total rip off.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: But you definitely said there's a there's a credit that's
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: due to them. There's a debt that's owed to them.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: If you listen to Steal My Sunshine. So it starts there.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: And then it was a song that they were working
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: on from the very beginning. So, again, he brings in
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: a new producer, in this case, two producers, David Lowery
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: and Dennis Herring, who were, you know, David Lowery is
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: the front man for Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, and
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: Dennis Herring had worked on a lot of the Camper
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Van Beethoven and Cracker material. And so the two of
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: them are producing, and Adam has this kind of idea
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: of a hip-hop beat with a piano loop. And ultimately,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: it's built on a whole series. There's like eight piano
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: loops going around and around in that song. And musically,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: they just kept working on it. David Lowery said... It
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: really didn't come together right away. It was something that
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: we just kept working on and working on. But the
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: key to it was that the bass and the bass
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: was just never right. And this was this was something
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: that was revealed to the world on the Sullivan Street
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: podcast by David Lowery, which was that Matt Malley, the
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: bassist of Counting Crows, did not play on that song.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: So they couldn't get the bass right. They couldn't get
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: the feel for it. Listen to the bass. It's incredible.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: They brought in a former member of Cracker and a
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: studio musician, a really good bass player named Davey Farger,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: and he played bass on it, and it just transformed
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: the whole song. When you hear the bass kick in,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: it's like, wow. And the bass is really, really interesting.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds like, you know, Geddy Lee or
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: somebody like that, you know, who's really, you know, or
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: Paul McCartney, just somebody who's really, you know, plays an
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: interesting baselines. And so that baseline changed everything. And Adam said, wow,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: this is incredible. Like, Matt, what did you do? They
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: all thought it was Matt Malley playing. And Matt's like,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: that wasn't me playing on that. So then he's like,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Adam was really upset and he's like, okay, well, Matt's
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: got to learn this new bass line and play it.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: They tried to get him to play it and try
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: to get it to work and try to get it
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: to work and it could just never quite nail it.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: But ultimately, they went with it. But when they were
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: mixing the album, one of the engineers replaced Matt Malley's
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: take with the original Dave, David, Dave, Davey Farragher baseline.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: And so what you hear, you replaced it with that.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: And they never told Adam. And so Adam didn't know,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: and maybe still doesn't know unless he watched the Sullivan
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: street podcast or listened to it, that the bass player
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: on that is not Matt Malley. It's a guy named David,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Davey Farragher. And that baseline really does make the song. So,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: such an interesting story. And it became another significant hit
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: for them. They, you know, still play it all the
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: time at their concerts and it's become, you know, kind
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: of a standard. So that was a song, the whole
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: story of it was so interesting to me, starting with,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Steal My Sunshine by Len, and ending with the bass
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: part being replaced by a studio guy without Adam knowing.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: The whole story just became so interesting to me that
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: I started to listen to the song and listen to
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: it in a different way. And now I'm like, oh,
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: that's actually a pretty great song.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. The album as a whole, it's a close
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: second behind August and Everything After for me. It's amazing. Yeah,
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: and Mrs. Potter's Lullaby is among the top five, maybe
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: top three, maybe... I don't think.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: You're alone in that opinion. Yeah. Fans. And I'm one
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: of them too.
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, what a song he wrote it after this talk
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: about the story behind the song makes it even more interesting. Again,
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: he wrote, he wrote it after seeing actress Monica Potter
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: in a film when she heard the band recording it,
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: she helped save a take that they were about to abandon.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: All right, let's talk about that. What did she hear
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: in that version? How did she end up in the studio?
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Such an interesting story. And this was another story I
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: didn't know until I wrote this book. But he had
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: written this song after seeing her in a film and
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: wrote this story of him just writing it. He was
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: supposed to go to a birthday party of a friend's
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: that night with the band they had been recording that day.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: And he said, wait, wait, I kind of came up
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: with this song idea. You guys go ahead. I'm going
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: to work on this. And so he spent, I think
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: it was like almost 10 hours working on the lyrics
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: and the music of that song. And it's got so
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: many verses to it. You know, it's just verse after
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: verse after verse and incredible lyrics to that song once again,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: and great music. So he put it all together in
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: a single session. He said back then he tended to
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: write songs. He would not stop until it was a
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: finished piece. And so it took him like eight or
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: 10 hours to write this song. But He had it
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: the next day. The band comes into the studio and
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: they're all giving him grief.
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: Like, why?
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: Where were you? Why weren't you at the party last night?
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: And he said, let me play this for you. And
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: they went, OK, OK, we're good. You know, that's a
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: good song. So they they recorded this song. And while
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: they were recording it and working on it, a friend
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: of his called and said, hey, you know what? Monica
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: Potter's down here at this restaurant. Why don't you come
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: have dinner with us and you could meet her? So
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: he Adam goes to the restaurant down the street from
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: the studio. You know, it's in it's in Beverly Hills
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: or whatever. and they're having dinner, and he tells her, hey,
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: I wrote this song for you, and they had just met,
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: and she's like, okay, that's interesting. Why don't you come
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: back to the studio? We're working on it right now.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: So she comes back to the studio and sits down
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: next to Adam as he's sitting at the piano, and
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: the band is working on the song, and she hears
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: them play it, and so she was very flattered. He
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: gave her a tape of it that night and said, here,
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: you can take this with you, and they continued to
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: work on the song, and He said, well, this is
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: what happens sometimes in the studio is you work on
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: a song so much that you kind of ruin what
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: was good about it. And so he said we had
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: worked it, added more instruments and kept adding to it,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: adding layers. And eventually we hated it. It like we
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: had ruined what was good about it. And so he
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: and Monica Potter started seeing each other. He's at her
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: house a few weeks later and tells her, yeah, you know,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: that song we decided we were not going to keep it.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: It just we ruined it. I don't know. Something's wrong.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: And she was like, no, this song is incredible. I've
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: been listening to this tape over and over. And he said, no, no,
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: it's terrible. And she said, no, listen, seriously, listen to this.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: So she puts on the cassette, plays it for him.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: And he's like, oh, my God, that song is incredible.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: What what have we done to it? So he said,
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: you got to give me that tape. And he takes
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: it back to the band in the studio and said,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: this is this is the song. Whatever we were doing
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: here on take four is what this song needs to be.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: And so they rerecorded it again, stripped it back and
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: turned it into the masterpiece that we now know as
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: the second song on This Is Your Life.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: A lot of times in these songs, there's there's like
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: a story within the song, like maybe more than one.
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: story within a song like in a particular verse and
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: i want to know what you make of this part
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: because this is the my favorite part and and i
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: always wonder what it's about and when the last king
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: of hollywood shatters his glass on the floor and orders
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: another well i wonder what he did that for that's
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: when i know that i have to get out because
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: i have been there before so i gave up my
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: seat at the bar and i head for the door
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: let's hope we can all relate to that wow I mean,
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: I looked at that as him kind of done with
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: the scene, being famous rock star, living in that world.
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. One of the things Adam said about
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: his songs is that he's always writing about himself. All
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: of these songs are about him, every one of them.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: And so no matter what he's writing about, he's writing
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: about himself. And sometimes he's doing it through you know,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: different lenses and things like that, but ultimately they're his perspective.
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: And so I agree with you. I think that was,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: he's writing about himself and, and he was the, you know,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: the king of Hollywood and the king of the Viper
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: room and, you know, the, the toast of the town.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: But also I think, you know, two things, one, he
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: was getting older, he was getting more mature and, and
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: realizing that that life wasn't for him. It wasn't too
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: long after this that he moved from Los Angeles to
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: New York, and obviously it was a time of change
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: for him. Also, his own image and the band's popularity
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: was waning. I mean, they were never more famous than
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: during their first album. And while they managed to maintain
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: themselves as a band and maintain themselves as a creative
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: unit and maintain a career after all of these years,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: much to their credit, they also had to deal with
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: the fact that they, you know, and he had to
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: deal with the fact that he wasn't going to be
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: on the cover of Rolling Stone, you know, every year
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: and that it was changing. And I think that he,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: in some ways was happy to give up that seat.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: He was never very comfortable with, with the fame and
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. And so I think he's
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: very much writing about that, that reflection of his during
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: that time.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: It's there's, there's like this sad, you know, pathetic thought
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: of the guy who, he's so drunk and he drops
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: his glass on the floor and you're like, dude, you've
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: had enough, but he orders another one. You're like, Oh,
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: it's time to go.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Right.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: That's kind of how I saw it.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: It's a great lyric. And that song is like every
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: word in that song is just incredible. It's such a masterpiece.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: And there's so many words to it, you know, to
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: write a song like that. He said too, it's very
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: challenging to write a song that's eight minutes long and
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: make it good and make it interesting and keep people
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: wanting to listen. So yeah, He said it wasn't influenced
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: by songs like Rosemary Lily and the Jack of Hearts,
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: which is a Bob Dylan song that's kind of in
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: the same vein. And there's some other songs I mentioned
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: in the book that are similar. And he said it
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: wasn't trying to do that when he wrote it, but
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: he can see how it's similar to songs like that,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: that have all of these verses and sort of repeat themselves,
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: but in some ways are interesting. If you go in
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: and listen to the music of Mrs. Potter's Lobotomy, they
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: keep adjusting and changing just slightly the music in ways
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: that keep you as a listener, I think, interested. And
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: that's one of the geniuses, you know, the things that
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: make that song so genius is that even though the verses,
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: it's kind of repetitive and goes on for eight minutes,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: it keeps you interested as a listener because the words
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: are so good. And then also because the music just
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: keeps changing a little bit. They keep sprinkling in new
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: things and new sounds throughout that keep you, I think,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: interested as a listener.
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: Track listing, Hanging Around, Mrs. Potter's Lullaby, Amy Hit the Atmosphere,
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: Four Days, All My Friends, High Life, Colorblind is another
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: great one.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: I Wish I Was a Girl, Speedway, St. Robinson in
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: his Cadillac, right?
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: Cadillac Dream, yeah.
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: Cadillac Dream, sorry.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: Goodness.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: Kid Things, final track on there.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: Yep. Hidden track, yeah.
• 44:37
  Speaker 2: Jeff Harp is the author of Counting Crows, The Story
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: of Every Song. So moving to 2002's Hard Candy, American
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: Girl's Such a catchy melody, yet Adam called it one
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: of his darkest songs. So what's going on beneath the
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: surface here?
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: That was another song that when I did the dive
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: into it, I learned more about it and I gained
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: a new appreciation for it that I didn't have. That
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: was not, you know, it's a very catchy song, but
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: the lyrics are very dark, you know. And he writes
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: in there about, you know, how it's another description of
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: another relationship that he's in. And he's very much sort
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: of at the beginning painting this kind of negative portrayal
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: of this woman that he's dating. But then he starts
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: to distance himself from her. But then he realizes that
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: once she goes away, that he actually does want her.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: He starts like dressing in her clothes and trying to
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: kind of pull back in his memory the time that
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: they had together. And so it's just another example of
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: a song where you know, he, he often talks about
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: how his songs are about relationships and his songs are about,
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: he's writing about himself, but he's, he's often not the
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: protagonist of the song. You know, he's often sort of, um,
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: you know, a flawed character, or you might even say like, um,
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: the villain of the song, you know, or something like that.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: He's not always the hero. He doesn't always come out
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: looking good. And I think American girls is just an
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: example of that, where he's writing about himself and he's
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: really writing about how he's the problem in the song. Um,
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: he even says he's referencing Shakespeare with the line about
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: weather and noise. Um, and, and, um, you know, sort
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: of describing this woman in a very, um, negative way,
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: but ultimately he sees it comes to see himself in
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: a negative way as being the one who kind of
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: ruined something that he didn't realize he wanted.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: He's been pretty open about his struggles with depression and
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: mental health. And he, he, um, it's, it's amazing. You
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: just see somebody with so much talent and, Seems like
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: a really nice guy, you know, but.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: I think for him, it has been significant mental health
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: issues that he's struggled with since, you know, since at
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: least adolescence. You know, he's had this dissociative disorder, as
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: he describes it. He started to talk about it more
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: in later years. It wasn't something that he really discussed
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: publicly until probably Saturday nights and Sunday mornings. But, you know,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: certainly this has influenced his own writing, his own thinking
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: about himself. And yeah, we sometimes look at famous people
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: and think, oh, they have it all. They're wealthy and
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: they're celebrities and what could be wrong with their lives?
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: But often they're quite miserable. So it's good to realize
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: that fortune and fame aren't the things in life that
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: are going to bring you you know, happiness and peace. Yeah.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: And being open about it, I think is so helpful
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: to those who do struggle with it because they know
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: they're not alone. I think.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Especially for men, because men don't talk about these things.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: And Adam's been somebody who's been very open about it
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: and willing to discuss it. And I think that's very
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: much to his credit.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: Before Saturday nights and Sunday mornings came out, that was 2008.
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: There was all fours accidentally in love. The dreamworks had
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: asked Adam for a song to open the film Shrek
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: two and initially struggled to write it. What finally broke
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: his writer's block?
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: That was a song where they brought him in and
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: they were going to use the Weezer song. They had
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: the Weezer song Island in the sun as was what
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: was going to be in Shrek. And I think there
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: were just some issues with Weezer. Didn't, you know, Rivers
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: Cuomo didn't want to give, give them the song or something.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: It was kind of crazy. And so they said, we
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: want something that's kind of like this, you know, that's
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: happy and upbeat and cheerful and, And Adam was sort
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: of like, well, that's not really what I do. And
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: so he was struggling to write it. The band was
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: going on tour and about to leave. And he had
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: worked on it and worked on it. And he said,
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: I was about to send it back to DreamWorks and
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: just tell them, look, I'm sorry, but your deadline's coming
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: up and I'm not going to be able to meet it.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: And he said, just before the band left on tour
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: and they were going to Europe, that he had a breakthrough.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: And suddenly he came up with like the music and
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: some of the verses and it started to come together.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: He took the song with him to Europe and the
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: band started their tour. He brought the band together to
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: finish in a hotel room in Manchester, England. And so
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: that's a track where you have contributions, musical contributions from
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: almost everybody in the band. Adam's lyrics once again. And
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: it all came together there and they had it complete.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: They canceled a show to go and record it in Europe,
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: recorded it in the studio and and, you know, again,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: did it very quickly. It came together quickly. He said
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: that this was kind of early internet era and so
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: they're on the phone and the video with the people
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: in Hollywood for DreamWorks as they're in the studio and
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: trying to tweak it. Something interesting, little fun fact from
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: the book is that if you watch Shrek, The version
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: in Shrek is different from the version that we all know.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: It's not the same song. The one in Shrek has
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: an acoustic part to it because it had to kind
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: of fit better with what was on the screen. And
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: they then revised that and turned it into the single version,
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: which was on the soundtrack. So the version that we
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: all know and love and that's been on the radio
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: and is on the soundtrack, which was, I think, went
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: to number one, the soundtrack, is not the same version
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: that's in the film it's slightly different i mean i
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: don't want to say it's radically different but there are
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: some musical differences in the two and so that's kind
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: of an interesting twist as well he said that those
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: kind of songs that are in disney pictures and pixar
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: films have resonance that you know no other songs have
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: culturally he said my grandmother saw snow white I saw,
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: you know, my mother saw Snow White. I saw Snow White.
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: My nephew's nieces have seen Snow White. And it's like
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: these songs last for generations. You know, Miles Davis has
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: played songs from Snow White. And so he said no
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: other songs resonate in the same way that songs in
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: popular animated children's films do. And so it was something
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: that was very appealing to him creatively was to do
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: something like that. He said it was difficult because he
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: wasn't somebody who was used to sort of writing to
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: spec and, you know, having somebody say, we need this
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: type of song and this type of theme. ultimately it's
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: a very counting crows song because again, he's writing about
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: a relationship that's, you know, problematic, but that ultimately works
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: out in this case and, um, and they fall in love. And,
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: and so I think it's, I love that song. I've
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: always loved that song and thought it was really good.
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: He wanted it to sound like Friday. I'm in love
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: by the cure.
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: He was thinking of a song like that, you know,
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: and you.
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: Can kind of hear that that's, you know, musically, it's
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: not really the same, but just this idea of being
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: so completely in love and, Um, it's a song that
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: my daughter knows, you know, she doesn't know a lot
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: of Counting Crows songs, but she knows that song cause
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: she's seen Shrek 2 a million times. So, um, I
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: think that that song does have a lot of resonance
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: and I've always thought it was, you know, it was
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: kind of a, another just mini little masterpiece that they
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: put together.
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: Regarding Saturday nights and Sunday mornings, the album moves from
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: anger towards the hope of rebuilding. In the song, You
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: Can't Count On Me, how much of the unreliable person
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: Adam describes is drawn from his own life.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: Again, he's writing about himself. He's writing totally about himself.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: And that's another song where he's kind of really beating
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: up on himself. And he's saying, and that's a song
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: that had an interesting sort of history. It had been
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: around for a long time. He had demoed it and
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: kind of put it aside. A friend of his pointed out, hey,
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: there's this really cool song you demoed a couple of
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: years ago that you should revise. And he listened to
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: it and went, oh, yeah, that's exactly what this album needs.
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: And so that's another song where Geffen wanted them to
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: change it and call it. You can count on me
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: and be this positive song about how I'm always going
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: to be there for you. I'm always going to be there.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: You're rock. But no, Adam was being honest and he
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: was like, look, if you're in a relationship with me,
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: understand you can't count on me to, you know, stick
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: around in this relationship. And, and again, you know, it's,
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: it's him being very honest about, you know, who he
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: is and what he's about and, and also how he
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: had just gone through this series of relationships that he
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: describes in all of these albums. I mean, what's interesting
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: is we'll get to it. Um, but what, what kind
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: of turns out to happen at the end, which is
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: a very, another plot twist and a different part of
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: the story, but that's another song. And that whole album
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: is so dark and, and really it's at the, the,
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: his lowest point in terms of his mental health. And
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: so that album is completely reflective of the, probably the
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: darkest period of his life. And I think you can't
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: count on me as a, as a song that, you know,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: even though it's, it's in the Sunday mornings part, it's
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: supposed to be sort of in the more hopeful rebuilding
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: part of the album. He's still saying, you know, Hey, listen,
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: just understand that if you get into a relationship with me,
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: you can't count on me, you know, just sort of
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: stick around.
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: Then they had the covers album in 2013 underwater sunshine,
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: or what we did on our summer vacation. A lot
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: of interesting choices there. Um, then we move on to
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: 2014 somewhere under wonderland.
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: And Palisades park, which draws on Lou Reed, who Adam
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: is a big fan of. And it also echoes earlier
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: counting crow songs. How did Adam use those influences to
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: build that story?
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: He said in, you know, that, that, um, that album
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: for him really marked the change. He had kind of
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: come to the end of wanting to write about himself
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: with Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings. And he said that
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: that album was so like wrenching psychologically to write about
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: that he had just had enough and he had nothing
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: else to say about himself. And so that album, what's
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: so interesting about it was that he changed his writing
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: style and all of the songs are written about characters
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: and about other people other than him. And so In
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: Palisades Park, he starts to write about these young friends
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: who live in New York City and who have this friendship.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: And he's drawing upon that time of Lou Reed and
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: the factory and Andy Warhol and the 70s and cross-dressing
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: and all this kind of stuff. He's writing about characters
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: who are living in New York and experiencing this as teenagers.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: And he draws upon these characters throughout that album and
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: in the videos for that album. And then also these
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: same characters recur in Butter Miracle as well. And so
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: it's just an interesting shift in his writing style. He
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: also said that it in some ways was just like
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: a throwback to some of his own earlier experiences. But again,
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: for this album, he's writing through the lens of different characters.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: And I think that that is what marked the real shift.
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: That album didn't get a lot of credit, but it's
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: such a gem if you listen to it. There are
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: so many really cool songs on there. I think particularly
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: the last song on that album, Possibility Days, is one
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: of the greatest songs he's ever written. It's just a masterpiece.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: And Cover Up the Sun. There's a bunch of really
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: cool songs on that album that I think completely overlooked, unfortunately.
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: But Palisades Park, I think one of the interesting things
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: about it was that it's this long song that sort
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: of changes and shifts in the same way that they
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: do in concert with songs like Round Here and Rain King.
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: And he said this was the first time in the
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: studio that we had done a song that really had
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: these different movements and different parts, kind of the way
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: that we reconfigure and reimagine some of our songs in concert,
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: that this, they were doing it in the studio. It
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: was a difficult song for them to put together in
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: the studio because it has all these different kind of
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: movements and parts to it. But that's, again, a real masterpiece.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: He really wanted it to open the album.
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, another one is Scarecrow. That's another great one.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: Love it. Yeah, I love Scarecrow.
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You have an interesting comment. It takes aim at
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: politics and media spectacle, but you hear some loneliness beneath
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: that heavier sound.
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Always. There's always that thread of melancholy in
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: Counting Crows. Even their sunniest material, like Accidentally in Love.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: What's the problem, baby? It starts with that. You always
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: get that, no matter what. Even at his sunniest, there's
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: a thread of darkness there and I think that's one
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: of the things that makes him so interesting as an artist.
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: But yeah, that album is full of little gems that
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: I think in some ways got overlooked.
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: That brings us to Butter Miracle, which began as a
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: four song suite in 2021, expanded into the complete suites
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: in 2025. Adam wrote the first songs while he was
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: isolated on a farm and then realized that these songs
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: belong together. What connected them?
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: That's such an interesting story. And In some ways, what
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: started this book was they had done this new album, ultimately.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: It started with four songs, and then they added another
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: five and put out this new album of nine songs.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: They had the documentary that came out. And he was
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: writing this on a farm during the pandemic, and he
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: brought in a piano, and he wrote the first song,
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: which is The Tall Grass. And I think that that
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: song is an absolute masterpiece. It's almost like Pink Floyd
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: or something. It's really unique and different. And also one
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: of the cool things he said about that song is
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: he had not played in a long time. It was
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: during the pandemic. He didn't even have an instrument with him,
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: but he asked somebody to send him a keyboard. So
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: he starts to write and you can hear in that song,
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: he said, it starts with just these basic chords because
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of relearning how to play piano. And as
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: the song progresses, the piano starts to get a little
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: more complex and the lyrics start to get more complicated.
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: And he said, you can actually hear me like relearning
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: how to be a musician in that song. It's so cool.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: And then he said, as he was writing it and
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: playing it, he had this new set of chords he
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: starts playing. And he's like, oh. maybe this is like
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: palisades park where i'm doing this kind of song that
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: changes and then he realizes no actually this is a
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: whole new song elevator boots which i think is another
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: masterpiece album so good um And he's like, oh, OK.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: And he realizes, what if I had a series of
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: songs that were all connected, that they never stopped? We
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: just got to the end of one and this started
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: into the next one. And so he wrote a four
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: song suite that never really ends. Those four songs are
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: all connected together. One's ending and the other one's beginning.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: And there's no pause between the songs. It's a really
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: cool concept. And he said, I really hadn't planned to
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: write or record or do anything. They hadn't written anything.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: and done an album in a long time. It had
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: been six or seven years. But he said he was
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: so inspired by that idea that he thought, I'm going
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: to do a suite that's like one piece of music,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: but that contains these four different songs. And Bobby and
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: the Rat Kings is the last one, which I think
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: is another really good song. What's so great? And I
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: describe it in the book, but everybody needs to go
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: watch this on YouTube because y'all missed it. We all
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: missed it. But they did a short film of that
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: entire suite that's like a 20-minute music video. And it
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: is a masterpiece. It is absolutely incredible. The band's not
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: in it. And so I know that's a tough sell
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: when you're like, hey, a 20 minute conceptual music video.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: It's like four songs in one and the band's not
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: even in it. But it is incredible. If you're a
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: fan of Counting Crows at all, you need to go
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: watch that short film. It's on YouTube.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: It is. All right. I'll watch it.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: It's amazing. And it's so good that I had to
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: like put a section of the book on it and
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: describe what happens in the story because it's again drawing
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: on the characters that he wrote about in Palisades Park
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: and they show up again. The stars of those videos
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: show up again in in this short film, too. I mean,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: they're part of it. So it's so cool. I guess
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: Taylor Swift does this with all the Easter eggs and
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: stuff like that in her music and connects all the
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: songs together. But he's doing that too. And it's just
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: one of the things that makes me love this band
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: so much is how creative they are, how interesting they are.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: Even this late in their career, they're doing this really
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: cool stuff. So that was the concept for part one
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: of Butter Miracle. And then in 2025, they came out
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: with part two, which was a new five songs. And
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: I think this was the interesting plot twist in Adam's
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: story is that He met this woman, Zoe, who dated
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: for many, many, many years. And, you know, finally, after
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: all this time that has had a real relationship that
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: had lasted and endured, they got married at the end
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: of last year. And so Adam, who spent his entire
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: career writing about, you know, terrible relationships and you can't
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: count on me and everything's a breakup. He finally meets,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: you know, the woman who he has a real relationship with.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: They've been together for like 10 years or something. And
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: there are a number of songs on Butter Miracle that
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: are about her. But the one that's really about her
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: is With Love from A to Z. Her name's Zoe
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: and he's Adam. So from Adam to Zoe. And he's
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: writing about his relationship with her. And he's writing about
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: his relationship, the music and to the fans and to
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: the band. And it's another just absolute masterpiece. It's such
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: a great song. And it's really maybe his most heartfelt
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: song he's ever written because it's about this relationship that
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: changed everything for him. So it's such an interesting plot
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: twist that somebody who spent a whole career writing these
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: dark masterpieces about romance ends up finding the love of
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: his life. And so cool, you know. So I love
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: Under the Aurora, I think is... as good as anything
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: the band's ever done. And how often does that happen?
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean, I love the Rolling Stones are
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: one of my favorite bands, but their last great album
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: was maybe like Tattoo You. I mean, it's been a
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: long time, you know, since those guys have put out
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: something that really held up as well as their earlier material.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: That's so often the case with bands. Their newest stuff
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: is good, but maybe not as good. I think Counting
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: Crows with Butter Miracle, especially like the Tall Grass and
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: Elevator Boots, Bobby and the Rat King, With Love From
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: A to Z, Under the Aurora. These are some of
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: the best songs this band has ever written. I mean,
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: I think they really hold up as well as anything
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: they've ever done. And that's not something I can say
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: about a lot of groups. It's not something I'd say
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: about every single song on Better Miracle, but the vast
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: majority of it is mind-blowingly good to me.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that says it all about where they're at now. Yeah,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: and it is interesting, too. You noted this about how
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: he's written about songs about fame before he was famous.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: And after he is famous.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, yeah. And how he views fame.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just, it's really, I mean, even on Elevator Boots,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: it's the character of Bobby, right? An aging rock star.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: You know, life looks glamorous on the outside, but. Yeah.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: Bobby, and again, he said, Bobby's me, you know, I'm
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: writing about myself through Bobby, but Bobby and the Rat
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: Kings is about the band's relationship to the fans. And
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: he's writing it from a fan's perspective who are watching
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: this band reunite. You got to watch it in the film.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: It's so cool. But yeah, he tells the whole story
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: of Bobby in this album. And Bobby is, again, a
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: proxy for himself. But he's writing about his career, his
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: relationship to music. And one of the things that he
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: said during this time was that One of the most
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: significant relationships I've had in my life is to music.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: It was there for me when I was a kid.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: It was there for me when I was a confused teenager.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: I became a musician, you know, in later life and
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: started writing songs myself. And he said he starts to
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: reflect on this relationship in Butter Miracle, his relationship to
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: music in songs like Bobby and the Rat Kings and
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: Elevator Boots. He's really writing about about those things. And
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: so I think that's very cool too. I mean, you
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: of all people can appreciate, you know, a love of music, right?
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, obviously this is what makes you do what
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: you do and what makes people like me write books
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: like this. And so I think all of us kind
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: of can appreciate where Adam's coming from because all of
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: us have had this long and significant relationship with music
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: that's meant so much to us. You know, it's, For
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: all of us, it's been one of the most significant
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: relationships that we've had. You know, of course, wife and
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: kids and all that kind of stuff aside, music has
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: always been there. And so Adam's talked about that, too.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: And here he writes about that. And that's very cool.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: So in some ways, it was the significance of Butter
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: Miracle and everything that was going on around that time creatively, artistically,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: for him personally, that made me want to return to
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: this story. And originally, I thought, well, I'll just add
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: a chapter to Rain King. and have like a second edition.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: But I kind of realized that these stories were so
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: interesting to me that there was no way that I
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: could put them all into there. I mean, this book
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: I think is longer than Rain King and it's just
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: about the song. So I had a great time writing
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: it as a fan. And like I said, I felt
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: like I learned so much more about the group and
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: even songs that either I had dismissed or that I
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: really loved. I learned a lot more about writing this book.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: So I hope... uh, the other fans will have a
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: similar experience reading it. And I appreciate, um, getting to
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: come on here and talk about it. This is always
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: so fun.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: The book is out now. Counting Crow is the story
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: of every song. Find it where books are sold, Amazon,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: all the usual places. And people can find you online, Jeff, where?
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: I'm on Facebook and, and, you know, I've been doing
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: this for a while, but every Saturday morning, including this morning,
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: this is a Saturday for those of you, um, paying
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: attention at home. But I post a Counting Crows video
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: on my Facebook page every morning. I try to find
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: something that I've been pulling up like old bootlegs that
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: people have sent to me. I've been using AI to
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: digitize them and improve the picture and the sound and
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: stuff like that. And every Saturday morning, I post a new, interesting, rare,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: you haven't heard it before, Counting Crows video. So it's
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: a good place to find me and to connect with
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: If you're a Counting Crows fan, but also just I
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: think those videos are fun. And thank you to everybody
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: who's watched those and commented on them. I have some
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: people who come and comment on them like every week.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: And I just, you know, I feel like we're all
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: sharing in our fandom. It's not like me posting this thing.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: It's just more like, oh, guys, you got to hear
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: how cool this is. This is so amazing. So that's
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: a good place to find me. And if you like
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: Counting Crows, tune in every Saturday morning for a new
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: exciting video. Nice.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: And I'll lead people there. Put the link in the
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: show notes so people can check it out. Jeff Harkness,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: thanks so much. Look forward to having you back on
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: again in the future.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right. I'll be back on in another six months.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: All right, man. Sounds good.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it, man. It's always great to talk to you.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: That's it. It's in the books.