{"id":93331,"date":"2025-05-11T18:11:13","date_gmt":"2025-05-11T18:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/93331\/"},"modified":"2025-05-11T18:11:13","modified_gmt":"2025-05-11T18:11:13","slug":"adam-duritz-on-new-counting-crows-album-battling-mental-illness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/93331\/","title":{"rendered":"Adam Duritz on New Counting Crows Album, Battling Mental Illness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFor years, people told Adam Duritz<\/a> not to bother releasing full albums, that \u201c<\/strong>nobody wants to listen to \u2019em anymore.\u201d So he released Counting Crows<\/a>\u2018 most ambitious music ever \u2014\u00a0an interlocked, glam-rock-infused four-song sequence \u2014 as an EP, 2021\u2019s Butter Miracle, Suite One<\/a>. \u201cBut I found that there was a certain amount of dismissal of the suite because it wasn\u2019t a full record,\u201d he says.\u00a0\u201cAs much as everyone says everyone just wants to listen to single songs, there\u2019s a certain judgment if it\u2019s not a whole record.\u201d Three years later, the band is back with a strong new album, Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets!, which finally rounds out that EP with five new songs. Durtiz sat down in his Manhattan apartment to talk about the long process behind the album, growing up \u201cbroken,\u201d an upcoming new documentary on the band, and more.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s a lot of Nineties artists who\u2019ve died and a lot of bands that have broken up. But you\u2019re still here. <\/strong>\u00a0
Yeah, some of them I knew, and we were friends. There are what you could call good reasons why bands break up. But they\u2019re not great reasons a lot of the time. A lot of it\u2019s just frustration, jealousy, money. I think if you want to, you can always find a reason why you deserve more, no matter who you are.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou just gotta figure out what\u2019s really important to you. I realized early on, I always wanted to be in a band. I don\u2019t wanna be a solo artist. I love the jazz of being in a band. I like the interaction. And I found myself in a band that I really loved. And so staying in, that\u2019s been my priority forever. I just made that the first priority. Those guys really matter to me. I gotta make sure they\u2019re all OK. And that way we get to do this year after year.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou wouldn\u2019t feel all the emotion in my songs if it wasn\u2019t for how good they are at interpreting that shit and how good they are bringing it out. People don\u2019t appreciate those guys. They\u2019re not, like, famous as band guys, but they\u2019re fucking great. And I recognize that. I appreciate them so much.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen I was a kid, I figured out what I wanted to do in life before any of my friends. And I was suddenly ahead of everybody. Then I fell behind when they actually got jobs and I was washing dishes. And then this fucking thing worked out, which is a fucking miracle. It\u2019s not that we don\u2019t deserve it or anything, but it\u2019s just dumb luck, because it doesn\u2019t matter how good you are. Success in the arts, who knows what the fuck it\u2019s all about.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd I\u2019m sure I\u2019m a frustrating person to work with sometimes. \u2018Cause I got a lot of ideas that maybe don\u2019t seem like the greatest ideas. I just want us to do our thing, and I don\u2019t want to chase what we did last time. I wanna find things that fascinate us and do \u2019em. I\u2019m sure we missed out on a bunch of success by not repeating some of that stuff. By not singing the songs exactly the same way in concert, whatever we did that people don\u2019t like or didn\u2019t like, or people I dated that made everybody hate us, I don\u2019t know. But fuck, 30 years later we are still in this band. Most of us are still here. I don\u2019t know, man. That\u2019s just really cool. I think a lot about it, because I\u2019m really proud of the fact that we\u2019re still in the band.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s also the \u201cstaying alive\u201d part.<\/strong>
I did a lot of drugs when I was a kid, but I have a pretty severe mental illness too, and that at a certain point did not mix well with drugs. And it was horrifying. Like, really scary dissociation, mixed with hallucinations is not good. And it started affecting me in ways even when I didn\u2019t take the drugs. I spent, like, a year between the age of 21 and 22 in a halfway hallucinatory state.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019re talking about acid?<\/strong>
<\/strong>Yeah. Feeling like I was on acid without taking acid. I\u2019d already taken acid, but when this came on I didn\u2019t, and I went through some pretty scary shit right then, and I had to stop doing drugs. I was done with drugs by 21, I couldn\u2019t take them anymore \u2019cause I couldn\u2019t hack what it felt like to be on them. It just made every drug turn into acid.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tI think in a way that might have saved me in a lot of other ways, because I didn\u2019t have to go through all the drug use when I was a huge famous rock star, when I could do every drug I wanted to all day, every day. Because I watched that be deadly for some other people. And I could have seen that being a big problem for me. \u2018Cause I really liked doing drugs, but I just couldn\u2019t. It was terrifying.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis dissociation and the acid flashback thing. It still happens a lot of the time. I\u2019m used to it now to the point where I can breathe through it, but it was really scary. You don\u2019t want to be on a drug for a year \u2014\u00a0not acid, not for a year. I thought I would never come out of that. And I thought my life was over at 21. In a lot of ways, though, it did really save me from a lot of difficulties later on that I saw other guys go through. I didn\u2019t know Kurt [Cobain] well, but I did know him and he was really nice to me. He just seemed like a really sweet guy.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s that line about being broken as a child on the new album. Is that you?<\/strong>
Oh, yeah. But it\u2019s other people too. We face things sometimes. Some people face them in their families. I faced stuff from outside my family, just difficulties and just insanity, stuff that\u2019s inside your head. There\u2019s nothing anyone can do to protect you from things that are inside your own head. Other things, they have doctors for them. Even now, we really don\u2019t have doctors for mental illness. We don\u2019t really know what causes it or how to fix it. The brain\u2019s a weird thing, man.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd it was a real scary realization to come to that \u2014 oh, there\u2019s nothing anybody can do. I have to figure out how to get out of this. And I don\u2019t have any ability to do that at all. Man, there were some times when I was a kid that I just did not think it was possible to survive. When you\u2019re a kid, your whole life is laid out for you, people tell you what to do, they tell you where to go, tell you what time to be there, tell you what you gotta do before you show up tomorrow. And if something goes wrong, they tell you how to fix it, or they take you to somebody to fix it.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s the general structure of it. A lot of kids find themselves in situations for a variety of reasons, and there\u2019s nobody to help them. Sometimes it\u2019s because they\u2019re on their own. Sometimes it\u2019s because the problem is such that nobody knows what to do about it. And that\u2019s one of the reasons why a lot of what kids are going through nowadays in isolated communities, queer communities, trans communities, communities of people of color\u2026I have my own way where I really relate to that, because I had a situation that no one could help me with and I had great parents, who tried really hard and would\u2019ve done anything for me, but just was beyond everybody\u2019s control.<\/p>\n

\n\tHalf of this album, the interlocked <\/strong>Butter Miracle: Suite One<\/strong>, came out as an EP in 2021, but you\u2019re only now releasing the full album. How did that process work?<\/strong>
The first half we recorded right before the pandemic, so that put things off by a little bit. But as soon as it ended, I went back to my friend\u2019s farm in England, where I wrote the first half, and I went back to work to write some more stuff.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSo I went back to work on it. I wrote a bunch of stuff and I felt like I\u2019d finished it. On the way home, I stopped in London to sing on my friend\u2019s record\u00a0 \u2014\u00a0 one of my best friends is a singer [David Le\u2019aupepe] for this Australian band Gang of Youths. And I had already sung on the record, but they scrapped it and changed to a more ambitious version of it. So I went to sing on it again, and they sent me the finished record, Angel in Real Time. I think it\u2019s one of my favorite records of the last decade. I just couldn\u2019t escape the thought that the stuff I\u2019d written wasn\u2019t at that level. So I went back to the drawing board on some of it.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat were the sticking points for you?<\/strong>
<\/strong>Musically, the songs were a lot more ambitious, and I couldn\u2019t tell if they were actually any good at being ambitious. Part of it was they weren\u2019t well-written enough at first, some of them. And part of it was just my inability to play them [on my own], and I sat for a good two years. And then I wrote \u201cWith Love from A to Z\u201d and I loved that. And I knew it was good. And the question was, now what do I do? Like, \u201cThis one\u2019s great. What do I do with it, though, if there\u2019s nothing else?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd I called up Jim [Bogios] and Millard [Powers], <\/strong>our bass player and drummer, and I said, \u201cI need everybody to come here and stay with me for a week. I can\u2019t tell if these songs are any good, maybe demo them.\u201d I don\u2019t demo much. But I said, \u201cI need you to come here to my house. We\u2019ll just sit in the living room. It\u2019ll take a week, maybe less, and we\u2019ll just do it.\u201d And we just sat here in the living room for a week. I cooked for everybody and we just went through them one by one. Everyone was really thrilled, and we were in the studio two weeks later recording them.<\/p>\n

\n\tTook 11 days, maybe. We just blew through them. It was really two or three years of me sitting around just not having the confidence to send them to the band. I guess it\u2019s fine \u2019cause it wouldn\u2019t really have been ready until we had \u201cWith Love from A to Z\u201d anyways. But I\u2019ve never had that happen before. I\u2019ve never really rewritten anything. But I just didn\u2019t have confidence.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s hard to go into something that you thought was finished and tear its guts out. There\u2019s a lot of writers who aren\u2019t comfortable with that kind of rearranging. <\/strong>
<\/strong>I certainly wasn\u2019t. And, like, the \u201c[Under the] Aurora\u201d chorus, [Duritz\u2019s girlfriend] Zoe really loved it. She was like, \u201cOh, I fucking really missed that chorus.\u201d She loves the new one more. But when I was talking about getting rid of it, she was like, \u201cI really don\u2019t think that\u2019s a great idea.\u201d I just knew something was wrong with it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tHow did the old one go?<\/strong>
\u201cCalling for oxygen\/\u2019Cause I cannot breathe without you\u2026.\u201d It was a pretty cool chorus. It just didn\u2019t mean much to me. It was a cool line, but it didn\u2019t mean anything to me really. It just didn\u2019t have the passion. It was just lacking something.<\/p>\n

\n\tI think you\u2019ve talked about the danger of writing something that sounds like it would be cool in a song versus something that actually means something to you or means something, period.<\/strong>
I\u2019ve usually been pretty good at policing that. There are things that sound like great lyrics should sound. \u201cSister Christian,\u201d that\u2019s one of those phrases. Fleetwood Mac pulls it off with \u201cCrystal Visions.\u201d But there are things that sound poetic and aren\u2019t particularly meaningful. I don\u2019t know, maybe those do mean a lot to those people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWith the song \u201cBox Cars,\u201d one of the problems was I couldn\u2019t finish it at all. During the pandemic, we had these two years of sitting around, and I guess I\u2019d gone really stir crazy. I cooked a lot, but I spent a lot of time running around the house, making up songs about our cats and just nonsense shit. One of the ones that I was running around the house being most annoying with was this one that went, [in a vaguely heavy-metal cadence] \u201ccoronavirus, duhnt-duhnt, coronavirus.\u201d [Laughs.] And I ran around the house, humming that to myself, this metal song about coronavirus, for ages.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd when I was working on \u201cBox Cars,\u201d I was trying to figure out a way to come outta the chorus and I had a riff that sounded so familiar. I\u2019m like, what is that thing? And then I realized, \u201cOh fuck, it\u2019s that coronavirus song!\u201d I called Immer [multi-instrumentalist David Immergl\u00fcck], and he\u2019s like \u201cOh, that\u2019s a cool riff. What is that?\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cI don\u2019t wanna tell you. Just play it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tI just recently learned that you played bass in high school.<\/strong>
<\/strong>Earlier, like 13-ish. I cannot figure out how that was possible \u2019cause the way I think of a bass now, it is the hardest instrument. I can\u2019t imagine. I don\u2019t know how the hell\u2026 I imagine I must have been playing really simple parts. We were all playing, we had these \u2014 our parents each offered to buy us a songbook. So we got the Beatles, Stones, and Zeppelin. They were the biggest songbooks, and we mostly played those songs, with a little Kiss in there. And I have no facility for it whatsoever now. It was something I did when I was really young and I probably never touched it again. So it\u2019s not like I kept up a little bit or that. I picked up the piano after that.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of the things that\u2019s really fresh on this album and was present in this suite as well, is this glam-rock energy that\u2019s pretty new to the band. Where did that come from?
<\/strong>I\u2019ve always loved Mott the Hoople<\/a> and Lou Reed<\/a> and Bowie, and those are big parts of me. But I think that\u2019s part of the ambition in the songwriting that hit during this period of the last 10 years that I\u2019ve been looking at. There\u2019s some of that in [2014\u2019s] \u201cPalisades Park\u201d too, and you could hear \u201cElvis Went to Hollywood.\u201d There\u2019s little bits of it on that album of me just dipping my toes in it. I think it\u2019s just something I\u2019ve been feeling for a while.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd a lot of the songs have to do with sexuality and bisexuality, different isolated groups of people and how they\u2019re forced to live nowadays. I\u2019m a Jew, it\u2019s not a majority. And I feel the weirdness of that in my life. And I think as a result of that, in a lot of ways in the last 10 or 12 years, I\u2019ve really thought a lot about other people living in sort of isolation and difficulties. It\u2019s a big part of the lyrics, at least on Somewhere Under Wonderland. Certainly \u201cPalisades Park\u201d is about these two kids just discovering their sexuality, dressing differently, that also pops up on \u201cBobby and the Rat Kings\u201d and other songs.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s just something I\u2019ve been thinking about. I grew up in San Francisco in the Seventies and Eighties, and\u00a0 I was growing up around that culture as a kid, seeing a lot of people who\u2019d come to San Francisco who\u2019d clearly been terrified in their childhoods and now were finding a sort of sense of freedom. Those memories about that were really coming to the front when I was writing \u201cPalisades Park\u201d and some other stuff. I\u2019ve just been thinking about it a lot in recent years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFor some reason that\u2019s really gotten into my writing and just been something I thought about a lot, especially as we\u2019re coming to a point where a lot of culture in America seems to wanna shove it back in the box and shove people back in a box. And it\u2019s sad to me. America\u2019s a place where you should be free to be yourself and we should live and let live. It\u2019s the idea of the country. It\u2019s a shame that it\u2019s getting really scary to be, like, a trans kid<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd I think the music is related to that. There\u2019s an expressive, showy quality to it that fits these songs and fits me. I don\u2019t know, it just feels very me. I\u2019m not gay, but I\u2019m an artist and I grew up weird among people who weren\u2019t like me. Nice people, a lot of them. But I\u2019ve always felt weird. Being crazy doesn\u2019t help!<\/p>\n

\u201cSpaceman in Tulsa\u201d has some of those themes.<\/strong>
<\/strong>It\u2019s about people who are different from everybody else around them, or specifically it\u2019s about people who go through some real trauma as kids, and how it can seem like there\u2019s not a place for you in the world. And then you find art has a place for you, rock & roll. In my particular sense, it reminds me of \u201cMr. Jones\u201d in some ways, which is about dying to be a rock & roll star, the celebration of becoming one, but also about the realization that it\u2019s probably not gonna be what you\u2019re thinking. It\u2019s not gonna make everything OK. And in this sense, it\u2019s about people who are going through horrific trauma, but who find a place playing rock & roll or making some kind of art. So it is a celebration in a way, \u2019cause you survive and you thrive, but where you come from isn\u2019t so great necessarily.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tYour singing voice has held up well over the years, which isn\u2019t the case for everyone.<\/strong>
It\u2019s a little lower for sure. I\u2019ve lost some of the top of my range. We\u2019ve had to lower some songs. But that happens. I do think I\u2019m getting to be a better singer too. I just lost a few notes at the top of my range, which is natural. I\u2019ve been on tour for 30 years now, basically.<\/p>\n

\n\tI feel like I\u2019m getting to be a really good singer. I hadn\u2019t been in the studio a lot when we started this band. We had only been together a little while and I\u2019d been in the studio a few times for Himalayans and for Counting Crows and maybe a bunch of times singing background vocals for other bands at Dave Bryson\u2019s studio. But I had never really taken much in the way of voice lessons before the band either, and then I had to survive touring. So technically I think I kept getting better, but also just it\u2019s a skill. You learn to use it.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut my voice has always been pretty fragile. I could do a lot of stuff with it, but it didn\u2019t take much to wear it down. And so it got wrecked really easily. I spent a lot of time on steroids early in our career. I\u2019m not sure why it\u2019s not wrecked, except that I have technique, whereas I think some people have none at all.<\/p>\n

\n\tI took some voice lessons because you go from singing once a month at home to singing on the road for months at a time. My voice gave out right away at the beginning and it was fucked. We were canceling shows or I was taking \u2014\u00a0chewing \u2014 steroids. And so I had to take some voice lessons, like emergency voice lessons, early on. Now I can\u2019t really sing without warming up. My voice goes from not working to working. I don\u2019t have an explanation for why it\u2019s not shit other than, I don\u2019t smoke anymore at all. I haven\u2019t really for a long time. I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

\n\tI heard there\u2019s a documentary in the works about the time between the first two albums. Is that correct?<\/strong>
Yeah. HBO\u2019s doing a doc about the formation of the band and a little bit about [Recovering the] Satellites.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat\u2019s the status of that?<\/strong>
I think it\u2019s done.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd did you go back through the archives and a bunch of outtakes and stuff in the course of that?<\/strong>
Yeah, we did.That\u2019s the one period during our career where we did the most filming ever. [We were] filmed while we were recording the record, and it\u2019s really cool. And then Josh Taft, who did the live video for Pearl Jam, filmed a whole show at the Ford Theater right before we released the record, we played the whole record. Plus we did Storytellers and we did Live at the 10 Spot. So there\u2019s a ton of live stuff. But [the filmmakers\u2019] philosophy is you don\u2019t want to put too much music in a documentary, \u2019cause it takes away from the story.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDo you think you might do something with those outtakes and stuff now that you\u2019ve found them?<\/strong>
<\/strong>I\u2019ve been wanting to for years. We\u2019d been talking about putting together a box set that has more video stuff from it for Satellites. But Universal couldn\u2019t find that stuff. They thought it was all lost. Ever since the 10th anniversary or the fifth anniversary of Satellites, we\u2019ve been asking for that material and they said it was lost and they said it was burned in a fire and then they finally found all of it when the documentary thing came up, which I think was maybe just because they looked. But I would love to do something with it. I put that outta my mind, because I thought it would be in the documentary.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tNow you\u2019re gonna get the fans excited about this box set, though.<\/strong>
Maybe. Yeah. I would love to do something with all of it. It\u2019s great stuff to me. The Storytellers thing\u2019s never been out, with the talking.<\/p>\n

\n\tI saw you guys on that tour. That was a great tour.<\/strong>
It was really fun. It was a cool year or two on the road. We have a lot of great stuff. It\u2019d be great to put it out somehow. We will see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For years, people told Adam Duritz not to bother releasing full albums, that \u201cnobody wants to listen to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[43998,41200,105,12286,43999,218,44000,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-93331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-adam-duritz","9":"tag-counting-crows","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-kurt-cobain","12":"tag-lou-reed","13":"tag-mental-health","14":"tag-mott-the-hoople","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114490551993808459","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}