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Podcast Summary: Broken Record - Adam Duritz Episode
Podcast Title Broken Record
Hosts Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam, Justin Richmond
Episode Title Adam Duritz
Episode Description The episode features Adam Duritz, the lead singer of Counting Crows, who discusses his experiences with mental health, fame, and the band’s journey over three decades. The latest album, *Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets*, is also highlighted.
Key Themes and Discussions
- Fame and Criticism
- Initial Success: Counting Crows' debut album, *August And Everything After*, sold over seven million copies. Popular singles like “Mr. Jones” and “Round Here” dominated radio and MTV.
- Criticism Focus: Despite their musical success, Duritz felt that critics were more interested in his personal life, particularly his dating history, rather than the band’s music.
- Mental Health
- Personal Struggles: Duritz opens up about his lifelong struggle with mental health, particularly his experiences with dissociative disorder.
- Connection Challenges: The disorder impacts his ability to connect with people off-stage, creating a sense of isolation even amidst public adoration.
- Musical Journey
- Longevity in Music: Over three decades, Counting Crows have continued to produce music, with the latest album, *Butter Miracle*, released recently.
- Creative Process: Duritz describes his songwriting as a deeply personal process, often improvisational but also reliant on craft and structure.
- Stage Comfort vs. Life Challenges
- Comfort on Stage: He finds solace in performing, stating that he feels more comfortable on stage than in everyday life, where social interactions can be difficult.
- Psychosomatic Reactions: Duritz recalls early career experiences where he lost his voice before shows, indicating a complex relationship with performance anxiety.
- Influence of Comedians
- Admiration for Comedians: Duritz draws parallels between musicians and comedians, expressing admiration for the live performance skills of comedians, citing their dependency on audience reactions.
- Songwriting Philosophy
- Craft Over Theme: He discusses how he approaches songwriting, emphasizing the importance of details and vivid imagery over straightforward themes.
- Tools for Creativity: Duritz mentions the utility of tools like rhyming dictionaries to stimulate creativity in songwriting.
- Reflection on Critique and Backlash
- Backlash After Success: He reflects on the backlash experienced after their initial success and how later albums like *Recovering the Satellites* and *This Desert Life* were met with mixed reviews at the time but are now recognized as valuable works.
- Changing Perspectives in Music Critique: The evolution of music criticism is discussed, with Duritz noting that new generations have re-evaluated his work positively.
- Closing Thoughts
- Gratitude for Connection: Ultimately, Duritz expresses gratitude for the connection formed through music, though he acknowledges the complexity of these interactions with fans.
- Ongoing Musical Exploration: He remains committed to exploring new musical avenues and sharing his journey through songwriting.
Episode Highlights
- Latest Album: *Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets* and its context within Counting Crows' long career.
- Dissociative Disorder: Insight into Duritz’s mental health struggles and their impact on his life.
- Songwriting Techniques: Discussion of songwriting processes and the balance of inspiration versus craft.
Resources
- [Counting Crows New Album](https://countingcrows.lnk.to/BMTCS)
- [Counting Crows Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3HMIs6Q49q9M0pcZPyo6vX?si=9a03472ed0e345e6&nd=1&dlsi=bada5369dfc54998)
- [YouTube Channel for Video Version](https://youtube.com/brokenrecordpodcast)
Conclusion This episode offers a candid look into the life of Adam Duritz, exploring themes of mental health, the challenges of fame, and the enduring power of music. It serves as a reminder of the complexities behind artistic expression and public perception.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:05Pushkin.
0:30including Mr. Jones and Round Here, dominated radio and MTV at the time. But all the exposure wasn't great for the band, and according to Duritz, it led critics to focus more on Duritz's star-studded dating life than the band's music. They've continued to release music over the last three decades, and this month, Counting Crows put out their latest album called Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets. Today, we'll hear Adam Duritz talk in-depth with Leah Rose about his lifelong struggle with mental health and about how his disassociative disorder has impacted his ability to connect with people offstage.
1:05This is Broken Record. Real musicians, real conversations.
1:12This is an iHeart Podcast. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at Ooclas Speedtest, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage. That's your business, Supercharged. Learn more at supermobile.com. Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S. where you can see the sky.
1:53Best network based on analysis by Ukla of Speedtest Intelligence Data 1H 2025.
2:24Whether you're a music journalist, passionate fan, or someone who loves understanding creative processes, Claude matches your curiosity about what really drives great artists. Try Claude for free at claude.ai slash brokenrecord. This episode of Broken Record is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve. Traveling is one of life's greatest joys. Honestly, can anything be more exhilarating? Well, actually, yeah, with Chase Sapphire Reserve. It's your gateway to the world's most captivating destination. First, you will earn eight times points on all purchases through Chase Travel. And the card gets you into Sapphire Lounge by the club at select airports nationwide and access to one-of-a-kind experiences.
3:06Whether you are booking a once-in-a-lifetime trip or your next week in Escape, discover more with Chase Sapphire Reserve at chase.com slash sapphire reserve. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Subject to credit approval, terms apply. If you want to see the full video of this conversation, visit youtube.com slash broken record podcast. Now here's Leah Rose with Adam Duritz. So how's it feeling being back in the promo world? Oh, it's cool. I am excited. Yeah. I mean, I have a weird job and it's not the kind of job that you expect to get to do for too long. Totally. You hope, but it doesn't usually work out this way.
3:55So I think it's pretty cool. I mean, it's been 32 years since my first promos, really. And I'm still here. Yeah. I think that's very cool. I've been a rock star for a long time, and I really dig it. So every time we go back to do this stuff, I get a little thrill. Oh, that's nice. I don't know. It's like I'm still making records and people still want to talk to us about it. Yeah. We could have self-sabotaged ourselves into the grave by now. We haven't. And everyone could just be so bored that they don't want to talk to us. And that hasn't happened either. So it's good stuff. Yeah. I was talking to Billy Corrigan recently, and he was saying that most bands or most artists who get signed, it's expected that they have four years.
4:48Oh, really? Who did the math on that? Yeah. You know, it's already extremely difficult to get signed at all, but to have a career that spans three decades is pretty phenomenal. I think he overestimated that at four years. Maybe you'll spend four years on the label, but I mean, I would think the greatest graveyard for bands is signed bands. like that you get in there and then they just shelve you or they, you know, nothing happens. I don't know. It seems like anyways, it's not great to not have that happen to you. Totally. Although, isn't it cool if he is related to Bill Burr? I didn't ask him about that because I, it feels like such a touchy subject, but they do look a lot alike.
5:34Well, I think it's a touchy subject because he sprung it on them. Like without telling him. On Bill Burr. On Bill Burr, yeah. Yeah. Which is weird. It's a weird thing to do. It's very like Jerry Springer. Yeah. And I can understand why Bill Burr would have been a little annoyed about that. Yes. Fucking Bill Burr. I'd like to be related to Bill Burr. I would just talk about all kinds of shit. I think that would be great. Yeah, I know. That's the craziest thing. It's so funny. Yeah. I love that. I love your connection to comedy, too. I watched your first, have you only been on Rogan once? Yeah. Okay.
6:13Yeah. I watched that episode and I just thought it was cool how just the connection you have. It sounds like you're friends with a lot of comedians with Jeff Ross and some other guys. Yeah, Jeff. I know Jeff. Well, I was friends with Bob Saget forever. And Bob introduced me to Jeff and we became very close friends. We went and did a USO tour together. Um, but also for me, comedians are the, that is the highest form of live performance to me. Like they are, they are the tightrope walkers. Like I, I love live performance. I love going to the theater. I love bands. I admire anyone that can go up there and really do it in front of people for real.
6:58and nobody does it like comedians because they're more dependent on an audience than any of us i don't care what happens in the audience but but i mean i just think comedians are incredible i've been obsessed with it my whole life you know growing up in san francisco was a big comedy and i saw went to see comedy all the time as a kid uh and you know a young adult and i've just always been obsessed with it and you know getting to know so many of these guys uh i'm huge fan of like Alex Edelman and Mike Birbiglia, guys who write these long form pieces that I think are so I've been obsessed with Mike Birbiglia forever.
7:37You said that you don't care about the audience's reaction. You're sort of just, you know, I imagine you're just doing your own thing for you. But correct me if I'm wrong about that. But does it seem like in your conversations, they care about the audience or are they also sort of just in their own experience? Well, it's much more symbiotic, like when you're a comedian. I shouldn't say I really don't care. It's not that. But I could play with a dead silent audience. When the audience is really responsive, it's the greatest thing in the world. But if they're not, we could still play just as good a show.
8:15And in fact, you can't be too affected by it because the truth is all you can really see is the first few rows. so everything after that let's say the first three rows are sleeping but there's 10 000 people behind them so you can't like decide to suck that night because you know as a as a musician you've got to be able to just play no matter what the audience is doing it doesn't matter but for a comedian you need the response because the laps are the you know the arc that the yes it's it's part of the arc of the performance and we're not dependent on that so they have to ride that in a way that is i think terrifying you know you know like uh i've done some like with jeff and bob they both used to have me come play piano and we would banter yes you know and and uh it's incredibly satisfying to get the laughs um but terrifying it's because you don't you know may not you know and having done a comedy tour with jeff like where we were going to uso basis where it's like and we we were going to landstuhl and like the hospitals really where that where where the first places people were transported and these these particular hospitals dealt with a lot of ptsd uh and a lot of like really traumatic shit and it was a lot of the people the doctors and the patients who were dealing with severe trauma wow you know and it would be like colin cain would do a set as comedian sarah tiana would do a set as comedian and the whole thing's hosted by Stewie Stone.
9:49And then I come on. And then Jeff and Robert Klein. And so it's like, funny, funny, funny. Death March. Because I'm not a very good piano player. The only things I could play were the most maudlin, saddest, counting, gross song. Oh. But it had to kind of be funny, too. I don't know. It was really challenging and cool. Yeah. Yeah. Wow, that must have been such an incredible experience. and a modeling experience. Yeah. I've heard you say that the place that you're most comfortable is on stage in front of an audience or playing with a band. When did you first realize that and what was that realization like for you?
10:30It was more about being uncomfortable in the rest of my life, generally. You know, and then finding that there's this thing I could do that made a place for me in the world. You know, that like, I had real concerns when I was younger with how I was going to take care of myself. You know, I knew that I was dealing with some pretty severe mental illness, even if I didn't know what it was then. And I didn't know how I was going to make that transition to being an adult. You know, it's one thing when you got to go to class every day, however difficult it is. But when you have to just make a life for yourself and you have all this handicap going on, all this difficulty, you know i didn't know how that was gonna work and then i found this thing i do that makes it all possible um i mean i think it was that writing songs gave me a way to process life and it also was a way that other people were drawn to i don't think i was comfortable on stage right away or anything like that in fact i know i was very uncomfortable on stage right away at the beginning it took a long time but I think it's some I think that comment really came out of someone asking me if I ever had stage fright and I said no man I've yes I have rest of the day fright you know like like the stage is fine I don't think I actually said like I'm more comfortable on stage but it came from somebody asking me though do you ever get stage fright and I was like oh no no no stage is fine stage is great You know, it's like it's the rest of life that I have always struggled with.
12:06The stage is like I know what I'm supposed to do up there. I'm going to improvise and, you know, but I know there's like a map. I even have a set list that tells me what's coming next, you know, like. And I am free to explore and expand on everything in that list of things. Not that it's easy or anything, but it's comfortable. I know what to do there. it's not it's not like walking into a party full of people and I have no idea what to say to people but I do know what to do when I walk on stage you know and I'm not that I'm never nervous or anything but it's such a I'm so much more comfortable there than I am in the rest of life that there's like no comparison so stage fright is not much of a problem anymore I definitely had it at times at first you know yeah yeah i can see why it seems terrifying my first few gigs i lost the first three gigs i played in my first real band as an adult i completely lost my voice that day of the show i woke up with no voice no idea why it happened i had to chew i had to bring ginger root on stage cut it up and chew it and swallow it during the show because it was the only thing that got my voice back and it just happened for like three gigs right at the beginning in my career.
13:25That's a lot. And then it stopped. By the way, at the time, like three gigs is a lot. That's like it was out of nowhere, especially when they're your first gigs. Yes. You know, I'd played gigs as a kid in a band, like when I was 13. But now I'm like, in my mid 20s. And I've got a band and we're playing my songs. And I go to sing and not forget go to sing. I wake up that day with no voice. And I go through the whole day. I can't talk. I can't make it's the weirdest thing. It happened for three gigs and then it stopped. So I didn't feel like I was afraid, but that's some kind of weird psychosomatic reaction.
14:01Totally. Yeah. Was that something you talked to your parents about when you were growing up, about feeling uncomfortable in any of the mental illness you were experiencing? Were you open with your parents about that? Not early on. I just don't think I recognized it. I just thought that's what life was like. Yeah. it was weird and I was awkward and we moved around a lot yeah early on so I didn't know any it wasn't like everybody else in my class who knew everybody they'd known each other since kindergarten I had usually just gotten there um you know that was true in first grade third grade fourth grade fifth grade were all new cities you know and then uh seventh grade was a new school so you know it was a lot of experiences where I'd only known anybody for one or two years yeah um so I just chalked it up to being shy you know it wasn't until i started having some more sort of hallucinatory experiences in the latter parts of high school that i realized this isn't supposed to happen this is not that this is weird and scary and uh kind of psychedelic and not cool and then i went to some doctors and talked to my parents and you know but i was probably a junior in high school when that happened.
15:16Wow. Yeah, so it was started then with really, you know, the more disturbing parts of it. Now I can look back on it and see, okay, that was happening to me in first grade. I can see what it was, the weirdness and the difficulty and the being inside my own head. All the things that make up a dissociative disorder, I could see them now. Yeah. Right back in first grade, you know, but I didn't know that then. You know, you're not really thinking about that stuff. and just think you're not popular, you know? Yeah. Have you, are there any ways in which you apply the, like you were talking about being on stage, you have a set list.
15:55So you have sort of a map of what you're going to do. Have you applied that to other parts of your life outside of performing? Like as a way to live, as a way to sort of like write yourself? I make a lot of lists for things, but you know it's not you know but everybody makes grocery lists I don't know like are you someone who benefits from having like a schedule like is that feel no I don't like that I prefer to have open space and then make things in the schedule but yeah but you know what I do do like I've always cooked since I was a kid and like during the pandemic I really started cooking again a lot because we were here and one of the things I do do is I do a lot of research when I want to find something I want to cook I'll read a lot about it first and then I'll like you know make the recipe from several other recipes often and I'll read it over a lot you know before I'd make it too yeah yeah and I the same way when we were doing the podcast I would spend like a lot of research time researching all the stuff I want to talk about when we had the underwater sunshine podcast talking about the music because if we're going to do like a four part you know like a four hour five hour series on punk music yeah then i really need to have my notes and have it together which is how i started cooking again because when we couldn't do the podcast over the pandemic i needed something to do with all that time so i started cooking yeah so i do do things like that like i'm not as comfortable just winging it totally i mean i will wing it still but it's i put a lot of preparation into the winging it.
17:34You know, I'll make my own recipe, but I'll put a lot of preparation into that recipe before I do it. Does that have any sort of overlap with the way that you write songs? No, not really at all. That's very, that is winging. I mean, I do that a lot off the top of my head and it's very inspiration-based. I mean, it's a lot of craft that goes into it too, but you really get in a groove with feeling stuff and then finding ways to express in words and music those things you're feeling. Does it build over time with experience or is that, is it more, does the craft get to where it's at from studying?
18:14Well, you push yourself into the writing. You push yourself to find the ways to say things that aren't the obvious ways, the ways that are you. So you look for the details in the feeling you want to express. You know, like saying I really like her or I love her or I love you isn't particularly meaningful. I mean, a lot of people have said it. What does that, what does I love her tell you about me? Not much, you know, and not much about the situation and not much about the relationship or anything. But if you say, and all at once I look across a crowded room to see the way that light attaches to a girl.
18:57well now you've got this picture of someone in a room looking at someone and all those details that communicates a lot of feeling yeah and also paints a picture that's very vivid of light hitting someone across a hospital room you know and but you don't necessarily that line doesn't just pop up out of nowhere you know you have to think about you want to express this thing so you think about the room you're in or the room you were in and you think about the details and how can I conjure this feeling which is I liked her yeah but in a way that's not just I liked her because that doesn't really give anybody anything you know um and then the craft is like disciplining yourself to do that um yeah I read I read a book by Stephen Sondheim once and he he mentioned that he always keeps a rhyming dictionary with him and I was like why would you do that that's so hack you know and i consider him as good a songwriter that has ever lived you know and and he said well it's just a tool why wouldn't you have a tool that gave you a bunch of ideas because it just gives you a bunch of words that you might want to use and one of those words even the one that you don't use might cause an image to pop up in your head that you do want to use later on you know and so i just thought oh it's weird i'll get a rhyming dictionary and i keep them around now and they're really useful and sometimes i'll just make lists of words that rhyme and then And it'll inspire something else later in the song or right there.
20:22You know, there are a whole lot of different ways to apply craft. Sometimes you can feel like it should just be this feeling you get. And that inspiration and that emotion, that is really important. You want the writing to be like infused with feeling and inspiration. Yeah. But, you know, you can't always expect it to just happen off the top of your head. I've written whole songs off the top of my head, just jamming with the band, and I'm singing into a mic, and what's going on four-track around here was written almost entirely off the top of my head. I just got the tape later and looked at it, and it was all there.
20:56But you also, sometimes you sit down, and you work on it. This record, you know, I wrote the first half of the record on my friend's farm, and I went back there a year later and wrote the rest of it. and uh on the way home i stopped in london because my friends in the band gang of youths were making a record and i had already sung on it once but they had scrapped the record and they were re-recording it and i needed to go sing on it again so i stopped there and sang on a bunch of stuff and then when i got home a little while after i got home david leopepe the singer uh sent me the record finished and it was so good and in listening to it i thought you know i didn't hit this bar on the stuff i just wrote it those songs aren't good enough and this has never happened before in my entire career i've never second guessed a song like this when i'm done they're done if they're not good enough i usually throw them out you know it was clear to me that i had kind of misjudged i thought that virginia through the rain was perfect but it's such a good song song um but the rest of them like uh space man in Tulsa it was it had too many sections it went through too many permutations it I needed to I went back to the drawing board and I really took that song and tuned it up and tightened it up the song that became under the Aurora uh it it wasn't a very good course I kept all the verses in a slightly different order but I wrote an entire new chorus for it, which is now the song is called Under the Aurora.
22:33The other chorus wasn't good enough. Boxcars, it was too hard for me to play and I hadn't finished it. I had all the ideas in my head, but not the song. So I went back and reworked all that stuff and then sat on it because I think the act of realizing they weren't good enough really shook my confidence in them. And so they sat there for two years. It's why there was such a chunk of time between Sweet One and The Sweet Tooth because I just, I don't think I even sent them to the band. I didn't feel good about them. Even after I'd reworked them and I thought they were great, I had a lot of doubts and I was a little embarrassed.
23:08And finally I wrote With Love from A to Z, which was the one song I wrote here at home. And I loved that. And I looked at the other songs and I was like, I got to figure this out. And I called up Millard and Jim, our bass player and drummer and Emmer, our guitar player and I said, I need everybody to come to my house like in the next, for a week, just come in the next few weeks. We need to set some time. I got to demo these songs. I got to play them with you guys. Cause I can't tell. I felt like I'd written a bunch of stuff that was a stretch for me to write and also past my ability to play. I'm not a good enough player to play these songs well enough to judge them.
23:46And I needed the band here to play them, especially boxcars, which was so much a guitar song in my head the whole time and i really couldn't even finish it until i had the guys here and as soon as we started playing we were like oh i love this song okay yeah spaceman is great a to z is great box cars okay now it sounds great that riff is great you know aurora okay it's not just long it's gonna be great you know this is these are really cool we we got so excited we wanted to go in the studio right away we went in like three weeks later and in like 11 days we recorded the whole thing wow um and it went really quickly from that point on but uh so it got delayed by two years yeah is that a feeling for you if you're going through like a crisis of confidence before that when everything works out and you're with the band and you you crack the code you make everything work is that just like oh my god thank god it's it's not gone I haven't lost it.
24:46Were you that scared? It never happened to me before. Yeah. Well, I don't know if I lost it, but I just, I had certainly lost confidence. For most of my career, when I'm writing, I know it's good. And that's why, otherwise I don't even finish it. You know, I know when a song is right. And I don't really, I write most things in one sitting. You know, I don't really rework over months and months. This happened a little bit with the songs on Someone Under Wonderland because they were so different from anything I'd written before. But this was different. This was like, I had had to rework the songs.
25:19They needed work. And then they got great, but I didn't know it. And then when we started playing them, I was like, oh, this is great. Okay, thank God. Yeah, this is fucking. We were all so excited that we did it all in about four or five days. And then we were in the studio two or three weeks later, like recording it. So cool. Yeah, it went really fast. I mean, you know, part of them is that they're like, like boxcars. it had its genesis in a way during the pandemic because all of a sudden there were these two years where I couldn't play. And at one point this riff kind of got in my head that went coronavirus, coronavirus, coronavirus.
26:00It was like this metal riff that I was like that earworm that got in my head and I was running around the house singing it for like months at a time and driving my girlfriend crazy. And then when I worked, I mean, I never thought I'd make anything of it because it was a joke i thought the riff was awesome but the song coronavirus probably wasn't going to be you know yeah um and then when i was writing what became boxcars you know i had that chorus that mom and dad and a couple of kids you know and i had the verse music in this chorus and one day i was like oh man i wonder if that riff would work here you know and so that that this riff that i never expected to see the light of day under any circumstances because it was kind of a joke in my head became like one of the best guitar riffs I've ever written you know like right here leading off that song it's blistering um I'm always tempted to sing coronavirus over it but you should you know um so you said maybe this is a metal riff have songs ever come to you that are in just a completely different genre like an EDM song like a hip-hop like anything like has something ever come to you and you're like oh well kind of I mean in that like my abilities to play piano are pretty limited and so often the idea I have in my head has not sounds nothing like what it sounds like when I play it like mostly I try and get off the piano as soon as possible I want to teach it to the band and then get it away from what it started as you know like boxcar is a perfect example it didn't sound very good on piano but it was never supposed to be on piano like i often hear guitar but play piano so i'll hum it to the guys are all kind of there are songs that are meant to be piano songs the way i play them and and some of those songs i end up playing on the records like a long december or good night la colorblind i played uh mrs potter's lullaby but often it's really not like what i've got going on is not where i want the song to go you know like mr jones is a guitar song but i wrote that on piano but it was never supposed to be on piano you know like when you wrote that did it sound different so if you're playing that on if you're playing mr jones for example on piano how how did that sound when you were singing it to the band is it the same melody i don't know the melody was probably the same yeah i mean for the most part the melodies are often the same it's just that the the feel of the song i'll often have to describe to them like you know hanging around was a piano song it's always supposed to be done to a drum loop you know what i mean and yeah that that drum loop was always going to be really important have you always been a romantic person like even when you were younger before you started writing music i don't know uh what's like a room i mean you seem very romantic i mean just the line that you just said about seeing a woman across the room and the light hitting her like that's very romantic yeah yeah i mean that line is supposed to be i mean that's that's sort of that's the point of that line do you feel like as a little kid like you had feelings like that like were you well you know when you're dissociative you spend a lot of time pretty far back in your own head and that can be pretty isolating and i think connection is something that you really lack and that you really want, but it seems like such a long way from you to other people.
29:26And so I think that there's a yearning that goes with that for connection and closeness. That's a big part of my writing and a big part of me, probably. I don't know if I would describe that as romantic. I mean, although that, you know, romance is certainly a part of, you know, making connections. But it was, I think music has always been about reaching out for me to other stuff. And the connection has been really important. Music provided me with a way of connecting with people that I didn't necessarily have otherwise. We'll be back with more from Adam Duritz after the break. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal.
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30:57And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite-to-mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid. That's your business, Supercharged. Learn more at supermobile.com. Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S. where you can see the sky. Best network based on analysis by Ookla of Speedtest Intelligence Data 1H 2025. The greatest music stories aren't always in the songs themselves. They're in the late night studio sessions, the chance encounters, and the cultural moments that shaped entire movements. For music lovers who find themselves going down rabbit holes about their favorite artists, Claude, an AI thinking partner, helps you explore those deeper questions.
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32:27Try Claude for free at claude.ai slash brokenrecord and see why the world's best problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner. This episode of Broken Record is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve. Everybody loves to travel, right? We can getaways, a once-in-a-lifetime vacation, all of it. And no matter where you're going, Chase Sapphire Reserve is your gateway to the world's most captivating destinations. Travel is its own reward, you know. You're out there having experiences you can't have any other way, and with your Chase Sapphire Reserve card, you're also being rewarded. You earn eight times points on all purchases through Chase Travel.
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33:39Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Subject to credit approval. Terms apply. Do you ever think about what your career would be like had The Counting Crows not blown up with the first two albums, especially the first album? like out the gate, like you guys were huge. If that would have happened on like in the middle of your career, do you ever think about how things might have been different? Well, it seemed like that's what was happening. Like, I mean, we were out for a while as like, we were like a college radio band for a while there. Even when we played on Saturday Night Live and Mr.
34:16Jones was kind of a radio hit already, the record wasn't even in the top 200. I mean, we weren't really blowing up at all. And that was kind of what we thought. I mean, nobody really thought we were like this instant hit band like Nirvana was right then, you know, who were our label mates. You know, we had a three-record deal. The talk was, you know, you hoped you maybe sell 100 ,000 records on that first record. And, you know, you got a chance to build a career. The model was probably like R.E.M., who spent five records on an indie label. You know, that's kind of what we thought was going to happen.
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34:50Yeah. Or what we, not what we thought. That's kind of what we hoped was going to happen. but we played round here on saturday night live and our career blew up it was really that i mean the record jumped 40 spots a week for five weeks and landed us at number two for the next couple years but it hadn't been before that we'd been out it had been out for three or four months we were touring we were having things were going pretty well i mean mr jones was doing okay on the radio mtv played a little bit on 120 minutes uh it all seemed pretty good and then it just went through the stratosphere you know yeah but i mean it would have been cool in some ways because the backlash was pretty severe after after the first album you know yeah satellites at the time was pretty disregarded i mean i think people really love it now and it's a really respected record and December has become like a Christmas standard almost for people.
35:49But at the time, I was so excited about that record. I thought it was incredible. It was a real departure from August and we were really growing as a band, you know, but it was completely dismissed at the time. I mean, we got some good reviews, but there was also a lot of people who were just really, really sick of us you know do you follow that same arc with other artists that come out and and blow up like someone like drake like the backlash is inevitable if you get so big well yeah but it took a long time to happen with drake i mean there were people who didn't like drake at the beginning too it's very um but i you know it's it was more like what happened to you know like alantis where it was just yeah you get one album and you're done you know like after that nobody's interested because they're so tired of you i think that happens a lot to bands that are too big on their first album i really tried to shut down that record after round here i told them i would no longer make any videos we were done no more singles no more videos uh and then it the rest of the songs went up and down the charts anyways without us doing that i what happened was they dgc i had refused to do any more singles and any more videos.
37:05And then I forgot that I had given DGC this demo track for their Rarities record, like a year and a half before that I had given them Einstein on the Beach. And because we never planned on recording Einstein for August and everything after. I thought it was a clever song, but not a great song. I had no interest in putting it on our record. And I completely forgot about it. DGC had asked me early on, do you have anything we can put on this Rarities record i was like yeah take this thing i'm not using it and then when i told them no singles because the next single would have been rain king which is what we always thought was the big single off the record mr jones was like a humble uh introductory track that was catchy and round here was a real statement of purpose that was going to define the band and then we thought rain king will be the hit which because he used to do that back in you put out introductory tracks you know and and i refused to put out rain king after around here was so big and the record was so big i was like no no no more we need to put this down so we can have a career and then smart and then they released the rarities album and put einstein on the beach to radio so i was worried that rain king was too pop and what ended up coming out was way more pop than rain king it was this demo einstein on the beach which was and that went straight to number one like like and then after that every song on the record went up the radio charts on their own for a while one at a time it seemed like almost every song on the record was getting played on the radio over the next two or three years so there was no controlling it after that it just was i might as well just put out ranking because it would have been probably better for us and now But after a while, you can't blame people.
38:52Radio stations will play it to death because they get their advertising dollars from playing popular things. So if you're too popular, it's not a surprise that people are sick of you at a certain point. Because it's like they have no choice. When it was radio and not Spotify, you had no choice what you heard. Yeah. Did you have a mentor at that point, someone in the music industry, who you could talk strategy with? Or you could just sort of try and figure out the best way to approach all of this? We had really good managers. It's hard to find anyone who doesn't want to chase success, though. Like, it's hard to tell someone, no, we're not putting out any more singles because our album's doing too well and have anyone think you're anything but out of your fucking mind.
39:33Yeah. You know what I mean? I mean, because they want to hit while the iron is hot. They want to make the money right now, and they are not as concerned. Our managers were. But your record company is not concerned with your career. They're concerned with selling records. Yeah. And, you know, so it was really hard to tell people, no, I don't want to do anymore. I didn't get a lot of positive responses from that right um but I I was sure it was the right thing to do and I was right you know because we got backlash um but you know what happens it's hard to complain too much about having success right it's hard enough to have that you know I mean I was very very happy with our career anyways and I just was so excited about the next record and making satellites.
40:15And it was kind of a rude awakening to have it come out and get such a, you know, the backlash that hit it. We hadn't had much, we'd barely had any bad reviews before that. Does it make you salty when people change their mind about albums collectively? Like if when something first comes out, people are kind of like, ah, these guys are overexposed. But then 10 or 15 years later, it's like, ooh, I love this album. Does that piss you off? I mean, how do you, like, does that show off? Like, I'm glad at all the sort of re-examination of, you know, recovering satellites, because I always thought it was a great record.
40:51It is annoying that it was, it wasn't just satellites. People were so sick of us that for 10 years at that point, we didn't get, people were more reviewing who I dated, or who they thought I dated, than they were reviewing our concerts. Yeah. I mean, that lasted from, like, 96 when we were recorded, when we released Satellites, all the way up through the first really good reviews we ever got again were 10 years later when we were released Saturday nights and Sunday mornings. You know, it was all through Satellites, This Desert Life, and Hard Candy, like, was hard to buy a good review. I love Hard Candy.
41:29And it was hard to buy a good concert review even. And there was just a lot of smack talk, a lot of really disses in random notes, in jokes about us in Rolling Stone and random notes. And concert reviews about girls they thought I dated, some of whom I've never met in my life. And there was a lot of that for like 10 years. It was a bummer because I thought we did great work. Like I think that Recovering the Satellites and This Desert Life and Hard Candy are great records. And now people go back to them and talk about all these songs they love. But in that 10-year period from, like, 96 to 2007, there were, like, no good reviews.
42:11How did things ultimately turn around? I don't know. But it turned around during Saturday nights and Sunday mornings. It turned around. Like, I remember, one thing I remember is that Rolling Stone came. It reminded me because Brian Hyatt's going to actually interview me for this record for Rolling Stone. and he wrote a piece about us i think during saturday nights and sunday mornings and it was the first piece anyone had written on us in rolling stone since august and everything after there had been like a few live reviews and we had gotten mentioned in random notes but there had never been an article in 10 years i don't think and so i remember i just remember that it happened at that point i was like whoa yeah i think the internet had changed a lot and And there was a lot of bands that had come up that were hugely influenced by us and talked about it quite vocally.
43:07A lot of punk bands and a lot of emo bands were really influenced by Counting Crows, you know, like Dashboard Confessional. Chris Carraba was very vocal in talking about how much he loved our band and how influenced he was. He covered Angel of the Silences. The guys in Panic! at Disco would cover Around Here. And, you know, they talked about it. There was a lot of indie bands who came up talking about Counting Crows. There was a tribute album made that was all punk bands. Wow. Bands like Between the Buried and Me. And by the internet, it had really expanded by that time. So there was also a lot of publications on the internet like Absolute Punk.
43:46And I just remember reading a lot about us in those magazines as the bands, a whole generation of bands came up that loved our band. Yeah. And were very vocal talking about it. And it kind of came from the bottom up. It wasn't like Entertainment Weekly or Rolling Stone. It was Absolute Punk. From musicians. Yeah. But also a lot of internet, indie rock. There were zines that were online. Got it. That came up. And they talked about us a lot. The first really good reviews I started reading happened online and in indie magazines. Sounds like it was just sort of like a changing of the guard, like a new generation of people coming in.
44:28Yeah. Discovering music. But also I think it was that there had been, that the music media industry, the media for music industry was very gatekept in the years before that. You had radio and you had, you know, Spin, Rolling Stone, whatever, a few magazines and Entertainment Weekly and people that wrote about music. But then all of a sudden you had thousands of, you know, and like now you have podcasts, you know before suddenly there was all these people that weren't like they didn't they didn't come up with that attitude they were just music fans who started their own magazines or their own podcasts or their own you know fanzines online and suddenly they they thought about things very differently they just i just think there had been a real old guard kind of media industry that was suddenly expanded into you know yeah like you guys you know like podcasts didn't exist back then so you have all these people who have their opinions.
45:24They don't come from... Like five people. They didn't come right from, you know, like a journalist who worked at one of four magazines who wrote music reviews. There used to be, you know, Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Spin, Entertainment Weekly, People, and a couple others. You know what I mean? That was it. And now there is a whole mega media industry that comes from everywhere else. You know, it's everybody, every man and every woman has their own soapbox now. Yeah, and their own outlet. So that gatekeeper is not there anymore. Yeah, that's awesome. I thought it was really awesome. I heard, I don't know where it was, but I heard that you were a women's study major in college.
46:07Yeah, I was. How did that come to you? For the first few years. I was an accident. You know, I, I. Was that like the easy, the easy major to get into? No, it was really hard. It was the opposite. It was by far the hardest series of courses I've ever taken in my life. Where'd you go to college? The first couple years at Davis and then at Berkeley. Oh, sweet. I went to Berkeley too. So it was, I was brought up in very much like a women's lib household. My mother was an early member of NOW in the early 70s. you know like we went to now meetings you know and now celebrations in houston when we lived in houston during that week when billy jean king was playing bobby riggs and uh we had that first issue of ms magazine that came out of was it in life magazine the pull out with gloria stein you know i was brought up in that very much and i but i had a lot of butting heads with my mom as a kid and uh she had left to go to uh medical school when i was like 15 so she was away a lot of that time and uh when i was applying to college or i just got into college i remember having a big argument with her one day about something she called me a chauvinist about it and i was like fuck you i'm not a chauvinist and uh i went upstairs and i was filling out my course things and I think I picked as my sixth choice, Social History of American Women in the Family.
47:36I wasn't going to get it, and I was like, see, I'm not a chauvinist. I'm taking women's studies courses. So fuck you, you know? And then I went up for orientation week, and I spent the entire time getting stoned and drunk and didn't get into some of my other classes and never bothered to try and switch the courses. So I ended up in Social History of American Women in the Family, which I had never intended to take. I will say this on my part. I don't think I was ever a chauvinist but I was totally full of shit proving it to my mom by that course. But I ended up in the course and it was incredible.
48:10It was like 200 women and four guys in the class. And I had probably more of a background in that stuff than any of the other guys because I literally had grown up in the movement. But I didn't know all the stuff. I hadn't read the literature. You know, you read The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. And, you know, I was... I mean, it's a whole half of our society that is, you know, fucked. Especially, I mean, it was different, somewhat better then, but, you know, it's still Reagan time, so the promise of the ERA in the early 70s hadn't really come about.
48:55in the early 80s when I was in college. It was just so good. It was really hard. We had to read an enormous amount. We had to write an enormous amount. And I basically, I mean, it was bullshit me taking it in the first place, but I took every single course offered. I only stopped being a women's studies major because I realized I was writing songs and I became an English major. I was getting straight A's in my English classes and I realized it was just too easy. I took that, that my freshman year fall term, I took a women's studies class. I took a women in poetry class. I read Carolyn Forche's poetry, which is hugely, and I got the first REM record and those things.
49:38And I wrote my first song. I love all those things together because they, they very much informed. My sister was 16 and at home, my mom was off at medical school. 16 is a hard time to be a girl and she was struggling with it, especially with your mother out of town um and uh my first song was written about like you know the difficulty she was having oh it was very informed is very informed by like everything i was reading and thinking about and you know i was just but once i started writing songs i started writing every day it's all i did was write songs and i realized that i couldn't do that really at davis I mean, I can write, but I couldn't start a band.
50:21The bands that were all cover bands, they played at frat parties. It wasn't anything I really wanted to do. I needed to go to Berkeley. And I also needed to go there for the English, to become an English major, to learn to really write, I thought. Did you graduate? I did not turn in my thesis. I'm missing one paper. Oh, man, come on. I was writing my thesis on HD, Hilda Doolittle, the poet who was expatriate living in London during the Blitz. She had the poem called The Walls Do Not Fall, and it was an epic poem. I was writing my thesis on that. And it just wasn't very good at all. I knew it wasn't very good.
51:00The more I wrote songs, the harder it was for me to write essays. It's a very different style of writing. Like one comes from this wealth of feeling, and then you try and find ways to hone it down into a craft. And the other one comes from a bunch of thought processes and an idea. and then you support the arguments in an essay and they're kind of backwards versions of each other and the more i became really like i spent all day writing songs for two or three years there the harder it was to write essays i just couldn't think that way very well anymore and uh like to this day i don't write songs with ideas like i don't have an idea for a song and then write it really i mean not like a theme i might have a line starts with a line usually yeah but i don't have like an idea like whenever i try and do that write thematically it's terrible ever since i started writing songs i can't write that way and i was really struggling with it at that point i had this i was all done except for you know as an english major at burglary you needed to write a thesis and it just wasn't very good and so i went to my professor and i said look i i need an extension on this i'm gonna have to take an incomplete because it's i just this i'm not turning this in it's not very good you know it's probably i probably would have passed i'm sure it Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
52:18It probably was fine. It was a weird way to sum up your college experience by getting a C, you know, or something like that. And so she said, look, just, you know, you need to just try and do it right away. Because people, if they get it done in the first semester after, they tend to get it done. If they don't, they tend to not get it done. So I understand, just get it done. And I never did. Were your parents upset with you? No. I mean, I don't know. I mean, not now. I mean, look, I wanted to learn to be a writer, and I did. I mean, I owe it all to Berkeley and Davis, but they were great. I mean, they taught me to be a writer, and I am, and many of my theses I've written since then have sold briskly.
53:03Yes. I mean, I feel like I got everything out of them in a really good way, and I really, it's come up before about honorary degrees from them and stuff. I was going to say they owe you an honorary degree. But I don't really want it. It came up and I sort of said no because I feel like it's not respectful. I don't know. I really respect my time there. Yeah. But I didn't graduate. I didn't turn in my thesis. And so I don't really think I should get a degree. I wonder if you can still turn it in. I don't know. But I'm not going to. i mean i i really i really it worked i really i respect college and i got everything out of college like same most english makers don't you know i mean like i don't know how it works out for them but not like it worked out for me like it's been i have the utmost respect for for everything i got out of berkeley and i have me too but i you know and i feel fine without the degree it worked out great you know like i'm the very rare english major who actually is a professional writer, you know, and very successful.
54:06Yeah. It's been, you know, I got it all from then. After one last break, we'll be back with the rest of Leah Rose and Adam Duritz. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at an Oocla speed test, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage. With Supermobile, your performance, security, and coverage are supercharged.
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55:32The greatest music stories aren't always in the songs themselves. They're in the late night studio sessions, the chance encounters, and the cultural moments that shaped entire movements. For music lovers who find themselves going down rabbit holes about their favorite artists, Claude, an AI thinking partner, helps you explore those deeper questions. Whether you're wondering about the connections between different scenes, trying to understand what drove a particular creative period, or exploring how social movements influenced sound, Claude works through these complex cultural puzzles with you.
56:03It's built for people who know that understanding music means understanding the human stories behind it. CLAW doesn't just compile facts. It helps you see patterns across decades of music history, ask the kinds of follow-up questions that reveal deeper truths, and works through the nuanced relationships between artists, movements, and moments. Whether you're a music journalist, industry professional, or someone who just lives for understanding the stories behind the sounds, CLAW matches your level of curiosity about what really drives great art. Try CLAW for free at clod.ai slash brokenrecord and see why the world's best problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner.
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57:14You go hiking on a volcano and you go out to dinner. With the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, you're actually earning points for going on a grand adventure anywhere you go, any trip you take. And that's not even mentioning how the card gets you into the Sapphire Lounge by the club at select airports nationwide and access to one of a kind experiences like music festivals and sports events. Whether you're booking your next big trip or we can escape, Chase Sapphire Reserve makes travel more rewarding. Discover more with Chase Sapphire Reserve at chase.com slash sapphire reserve. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC.
57:50Subject to credit approval. Terms apply. Are you a short story reader? Not anymore, really. I used to a long time ago. What do you read now? Oh, I read a lot of crap now. I used to read a lot of history and a lot of fiction. And I mostly just read sci-fi and stuff now because I mostly use my reading on the treadmill. Oh, wow. I work out. I read on the treadmill and I work out. Like, do you run or walk and read? Both. And read a book? Yeah. That's hard. I use my Kindle. I mostly just read sci-fi when I'm reading books now. I don't really. That was another problem I had. I started to have more problems in the latter part of my 40s.
58:35I had a lot of trouble reading. Some of the dissociative stuff fucked with my ability to focus that way. And so I didn't read anything at all for a number of years, really. And then I got back into it on the treadmill. And now I read a ton, none of which is, you know. Literature. Great literature, but I read all the time now, constantly. and then I get on the treadmill and I come off again and read more and get on the treadmill and read and yeah nice it seems like it'd be hard to run and read but yeah I think it is but I it works for me somehow you know a few years ago when Bob when Saget died yeah my girlfriend came to me and said that was really scary I wish you would be a little healthier um you get older and I wish you I would just feel better.
59:25Yeah. And I was like, you know, and after years of not taking that shit seriously, I started getting on the treadmill every day. And for like three or four years now, I've been every day and going to the gym. But the book, the reading really helped it. Like I found that it really worked for me. But I can't think too much about what I'm reading. I just want to plot. Yeah. Well, whatever works, I mean, whatever gets you on the treadmill and keeps you on there is a good thing. I mean, I read books about music sometimes. I read Joe Boyd's book, White Bicycles. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's a fantastic book.
1:00:02Oh, I haven't heard of that. He was the producer who produced Fairport Convention and Nick Drake. A lot of different stuff. Richard and Linda Thompson. And a lot of different... And he wrote this great book about life in the music, kind of in the English folk scene, even though he's American. Oh, nice. He's actually the sound guy. Did you see A Complete Unknown? I did not. Okay, well, he's the sound guy at Newport who refuses to turn down. That was actually Joe Boyd. They don't identify him in the film, but they do in the credits, and it's him. Oh, very cool. Yeah, I'm waiting for it to come on streaming so I don't have to pay for it.
1:00:41It's so good. Is it? I hate, hate, hate movies about music. I hate, they're always such bullshit. And they're always like, about oh he he's this one he's terrible with people and let's show you know it's so good i really i was prepared to hate it yeah and it's just so fucking good wow i it is so great i i don't i can't believe it is i still can't believe it's that good a movie and it is i've seen it twice now wow two movies i've seen recently that blew my mind were that and becoming led Zeppelin, the documentary. Oh, I haven't seen that either. It's actually playing at a theater near me. I want to go see it in a theater.
1:01:21You should go. It's so good. And they're both good for the same reason. They both play full songs. Oh, that's right. The movie does too. The movie actually plays songs, like real performances that are great. But is it Chalamet singing? Yeah. Fucking bizarre that it's any good. Him and a girl Monica Barbera who plays Joan Baez. They're both so good and they're so good together ed norton as pete seeger is it's you've never seen ed norton in a role like this and he's fucking great the guy that plays woody guthrie scoop mcnary who does the almost he's a mute at that point in his life for the most part because he's been so sick and so it's mostly with his eyes he's he's it's just such a good movie you you you gotta see it i'm those two movies for music fans are like wow like what a lush treat both those movies are they're so they give so much wow they don't think of you as having no attention span yeah which is i think a lot of movies about music think you have the attention span of a four-year-old yeah you know and these ones do not treat you like that and they're really good and i tell you i fucking hate movies about music do you like docs though music docs some oh yeah some docs more yeah very few but so many docs are just like so they're they're bench a lot of people who make documentaries their benchmark for how to make a great documentary is behind the music yeah that's a good call it should not be that should not be but this like that deplin movie it's fucking great its benchmark is closer to Get Back.
1:03:09Get Back was incredible. Yeah. And so is this. You're going to blow your mind when you see it. Like there are at least four, maybe five full song performances in that movie. That's awesome. Like full songs. Aren't they incredible? They're so good. Did you come away with like any new takes on Zeppelin after seeing it? Yeah. I mean, there's a lot. I mean, I'm a fan, but. I mean, I hadn't watched, you know, the song remains the same is not the greatest concert movie. And I had seen that and been like, you know, but I have a lot of Zeppelin bootlegs, so I know how good they were, but I had never seen this footage like this where like, holy shit, the first song, my girlfriend's not a huge Zeppelin fan or anything.
1:03:55She went to the movie with us and they got through playing the first song, which was, I don't know if it was Heartbreaker or A Whole Lotta Love, whatever the first thing in the documentary is on some Dutch TV show or something. I don't know what it was. But it was over and she turned to me and she's like, holy shit, they're great. What a fucking band. And I was like, I know, unbelievable. One of the songs is Dazed and Confused. 10 minutes long. They play the whole fucking thing. Wow. And the footage, they get all this great childhood footage. They got great, like, they don't have footage with John Bonham, but they have a great interview with him.
1:04:27It's a really long interview. And they play it throughout the movie over stuff. and there's scenes of the other guys in the band sitting watching footage with the director while he plays the Bonham interview and they're they're really moved by seeing him and it's just fucking it's only about the first the time from when they're kids leading up to the second record but it is sublime for a music fan it's like the real deal yeah I love that when you see a doc and it sort of gives you a whole new perspective on a band that's that legendary. That's why I love Get Back because it was like I saw the Beatles in a whole different way.
1:05:06I understood them in a way that I, you know, they're such an institution. It's hard to have new feelings or revelations about the Beatles. You've heard every song so many times that you know every last inflection. And so it doesn't give much to you because listening to a Beatles song is often more like remembering than hearing yes you know because you already have a memory of every inflection in the song so to see them yes sitting around in a room to see how close they all are and how they fight but how good friends they are how loving paul and john are with each other yeah but how loving john is with yoko and how loving paul is with yoko that like all these legends of all the butting heads and everything all the bitterness you realize that some of that is just like a bad day yeah and to see george's yearning like i want to contribute more than i'm allowed to my voice isn't valued like you see all of this and ringo just kind of like hanging back and but how good he is how every time they start with a bizarre song idea ringo has the perfect fucking beat he's just there i don't know you know if you're a musician or not but like one of the hardest things about being in a band is if you have a drummer it is so hard to work on new material if you don't have a drummer who is good at that that particular skill of keeping the beat but not getting in the way as a drummer and therefore stalling new material because you don't know what to play yet and everything you're doing is fucking it up Ringo is there every time with something original and cool and like they're writing and he's supporting and the songs take off because he's so good and he's so easy to write him off attention I know and but when he comes in it's like like get back itself who would have think to go you would think to get back but he's like who thinks to do like a fucking marching beat like that but he does and it's so good it's the zeppelin movies like that because you really get to see them play and they're really good yeah they're so good robert plant is just like incredible i mean all of them are incredible ball it's blistering stuff like it's crazy good oh that's awesome are you um speaking of a fellow english major are you a big paul simon fan oh yeah like i mean to me what's your favorite album hearts and bones it's it's to me it's the one of the best written albums i've ever heard in my life i mean there's graceland's great all those albums are great hearts and bones i don't really love the first song it's called allergies and it's al d neola playing guitar on it but everything after that is the best the songwriting on that record is yeah you should listen to it man hearts and bones is and he's made a lot of great records and written a lot of great songs i go back to that record all the time because the depth of the writing on it it's just peerless to me yeah I hear that documentary about him is so good.
1:08:07Everyone's told me that it's really, really good. Oh, I haven't heard about that. It just came out like a year ago or two years ago. I hear it's amazing. Why'd you ask? Just because Paul Simon is a, I know, maybe Simon and Garfunkel were both English majors. And also you mentioned Graceland. And I love Graceland. And I also feel like Graceland is very much like a Berklee album. Like, I don't know, it has a Berklee vibe to me. I get that. I love that record. I think, but I, he's got so many, that first record, the Paul Simon record that has Mother and Child Reunion on it. Oh, that song is incredible.
1:08:41That's an incredible record. Yeah. I mean. Yeah. He's, he's, yeah. So gifted. He's, he's, he's a peerless songwriter to me. Like as good as it comes. Yeah. But that record, Hearts and Bones is very underappreciated to me. I think because the first song is not a great song, but everything else is, I mean, I, I studied that a lot. like yeah that in graceland i really studied a lot there was a great box set when they put graceland out that had this like a spiral binder in it that had a bunch of stuff about songwriting he also talked about like rhyming and how he would work and he would make lists of words that rhyme to give him ideas for later in the song too i remember really thinking about that as i read i think that came out as well as the sondheim book when i was working on the songs for somewhere under wonderland and i was trying to write in a whole new way for myself yeah less just autobiographical plots more about how i feel but with with other characters as opposed to trying to make everything about my life yes i could i realized i could write how i felt without making it a plot line from my life you know and so i wrote songs like palisades park and you know and i really studied that graceland lyric book and all the stuff all the scribbling he does in the margins with all the different rhymes and really thinking about how to like, how to brainstorm ideas for writing.
1:10:05I don't know. That's a great record. I say hearts and bones because I, it's not as innovative as Graceland by any stretch of the imagination, but the pure songwriting on it is just maybe the strongest group of songs anyone's. I just, I just think it's incredible. Awesome. Yeah. Has it been satisfying seeing so many people connect with your music and hearing you know over the past three decades people come up to you and tell you how much they've connected to your songs and what they mean to them i think it's more me connecting with them for me that does happen what you're talking about and but i always feel really awkward yeah i think it's more about like the feeling of me connecting with everybody like when i'm writing when i'm on stage me connecting with the band like it's more about yes me connecting with them than them connecting with me for me it works both ways though you know like uh the fact that i can talk about myself and that does connect me to other people is really cool that it's something that is so personal to me can become personal to everybody yeah but that's like but i'm still working from the it's personal to me perspective because inevitably other people's connections to me are they're their connections you know i mean they're in their heads and they're connecting with a picture of me not actually with me but it allows me to actually connect with people in a way that feels important and but the the wall of connection coming back is often uh more disturbing than anything else kind of yeah you know because it's overwhelming and it's also uh it's a lot of it takes place with a character inside their heads that's a version of me that isn't actually me they have deep deep connections to a version of me but it's not actually me and I don't know them at all so they I don't have any connection to them you know what I mean like I have not thought about I don't know them at all so like but they have this very real deep connection to me that means the world to them yeah and it and it and it has provided solace and joy and a million other feelings throughout their life.
1:12:18I've been present for all these parts of their life for them. But I wasn't actually there at all. So for me, it's like, I don't know what you're talking about. I wasn't there for that. I was over here. Have you had that experience with anyone who you really admire, any musicians who you feel extremely close to and then you've met them and it's just sort of strange? I have a lot of trouble talking to my idols. I have trouble forming sentences with certain certain of my idols who are the nicest people in the world but I can't always think of anything to say yeah there are people who have been great to me my entire career who I've known for decades and they have been nothing but nice to me and I cannot form sentences around them and we're not friends because of that you know like it's a it's a weird thing yeah I mean because I'm probably a lot more hesitant and careful about that I don't come up with the expectation of knowing them because I don't and I'm ultra hyper aware of that because I've been on both sides of it so like I don't uh you know I don't show up to Bruce Springsteen's house expecting to be Bruce's best friend even though Bruce is the nicest guy on earth you know he's the nicest kindest guy one of the nicest people I've ever met in my life and I have a deep connection to that stuff but it's not real you know I mean I can't show up to his house.
1:13:36Yeah. Shame. You probably could, but you won't. We'll try. I'll try at some point. Yeah. Thank you, Adam, so much. And have fun on tour. We will. Thanks so much. You can hear the latest Counting Crows album, Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets, as well as our favorite Counting Crows songs on the playlist linked in the episode description. And again, to see the video version of this episode, visit youtube.com slash broken record podcast. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at the broken record pod. You can follow us on Twitter at broken record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan.
1:14:18Our engineer is Ben Toledo. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad-free listening for$4.99 a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richmond.
1:14:52The more you learn about your favorite artists, the more you want to know. Claude helps you keep digging, finding new threads and rabbit holes to explore. Whether it's discovering deeper meaning behind a detail in an interview or figuring out the influence behind an artist's particular era. Claude thinks with you to find the next clue. If you can't get enough of the stories behind your favorite music and artists, Claude will help you discover new layers you didn't know existed. Try Claude for free at claude.ai slash brokenrecord. This episode of Broken Record is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve.
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From the publisher
Adam Duritz is no stranger to the spotlight. Counting Crows’ 1993 debut album, August And Everything After, sold over seven million copies in the U.S. Singles released from the album including “Mr. Jones” and “Round Here” dominated radio and MTV at the time. But all the exposure wasn’t great for the band, and according to Duritz, it led critics to focus more on Durtitz’s star-studded dating life, than the band’s music.
Regardless, Counting Crows have continued to release music over the last three decades and this month they are putting out their latest album, Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets!
Today we’ll hear Adam Duritz talk in-depth about his life-long struggle with mental health and how his dissociative disorder has impacted his ability to connect with people off-stage. You can pre-save The Counting Crows new album here. And check out their new video for “Under The Aurora” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMzFO8CAmK0&feature=youtu.be
You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Counting Crows songs here.
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