This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER

7th June 2008

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When Counting Crows first toured South Africa in August 1999, they played to a packed house at the Sun City Superbowl. The Springboks had just lost to the All Blacks and frontman Adam Duritz commiserated with the crowd, but when a few patriotic fans started waving South African flags, Adam’s response was curt: “Hey man, this is rock’n’roll, put those f***ing flags away!”

Since then, I’ve been wanting to ask the Crows about the link between music and politics – especially at a time when, from global warming to third world debt, it’s pretty sexy for rock stars to wear their political colours on their sleeves. After all, the band has demonstrated an ongoing social commitment through its Greybird Foundation, which raises money for needy causes, and they are actively encouraging Americans to vote in the upcoming presidential elections. But there’s little overtly ‘political’ content in their music.

When I chat to Dan Vickrey, the Crows’ lead guitarist, he plays down the politics: “In America, it’s generally the Republican party that complains about the ‘Hollywood elite’. My feeling is that musicians are citizens as well, they have a right to speak and act like other people, but it’s just that they have a bigger platform. And musicians such as Bono are doing a lot of great things, so I don’t have a problem with it.”

The tension between the public citizen and the private citizen – a dilemma faced by all celebrities – is, of course, a preoccupation many people associate with the Crows, primarily because of Duritz’s lyrics. Their breakthrough hit, “Mr Jones”, looks forward to fame and fortune, but since the band first made it big, that song has been performed with lyrics adjusted to reflect the disillusionment and loneliness that comes “when everybody loves you”. From “Have You Seen Me Lately?” on their second album, Recovering the Satellites, to “Mrs Potter’s Lullaby” on This Desert Life and various tracks since then, many of the Crows’ hits have, ironically, renounced their popularity.

As Vickrey reminds me, however, “Adam gets most of that. I think it’s something he’s felt more acutely than the rest of us ... we get the best of both worlds, playing music that we love and then walking away from it to live a somewhat normal life ... but Adam doesn’t have that benefit.” 

I’m interested in the band dynamic, given that Duritz is both the ‘face’ and the ‘voice’ of the Counting Crows. A glance at any of the Crows’ albums reveals that, while Duritz writes the poetry, most of their musical output is attributed to a collective creative process (apart from Vickrey, David Bryson, Charlie Gillingham and other band members are frequently co-composers). Vickrey explains: “Sometimes Adam will have everything for the song. Sometimes he’ll need a bridge, and other times I have a riff that I play him, and then Adam’s very good at just listening and singing over the guitar melody. You just try to get the songs out any way you can, I guess!” 

Despite this organic process, their new album, Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings – released in South Africa in March – is carefully structured. The first half is heavier, while the second half has a gentler, even ‘country’ tone. “Yeah,” says Vickery, “We were thinking of it more like an old LP than a CD. One side’s a little harder, the second side is – well, not necessarily acoustic, but the songs are a little quieter, with some interesting sounds. And Adam was thinking about lyrics thematically as well.” Indeed, Duritz has suggested that “Saturday night is when you sin and Sunday is when you regret. Sinning is often done very loudly, angrily, bitterly, violently.”

These two faces of the Counting Crows – hard rock and melancholic, whimsical, intimate melodies – have been a feature of the band’s music from the outset, making it difficult to trace a clear musical ‘progression’. Certainly, there is the personal narrative sketched out in Duritz’s lyrics, which (whether accurately or not) seem to represent a band narrative: the ubiquitous but obscure Maria, whose name surfaces in so many of the songs; the circus imagery; and continuously shifting signifiers like Michelangelo or rain. But is there a purely musical narrative?

Vickrey agrees that “The ‘through-line’ is Adam’s lyrics and the character that he’s writing. But each record had a different purpose, defining a time for the band. August and Everything After was very quiet. The second album was a conscious effort to make something a little more alive. Then in This Desert Life, we wanted to make it more indy. It was a little more fun, a little quirkier, as we were exploring the studio. Hard Candy was partly about writing pop songs.”

The Crows are best known, however, as a live act. The current tour has a taxing schedule running into October, but the band is happy to be back in South Africa: “In 1999 and 2004 we had a blast. The audiences were very enthusiastic, and Cape Town and Jo’burg were among the biggest capacity shows that we’ve ever played. So we’ve looked forward to returning.”