Rich and Chris Robinson have been sailing under the same flag again since the end of 2019: The Black Crowes. What was unimaginable just a year ago is now back to everyday life. On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of their debut album "Shake Your Money Maker", the brothers have put aside their years of animosity and opened a new chapter in the band's history. In the interview, which was written before the Corona crisis, Rich sounds as euphoric as one has seldom heard the band's guitarist and main songwriter in recent years
Along with the Oasis brothers, Chris and Rich Robinson are among the most famous musical blood relatives, who have been skillfully and media-wise fighting each other and shooting verbal arrows back and forth for decades. It was all the more amazing when they officially smoked the peace pipe at the end of 2019 and announced: "The Black Crowes are reunited." Some might object that not the original band is back and reunited, but "only" the brothers who are back together with new accompanying musicians. But a look into the history of the band is enough to realize that the only personal constants in the group that formed as Mr.Crowe's Garden in 1984 were the two brothers. The first milestone was the debut "Shake Your Money Maker", which was released in 1990. In 2002 the band officially broke up for the first time.
Three years later it came to a reunion. However, until their next break, the group was not as commercially successful as in their best times in the nineties, when they took critics, fans and charts by storm with songs like "Jealous Again", "Hard To Handle", "Twice As Hard" and "She Talks To Angels" from their debut album or later with "Sting Me", "Remedy" and "Wiser Time". In 2013 there was radio silence between the Robinson brothers for the second time. In January 2015 they officially announced that the band was finally over. But in 2019 this statement was the famous snow of yesterday again. The same goes for the poisoned arrows that were shot down in interviews where singer Chris praised his band Brotherhood over the green clover. He also played old songs of the Black Crowes with the formation As The Crow Flies, while Rich was on tour as The Magpie Salute together with some former Crowes musicians (guitarist Marc Ford and bassist Sven Pipien).
eclipsed: As much as I, like many of our readers and Black Crowes fans around the world, am excited about your reunion, the question remains: Is this because Brotherhood and The Magpie Salute were never able to reach the status of The Black Crowes? Even if The Magpie Salute and partly Chris' band have released really good albums. Or to put it another way: Would there be a reunion, if you filled big halls with your bands instead of busting through clubs?
Rich Robinson: I for one would say yes! Or should I say: blood is thicker than water. Chris and I have always had the opportunity with the Crowes to realize all our musical wishes. In between there were always some disturbing manoeuvres. This led to the fact that we didn't trust each other anymore and instead of doing our thing we listened to other people. And our thing is The Black Crowes. And what we did in between with other musicians is therefore not less valuable or bad, some things were even excellent, but it was never like with The Black Crowes. If this is now more successful than with the bands before, maybe it has something to do with the feeling of the audience, when something can be really magical and when it is just good. And I think in the combination with Chris we instinctively created some magical moments and songs.
eclipsed: There were small concerts in Nashville 2019 and now in London (February, see Stage Hopping 04/20, note) under the name Brothers Of A Feather. Apart from advertising for upcoming reunion tours: What was the reason to keep the live frame so small at first?
Robinson: When we got back together, it was clear to us that we wanted to leave out all the people who had been with us up to that point and who had made us fall out. By that I mean first and foremost managers, crew members and other business people who only pursued their own interests and didn't have the welfare of the band in mind. That's why it was important to me that only Chris and I got back together, just like in my parents' living room in the eighties when I was 17 and writing and singing "She Talks To Angels" with Chris
eclipsed: But you can't be at odds with all the musicians, after all, there were three ex-crowes with Magpie Salute: keyboardist Eddie Harsch, bassist Sven Pipien and guitarist Marc Ford.
Robinson: Eddie unfortunately passed away in 2016, and what I said about managers and other people in the Crowes organization doesn't automatically apply to all the musicians who played with the Crowes. But Chris and I wanted a real fresh start, and we wanted everything to be like it was back then on our parents' couch. Marc and Sven have become something like pawn sacrifices, because we were looking for people and musicians who hadn't been there before. So we didn't get any of this, which is why we Robinson brothers were driven apart. It may sound presumptuous, but The Black Crowes are and were Chris and me. And we need fantastic musicians to put it into the rock context. And the advantage of Tim Lefebvre (the new bass player, note) is that he is completely unbiased and new to the game and Sven was part of the old system that no longer works.
