OK, so let me explain one of the year’s most attention-grabbing new album titles . . . Happiness Bastards.
The “happiness” represents the reconciliation of The Black Crowes’ brothers Chris and Rich Robinson and the “good place” they find themselves in.
“But we’re still bastards,” remarks guitarist Rich wryly, acknowledging the siblings’ warring past.
“And rock and roll is the great bastard art form,” affirms singer Chris, alluding to their high-octane music incorporating blues, soul and country.
The title actually comes from the only published novel by American beat poet Kirby Doyle.
Chris explains: “I love beatnik-era literature and I started to read the lesser writers.
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“Everyone knows Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac but this guy Kirby Doyle wrote a good book called Happiness Bastard and I thought, ‘Oh my God, it’s perfect for us’.”
The new album is an unflinching testament to the brothers’ desire to “rekindle their love affair” with rock and roll.
This time, it was all done in a friendly spirit. “Sometimes Chris had an idea and I would have a different idea so we had to defer to Jay [Joyce, producer] and that was cool,” says Rich.
“It wasn’t like the old days when we would fight and scream. Our disagreements have become a lot more gentlemanly.”
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‘Funny and strange’
Happiness Bastards is dominated by breathless, riff-driven, albeit soulful mayhem but it also finds room for a couple of richly atmospheric ballads.
“These songs are fully transparent,” says Chris. “This is exactly how we feel — and it comes across.”
And Rich: “We recorded the bulk of it in about two and a half weeks. No time to f*** around!”
I’m talking to the Robinsons in separate video calls and I am immediately struck by their contrasting characters.
Flamboyant frontman Chris is all big hand gestures and expansive views while Rich is calmer, more considered but equally engaging.
Where once they were regarded as chalk and cheese, these days they complement each other perfectly — yin and yang, if you like.
Chris agrees and says: “Rich and I ARE very different people but we’re both outsiders and have been since school.
“I’m more gregarious and Rich has more social anxieties.
“I’m dyslexic and I need communities around me. A band has always been more important to me than doing it all by myself. I like the input, the collaboration.”
Los Angeles resident Chris is calling from Telluride, a ski resort town in the foothills of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains.
“My wife Camille is an avid skier and it’s her birthday tomorrow,” he reports.
“So, before the madness of the tour, she’s having one last little getaway to the mountains.”
Rich is at home in Nashville, Tennessee, where the brothers’ 85-year-old mother also lives.
There, he loves nothing more than to immerse himself in composing music. “I’m always writing,” he says. “That’s what I do.”
To understand the full extent of The Black Crowes’ recent revival, you have to return to 2014 when they completed what Chris calls “the contractual obligation” tour.
He likens the band at that time to one of those old stove-top kettles, and says: “We had to take it off the heat.”
After being together since they were teenagers (aside from a hiatus between 2002 and 2005), it was time for the brothers to go their separate ways, possibly for ever.
Chris says: “From the day that tour was over, I didn’t speak to Rich until 2019.”
Dad-of-five Rich recalls how his children began asking questions: “Two of my guys were still really little at the time and they had never met Chris.
“But my older guys would always ask, ‘How come you never talk to him?’”
And Chris again: “When we eventually did get back together, believe it or not — we’re very funny and strange in our own way — we didn’t talk about our break from each other.”
In fact, it was a chance meeting that prompted the band reunion.
Chris continues: “My wife and I ran into Rich and his family in the lobby of The Bowery Hotel in New York.
“That day, we committed to giving it another go. Our dynamic is brotherly and it is very deep.”
Rich says they agreed on a plan where “we do the talking and not let people talk for us — and we’re sticking to it”.
‘Massive momentum’
“We brought in new people who didn’t have an agenda.
“If anyone has an agenda, they’re not going to be around very long. Our radar is attuned to that.”
The initial plan for The Black Crowes 2.0 was to play live their searing 1990 debut album Shake Your Money Maker in full, as well as other fan favourites such as Remedy, Jealous Again and Thorn In My Pride.
But having played just a handful of warm-up gigs in late 2019, along came the pandemic.
Rich says: “We were ramping up, getting massive momentum towards the tour and suddenly we had an indefinite amount of time plopped in our laps.
“So I started working on new songs in my home studio. I wound up writing more than 40, always with Chris in mind.
“I would send them to him and he would pick what he wanted to work on and send them back.”
Though the Shake Your Money Maker tour eventually got going in the summer of 2021, The Black Crowes had enough material to take things to the next level with their first studio album since 2009’s Before The Frost . . . Until The Freeze.
Happiness Bastards serves as a raw and refreshing blast at a time when polished pop dominates major label thinking . . . and the airwaves.
But Chris says there’s still a genuine thirst for rock and roll and that The Black Crowes aren’t its only saviours.
“A few months ago, we saw AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses and Metallica at Power Trip [Indio, California] in front of 100,000 people,” he says.
“I also watched Queens Of The Stone Age recently at the LA Forum. They were rocking out, playing beautiful riffs.”
Rich picks up the thread: “The problem with a lot of music today is that there’s no humanity in it.
“There’s a pursuit of perfection and a use of these tools that sucks all human qualities out of it.
“Listen to a Beatles record – they’re all over the f***ing place. Same with Led Zeppelin and the Stones. That’s why their records are exciting.
“Some of my favourite moments on my favourite records have f-ups in them. You listen to Zeppelin’s Since I’ve Been Loving You and you hear John Bonham’s squeaky kick-drum. That’s so cool.
“You hear about the Stones and the chaos that went into making Exile On Main St in this mouldy French villa and it’s 100 degrees.
“It’s amazing and it’s dangerous and can fall off the rails at any time but it’s brilliant and it never does. That’s the human element.”
‘Beautiful mistake’
We return to The Black Crowes and their undeniably “human” new music.
Chris says of the recording process: “We were just really loose and funky.
“I want my accountant to be perfect, I don’t need my art to be perfect! Unless it’s Leonardo da Vinci or William Blake or someone.
“We like the beautiful mistake here and there, the irritant in the oyster that creates the pearl.”
Though Happiness Bastards began as a long-distance collaboration, Chris explains the special chemistry that comes into play when he’s in the company of his brother.
He says: “I live in California, Rich lives in Tennessee. He can send me files and I can start sketching things out but we work best the old way.
“That means us being in a room with a couple of guitars, my notebooks strewn on the floor, a harmonica maybe — and we start banging it out.”
The final track, the gospel-infused Kindred Friend, is a ballad driven by gorgeous acoustic guitar, piano, harmonica and strings, and is of special significance.
Chris says: “On one level, it’s about two people who have reconnected, whether it’s good friends, whether it’s ex-lovers.
“But it could be about me and Rich or The Black Crowes and our audience. Of course, I didn’t write it thinking in those terms.”
The last song the Robinson brothers worked on before the recording sessions proper was wild album opener Bedside Manners.
Rich says: “It was one of those songs that wrote itself — it took five minutes.
“Some songs flow like that and I never question it. I just take it and bow down in reverence and respect.”
The equally explosive Rats And Clowns is an unabashed Black Crowes tribute to the band that got the teenage Robinsons into rock and roll in the first place, AC/DC.
“One of my earliest memories of wanting a guitar was when I saw the cover of If You Want Blood You’ve Got It,” recalls Rich. “I must have been about 11.
“You see Angus Young with that [Gibson] SG sticking in his gut and I was like, ‘F***, man!’ It was enough to hook me. The power between him and his brother Malcolm was unbelievable.”
In 1991, not long after The Black Crowes hit the big time, they found themselves on the same Monsters Of Rock bill at Castle Donington as their heroes.
Rich says: “One of my favourite moments was watching Angus play slide with a lighter during soundcheck. It sounded so good!”
All these years later, he is paying his respects. “Rats And Clowns is my humble tribute to the great Angus and Malcolm guitar duo.”
Chris adds: “It’s an obvious nod to AC/DC. Rich plays all the guitar on that track.
“We had the most fun I think we’ve ever had in the studio on that solo. It’s probably the coolest solo he’s ever played.”
Another Happiness Bastards song deserving special mention is the dark ballad Wilted Rose which matches Chris’s rock voice with breakthrough country singer Lainey Wilson’s.
Chris says: “Lainey is the loveliest person, very authentic and a real superstar. She told us, ‘I’m from a little town in Louisiana and I loved The Black Crowes growing up’.”
‘He’s fearless’
As the chats wind up, one question I’ve held back is what each Robinson admires about the other — just to test their rekindled feelings of brotherly love.
First, Chris on Rich: “He and I are in a good place. We’re happy to be on tour together, we go for dinner together and we laugh together.
“He is a unique guitar player, so different from anybody else. For instance, he didn’t learn the Stairway To Heaven guitar solo!”
And Rich on Chris: “His voice is as good as it’s ever sounded, if not better. His control is amazing. And I’ve always loved his lyrics.
“In the band, he’s the one who stands up there and he’s the guy. He takes the heat and he’s fearless.”
Finally, with The Black Crowes winging their way to the UK for four dates in May, how do the brothers feel about themselves?
Rich: “It’s been great — the band’s in good shape and I’m really happy with the record. All of it is stellar.”
And Chris: “The last couple of years on tour have been fantastic. For the first time, we really know who we are.
“Personally, I’ve never been happier being the song and dance man.
“I’ve never had more fun putting on my shiny shoes, getting up there and shaking my ass a little bit.”
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Album rating: 4 and a half stars out of 5
- Out tomorrow
