Chris Robinson: “The Black Crowes don't know shit about music”
The frontman of Black Crowes Chris Robinson, guest of the Broken Record podcast, speaking about his band, expressed himself in rather surprising and definitive terms. In fact, he declared, without resorting to mincing words: “We don't know shit about music. We didn't learn music… I don't read music. Rich doesn't read music.”
The musician originally from the American state of Georgia believes that the secret of his and his brother Rich's success is due less to musical technique than to the emotion that each of their songs communicates, unlike other musicians who only think about numbers.
“We know what it feels like and we know what sounds good, and we continue to do it. Of course, because of that the vocabulary is broader. But perhaps we use different words than those who are more knowledgeable about the inner workings, the mathematics and the arithmetic of music. It's something we missed.”
Always talking about the writing of the songs of the Black Crowesthe 57 year old Chris Robinson he explained in detail what the chemistry is and how things work between him and his brother Rich. “It's a kind of magic when a song suddenly arises. One moment there's nothing, a little thing like this, then I get an idea and it changes what Rich is doing. Everything is dictated by the atmosphere with which Rich plays me. There's an emotional ingredient in what she plays for me, like in probably our most famous song “she She Talks to Angels”. He wrote that song. He was very young with the riff, and we probably didn't get it until about a year later.” Ultimately, however, Rich's music put Chris “in a position to write a song with that kind of dark, romantic, melancholic imagery.”
THE
Black Crowes
last March they released their latest album,
“Happiness Bastards”
(
read the review here
). The Robinson brothers are presenting the new songs in concert on the 'Happiness Bastards Tour' which kicked off from the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville last April 2nd and will also arrive in Italy, for a single date,
next May 27th at the Teatro degli Arcimboldi in Milan
.
