The Making of "A Long December"
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15% off your first set of sheets at BolanBranch.com with code CUMULUS. Exclusions apply. See site for details. I'm Brian Hyatt. This is Rolling Stone Music Now. Before the year is over, I wanted to bring you this new edit of a seasonally appropriate interview. My conversation with Adam Duritz of Counting Crows about the making of his band's classic song Along December and much more. Thanks for listening and Happy New Year.

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We talked about whether Long December counts as a holiday song. I think it does. That it fits with the season in its own way. I think there's this big discussion that runs around with everybody trying to, is Die Hard a Christmas movie? Exactly. I don't know. It takes place during December, and in fact, it takes place during Christmas. And if it's a Christmas movie to you, then it's a Christmas movie. We were having this discussion the other day because a friend of mine insists that, why

Eyes Wide Shut is too, and I think, no, it's not. That's not my Christmas feeling. There are movies that are Christmas movies, and there are movies that take place in late December. Eyes Wide Shut takes place in late December to me. Long December, though, I mean, it fits in with my feeling of like,

songs that conjure up and resonate with times of year and this particular time of year coming to the end of one. It is cheery in a bittersweet way in much the same way that the original like "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is. In the original lyrics before Sinatra changed them You know it's a

"Someday soon we all will be together if the fates allow. Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow." He changed it to "put a shining star upon the highest bow" to make it more about Christmas. And the original, if you listen to Ella Fitzgerald's version, is kind of like, you know, "until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow." It's got a little bit of sadness and difficulty to it, and I think "Long December" is very much the same kind of thing. ♪ Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow ♪

Also like, you know, River by Joni Mitchell. Same kind of thing. It conjures up a period in time and it's not necessarily the happiest, but it makes you feel, which is I think what Christmas movies and Christmas songs should do. Holiday stuff, sometimes it's just cheery, but sometimes it's about resonating.

And I think, I mean, A Long December resonates for sure. For sure. And like most of our great Christmas songs, then it was in fact written by a Jewish person. Yeah.

It's a classic holiday thing. I've often thought about that because I'm Jewish, but I love Christmas. I love the holidays. I think it's really cool. I love those songs, but I think I'd catch a lot of shit for making a Christmas album. But then again, the truth is, if you really get into it, yeah, they are written by Jewish people. There's guys like Julie Stein running around writing a lot of songs at one point or another. If Bob Dylan can make a Christmas album, certainly you can make a Christmas album.

Who's got a beard that's long and white? Santa's got a beard that's long and white. Who comes around on special night? Santa comes around on special night. Special night. Well, but Bob Dylan was Christian for a while, for sure. His religion is in flux, but nothing's stopping him. The Counting Crows Christmas album would be sick. In fact, I think you should probably consider that. Is Irving Berlin Jewish? Well, then he wrote White Christmas. I'm dreaming of a world

That's right. I mean, that automatically makes it okay. And he also wrote, Bonnet in your Easter bonnet, da-da-da-da-da, for the Easter parade. That's Irving Berlin, too, so... You're all right.

If he's Jewish, then it's totally okay because he's got Christmas and Easter sewn up. He was Jewish and born in Russia, immigrated to America. Yes, very much. Yeah, there you go then. Then it ought to be okay. Born Israel, Berlin, in fact. That I didn't know. Wow.

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the same checkout Skins uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/westwoodone, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com/westwoodone to upgrade your selling today. shopify.com/westwoodone. - So there we go. But I did want to, since it is a song on everyone's lips at this time of year, and it's probably my favorite Counting Crows song,

These days, and it's probably one of my favorite songs in the 90s, maybe we could dig a little bit into kind of the writing of that song, which I know was like a one-night, three-hour kind of thing. Your friend, I think Jennifer, had been hit by a car and was in the hospital, right? You were visiting her, and it happened to coincide with, it was literally December, and you were recording Recovering the Satellites. Is that all correct? Yeah, yeah. It was an interesting situation because...

Jen Andrews, then Cohane, got hit by a car, I think around a little after Halloween, maybe. I can't remember. And she got really destroyed. And it just broke the left side of her body. And I wasn't close to her at all. But I knew her. And she was very close to two of my best friends, Tracy Falco and Samantha Matheson. We went

The day after, she'd been in surgery for like a day and we went to the hospital to visit, hanging out there during the day. It was a bunch of us were there. And her mother had flown in from Rhode Island and stayed with her the whole first night.

I had to go home and change and get a shower. And she's asking people about coming and spending time with Jen so she wasn't there alone. And I was saying, you know, yeah, I can come by after work tomorrow and I can do this, I can do that. She's like, well, anybody who can be here during the day, because I've got to go to, you know, home and shower and I'll be here all night most nights, so I can't be here all day. And no one was raising their hand or anything. And I felt really

bad about it because I was making a record, but I was free during the day generally. You know, I wasn't really doing anything. We didn't start till usually, you know, in the late afternoon.

And I felt silly because I didn't know her that well, but I said, yeah, okay, I'll be there tomorrow. And so I guess I started coming in during the days and I stayed. I'd come in most days. I brought her like a VHS player at one point and a bunch of DVDs, not DVDs, like tapes of Masterpiece Theater stuff. I remember we watched the original Pride and Prejudice together. And I watched all this stuff with her. And she told me later, she's been like my sister since then, like

One of my two or three best friends. She said her mother was in there like a few nights, like a little while later. And she said, so what's the deal with Adam? I don't remember you ever talking about him before. I guess you guys are really close. And Jen said, no, I didn't really know him that well. I'm not sure what he was doing here, but he's really great. I just got roped into it at first. And then we became, you know, you spend like a month or two in a hospital with somebody, you become really close. So it was, I was there a lot because of that.

And it was just, it was a very like weird and highly like emotional time, both spending my days, a lot of them in the hospital with my friend and then in the middle of making a record as well, which is obviously a very emotional thing to do. And in that record, I was writing a lot of it while we were making the record, a bunch of songs I wrote while we were recording. Was that by plan or was it the typical second album thing where you just were, just didn't have enough time to actually write it in advance? Yeah.

No, because it ended up being like a double album. I had a lot of great material. I just had, you know, I'm trying to think what we had already. We had Catapult. All of the songs she did. Just yesterday she... I'm Not Sleeping. I'm not sleeping anymore. Angels of the Silences. Waiting on my sin.

Good Night Elizabeth. Children in Bloom.

I didn't know this yet at the time, but it turns out I get really creative in the studio. Just like the thought of having a place to put music makes me want to make music and write music. And so I did a lot. I wrote much more of Desert Life and probably Hard Candy in the studio. But on that record, I wrote Long December. What's the other one called? Another Horse Dreamers Blues. Walking out of green sky, sun like a

Bright blue horses are the fortunes. We're covering the satellites. It's the lifetime commitment.

Recovering the satellites Was started before then, but I finished that in the studio. There's three or four really good songs that I wrote while we were working. But that one, we would, I would get up and I would go to the hospital like 11 o'clock or something late in the morning and I'd stay there for a few hours and then three or four I'd go to the studio and work there until later whenever we got finished or whenever I was done and then I'd go to the Viper room.

And I'd bartend for a while and hang out. And then I would go home and lather, rinse, repeat. That was my schedule. So it was pretty full of interesting stuff. A lot going on right then. So tell me about the night that led to this, to Long December. I don't remember much of the day. I know I'd been in the hospital with Jen. And it had been going on for a while at that point. She's been in there for like a month and a half or something. And I had worked for a while and been at the Viper as well. And I left around...

I guess probably two, closing time from the Viper. And I was with Samantha and Tracy, or they had gone home already, but I went up to their house. And I think there were a few of us there that night, like maybe also Christian Slater and Jude Law. I'm not sure. They were all, we were all friends.

I get these nights all blended together, but I feel like one of them was there that night as well. I had dated Samantha while we were, that year when I was on tour for our first album, and we were still really close friends. So I went to their house for a couple hours, probably from 2 to 4.

and hillside manor was what we called their house it was on hillside street i think at the bottom of laurel canyon and then i went up to my house probably around four and i just you get really full of feeling it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what you're writing about i remember one time i watched dr zhivago when i was younger at my parents house and then i got up from that and wrote rain king whoa in like 40 minutes it was just

It doesn't have anything to do with Dr. Zhivago. It's just that, you know, you get, I was emotional after seeing the movie. Plus, that's not the literary reference I would have expected for Rain King, of course. No, but it's like the stuff is in your head. It doesn't necessarily need to be what you're writing about as much as it can be something that gets you sort of overflowing with feeling or something, and then you write what you're going to write about. I mean, it's not about, the song has nothing to do with Dr. Zhivago. It's a combination of an idea I had about Boys Don't Cry by The Cure. Hey, I'm sorry.

Yeah, but the whole change of mind

And maybe Saul Bellow in a way. That was the one I would have expected, yeah. Ranking Interestingly is an upside-down version of Boys Don't Cry. I really loved that song, and I was like, they make such a cool sound, how does this work? And I figured out it's by rotating these two chords in your right hand and either descending or ascending in your left hand. And I reversed it and thought, what happens if you go the other way, if you ascend or descend, whichever it is? And

And I really liked what that did musically. And that's the verse part, I think, for Rain King. But anyways, I got home and I was just feeling full of things. Like, a lot going on that day. The hospital, the studio, the Viper, and then being up at Sam and Tracy's house. And I just wrote Long December. Or halfway it wrote itself. It just felt like when I was writing it, like I knew where it was going. It felt like I... A lot of times I don't know how to play. I don't play by ear. And so I...

I can't play very well, so I'm kind of just messing around and then I find things that work. I stumble upon things. But with "A Long December," it felt like I knew what the next chord should be before I wrote it, and I just found it. It just seemed to play itself. It just flowed like I was playing by ear, which I can't do. And the lyrics just came. It was the most perfect thing I've ever written. It's not complicated to me.

But it's all the right simple things. Yeah. I mean, there are parts of it where I think, well, that's a really good lyric. I'm a guitar player who was just learning piano, and that song falls very nicely under the fingers. I love the way you double the bass with your left hand. And I know that Craig Finn from the Holsteady was taking piano lessons.

And he learned it and he covered it last year and explained to the crowd that it was one of the first songs he was learning on piano. So it does fall very nicely under the hands. I mean, the key of F is a great piano key, obviously. A lot of Springsteen piano songs, almost all of them, the songs that he wrote on piano are in the key of F and use a lot of those same chords. I don't know if that means anything, but... Well, it's only one black key away from...

C. I mean, it's pretty simple. I think the only black key is B flat. So it's a pretty simple key that has a little more to it. I say that having probably had no idea what the key was when I was writing at the time, because it's not the kind of thing I know. But yeah, it's all root chords. Yeah, there's no sevenths or anything in there. It's pretty simple that way. It just seems like when I'm playing it in concert,

I don't even think about what the chords are. It's more like a geometrical. It goes around this way, and then it goes back and forth, and then it goes around this way, and then it does this other thing. It's more like it moves in these patterns on the keyboard to me almost. And if I lose my place...

I don't know where I am for a second. I just have to wait and then jump back in at the right place. If a whole song falls out of you like that, do you think you wrote it in verse order? If you know what I mean, did it come out in sort of the order that we end up here? Oh yeah. No, it's written exactly in the order it was. I don't think it's even with Mrs. Potter's lullaby. Woke up in the afternoon, cause that's when it all

I wrote more verses than there were and then cut it down. This one, I think it's just what it is. I think I wrote it exactly the way it's played. A little slower, maybe. But I think I wrote it straight from top to bottom. And the idea of this year being better than the last, was that something... Was that... Had you somehow come to that place of hope at the moment you were writing it? Yeah, and I think it's a common theme for me. A lot of my songs are...

about hope. They seem about sad things, but they're often about, at least aspirationally, things changing for the better. And that one especially, I had a really hard time after the first album. The adjustment to being famous was really rough. And I had to leave Berklee. There were people camped out on the lawn. I just, I'm dissociative. It's really hard for me to, I'm not always present in the world and it's really hard to, I struggle to relate to people and it was an overabundance of people.

at the time more than I'd ever dealt with before and I felt very on stage and strange. But coming to LA really helped. It changed things for me. It moved from a struggling artist town to a working artist town and not that LA is a better place than San Francisco but for me at the time it was much better. I felt like I had a lot of peers. I came from a place most people grow up in a place where

if they're an artist, they're the only one doing that. Or it's like everyone else isn't. And then you find a group of people who are, like I did too in the indie scene up in San Francisco. But then it becomes very, oh, it's not local boy makes good. Everyone's kind of frustrated with you. But when I got to LA, it seemed like everybody was doing what I was doing. One way or another, they were sculptors or painters or actors or musicians, writers. It just seemed like everyone was kind of doing the same thing. It felt like a

getting to go to one of those high school performing arts or something where everybody's like dancing in the halls and wants to put on a play. I don't know, it got that way when I first got to LA. I felt very accepted and it was exciting because I met a lot of people I wanted to meet. My first friends down there were the people at the Viper Room, but the next guy I really got to know was Sean Penn and it was great hanging out with Sean and like

seeing what someone who was really creative was like. He picked me up one, he called me one day and he said, hey, what are you doing? I want to take you out to Malibu. I'm going to go hang out with some of my high school friends. You want to come? I said, sure. Picks me up. He had this like grand national at the time. Terrifying car. Went a thousand miles an hour. We got out to Malibu. It seemed like about 15 minutes later, we made it to Malibu. Him and this guy, the Rev, the Reverend who hung out with, who was this sort of like

very crazy Harry Dean Stanton-esque character. And we drove out to his friend's house and we walk in the door, it's Robert Downey Jr. and Emilio Estevez. Oh yeah, this is your high school friends. Okay. And then I got to be really good friends with Downey after that. And Bob was such a great creative person, like overflowing with that stuff then. And like, you know, it was such an exciting time for me. Like, wow, these are the people I get to hang out with. This is really great. This is

This feels like these are my peers. I get to be peers with these guys. You know, it really changed a lot of things, but it took me a while to get out of that hole I'd been in from the first record and all the touring. But yeah, I think at that point, like, it really did seem like things were getting better and I was ready to make a record again and put out music and get back into it. It wasn't like I had to run away from what I was, which I felt like I needed to for a minute after that first album. It could be me.

It's weird. Everyone did in the nineties. Everyone felt that way after their first successful record more than any other era, I would say, you know, and everyone from, and not just the cliche Kurt, not just like Kurt and Eddie, but also like Rivers Cuomo a little later, like everyone, it's such a, it's such a genuine thing that everyone seemed to experience, particularly in that decade and in that,

in that scene in the broadest sense. - It may have something to do with the kind of people who were successful right then too, that a lot of us were people who were troubled and had difficulties in ways that maybe weren't the quintessential rock stars in the years before that. I don't know. It's hard, that's a big generalization to make, 'cause I'm not sure, but I knew Kurt. It's certainly true in our case, both of our cases, that we were difficult, we had difficulties. The weird thing was I thought that was totally understandable and I made a record about it.

And I felt like this is what my life was. And I made a very honest, bearing things record about that experience. And then just caught all this shit from people who said it was a trite thing to write and make a record of, oh, another guy making a record about how hard it is to be a rock star. Just like that record was so dismissed at the time. I think it's a lot more respected now. And especially among musicians,

It turns out to have been this deeply affecting record. A lot of my friends who became songwriters

were so affected by that record. It's a huge deal to them. A lot of people I know talk about that was the record that really, but the critics really ripped it. It got just mostly dismissed. That was what it was. You did get a good review in Rolling Stone. I looked back, Anthony DeCurtis loved it. But it was buried. It was, let's face it, like we had just made, we were the biggest band in the world in the years before that. We made our second record

And it's a really good record. It's the number one record the week it comes out. And it's buried in the Rolling Stone review section. It doesn't, it's not the lead review. We've never had a lead review record. It's way deep back. Anthony DeCurtis liked it. He did. I think it got four,

stars maybe but but the band was it was coming to a place where we were sort of not cool and a lot of for about 10 years after that most of our reviews are about the girls i dated or why should we listen to this guy we got a cover story on our first album david wilder wrote that cover story and the next interview i did for rolling stone the next real feature on us was you

Wow. And that's 2000, I don't know, whenever Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings came out. So it's probably 14 years later, 15 years later. There were reviews and there were like backhands and random notes

But even Rolling Stone, who reviewed our records pretty well, didn't do another story on us until you did. I was really surprised when we got that. I remember very clearly how surprised I was when I heard that you wanted to do a big story on us for that record. Because I was like, wow, that hasn't happened in a long time. It was also, and it's something that we see...

over and over again it was i was a new generation coming in who had grown up as a fan and yeah the second record was my was my favorite as well so it was but then what happens is and then you have to convince the older jaded people that hey there's another generation that loved this stuff it's a cycle yeah i see it over and over again camera crow did the same thing in the 70s you know coming in and being like no let's up on's good it's literally the same thing but

I mean, it's interesting because, yeah, Hollywood felt like a salvation to you. When you listen to the song to Long December, there's so much melancholy, though, on the lines. And it's one more day up in the canyons and one more night in Hollywood, which goes against the way it works.

it was in your life. Well, sort of, but I mean, I was, that's where I was living when I was going through all that stuff and recovering from everything. It's not that it was bad in Hollywood. And the things that he says after that are very hopeful. If you think I could be forgiven, I wish you would. If you think you might come to California, I think you should come see me. I'm getting better. And it's been so long since I've seen the ocean. I guess I should like, I should time to go look at something beautiful for a minute. He's saying that and

It's all part of his move from, it's been hard and it's getting better, I think. He, it's me. A fearless verse that I always loved. I mean, the smell of hospitals in winter. And by the way, if you look at the YouTube comments on this song, I shouldn't have because they were like really upsetting because there's so many people writing about

that this reminds them of a relative, it helps them in a positive way. It got them through a relative who's sick or stuff like that, like really intense stuff, which I hadn't really quite thought of. But then, you know, the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls. And all, once you look at it across a crowded room to see the way the light attaches to a girl, the, it, the, a lot of oysters, but no pearls rhyme with girl is audacious. And, and it is, it is the kind of thing where some people are like, oh, Jesus Christ. But other people are like, that's brilliant. I think sometimes you,

People get caught up in trying to sound like you're writing something deep and it's a song. Crystal Visions and Sister Christian, these things that sound... But sometimes...

You just need to write things that feel like they're real. Like a lot of oysters and no pearls, it's a bummer. And it should be mundane. I think sometimes, I remember a lot of shit, I got a lot of shit from our fans when I wrote the song Speedway, which is one of my favorite songs. It's like, I get so nervous I'm shaking, get so I got no pride at all. It gets so bad, but I just keep coming back for more. I just get off on that stuff. I guess I just get off on that stuff.

And I just wrote, get off on that stuff. And they were all complaining that there was something so mundane about the... I couldn't think of the right word, but what I wanted was something like you can't think of the word off the top of your head and you're just trying to write something, stuff. It's just that, and it's sad. And I remember our own fans like, oh, Adam's lost it. He's just really not making any effort in the writing. He's just...

Because people think it's supposed to be poetry, but even poetry does that. It's because they don't read poetry and poetry doesn't make everything rhyme and sound beautiful. Really good poets, they'll drop words on you like a rock on a stuff. It should be clumsy sometimes and it should feel blunt and unpoetic. But I think people don't think about that.

But I do think after a while, what happens in that verse is you get exactly the feeling you're supposed to get when you hear it. It's sad and... But then this thing happened. Which is one of my favorite lines I've ever written in all of my career because...

And I use it as an example when people are talking to me about songwriting. I use that line all the time about how it's not about saying, I love you. It's about telling people what's on the shelves in your room. Because I love you is easy. Everyone says it. It doesn't mean anything. It will not move anyone to say it in a song. But if you say the way that light attaches to a girl, then they see your interest, your passion, your...

how much that moment affected you. And it says all those things about I'm infatuated with this person that is not I'm infatuated with this person, which doesn't mean anything and doesn't communicate anything to anyone. And, uh,

It's just about talking about what's going on in the room you're in. When people talk to me about songwriting, I use that line as an example because I think it's very exemplary of the way I write and the way I think good writing works. Yeah, no, it's very imagistic. And if anyone, if it doesn't conjure the right thing for someone, then I feel bad for them. They've never, in their whole life, they've never experienced that moment, whatever the gender would be. It's the cinema of it too. It's very cinematic. It gives you like what you think the, what are they called? It's like the storyboard of that.

of that moment. And so you get to, it's been so long since I've seen the ocean. I guess I should. And the song ends there. And then we go back to the nanas. Like, do you remember coming up to that as the ending? No, not specifically the moment of it, but I know it's something I thought about a lot then because I hadn't really gone to the beach, you know, I'm living in LA and I, if you live in LA, you understand it. It's actually, it's,

a long way to the beach from Hollywood. It's really not. And so you can go a long time and never go look at the ocean because traffic in LA will make you want to be very set in one place. But I do remember thinking about the things I wasn't doing, the things I, I don't know, things you would change the way you felt at a given moment. But I don't know how soon I went after that.

Yeah, that was the next thing I was going to... It's funny because there had never been a... These are things that people forget, but there'd never been a more controversial Sha La La than on your previous album. Where that somehow became as if the only Sha La La in history was on a particular Van Morrison song, and that became like a whole thing, as you may recall. Sha La La

The only thing was it was a joke at the time. I was like, I threw that in there as a joke and my A&R guy was like, oh yeah, you're not going to leave that in there. And I thought, I'll leave it in there. What do I care? I mean, to me it was like, it's literally something I thought of off the top of my head when I was singing that moment. What could be more like real?

You know, what could be more real than just, even if it is a joke, which it was, like I'll throw a Van Marsen thing in there. I'm not scared of that. Who cares? At the time, you're also thinking when you're doing that, it's not like anyone's going to hear it. We've never even made a record. I hope everyone will hear it.

And in that case, I'll do in the interview and I'll talk about how it was a joke, whatever. It was funny. And it was like brave to me. It was just, what do I have to worry about being scared about what people are going to think? I should just make music I like. And then here you are with bringing in the Nas, despite all that. I've moved from Van Morrison to Hey Jude. I don't know. It just seemed like the right thing at that moment. I didn't even think of it as any big deal at the time. It just seemed like,

the right thing. It's a weird non-chorus. And I was, we were talking to, Rob Sheffield brought it up a little while ago because my friend James Campion wrote a book about Hey Jude called Take a Sad Song. And before our Underwater Sunshine Festival this year, we did a night, a book release night where me and James and Rob Sheffield

And Rob said, yeah, it's funny because we're here with the guy who wrote the second most famous Na Na song in the history of rock and roll. I was like, wow, I'd never even thought about that. I forgot about it. There was no part of me that was equating it or thinking about Hey Jude at the time. Certainly it wasn't. In fact, it never occurred to me until whenever that was a month ago. Now I was like, wow, wow.

I wonder if people have been thinking that all this time. I have no idea. It's definitely a very Rob observation for sure. Yeah. It's perfect. And then I believe, so you wrote this thing and then I think you went basically straight to the studio and recorded it. Yeah, it was the next day. I went to the hospital again in the afternoon or the morning into the afternoon and I got to the studio about,

It was a little bit before dinner and they had just finished working on something so I knew when I should get there. And I played it for everybody right before dinner, showed it to them and taught it to them right after dinner. I went through the chords and then we started playing. Just all of us in this room together, I think that's just take five or six or something like that. It's just...

There are no overdubs on it except for we hit the take and did one more and then we were like, no, that was it, the one before this. And we went into the kitchen and got glasses of wine and while we were in there I said to the engineer, come on for a second. And we went back in the room and I said, just give me a mic and play it through once. And I sang one of the harmonies.

And then I said, "Do it again." And I sang the other one on top of that. Those are the only overdubs on it, are the two background vocals I laid down. I only did one pass at each of them. Yeah, I mean, it's completely live song, except for the background vocals, which are one take each. - Obviously, we're covering the satellites as sort of a louder,

arguably more bombastic album. It was the arena-ready album as compared to August and Everything After. August and Everything After was more about delicacy and restraint, I think. It wasn't that it needed to be quiet so much as what we didn't have

a lead guitar player then, because Dan wasn't in the band yet. He joined right after the making of the record. Plays on a lot of the record, but he was more playing mandolin and acoustic and stuff. He didn't play a lot of electric on it. So the first album, it's just what we were capable of. And we just also didn't have Ben yet. We still had Steve Bowman was our drummer. It wasn't right for some of that stuff. And we were really trying to learn to play together. And it's easier to do when you're playing quieter. So the song, the first album has more of that. But yeah, I mean, the second album, it's not that it was

everything is loud on it because it also has walkaways. Gotta rush away, she said. And it has Goodnight Elizabeth. But it has more range, though. It has the things the first album could do and a lot that it couldn't do. But even on the stuff that's quiet, I feel like it's a lot more raw. Like Long December is a far cry from Sullivan Street or something. Take the way home.

It doesn't have that sheen on it. I mean, it's a live take and it's pretty raw and bare. Wasn't going back to try and fix any vocal there. You know, Goodnight Elizabeth's the same way. It's got a lot of, it's got some quiet song bits, but it's pretty stark in ways that I don't think the ones on the first album are. T-Bone has a bit of a sheen on things too. And Gil Norton wasn't doing that. I think the album in a way is very much like

the stuff it was inspired by, those Pixies records that are loud, quiet, loud. The album has loud, it also has, but in whole album form, it's got loud and quiet songs. And to me, I really like the contrasts on the record. Absolutely.

Do you remember Gil having any reaction when you brought in Long December? I think he loved it. I don't remember exactly. But I mean, it wasn't like anybody was very resistant because we were right to recording it. No one had anything to say except, what should I play? Charlie grabbed an accordion because I felt like I should probably play the piano on it. He grabbed an accordion. Everybody seemed to get it right away.

it didn't take like i said it's probably take five or six or something like that i don't think we played more than seven takes and we got it just like everybody seemed to the same way it was writing it everybody seemed to just get it yeah it's all from whatever that take is take five or something i feel like there were not more than seven takes on it and when we got it we just got it we knew it and maybe we played it one more time but

We all knew it. It was just like, oh man, that was really good. I think we played it maybe one more time after we... Whatever take is on there. We played one more and then went, now that was it. And then everyone was really excited. I think we went and grabbed and opened a bottle of wine. And everyone wanted to have a drink. And then while they were doing that, I went back out and did the background vocals. Wow. And then it was done. Because I remember...

and got to the Viper room before it closed. It took a little bit of time, but I played it for the guys outside after we closed, but I got there a while before it closed. So I don't know how long it took, but it couldn't have been all that long. Wow.

Like I said, I think I got there, I taught it to them sometime after dinner. And then you don't start playing right away because you got to get sounds together and there's got to go through amps and which piano. Like, I don't think I used the grand. I think I used the upright we had there. Get all your sounds together. It takes a while to start a song. Even if you're only doing a few takes, it takes you a while to get things together and

Charlie figuring out, oh, I should probably play accordion. I don't remember what happened because there's a few hours in there because it's probably done by 11 or something or 12. So there's time in there, but it's not a lot of time to finish a song like that. It does show how empathetic the band was to your songs by that point and how well developed you guys were that an arrangement like that could come together so quickly. Oh, yeah. I mean, we were...

That changed as soon as Ben joined the band in a lot of ways because he got me like that. He understood. I mean, we recorded Miller's Angels. And it was recorded originally before all the other songs because it was recorded for the movie The Crossing Guard. And we did that version of it two or three days after Ben joined the band.

So we had almost never even played it. And he and I made up the whole latter half of that song was an improvisation that I made up on the spot while we were recording it that day. And not only Ben, but everybody else played right along with me making up the whole latter half of the song. That whole long outro on Miller's Angels was just improvised and improvised.

I mean, it's surprising enough that everybody else got it, but that Ben did is shocking because he'd been in the band literally two or three days. We were, yeah, maybe like that. Anything stand out from the making of the video? I do think it was probably, I think it was Courtney's first music video since Dancing in the Dark, it just occurs to me. It was a long day. Those were a couple, I think a couple really long days. A lot of hairdressers. Videos had budgets back then. It still had a budget. It was just, it was really long.

I don't want to get into that. It was long. It was difficult. I found it very difficult. Someone will save that for the 50th anniversary of the video, maybe. Has it risen in your estimation in your canon or was it always pretty high up? I thought it was perfect when I wrote it.

like i actually i forgot one part of that day the first thing i did the day the morning after i wrote it was i drove to geffen which was still in the clubhouse back then that that great house on sunset boulevard with the g over the door i drove to geffen and to tony berg's office to my r and r guy and i played it for him the best a r guys the really good ones they got pianos in their offices and tony had a piano in his office i played it for him that was the first thing i did then i went to the hospital

but I was really excited. I thought it was the most, it just felt perfect. I don't know if it's the best song I've ever written, but it's absolutely timeless to me and it's perfect. Hello, Hannah Waddingham here. Have you seen the fabulous new Sun Princess? World-class entertainment, exceptional dining, and the greatest pizza ever. It's on!

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It just seems like a gem. It's cut perfectly. It's flawless and like not perfect like you played it all perfect. There's no wrong notes. The timing's weird. Maybe it's a little slower than it should be, but it just feels like forever. It just feels like it's perfect. It feels like it's got a little brill building in it to me, a little like a craft, a little of the kind of thing that Townes Van Zandt would write, like the writer writers. It feels like

it's not just passion it's got some craft to it and feels like it had a lot of thought and craft and it didn't because it was just really just written in a stream of consciousness halfway but it was the right stream of consciousness so much so that it feels like

Cole Porter to me. Are there other sort of Christmas songs that are in your personal, at the top of your personal canon? Everything on Phil Spector Wishes You a Merry Christmas, whatever that record is, is out of this world. Especially the one, Christmas, the snow's coming down. I think it's just called Christmas. I don't, I can't remember, is that Merry Well? Christmas, Baby Please Come Home. Baby Please Come Home. Darlene Love, that makes more sense, yeah. Christmas, the snow's coming down. Christmas, I'm watching.

Yeah, that is a fantastic song. I think my favorite is still "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," especially the Ella version. I think that's just a spectacular song. And like I said, I guess "River" too is a real... it's not... yeah, but it is a Christmas. "Singin' Songs of Joy" and a piece of... It is. It's very much a song about... I think it's very similar to "Long December." It's about... it's hard. Some of this stuff is hard that I'm going through.

and I wish I had a river I could sail away on. It's got some of that, there's difficulty in this life, and I'm dealing with it. I think that Mariah Carey song is fantastic. That's a great one. Yeah, I mean, a lot of pop songwriting in that period is not that memorable to me in that kind of a way. But that one is fantastic. That's a great song. The best record, other than the Phil Spector one to me, is probably that...

Ray Charles' Christmas album is so good. Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer had a very shiny nose. And it's out of print now. You can't even, I think it's not even on Spotify. Some of the songs are, but the album is not. I don't know what the deal is with it. I was trying to find it the other day. I wanted to buy it for someone, and it's like, it was a million dollars on Amazon. I guess this was last year. Maybe it's changed since then. But I remember that I couldn't find it online.

The album itself isn't on Spotify. The Spirit of Christmas, that album. Yeah, yeah. By Ray Charles, yeah. That's next to the... There's an Ella Christmas album, which is also great, called A Swinging Christmas or something. I'm a little in a rut with my favorite singers. Ella, Ella, Ella, Ella. But yeah, I think those are the best. But that Ray Charles record is so good, and maybe it's even more in my brain right now because of the fact that I can't find it. Sufjan Stevens made one of those really good... He has a collection of...

a group of those EPs he was making for a while that are all Christmas stuff. And there's some really good stuff on there too. He has a beautiful sort of sad version of Little Drummer Boy. I think it's Songs for Christmas is the Sufjan Stevens thing. Oh, I know. Oh my God, Charlie Brown Christmas. ♪

That's magnificent. The music on that is so... It's so much above what you expect from a soundtrack to a TV cartoon. I read someone the other day saying this. I wonder if it was in the Times or the New Yorker. That would be a perfectly fine cartoon without that music. But when you add that music, it becomes...

completely timeless. That Linus' song, or not Linus' song, that one Schroeder plays, not the do-do-do-do-do-do, but it's like that sort of slow, sadder one. Christmas time is here. Christmas time is here.

God, what a great record. It's shocking that someone paid for that for a TV thing, you know? You released what was essentially the first half of an album last year. It was called Butter Miracle, Sweet One. I really enjoyed that. And then there's a part two on the way, which I understand you already recorded, but I think you scrapped it and are starting over. Yeah, or I should finish redoing it soon. I should get a wrap to finishing that. I've been not doing it.

Yeah, you know, it was really, I thought I had the second half written. I was over in England again on the farm. I wrote the four songs I wanted for the second half. And then I went on the way home. The last thing I did was go to London for a few days and I sang on the Gang of Youth's record. I hung out with those guys for a few days and sang on that record. And a little while after I got home, David sent me the record. David Leo Pepe, who's the lead singer, sent me Angel in Real Time. It was a while before it came out.

And it blew my mind. It was so good. And also I felt, oh yeah, this is what it's supposed to be like. This is falling a little short. The second half of the suite, it just needed more work. So yeah, I scrapped it. That album is so good. It's never happened to me before in my career. I've never sat with someone else's record. There's no point in comparing. They don't need to be. But there was just some things missing from it. I just wasn't moved like I wanted to be or moved like I was so moved listening to

Angel in real time, I think that I just thought, yeah, I got to put a little more work in. So next year, perhaps? Yeah, I've got to finish it soon because next year is so busy. We're going to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa in March and April. And then we're going to the American tour will be June, July, August through September. It's like a long tour. I really need to get finishing this.

sometimes i just don't think about writing i really i think about playing all the time but i don't always think about writing yeah i thought the first half was really good so i love the first time i really do love it you just have to match that's all yeah you know it's a weird thing i just i'm so unsure about how to put out music these days i used to get so fired up about the possibility of putting things out that once i start writing i can't stop and i think i avoided writing for the last few years before butter miracle because i loved somewhere under wonderland

And I think it's the best, most attentive and best performance we've ever had by a record company. Capitol was so good about working on that record and all the stuff they put into it. But it feels like it didn't make much of an impression on the culture and I worry that we aren't exactly sure how to put out records anymore. You can get stuck in that, "Yeah, I'm gonna put it out and then I'm gonna go work with radio." Elevator Boots is the number one song at a format. It's the number one song at AAA. It's not like it failed in any way.

♪ Bobby was a kid from 'round the town ♪ ♪ Kick's pumped up and head held down ♪ ♪ Underwater mall ♪ But I just, I don't know that we know how to do it. We're missing something that we should be doing. I don't know what exactly it is. Part of it may just be that you can't just grind and work and manufacture a hit like you could before. Things happen all the time, but they may just happen virally, which is something no one can necessarily grind into happening. I don't know, but it makes me feel a little like

You know, after Saturday nights and Sunday mornings was the first time that I felt like people had come back around to really wanting to hear our band again and respecting us a little bit and not being just the butt of jokes. And so I really wanted all the things after that to make impressions because we could finally do that again. But it's come at a time when I'm not sure we can crime back into that place in the world. I don't know.

No one knows how to anymore. Even the labels thought they could manufacture TikTok virality and it could just as likely be Billy Joel's Zanzibar or whatever that goes viral instead of something new they're trying to push. So it's just weird out there for sure. Yeah, I mean, we had a little bit of a thing with Accidentally in Love started to be something that people were doing like lip syncs to a little while ago. It just comes and happens and goes and that's that.

I don't know. I'm not sure how to do it exactly. But I really love the work we're doing. And I wish I could. I don't know. I know it's one of the reasons I don't think of writing a lot. I think of playing because we get such good responses when we play. But I should probably spend more time writing. Did you see that bizarre New York Times op-ed that dropped your band's name and put you alongside bands I'm not sure you totally belong with? The headline was Hootie and the Blowfish and the End of History. Oh, yeah. No, I started to read it the other day and I was like, oh, this is not...

It's just going to make me sad. It did. I feel like it's someone who didn't bother to ever listen to any of our music and then just lumped us in a bunch on stuff. And we've never... I was so relieved when you wanted to interview us that time, but...

It was a decade of being a joke. And it's never, I don't know that we're ever going to really recover from that completely. You know, just the other day, there was a clip that showed up from Jimmy Kimmel, who I, you know, I liked Jimmy. I knew Jimmy. Like he was dating a friend of mine years ago. I gave him an opening slot. I surprised an audience at Hammerstein by putting Jimmy on stage and having him play a bunch of when he was doing parody stuff on SNL. But, and he kind of objected to it, but obviously the writers thought it was funny. It was like talking about

Wee Tweets. It's his Wee Tweets thing and they were picking tweets they should or shouldn't say and the audience picks them. And the tweet was, if you know more than four Counting Crows songs, you're either depressed or in the band. He was like, wait, but I love the band. They're great. But I was like, but that's the sort of attitude. It's not just, it's not even about being bad. It's just about

being dismissed, like that no one out there would know more than four of our songs, because what would be the point? And I think that's, it's even worse than saying you suck in a way. It's just saying you're just a part of a lump of something that doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, that's how I felt like the, that piece did not, was bad on every level. I just, I started the first couple of paragraphs and then I put it down. I thought it's just going to make you sad. Don't, no point.

But yeah, no, I didn't see the rest of it. There was a thing going around, and I genuinely don't know if this is true, that sometimes you withhold Mr. Jones if you feel like you're not feeling a crowd on a particular night. Is that true? It's usually like the third song. Because I noticed you always play it. It's almost on every set list and usually at the beginning these days. But that was like a...

Someone said they knew someone who worked with you and then if you weren't there, you would sometimes punish crowds by withholding Mr. Jones. I think so. I mean, I could... It might feel like that to the crowd. You know, there are... Because there are days when we don't play it. Not recently so much, but there were times where... There were years where we didn't play it at all and I felt like it didn't matter. We had great shows...

But I know that my crew told me one time that sometimes if we don't play Mr. Jones, when they're clearing the stage, people are yelling at them. Which is like, sorry. So I don't know. But it's been a while since we didn't play it. I really like the song, so I tend to play it a lot. But I don't know. I mean, it's entirely possible I have done that. It does sound like, you know what? Fuck you. You're not getting Mr. Jones tonight. I could see doing that. A crowd, you end up playing one of those shows at a casino. Yeah.

And the casino sells the front row to high rollers. And so they have these people wandering in and out of the show or sitting with like a hooker on their lap. And you do have shows like that at casinos where it's like, oh, and it's one of the reasons I tell people,

I don't pay attention to the audience very much because it's a bad thing. It can be great. When the audience is great, it's great. But you're going to have a front row. And even if you do, what about the 10,000 people behind them? You can't see them and they're there. And are you really going to shit a show down the tubes because some guy in the front row? But that isn't to say that I've never done it. I could see it does sound like me, but I...

I have no memory of it. Not that I know of. Like I said, we mostly play it every night. I don't know. It's like you say things sometimes in interviews and they get misquoted. And then after the game of telephone gets to some guy saying,

We withhold it. Who knows? Like we're testing the audience. But it's mostly been like the third or fourth song because we use it to peak the intro and then we play something quiet and we build the show up again. It's like part of an arc. There was a couple times, you know, a few years ago, like maybe five or six years ago now. I always forget because the pandemic put a chunk in there where we had it like.

two-thirds of the way through the main set for a little bit and that worked really well too but most of the time it's like the third song or the fourth song depending on the length of the show so can't be doing much we'll call that one semi-debunked mostly debunked anything's possible anyway yeah anyway man i'll let you go in a minute i mean in general you seem like just talking to you i guess for the second time this year you seem like you're in a pretty good place these days

Yeah, I mean, I think I really am. Life's good. I mean, we had a flood here and that sucked, but it enabled us to replace all our floors. I mean, the problem is we got back from two months on tour and they had fixed all of it, but it's basically like we'd just moved into our house. But yeah, you know, life's pretty good. I've been feeling, I've been in a really good relationship for five years now, which is impossibly long for me and has been great. And, you know, I feel like I've,

I made a lot of good adjustments in my life. Come around on stuff. There's things I want. But I'm pretty happy in the band. We're playing great shows. Gonna go around the world this year. Next summer, I got a tour with some of my best friends. That's not announced yet, so I probably shouldn't say it. Yeah, things have been pretty good. Glad to hear it. Yeah. Happy holidays. Thanks, man. You too. Happy long December season. What a pleasure. Thanks so much for joining me. Thanks, Brian. I really appreciate it, man.

And that's our show. We'll be back next week. In the meantime, subscribe to Rolling Stone Music Now wherever you get your podcasts. And please leave us five stars and a nice review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify because that's always appreciated. But as always, thanks so much for listening and we will see you next week.

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