I
n April 1990, I went to see Junkyard, a middling bluesmetal band with a guitar player who’d been in Minor Threat, thereby raising my punk rock-loving curiosity. There were maybe 12 of us in this cement box of a venue underneath an interstate. The place typically drew an amazing slate of underground/indie bands, along with regular visits from bored local Nazi skinheads, and my friends and I got there early this night, in time for the unknown opening band. That band was the Black Crowes, touring for the first time two months after releasing their debut album, Shake Your Money Maker. There was no mistaking they had something special. The lanky singer moved like classic Mick Jagger, the two guitarists traded killer riffs on song after song, and the whole band delivered like they were playing an arena instead of a mostly empty shithole. The Black Crowes played those types of venues for a few months before the album took off thanks to a hit cover of Otis Redding’s soulful “Hard to Handle,” Stones-y rockers like “Jealous Again” and a massive ballad about a heroin addict, “She Talks to Angels.” Their tour eventually did move to arenas over the next 18 months, the Crowes opening for the likes of Aerosmith and ZZ Top, and Money Maker slowburned its way into becoming the third best-selling album of 1991, right behind Mariah Carey and Garth Brooks, and ahead of Madonna, Whitney Houston and the Crowes’ fellow Georgians R.E.M. Shake Your Money Maker was a strange success in that musical landscape. The Crowes’ retro sound hit the sweet spot for rock fans after hair metal dominated the late ’80s and before so-called “grunge” hit big. It launched a long career for the Crowes, selling more than five million copies, and band-leading brothers Chris and Rich Robinson reunited in late 2019 after years of brotherly turmoil to announce a 30th anniversary tour celebrating Money Maker. The pandemic had other ideas, so now the tour is planned for 2021, and a 30th (OK, 31st) anniversary special edition of Shake Your Money Maker arrives this week, including demo tracks, long-lost recordings from the Money Maker sessions, and a complete live show recorded in the band’s Atlanta hometown in 1990. Rich Robinson called from Nashville to talk about his Money Maker memories and more. These responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Black Crowes’ Rich Robinson (left) and Chris Robinson JOSH CHEUSE PHOTO
ANNIVERSARY
STRUTTIN’ BLUES The Black Crowes’ Rich Robinson reflects on the band’s breakthrough debut, Shake Your Money Maker, and a new edition celebrating its 30th birthday BY DAN NAILEN
INLANDER: What do you think of now when you look back at recording the album? RICH ROBINSON: Being 19 years old, it was just a tremendous amount of fun, and it seemed like a big accomplishment, coming where we came from. We didn’t have a huge following in Atlanta; we were playing music that didn’t really fit in anywhere. There weren’t many rock ’n’ roll bands during that time in our music scene. It was either heavy metal or really alternative, and when we started we came from more of an alternative place. We were way into R.E.M. and Let’s Active and the Paisley Underground movement on the West Coast. But some of my earliest childhood memories were listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and Joe Cocker and Sly Stone and Bob Dylan. Otis Redding and Mose Allison. You have these influences that come from your parents, and you reach a certain age, and you reach out for your own musical identity. Chris got way into Prince and Funkadelic, and I was into AC/DC and bands like that. By the time we got to where we were going to be a band and start writing songs, we came back to rock ’n’ roll music, in its broadest sense. Why do you think the album was commercially successful? It wasn’t just a bunch of critics who liked it. We put out Shake Your Money Maker on a tiny-ass label [Rick Rubin’s Def Jam Records], and God knows why [it took off], but it was authentic. It was sincere. We wrote these songs that spoke to us, and we weren’t bullshitting. We weren’t trying to be successful. We weren’t trying to write ...continued on next page
FEBRUARY 25, 2021 INLANDER 23