BY BRENT OWEN

LEO: This album seems very dark – even by Counting Crows standards – what happened in the last five years that made you more miserable than ever?
Adam Duritz: Oh, I lost my fuckin’ mind, that’s it…I lost my fuckin’ mind…that was a major problem in the delay. Yeah, and I apologize to my band mates daily for taking six years, but yeah that’s kinda what it was. Then we got together and do what we do…we made an album. Now we’re going to school in our underwear, it’s totally different. It’s like that bad dream where you wake up at school in your underwear, with no fuckin’ idea where all clothes are. That’s how we made this record…it’s was a lot like walking around in your underwear.

LEO: Has turning 40 affect your songwriting at all?
AD: Not really. I don’t really think about my age at all, I never really have. I think, what’s the point? I mean, you get all of your days, you have them all and you can do what you want with ‘em. Nobody takes them from you. So I find it hard to be anywhere but where I am. I don’t really feel young or old or anything. This is what 43 is [sic]. I have a friend that’s 75, I have a good friend that’s 22 – and it just seems that I have a lot in common with both of them.
So, no, not really.
I mean being 43 affects me in that I’ve lived these years. 40 through 42 were very good but 43 is no real milestone. My 40th was a blast – I wore a bunny costume. I made everyone dress up in costume in the middle New York. It was the middle of August in New York City and everyone was wearing costumes in my half-built apartment; a construction zone.
I don’t really see age landmark-wise that way. I think you are who you are; it’s all just a matter of how you approach each day. I don’t feel at all old. Me and Dave Bryson [guitarist for Counting Crows] were sitting down talking the other day…well we writing e-mails back and fourth about this. It was right before the record came out and said, “By the way, it’s been nineteen years just me and you.” That’s a hell of a long time to be doing something like this. Me and him have been playing together for nineteen years! And I’ve known Immy [David Immergluck – guitarist for Counting Crows] for twenty-three years now. Immy and I did our first recording together twenty-three years ago. I feel like a kid, I mean, I play in a rock n’ roll band, I still feel like a kid. You know, I’m a mature kid running a big corporation…but I feel like a kid. Immy and I made our first record together before some of my friends were born.
I talked to a friend of mine yesterday, he called me, he’s a student at Berkley who’s getting ready to graduate and trying to figure out what’s going on with life. He was telling me about what he was doing in school and about how his father had been lecturing him about his future. And we just talked about how he was getting ready to go out into the world, and figure out what he’s going to do with the rest of his life.
Ya’ know, he’s just a kid, not from a good part of town, he got himself into school on a full scholarship – he’s really smart and he’s going to do something amazing. But you know, I realize now, that he was born the year after Immy and I recorded the first thing we ever recorded together. But I still have a lot in common with him – because I’ve had some success but I’ve still got lots of dreams too.

LEO: You worked with Gil Norton again to produce the Saturday Nights portion of the album. He’s done Pixies, Throwing Muses, Belly, and of course your own Recovering the Satellites. Why did now seem like the right time to work with him again?
AD: In May of 2006, my manager and I were talking and I had sorta realized that I was crazy and probably needed to go to a hospital or stay home and do work on that. But he thought we should go on tour. And I really wanted to go on the tour too, I just didn’t know if I was healthy enough.
At that time the whole record was [the song] “1492.”
Anyway, I went home after talking to him and I suddenly realized what record I wanted to make. So I called Gil up because we were going on the road in the beginning of July this was maybe the first week of May. I said, “Gil, I want this record, I know it, and I want to do it now.” There were only a couple of songs and a little piece of music I had. And I asked him, “Can you come here? Can you be here by June 1st?”
He said, “Sure.” Then he called me back and said sure he’d be here in three weeks; and we recorded for 25 straight days. I never had any doubt there was only one guy for me. I think I talked to [Steve] Lillywhite at one point about something being possible when “1492” was just getting started. But it seemed obvious this was a Gil record. We’ve never gone back and worked with a producer more than once, but Gil was the guy.

LEO: The Counting Crows have been known for so long as romantic and lovelorn, but there seems to be more than a few, subtle and less-than-subtle, references to various forms of raw sexuality. As a songwriter how can you be frank without coming off vulgar?
AD: Well, there’s been some stuff on other albums that were that way but on this album I didn’t really have a problem with being vulgar. I kinda even wanted some of it to be. But I wanted it to be sexy but I also wanted it to be ugly at times. I wasn’t really trying to avoid ugliness on this record. There were songs that people wanted me to take off of the album for that very reason. Not just in a sexual way but there are songs that are ugly personally. Like “You Can’t Count on Me” that was really calling myself to account for…I’m not really that kind of person but if you’re crazy and you hurt people with all the best of intentions; you’ve still done something kinda terrible.
I found that I had written a lot of songs, that were really sad songs about relationships and people still found that romantic. And I wanted to write that really made it clear: “Look, yeah, it’s romantic that things are over but it’s over because it’s tragic for the people involved – it’s brutal.” So I made it a lot uglier than I am…”You Can’t Count on Me. But this album I wanted parts of it to be ugly. A lot people wanted the guitars off of “You Can’t Count on Me” – and they said take the “t” off of the end of that word. They wanted “1492” and “Los Angeles” off the record…completely. They wanted “On a Tuesday in Amsterdam” off of the record because they said that was too embarrassingly raw emotionally. I said, “Fine, I’m embarrassing but I want it on there.” And “1492” is the reason for the whole record so no one could just take it off – ugly or not…that’s the point.
I didn’t really have a problem with it. I don’t know how you do it without making it vulgar because everyone hears things different. But I definitely made a consorted effort to make it not-pretty. “1492” is not a romantic song…it’s just not. And “You Can’t Count on Me” it’s supposed to be about fighting and finding a void – it’s not a party song.

LEO: So is this the most exposed portrait of Adam Duritz that fans have seen?
AD: No, not necessarily. I guess they’re all pretty bare – ever since August we’ve really been trying to make exposed records – after that I’ve really tried to open myself up. There’s stuff on all of ‘em that’s uncomfortable to sing. This album is