It’s every artist’s dream to have a song become so huge that they begin to hear it being played everywhere, but sometimes such a level of success can be a blessing and a curse.
Just ask Counting Crows’ Adam Duritz, who recently revealed that the band’s successful debut single, Mr. Jones, became such a huge hit that he even heard it in a strip club, and it became somewhat of a buzz kill.
The song was released as part of their 1993 debut album, August And Everything After, and speaking to Classic Rock magazine, Duritz says the song was originally written for another band he was in before Counting Crows, but it ended up not being used.
He recalls writing Mr. Jones directly after a wild night in San Francisco’s Mission District with his friend and Himalayans bandmate, Marty Jones. At the time, Jones’ father, who lived in Spain, was over in the US performing.
“He’d become one of the iconic flamenco guitar players in Madrid, and was playing with his old flamenco troupe who he’d played with many years before,” explains Duritz. “There were singers, dancers, musicians, a whole bunch of people who were all part of the scene, and they played this show and it was fucking outrageous.”
He adds, “I remember going home and needing to go to work [on it] right away. I’ve never been one of those people who wrote over chunks of time, I used to just sit down and do it and I’d stick with it until it was done.”
The actual recording of the song became tricky, and Duritz says he must have done “fifty or sixty” vocal takes. Though released as Counting Crows’ first single, they didn’t expect it to become such a huge hit.
“After SNL [Saturday Night Live], it got pretty big on the radio. By that summer, when we were playing, there was a lot of people who wanted to hear Mr. Jones. It seemed like the audience was there for Mr. Jones. But I noticed that more after the fact. I didn’t notice it blowing the record up, I just noticed that once the record blew up, Mr. Jones was really big.
“I remember being in a strip club in New Orleans and Mr. Jones comes on, and I was like: ‘No, no, this is not the vibe. Not to this song!’ I don’t mind getting a dance every now and then, but not to my song,” he says. “That is not okay.”
Counting Crows released their eighth album, Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets! back in May. Head over to their website to view their current tour dates.
The post “No, no! Not to this song!”: Counting Crows’ Adam Duritz recalls the time he heard one of his songs played in a strip club appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.