THE BLACK CROWES CHRIS AND RICH ROBINSON DISCUSS ‘LIONS’

"People ask us what kind of music we play…Now we say we play Black Crowes music. To get even more general than that, it's soul music-which doesn't necessarily mean it's R&B, it's just music from and for the soul."
–RICH ROBINSON, Album Network, March 30, 2001

"We're trying to make the most soulful, interesting rock & roll music that we can with the tools we feel comfortable expressing ourselves and that's what you get. This record is an accumulation of experience, the things that happen in your career, which are things that happen in your life. Within that, I think LIONS is easily the best record that we've ever made, but we approached every record the same way. It's just that the time, different situations, producers and places in our lives are all a little different."
–CHRIS ROBINSON, Album Network, March 30, 2001

"It's just that the songs are Black Crowes songs. One great thing about working with (producer) Don Was is that he appreciated that-and the fact that we've changed with every record. He felt that every record we'd made had been a growing process in order to reach this level we're at now, where we can shed all the external trappings and it's just us."
–RICH ROBINSON, Guitar World Acoustic, May/June/July 2001

"I think this new album really sums up the last 10 years of where we've been, musically. And it really gives us a starting point for where we wanna go."
—CHRIS ROBINSON, Guitar World, July 2001

"Rock and roll itself is a limiting label, nowadays. Which is weird, because back in the day, rock and roll meant everything. There was rock music and soul music. But now rock music is this tiny little corner of popular music. I know there are kids out there who still care about music. But as far as how the music is sold to people, it's just become a service industry. People write music for the masses, and you can't really do that. Music is a very personal thing. The minute you try to second guess what two or three million people are gonna like, you're fucked. And you put out crap music."
—RICH ROBINSON, Guitar World, July 2001

"Our independence is a fierce statement and when we started making this music, I said that we needed a fierce title for it… I love lions as animals but I also love the symbolism, the strength and the danger. The lion encompasses a lot of things that make music powerful for us. Plus the lion is king of the jungle, the conquering lion of the tribe of Judah, Jah Rastafari."
—CHRIS ROBINSON (on LIONS album title), Kerrang!, April 21, 2001

"Don (Was) was like, 'Make the record you want to make and I'll help you make it'…It was a really pleasant experience: 'This is cool: let's focus on this,' instead of just saying, 'No, that sucks, let's just fuckin' do this.' It was definitely more conducive to being creative and being who we've always wanted to be. Plus, he went back, listened to our records and really focused on the positive element of the fact that we've changed with every [release]. And it hasn't been a conscious change-it's just been the way the music goes through us in a weird way."
–RICH ROBINSON, Album Network, March 30, 2001

"Rich and I really communicated on a different level on this album… The last few years have found us getting closer and being able to deal with each other better and write some really good songs. With this record, we really got deeper into that and expressed ourselves more clearly and the most honestly. When we were finishing up the recording, it was like, wow, that was quite an experience."
–CHRIS ROBINSON on songwriting relationship, Album Network, March 30, 2001

"I think it's funny when people get so angry at the boy bands and all this teen pop. Who cares? Nobody's gonna give a fuck about them years from now. So I don't hate them. Hey, imagine if someone came up to you and said: 'We'll give you a million dollars. You can be famous. We'll have someone write your songs for you, someone produce your record and someone produce your videos. All you have to do is show up and sort of sing on key and we can fix it in Pro Tools.' Would you refuse? Man, who wouldn't do that? So you can't blame these people. They're just doing what they do. I don't think Britney Spears is going to mean something to people 30 years from now."
–RICH ROBINSON, Guitar World Acoustic, May/June/July 2001

"Of course, you're ambitious and you want your music to be popular and to be heard, but we're not adding a deejay or shaving our hair and wearing baggy pants to do it…Don Was was the first person we worked with who brought a tremendous amount of enthusiasm to our work and our project and our vision."
–CHRIS ROBINSON, The New York Daily News, May 4, 2001

"Probably the single biggest influence on how I play would be Nick Drake. I was 16 or 17 when a friend gave us the record Time of No Reply. It was instantly the most beautiful thing I ever heard. It really was. It was right when I started playing guitar so I started trying to figure out how to make my guitar sound like that. I've never been someone who wanted to be Jimmy Page, or Keith Richards. I've never been into guitar players; I've always been into songs."
—RICH ROBINSON, Nylon, July 2001

"The person in these songs (on LIONS) is a man that's gone from being totally alone to one day meeting a woman, and who knows that his entire life will be different from then on in. Musically, the record reflects this change. It's about going from a place of darkness to one of light, from being alone to being together. Listen to the record and you'll hear that it starts in a darker place and then moves through confusion to clarity. You can hear the energy of the freedom we felt as me and Rich talked about communicating on a different level, and I myself reached a new level of enthusiasm and consciousness."
—CHRIS ROBINSON, Kerrang!, April 21, 2001

"What is success? Being around for this long and being able to do what we do is success…Have we sold 60 million records? No. It would be great for us to sell millions of records, but on our own merit."
–RICH ROBINSON, Album Network, March 30, 2001

"The commitment we made to making music is far greater than putting a price on what beauty or what freedom means to us…Our goals have pretty much stayed the same: These songs come before anything else…Music really is an intricate part of our daily lives; it's how we see things–the people we love and the people we hate."
–CHRIS ROBINSON. Album Network, March 30, 2001