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Tuning In To The Music Scene

The Counting Crows' Adam Duritz and The Wallflowers' Jakob Dylan bring their bands to Motown.

ere's a bit of symmetry for you:
On Counting Crows' 1993 de-
but hit, "Mr. Jones," singer Adam
Duritz introduced himself to au-
diences with the line, "I war= be
Bob Dylan." Three years later, he
sang backup for Dylan's kid — on "6th Avenue
Heartache," a hit for Jakob Dylan's band, the Wall-
flowers.
And next week, both singers bring their bands
to Detroit.
"I think we're both after what every band wants
to be," says Duritz, who links Counting Crows and
• the Wallflowers to the swirling, rootsy approach
mined by Rock and Roll Hall of Famers The Band.
"I think we both came from a place where The
Band ... shaped what we do. The basic lesson every-
one learns from The Band is that sort of natural,
reactive playing — really spur-of-the-moment, dy-
namic playing."
And while Duritz and Dylan take a dim view of
the frequent comparisons between their bands'
sounds, there are still striking similarities in the
way both singers handle their notoriety.
In "Mr. Jones," Duritz also sang about his de-
sire for fame, to be "big, big stars." And, he crowed,
"When everybody loves me/I'm gonna be just about
as happy as can be."
He isn't.
For Duritz, fame and celebrity in the wake of
success — 6 million copies
Above:
sold of the Crows' debut al-
The Counting Crows: Ben
bum, August and Every
Adam Duritz, Charles
thing After, has been a cold Mize,
Gillingham, Mall Malley,
experience. He's soured b 37 Dan Vickrey, David Bryson.
intense fan attention,
along with tabloid head-
Below:
lines revealing his rela-
The Wallflowers: Mario
Calire, Rami Jaffe, Greg
tionships with assorted
Richling, Jakob Dylan,
Hollywood actresses (Mary
Michael Ward.
Louise Parker, Samantha
Mathis, Jennifer Aniston and, most recently,
Courteney Cox). It even prompted him to leave his
home in the San Francisco Bay area and move
to Los Angeles.
"When I was home, it was weird going out," says
the son of a former Army doctor who moved Du-
ritz, his mother and his younger sister through six
cities before settling in the Bay area when Duritz
was a teen-ager. "I couldn't seem to go anywhere
without people staring at me."
So he moved down the coastline. "In Los An-
▪ geles, no one cares. New York is the same way,"
he says. "I could just be a guy and go out and talk
u-) to people, not be a rock star for awhile."
Duritz did a lot of his talking at the Viper Room,
wthe notorious celebrity haven where he would hang
out and watch bands play. Eventually he moved
cp behind the bar and started pouring drinks. "I re-

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Gary Graff is the editor of MusicHound Rock: The
Essential Album Guide (Visible Ink Press,
$24.95). Listen to his Rock 'n' Roll Insider
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reports at 8:35 a.m. Thursdays on WRIF-FM
(101.1). Gary Graffs new monthly column on the
music scene will appear the first Friday of the
month in The Jewish News.

L1J

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PHOTO BY DENNIS KEELEY

GARY GRAFF SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS