Here is an interview with Adam Duritz from Zack's page. It was trascribed by Benjamin Day.
Viktor

Hi.

I have just finished transcribing some mini-interviews with Adam, from a TV broadcast. The transcription is verbatim, except for one word that the interviewer says, (very strong Italian accent didn't help!)

The transcription is in a text file included with this mail.


** Verbatim-ish transcription of mini-interviews with Adam Duritz of Counting Crows, from the TV broadcast of the Rome concert, 28/04/94. ***

transcribed by Benjamin Day.

*Adam on How Band Formed*

"Uh, well Dave and I, (our rhythm guitar player) had just been playing together in little coffee houses, cafes, bars, and we decided to put a whole band together. And, uh, knew a lot of guys from the scene from playing around San Francisco. Charlie played keyboards for a band that I opened for on my very first gig. Matt, our bass player, had been in Dave's old band. Steve, uh, Steve and I had rehearsed in the same building on different bands, Dave produced Steve's band's record.

We had all been around for a while. Dan used to play guitar in a lot of Charlie's bands. Um, we'd just kind of known each other and they were guys we had always wanted to play with, so...that's how we did it."

*Adam on Time and Time Again*

Interviewer:
Listening to Time and Time Again, I was thinking about the immensity of the USA, and the loneliness especially of some small town. I mean, what's wrong in it? There's another side of the freedom and the ?????????? in the USA.

Adam:
"It's kinda, you know, a nihilistic song, it's almost like someone gets frustrated with...you know, I was thinking of the desert, east of California, and just leaving people and ending up...trying to fly as fast as you can towards something else, and the desire at times to sort of rid yourself of that numbness and that emptiness that you get when you're in the middle of something too big, and in the song the person just has the desire to destroy, wishes he can burn it all down, and take himself with it probably."

*Adam on Rain King*

"Rain King is a book I read, but in this song I was relating it to me. Just someone who maybe pours out a little too much. Sort of a vision of excess. You know, just someone who does everything just a little bit too excess, like a big open wound of a person. For good and for bad, get yourself all over other people."

*Adam on Round Here, Rain King, Ghost Train, Sullivan Street, A Murder of One*

"Most of the album was about people leaving, and the ability to stop leaving, too much ambivalence in the way you stick to other people, and the ability to stick to other people. I think Round Here is about someone who's left so much that he's turning into sort of a ghost, you know, just a memory of himself. You know, I really relate back to to the same character in Rain King, yeah, Rain King certainly, but more specifically in Ghost Train or Sullivan Street.
The flip side at the end of the record is A Murder of One, which is about me looking at someone who is staying, but perhaps for all the wrong reasons. Because there was a friend of mine who was in a relationship that was really bad, and she stayed because it was safe, because she felt good there. But it was a suffocating degrading, numbing relationship and I was sort of telling her 'you should get out of that, you should change', you know.
But it's funny, you know, there's an addition to that that I wrote which we only do live, I don't think we should do it all the time, where in the breakdown part the woman responds, 'How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people? How does it feel to be one of the fortunate ones? How does it feel to be all alone under the sun?' which is, kinda...I did it off the top of my head one day live in a concert, and it sorta responds to it, which is 'You're telling me to leave, to get out there cos it's safe, but you know, what's it like to be you, where everybody loves you, you're a big star, you know, And you're still alone. Maybe I don't want that danger.' And that's what she's sort of saying back."