Counting Crows' Adam Duritz: ‘I've known Springsteen for decades and I still can't speak around him'

Telegraph

18-04-2025

It's not often – if ever – that an American pop song name checks The Telegraph. But now, we can add at least one track to that list, thanks to alt-rock veterans Counting Crows. Their latest single, Under the Aurora, opens with an image of London commuters grasping this very newspaper.
'Almost the entirety of our new record was written in England, which is why there's that reference,' explains Adam Duritz, the band's lead singer and principal songwriter. He's talking to me from his home in New York, ahead of the release of Counting Crows' new album, Butter Miracle, The Complete Sweets!
Other nods to Britain are scattered across the album: one track references a 'shrinking English sky'; another sneaks in the British colloquialism of 'telly' for television.
But while his recent stay in England clearly influenced the album, Duritz is a longtime Anglophile. 'I can't describe to you what a thrill it was that first time we went to London,' he says. 'As a kid, you see pictures of the Beatles coming to America and getting off the plane. Going to London for the first time was like that in reverse for me.'
That first overseas tour came in the mid-1990s. Counting Crows had experienced a smash success with their debut album, August and Everything After. It seemed like a self-fulfilling prophecy. After all, the breakout single, Mr. Jones, was about an aspiring singer who dreamed of fame. 'When everybody loves you / You can never be lonely,' Duritz sang. But he soon found that celebrity had its drawbacks.
'It was a really hard adjustment,' Duritz recalls. 'I didn't know how to be famous. When I got home at the end of touring, there were kids camped out on my lawn – I mean literally!'
To escape, he started working a menial job – albeit in an exclusive location. 'I bartended at the Viper Room for a while,' he says. Founded by Johnny Depp and his 21 Jump Street co-star Sal Jenco, the club became the infamous epicentre of 1990s Hollywood culture.
'I was among friends and I was comfortable,' Duritz tells me of his time at the Viper Room. 'I have been a really shy person my whole life. I had trouble going up to people and saying 'Hi'. But when I got famous, I didn't have to go up to people anymore. They came up to me.'
Duritz found he was more comfortable being approached in that contained world than out in public. 'The Viper Room gave me a home at a time when I needed one,' he remembered in a 2021 documentary about the club. 'I will treasure Johnny Depp for the rest of my life because of that. It changed my life. It was the making of me in some ways – the remaking of me.'
Duritz became a key figure in the venue's celebrity scene, where he met – and dated – a string of A-list actresses. 'I met Jennifer Aniston there because a bunch of my friends lied to me and told me she had a crush on me,' Duritz recalled in the documentary. 'I honestly had no idea who she was. I had been on the road during all of Friends.' He also dated Aniston's Friends co-star, Courteney Cox, who appeared in the music video for the Counting Crows song A Long December.
After their debut, the band continued to find success – their second album went to Number 1, and they also picked up an Oscar nomination for their song Accidentally in Love, from Shrek 2. But that first album and single still seemed to overshadow everything else. A recent video promoting their tour acknowledges this with good humour. Duritz lies on an analyst's couch, while a therapist (played by Brain Fallon from New Jersey rock band The Gaslight Anthem) enquires: 'None of your other records have sold as well as your first one. How does that make you feel?'
Duritz may be able to poke fun at the diminishing returns of his band's output. But it's still a sore point. In fact, it's a key reason why Counting Crows haven't released a full-length album in 11 years.
'I really loved our last record,' Duritz says, referring to 2014's Somewhere Under Wonderland. 'Our label did everything to promote it. And I felt like it still barely made any impression on the general public. After that, I got discouraged about the idea of doing really good work and then having it just disappear.'
As Duritz acknowledges, the seismic changes that reshaped the music industry have put bands from an earlier era at risk of being left behind. 'I got the feeling we didn't know how to put records out in this new world,' he admits. 'Radio doesn't really do it any more. There's no MTV. I love social media and its possibilities. But I missed the boat on Instagram and TikTok.'
Throughout our conversation, Duritz defaults to this kind of self-criticism. Rock stars are supposed to ooze confidence. But he seems more focused on his shortcomings – particularly his mental health struggles with dissociative disorder and social anxiety. 'I can be a complete frozen nightmare with my heroes,' he tells me. 'I've known Bruce Springsteen for 35 years and I still have trouble forming sentences around him.'
This lack of confidence is another reason for the 11-year gap between albums. 'I sat on these new songs for two-and-a-half years without even playing them for the band,' Duritz says. 'It was hard for me to know if they were good. I really started doubting them and I lost a lot of confidence.'
One is tempted to draw an analogy with the Biblical Sampson, whose powers were bound up in his hair. After all, this new album will be the band's first since Duritz shaved off his trademark dreadlocks. It was a haircut so significant that it made headlines around the world. It also sparked a social media storm among Counting Crows fans. Most were supportive, though some took the opportunity to mock Duritz's departed dreads, which had reportedly been reinforced by extensions. 'Where will the crows nest?' one commenter quipped.
But whether the hair was real or fake, the Old Testament analogy is apt. Duritz admits that his new look has had a major impact on his identity and self-esteem. 'Since I cut the dreads off I've become much less recognisable,' he says. 'I've found myself struggling to talk to people again.'
At a recent party, he found himself next to actors Michael McKean and Bob Odenkirk. 'Neither of them knew who I was,' Duritz says. When a partygoer outed him as 'the singer from Counting Crows', McKean joked, 'Let me shake your hand again now I know you're famous.'
'It was funny,' Duritz acknowledges. 'But I'm having this weird experience where I'm suddenly not famous. I'm having to do that thing I had to do when I was a kid which is introduce myself to everybody. But I'm still paralysingly shy.'
However, the party ended with a more affirmative encounter, when Duritz was recognised by Jack Antonoff, superstar producer for Taylor Swift and frontman of indie band Bleachers. 'He was probably the only person there who actually knew who I was,' Duritz says. 'I said to him, 'Ever since I shaved my dreads, nobody recognises me.' Then he was like, 'It was never the dreads, man. It was always you.' He was really nice.'
Duritz could have used such positive reinforcement two-and-a-half years earlier. Because when he did finally share his new songs with the band, he found his doubts had been misplaced. 'It just felt great. We ended up going in a couple weeks later to make the record.'
Now, everything will come full circle, as the band's upcoming tour culminates with a final show in London – like the Beatles in reverse again. 'It's still the coolest thing coming to London,' Duritz says. 'It's still a thrill.'
Beyond that, he has hopes for the future of Counting Crows, albeit in his usual self-deprecating way. 'I suppose at some point it's going to run out,' he reflects. 'No one's going to want to see us or we'll get sick or someone will die. But as long as we can play, we will. Because why not? I mean, who gets to spend a whole life playing rock'n'roll? It's pretty rare.'