The feud between The Black Crowes and Aerosmith
The Black Crowes have always been firmly rooted in the best of old-school rock and roll. Throughout their glory years in the early 1990s, the Robinson brothers always wore their influences on their sleeves, taking the sounds of classic rock and blues, which they combined with the band’s trademark swagger. That included everything from B.B. King to The Rolling Stones, and right at the top of their idols list was Aerosmith.
In the early days of the group, Chris Robinson proudly declared Aerosmith were at the top of his list of influences. He said: “I’m a massive Aerosmith fan. I especially love Night In the Ruts and Draw the Line – all of the damaged, burned-out records – the most. I think there’s some really cool, unique rock music on those records.”
For a while, it looked as though The Black Crowes were going in a similar trajectory to their heroes on their first handful of hits. While songs like ‘Hard to Handle’ and ‘She Talks to Angels’ might not have fit in with the grunge scene happening around the same time, this was the kind of rootsy rock and roll that could please both the alternative kids and the cool uncles who had grown up on acts like Aerosmith.
Since ‘The Bad Boys From Boston’ were going through a career resurgence alongside The Black Crowes, Aerosmith took them out for a couple of shows as a support act, where Robinson got a bit of an education as to how the sausage was made. In between shows, Robinson noticed that Steven Tyler was using some sampled vocals onstage, which didn’t sit right with him.
During an interview around the same time, Robinson mentioned keeping all good rock and roll authentic, saying: “If you’re an entertainer and you take it seriously, you entertain with your natural abilities. You go onstage and take a chance like everyone else. People say to us, ‘Man, I heard some bad notes in your set tonight.’ Well, fucking-A right you heard some bad notes. You saw a real band tonight, didn’t you?”.
While Robinson didn’t call out Aerosmith directly, he did ruffle feathers in their camp, and later said: “We went on tour with them and I was still a kid, and I was shocked that they used tapes for Steven Tyler’s vocals. Not the whole thing, but you know, that people back then were using tapes. Robert Plant was doing it. I brought it up in my first Rolling Stone interview and got nasty messages from everyone involved! ‘What are you doing, kid?’ I was like, ‘Oh, sorry!’ I just was shocked that that’s how this went down”.
However, this story does thankfully have a happy meeting. During a chance meeting with Joe Perry in an elevator, Robinson was quickly able to patch up his differences with the Aerosmith team. They hit it off so well that Perry even asked Robinson to contribute vocals to one of his solo albums, as Robinson once recalled: “I hadn’t seen Joe in a while, but I got a call and he was doing these songs. He sent over this song and it only took me about 20 minutes to complete it – because it’s like, oh yeah, I know this! This is fun!”.
Despite the few years lost with bad blood between both bands, the common language of music helped mend those old wounds.
