Episode 214: You Demand Perfection From Yourself

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• Drummer's Memoir Says Black Crowes Were 'Too Hard To Handle'

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  In the early 1990s, the Black Crowes were on top of the rock ‘n’ roll world. In a pop music scene pivoting from hair bands to grunge and hip-hop, the Atlanta-based blues rockers had positioned themselves apart from everyone, topping the charts and selling millions of albums.

  Fronted by a pair of ever-feuding siblings — singer Chris Robinson and his younger, guitar-playing brother, Rich — the Crowes became known as much for their volatility as they were for their hit music.

  But the Crowes’ flights through fame and fortune were anything but a straight-line ascent.

  So says drummer Steve Gorman, who has released his memoir, “Hard To Handle: The Life and Death of The Black Crowes,” that details the meteoric ups and tumultuous lows that the legacy rockers experienced on their journey from local band to global megastars. Gorman’s memior was co-written by Wisconsin-native Steven Hyden.

  Gorman, a cofounder of the band, was there at the beginning of it all and remembers meeting Robinson the moment the drummer stepped off the Greyhound bus in Atlanta, having moved there from Kentucky in 1987.

  “When I stepped off the bus, the first person that approached me was Chris,” Gorman said told WPR’s “BETA.” “And my immediate thought was that he looked like Emo Philips.”

  “He was just a super skinny, big-nosed, rubber-faced guy with a clear sense of humor and a great wit, which was on display immediately, so we hit it off right away,” Gorman recalled.

  The next night, Gorman would attend a show of Chris Robinson’s band, Mr. Crowe’s Garden, which featured Rich Robinson on guitar. Gorman would get a firsthand look at the Robinson brothers’ dynamic dichotomy on stage.

  “There was an energy and very real vibe … to that singer. Now, his brother, who is playing guitar, had the exact opposite effect. He was invisible and trying to be even more invisible,” he said.

  Still, Gorman couldn’t help but be impressed by the results.

  “There was no denying that that band had a vibe, they had something,” he said.

  Gorman and Chris Robinson would eventually become roommates and a few months later, Chris Robinson would ask the drummer to join his band. At first, Gorman was hesitant, not wanting to get in between the two brothers. Sensing their potential, he would ignore his internal compass and became a member of Mr. Crowe’s Garden.

  In the spring of 1988, the band would be discovered by A&M Records’ George Drakoulias. The college roommate of Def Jam and Def American Records founder Rick Rubin, Drakoulias would land the band, which was now refashioned as the Black Crowes, and help with their debut album, “Shake Your Money Maker.”

  “Shake Your Money Maker” launched the Crowes into the stratosphere. The record featured four hit singles, with two of them, “Hard to Handle” and “She Talks to Angels,” topping the pop charts. The album would go on to sell more than 5 million copies.

  “At the time, it seemed perfectly normal because when you’re that age, everything you do you go, ‘Yeah, well, this makes sense.’ Looking back now, it’s completely absurd,” Gorman said of the album’s overnight success.

  While the success of “Shake Your Money Maker” would make the Crowes household names, it also exacerbated the underlying tensions innate to the band’s culture.

  “For a few years as a local band, we would have blowups and we would have arguments and I would get caught in the middle and then I would be arguing with one or the other of them or both,” Gorman said. “But in a local band, you do that and then you don’t see each other for three days. That all ends when you put an album out and tour for a year and a half straight.”

  Gorman said that this unhealthy dynamic synthesized as the Crowes’ new normal. He said that the pressure Chris Robinson felt being thrust forward as the face of the band was leading to a new toxicity behind closed doors.

  “We weren’t the kind of band that could talk about how we were feeling on a day-to-day basis. You got up, you put on your armor and you made sure you didn’t turn your back on anybody,” he said.

  Gorman said his personal low point was touring in Tokyo for the band’s second album, “The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion,” where fatigue, alcohol abuse and the poisonous new normal finally led to a breakdown and a brief contemplation of suicide.

  “I thought, ‘If I just jump this would go away.’ And thankfully, my immediate second thought was, ‘Oh my God, what are you doing.’ And I threw up. I got sick right there in my room,” he said.

  “A lot of this was fueled by Chris Robinson and how he was acting and treating everybody,” Gorman continued. “The very essence of our band’s community was toxic and I couldn’t take it anymore.”

  The band’s follow-up albums would be met with ever-decreasing fanfare and singer Chris Robinson was becoming better known for dating and eventually marrying Hollywood star Kate Hudson. Gorman was ready to leave the group until a chance meeting with Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page in late 1999. The legendary guitarist and the Black Crowes would collaborate on the live 2000 double album, “Live at the Greek,” featuring live performances of Zeppelin classics. This pairing would re-energize the group, according to Gorman.

  “We felt a very, very real kinship and that experience, it really was great for the Black Crowes,” he said. “It was great for the Black Crowes in that our career was really sagging and suddenly, the world remembered we were a good band.”

  But as before, the good times wouldn’t last. Page abruptly left the accompanying tour after a performance on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” ostensibly blaming an ailing back issue. Gorman would find out later that Page had offered to formally contribute to the Black Crowes’ upcoming album and that Rich Robinson had rudely declined.

  “(Jimmy) had had a conversation with Rich Robinson the night before he left the tour and that conversation made him question ‘Why am I risking further damage to my back for a situation where this guy clearly doesn’t appreciate me.’ And it was a staggering, truly earth-shattering conversation to be on the receiving end of,” Gorman said.

  Gorman left the band in 2001.

  In 2013, after many fits and starts with reunion touring plans, the founding trio decided they would honor the 25th anniversary of the release of “Shake Your Money Maker” and formally say goodbye with a 2015 tour. As they were planning it, Rich Robinson and Gorman received an email from Chris Robinson’s then wife outlining that he wanted to renegotiate the terms of their agreement.

  “His terms were non-negotiable and our answer was ‘no.’ And, that was literally the end of the Black Crowes,” Gorman said.

  For his part, Gorman doesn’t think either Robinson brother will ever pick up a copy of his memoir.

  “I don’t think either one of them is going to be at all happy with it, but they would never be happy with it regardless of what I wrote and what they’re going to hate, is that someone else has the narrative.”

• YouTube Star’s 'Binging With Babish' Goes Big Time

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  Andrew Rea didn’t set out to be a YouTube star. But, when you explore the intersection of his life’s shared passions of food and film, all the ingredients are definitely there.

  “I was burning chicken breasts and cookies back in middle school,” Rea tells WPR’s “BETA.” “And, I was making home movies to get out of writing essays in middle school. I was doing those things at the same time. I didn’t put the two together for a solid 15 or 20 years.”

  When he finally did combine his two favorite hobbies, the result was “Binging With Babish” – Rea’s signature YouTube series and channel. The concept is short and sweet: Rea recreates recipes from popular films and TV series.

  “I didn’t realize that it would create a formula that consistently gets new audience members every time because it keeps attacking niche subjects and media,” Rea explained. “But, just like the channel itself, it was a very happy accident. I just love movies and television.”

  The concept may be simple, but it’s successful. “Binging with Babish” boasts north of 5 million subscribers and Rea recently tweeted that his channel was watched for 228 million minutes last month.

  My channel was watched for 228M minutes last month – that’s 433 years 🤯 I love my job!!

  — Binging With Babish (@BingingWBabish) October 17, 2019

  Rea created the concept one night while working in his tiny Queens apartment. The self-described film junkie loves to have Netflix reruns of old TV shows play in the background. That night, an episode of “Parks and Recreation” came on and as Rea writes in his companion recipe book — “Binging with Babish: 100 Recipes Recreated from Your Favorie Movies and TV Show” — “The proverbial lightbulb stuttered to life over my head.”

  This particular episode of “Parks and Rec” featured a burger cook-off between health nut Chris Traeger’s turkey burger and beef purist Ron Swanson’s traditional patty.

  “Chris’s burger was this mélange of foodie buzzwords,” Rea said. “And I was like what would that actually taste like? Were the writers just having fun with foodie buzzwords or would that actually taste good?”

  So, Rea set out to recreate the burger and film his project. He planned to post the video on the food subreddit on Reddit.com where he would post under the moniker of Oliver Babish — derived from Oliver Platt’s character on “The West Wing.”

  “I didn’t know what to call it, so I just said ‘Binging with Babish,’” Rea said. “Now, that not very good and very specific niche joke is my entire brand and identity and what most people think my last name is.”

  The verdict: “Beef just tastes better than turkey, no matter how you dress it up,” Rea admitted.

  Rea’s video was a huge success and encouraged him to do more. He would eventually pivot from his day job in the film industry to creating Babish episodes full time. An epochal episode Rea cites is when created the pasta aglio e olio scene from the film “Chef.”

  Rea needed to buy the carving fork prominently displayed in the film, but he was deep in debt and broke. Yet, he still purchased the carving fork and went home to film the episode. It turned out to be one of his most popular videos, inspiring legions of fans to share their version of the recipe.

  “That was the moment when I realized I will do anything for this show. I want to do it right,” he said.

  Rea was so moved by this turn of events that he got a tattoo of the carving fork on his arm.

  “Chef” director Jon Favreau’s kids saw the episode and became enamored with the series in general. They encouraged their dad to watch it.

  Favreau — who penned the foreword to Rea’s cookbook — loved “Binging with Babish” and wanted to connect with Rea on a crossover with his own Netflix food series, “The Chef Show” with Roy Choi.

  “Now I have this incredible connection with this Hollywood megastar who I never could’ve imagined I would have the opportunity to even be in the same room as,” Rea said.

  When Rea appeared on “The Chef Show,” Favreau presented him with the actual carving fork from the movie.

  “That was a superlative and incredible experience,” Rea shared.

  In addition to his cookbooks, Rea has expanded his brand to include the offshoot series “Basics with Babish” where he shares food staples and tips. He also launched the “Being with Babish” series where he shares his life experiences with lucky fans of his channel.

  “I wanted the opportunity to meet with fans and I wanted the opportunity to give back. My success and my happiness and my beautiful new life is a direct result of my fans engagement and willingness to tune in,” Rea said.

• Crime Novelist Laura Lippman's 'Lady In The Lake' Explores Social Issues In 1960s Baltimore

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  Since she wrote her debut novel in 1997, crime novelist Laura Lippman has made her mark in crime fiction.

  Lippman was named one of the most essential crime writers of the past 100 years by Lithub. And her latest novel, “Lady in the Lake,” combines elements of noir with an exploration of social issues such as race, gender and religion.

  “It’s always important to me to explore social issues,” Lippman told WPR’s “BETA.” “When I started writing crime fiction in the 1990s, there was a sense that certain topics — the focus on what it meant to live in a particular city and its problems, class issues, economic inequality — all of those things were kind of on the table at the time for crime writers to write about.

  “No one seemed to be that interested. Money is so central to so many crime novels that it allows us to write about class and economic inequality in a way that wasn’t always being taken advantage of in literary fiction.”

  “I see the crime novel as a particularly good vehicle for writing about the times we live in now and writing about certain issues as long as one doesn’t become polemical about them.“

  Lippman’s latest novel is set in Baltimore in 1966, a “hinge year,” she called it.

  “Things are changing, there’s a lot of stuff bubbling beneath the surface, but in many ways, the old order is holding on by its fingernails,” Lippman said. “I found this terrific book called ‘1966,’ which is a history of the year through its pop singles. And one of the key facts you find out when you read that book is that it’s a year in the United States where Roger Miller had a No. 1 song with ‘King of the Road’ and the Rolling Stones had a No. 1 song with ‘Satisfaction.’ And I thought, ‘That’s it. That’s a time period, that’s a culture that’s really breaking apart and that’s interesting to me.’”

  Lippman wanted to write a novel about a woman who wanted to matter.

  “It was a time in which no one would have spoken about women having it all. That wasn’t a concept yet,” she said. “We were a little ways out from the Virginia Slims ads and the Enjoli ad where she said, ‘She could bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan,’ that whole thing.”

  Lippman said that there were a lot of women quietly heading into the workforce in 1966.

  “That did seem to me to be a key element of that era, of women beginning to look around and say, ‘What if I wanted something more?’ And especially a woman like Maddie in ‘Lady in the Lake’ who has a son who’s about to head to college and a husband who, young as he is, is already talking about retirement,” she said.

  “And there’s a line early in the book where he asks Maddie, ‘Well, how do you feel about the Atlantic side of Florida versus the Gulf side?’ And she wonders, ‘Those are my choices now, that’s all I get to decide is whether I’m going to retire in Boca or Sarasota?’ And I think that really sparks something in her because she’s only 37 years old,” Lippman said.

  A chance encounter with an old classmate makes Maddie realize she has broken all of her promises to herself about becoming a writer and living an exciting and interesting life. So she leaves her husband, moves into her own apartment and has an epiphany during which she decides to become a newspaper reporter. But she discovers that the men who run the newspaper only see her as a possible clerical assistant or a secretary.

  “So she has to find a story that’s small enough that they’ll let her work on it but potentially big enough that it will impress people if she breaks it open. And she focuses on the death of an African American woman whose body has been found in the fountain in the lake at a public park after a disappearance of many months that the daily newspapers have never acknowledged, in part because she is an African American woman and there’s very little interest,” Lippman said.

  The two murders in “Lady in the Lake” are based on crimes that happened in 1969.

  The first was the murder of a 35-year-old African American woman named Shirley Parker who was discovered in the Druid Hill Park fountain in Baltimore.

  “They couldn’t even classify it as a homicide because they couldn’t determine the cause of death by the time they found the body,” Lippman said.

  The case remains unsolved.

  “The same year, an 11-year-old girl disappeared and was quickly found. And she had been murdered. And that case was solved very quickly,” Lippman said. “And as a kid growing up in Baltimore, it was a case I knew and was familiar with. I didn’t find out about the so-called Lady in the Lake until I went to work at The Baltimore Sun, where it was a story that was sometimes written about as a local curiosity, an unsolved murder. And I was struck mostly by the fact that an 11-year-old girl had died and I knew everything about that. I knew it contemporaneously. And a woman had died and I knew nothing about it. And had never even read about it.”

  “That is a very big and complicated question,” Lippman said when she was asked about how much the racial dynamics in 1960s Baltimore have changed over the past 50 years.

  “I know that by the ’60s, Baltimore city had become a majority African American school district, which would seem to indicate that the city as well had become majority African American. So that’s the history of Baltimore, that it has long had a minority majority population and it has been very reluctant to grant power to that population,” Lippman said. “It was a long time before we had an African American mayor. And even now with the politicians of the city more and more looking like the people that they represent, it’s still a city that is full of so many haves and have-nots. This is a city that is not providing enough opportunities for the people who really need them.”