Book Review: Hard to Handle by Steve Gorman and Steven Hyden

Look, if you like books about bands achieving success and then fighting each other like whiny babies (and I know I do!), this is the book for you. Lots of people know Chris Robinson, but not as many people know that his brother Rich was the lead guitarist for the Black Crowes. And when Chris and Rich weren't trying to screw the rest of the band (including the author, drummer Steve Gorman) out of percentages and publishing rights, they were fighting each other mentally, physically, and sometimes violently. If you like to have a chuckle now and then at people who take themselves way too seriously, this is a great book (and the authors are on your side).

Side note on the Robinson brother antagonism: In the early 2000s, the Crowes had a month free in their concert schedule, and decided to pair up with Oasis to fill the month with arena dates. They called it the Brotherly Love Tour. It doesn't get any better than that!

What makes this an even better read, especially for me, is that this is an ATLANTA book. The band (originally called Mr. Crow's Garden) formed in Atlanta in the late eighties. When the author took his first trip down to Atlanta, he was met at the bus station by Chris Robinson and some friends, and they all went out to Jalisco's in Peachtree Battle. Before the first album made it big, Steve worked in a record store in Little Five Points as well as in a Fellini's. And years later, as part of a very successful band, Rich ran into one of his old friends who had turned into a meth head while pumping gas at Monroe and Ponce. There was a lot of cool Atlanta references in this book - it would probably be even better for someone who went to the rock clubs in the late eighties/early nineties.

There's also time spent talking about some of the other bands and music people the Crowes ran into. Both Robert Plant and Jimmy Page come off as godsends for the band - making it all the more heartbreaking when Rich Robinson ends up blowing up the band's relationship with Jimmy. Joe Perry from Aerosmith starts out as a jerk but ends up being a nice guy. Producer Rick Rubin comes off as completely ignorant - he should go to jail for his suggestion that the band call itself Kobb Kounty Krowes. And, in a twist, Kate Hudson, who some people thought of as the Yoko Ono of the band due to her marriage to Chris Robinson, comes off great - Steve said that she was the only person who could keep Chris in line and focused on what he needed to do (one of my favorite stories is when Steve told Kurt Russell at Chris and Kate's wedding that the over/under for their marriage was two and a half years; Kurt said "I love my daughter more than anything, but I'll take the under!"). In one of the most famous episodes, the Crowes were one of three bands with trailers backstage at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards. The other two bands with trailers were Nirvana and Guns and Roses, both of whom reportedly wanted to kick each others' @sses. The Crowes spent their time backstage trying to provoke a confrontation between the two bands so they could throw down too (there's a lot of fighting in this book).

Altogether, I'll give this seven out of ten hot dogs for content, plus another dog for being an Atlanta story (your mileage will vary). Curiously enough, last week I was served a bunch of Facebook ads about the Black Crowes getting back together and launching some concerts. This book was published in 2019, and it had sounded like the Crowes were done for good as the Robinson brothers were no longer speaking to each other, but apparently they patched things up and are good to go on tour together. I checked their website to see if they had the rest of the band put together, as I wanted to see if Steve was going to come back as the drummer (being a founding member of the band and all). I haven't seen anything besides Sven (who had a really rough time with drugs in his brief time in the band) coming back as the bassist, but considering how much dirt Steve dug up on the Robinson brothers in this book, I'll take the under!