Tuesday, December 21, 2004

"So You Wanna Be A Rock'N'Roll Star?"

So I was sitting there looking at the liner notes to Ryan Adams's Gold last night, and I noticed that the song "Answering Bells" featured Adam Duritz and Benmont Tench (of the Counting Crows and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, respectively). Anyway, it occurred to me that I'd seen a similar combination before with another roots rock band, the Wallflowers. On their Bringing Down the Horse (still my favorite Wallflowers album), the song "6th Avenue Heartache" features Adam Duritz on backing vocals and Mike Campbell (of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers) on slide guitar.

So what I thought was this--in order to be a successful roots rock band, you apparently need Adam Duritz to do a backing vocal and a member of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers to do their thing on one of your songs. Both people have to be involved on the same song, or it doesn't count.

On the positive side, at least both of those songs really rock. I mean, it'd be something entirely different if they were bad songs, y'know?

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Wallflowers, "The Bleeder"

2 comments:

Noise Monkey said...

Adam Duritz rocks. I'd buy an Elton John album if he was on it.

Chuck Cottrell said...

See, that's exactly why I want to get him to do backup vocals on a Yeti tune...or maybe just lead vocals. It'd be better for everyone involved, really.