‘Hard to Handle: The Life And Death of the Black Crowes – A Memoir’ – Steve Gorman Recounts Years With Chris & Rich

Reformation of The Black Crowes roughly a month after the publication of Steve Gorman’s Hard to Handle provides better marketing for the book than any PR team could’ve imagined. The nebulous circumstances and seemingly arbitrary nature of the reunion, taking place ever so suddenly under the aegis of long-estranged brothers Chris and Rich Robinson, only seems to corroborate the veracity of what Gorman relates in writing and promoting The Life and Death of the Black Crowes .

Naturally, the cult of personality dominates Gorman’s co-writing of A Memoir with Steven Hyden (who’s also written on Led Zeppelin, a subject similarly fraught with melodrama). Gorman can be forgiven the subtle self-promotion he injects into these three-hundred forty-some pages, in part because he is one of the three mainstays of the group along with the aforementioned siblings, but also because he appears to possess more social skills than either of them. 

To his great credit, Gorman cultivates a distinct measure of detachment in his writing and while his self-imposed distance is occasionally self-serving in those passages devoted to substance indulgence, he does illuminate the often violent conflicts of interests the likes of which wracked Crowes lineups throughout their history. Within such personalized perspective, it is absolutely crucial to note the author’s frequent and lengthy interactions with long-time Black Crowes manager Pete Angelus: the man who worked for Van Halen as lighting director and creative consultant from 1977-1985 became the steadfast and multi-faceted operational focal point for the Southern rockers early in their existence, so it’s little surprise he plays an integral role here. 

But the observations Gorman offers about Angelus’ promotion and marketing efforts, including the intricate coordination of publicity, tour schedules etc., are invaluable in rendering Hard to Handle more than just the archetypal tell-all. It is ever so insightful to read how the man utilized his experience with surgical precision, not to mention a clear-eyed (and clear-headed) attention to detail no one else within the organization usually could (except, in later years, Amy Finkle). These comparatively mundane segments of the book are nonetheless overshadowed by the colorful accounts of near-constant infighting and soap-operatics Gorman describes. 

Yet the litany of near-implausible plot twists would strain the credulity of a reality show audience. Meanwhile, the cross-purposes at which the two Robinsons so often work, inside and out of their songwriting partnership. are lethal for the long-term fortunes of the Black Crowes. Gorman discerns that fundamental conflict practically from the day he joined as drummer and it’s only the fleeting euphoria of shared creativity on stage and in the studio that keeps him in the fold, a paradox of which he reminds himself increasingly frequently as the years pass. 

In fact, he remains a staunch member of the group for a protracted period after his decision to quit fairly early in his tenure with the band. He perceives their fraternal titular leaders seemingly intent on career suicide following their rise to  stratospheric heights of commercial success with their debut album Shake Your Money Maker, the most extreme example of which may be how the band effectively sabotaged a fruitful working relationship with Jimmy Page: an interaction between the ex-Yardbird and Rich rent asunder the collaboration.

It’s a vivid demonstration of the shortsightedness the younger Robinson shares with the older. For his part, Chris continuously acts willfully ignorant of the ramifications of his pretension(s), whether it’s his adamant choice of questionable cover art for the third album, Amorica, that limited its retail distribution or his adoption of the Grateful Dead ethos. It’s this improvisation aspect of which undermined the hard-knuckle rock and roll attitude that distinguished the Black Crowes at their best and which the quintet, with the Zeppelin guitarist in tow, recaptured in 2000. 

If Gorman’s tone toward the end of the book didn’t sound so deflated in the wake of that mammoth faux pas, we might have read of the machinations during the years Luther Dickinson was a full-fledged member of the group. But the very fact Gorman doesn’t go into much detail about the period circa Warpaint, Before The Frost, Until The Freeze and Croweology only reaffirms the latter’s presence did not appreciably mitigate the instability within the group. Only Chris’ relationship with and marriage to actress Kate Hudson, in the years just prior, achieved that effect and it was temporary.

The resumption of Black Crowes activities roughly a month after the publication of Hard to Handle might well have rendered the book out-of-date and obsolete. But that sequence of events appears like nothing so much as the logical extension of what’s described in The Life and Death of The Black Crowes. As a result, the subtitle rings with irony, louder and truer than Steve Gorman might have ever dreamed it could.