Photography by Matthew Mendenhall

After an acrimonious split five years ago, both Chris and Rich Robinson thought The Black Crowes were over for good. Now, with Warpaint—one of the group’s best albums to date—The Black Crowes again reign as one of rock’s most authentic practitioners. Just don’t expect it to be all warm and fuzzy—it never was.

The striking building that houses the Angel Orensanz Foundation for the Arts on the now ultra-fashionable Lower East Side of Manhattan was built more than 150 years ago. Now a performance and exhibition space, it is the city’s oldest surviving synagogue, a rare architectural example of a Gothic synagogue, a kind of fusion of Jewish and Christian aesthetics. It had been abandoned and run down for decades, before being purchased in the mid-‘80s by Angel Orensanz, a Spanish-American sculptor. Now the neighborhood is on the upswing, and the gorgeous building itself stands as a dignified reminder of deep spiritual traditions and rich, dynamic communities that preceded the inexorable gentrification of Manhattan.

Angel Orensanz is a fitting setting, then, in which to meet with Chris and Rich Robinson of The Black Crowes who, after all, wrote “Talks to Angels.” The Crowes, too, are on the upswing. After splitting up acrimoniously in 2002, the band re-formed in 2005 and is now about to release Warpaint, the group’s most confident and instantly appealing album since the raw, raucous Shake Your Money Maker first brought the group national attention in 1990—and sold more than five million copies to boot. In addition, the Crowes, too, see themselves as symbols of vanishing values. Sometimes disparaged, run aground for a stretch, newly energized, the brothers Robinson view themselves and their band as keepers of the rock and roll flame in an era in which slickness, irony, self-indulgence and soulless technology threaten to plunge the music world into darkness. Their new album is called Warpaint for a reason.

“It’s the perfect title for where we are,” Chris says. “There are clandestine messages in there for people who like rock music.”

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Twenty-five years later and eight albums in, the BEASTIE BOYS are still checkin’ heads

Somehow, I just knew this was gonna happen. I mean, it had to. Of course it was going to.

After waiting for more than an hour for the Beastie Boys to amble into a spare dressing room backstage at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom, the 20 minutes allotted for the first interview for this cover story have been reduced to ten, and after Mike D and MCA spend the first few minutes going over the night’s setlist—and with label execs waiting to speak with the band before they take the stage in roughly 35 minutes, or so we’re told—the three wiseacres that comprise the Beastie Boys are pretty much impossible to reign in.

They’re in the middle of their trademark interview schtick: One riffs, while the others think up witty retorts. Meanwhile, the interviewing journalist—me—struggles to glean a usable quote from the stream-of-consciousness babbling, and of course there aren’t many. Well, that’s not true. It’s just that most of it has nothing to do with music, the group or its new album, The Mix-Up. And to some degree, that’s okay.

Somehow, that tag-team wisecracking—an almost identical version of which you could have easily caught on MTV News in the mid-‘80s—has landed them on the topic of communication. Adam “MCA” Yauch dryly explains that the Beasties are exploring primitive means of communication of late—you know, semaphore, smoke signals—before Mike D (originally Michael Diamond) notes that he’s thinking about building a system of pneumatic tubes under Manhattan through which he, MCA and Adam “Ad Rock” Horovitz could send notes to one another.

MCA: I’ve actually been tunneling. Did I not tell you about that? I’m doing a bigger tunnel so we can climb in.

MIKE D: That’s a great idea. So, to go to O-Scope [the band’s New York studio], instead of me having to walk, I could just pneumatic tube?

MCA: Yeah, your wife will put you in the tube and drop you in.

MIKE D: Why do I need Tamra to do it?

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They’re the biggest multi-platinum band that your best friend has never heard of.  Playing brooding, unflinching psychedelic rock accompanied by unnerving visual imagery, the quartet draws tens of thousands worldwide every year. And guess what? They enjoy playing cricket, too.

Tool is the most popular band that you know nothing about. Over the past 17 years, the California quartet has established itself as one of the most enigmatic and mysterious forces in rock, selling millions of records and filling countless arenas while refusing to obey the standard rules of engagement. The band creates stunning packages for its albums (last year’s 10,000 Days offered stereoscopic glasses and hallucinatory art) and composes experimental, often sprawling songs with surreal lyrics and provocative titles. “Prison Sex,” “Hooker With a Penis” or “Stinkfist,” anyone? Guitarist Adam Jones produces and directs nightmarish animated and live-action videos that almost never feature the group members, who actually go to somewhat great lengths to avoid the spotlight.

Occupying its own niche amid the metal, prog, goth and avant-garde worlds—and hardly radio-friendly—Tool has only released four studio albums since 1993, but has cultivated a tenacious following that immediately gobbled up a half million copies of 10,000 Days, making it the band’s second consecutive album to debut at No. 1. Their multifaceted musical outlook has allowed the band to make a stir at Lollapalooza during their early years, tour with musical idols King Crimson in 2001, conquer Coachella in 2006, and convert the masses at Bonnaroo this past spring.

Despite their multi-platinum success, frontman Maynard James Keenan, guitarist Adam Jones, bassist Justin Chancellor and drummer Danny Carey purposefully elude media attention and reveal little about their personal lives. Until recently, there were few publicity shots that did not feature them disguised, obscured or sporting a new look—Keenan once reportedly showed up to a photo shoot shrouded within a hat, scarf and sunglasses, and onstage with one of his other bands, A Perfect Circle, he dons wigs—while the current images on the band’s website are hazy, underexposed or oblique. Devoted fans know their faces, but more casual followers have no definitive idea of what they look like. They’re even obscured by shadow and light during their dark and moody shows—Keenan performs at the back of the stage, behind his bassist and guitarist–subsuming their audience within its total sensory experience. And they grant few interviews.

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The first thing you think when you meet Ben Harper is that he’s too good to be true. Lithe, graceful and almost bone thin with black, black eyes that seem to bore right into the back of your head. He has a perfectly symmetrical face that makes one recall Jimi Hendrix on the cover of Are You Experienced? without the aggressive facial hair, yellow feather boa and menace, but with most of the charm.

 
He drives a hybrid car, turns off the water when he brushes his teeth, wears shoes from recycled materials and had his entire house painted with a solvent-free paint called Bioshield.

“Okay, okay, I am that guy,” says Harper with a laugh. “But I’m not that squeaky clean. I mean, I wasn’t always this well behaved. I did have my bouts with some rock-star behaviors—you know what I’m taking about—but in the end I decided that this is really who I am, so I should stop fighting it.”  

He likes to save the fight for other things, like poverty, injustice, farm workers rights, the debacle that is the clean-up of Hurricane Katrina or sometimes just plain meanness.

“I always loved that John Lee Hooker had a bumper sticker that said ‘Mean People Suck,’ on the back of one of his cars. Mostly I just want to take a stand against evil people.

But evil is relative. There are evil thoughts, evil deeds and evil people. Get him talking and he’ll tell you a little about his fascination with some of rock’s darkest hours, whether it’s Led Zeppelin and their hotel-room orgies (with or without the mud sharks), his theory on Hendrix’s final hours or some of the rock carnage that littered the Sunset Strip before Cameron Crowe sanitized it and stuck it into Almost Famous. Right now Harper’s reading I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, the oral history-style biography about Warren Zevon by his ex-wife, which chronicles his dissolute lifestyle—the drinking, the carousing and odd, unacceptable behaviors such as rubbing a pot roast over his chest like his character in his song “Excitable Boy.”

“I’m utterly captivated, but equally appalled. I put the book down, I pick it back up,” says Harper. “I just would hate to be chronicled like that after I’m gone. I guess I just have to outlive everybody.”

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