In Issue 1049, Counting Crows' Adam Duritz tells Rolling Stone's Brian Hiatt about the band's struggle to be likeable, the dissociative disorder that derailed him for years and making their new album, Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings (read the whole feature here). Keep reading for more from the forty-three-year-old singer who's still rocking the dreads and hailed as an inspiration by everyone from Sara Bareilles and Dashboard Confessional to Panic at the Disco:

Adam Duritz on ...

The band's early days and singing their record deal:

Dave Bryson and I were just going to open mikes at bars and playing acoustic. I don't think I'd written "Mr. Jones" yet. We had an acoustic version of "Round Here," the Himalayans' [Duritz's first band] song. And we'd just kill at these open mikes. I was in the Himalayans and I was singing backup for Sordid Humor, which was my favorite band. [Dave and I] got together for one more recording session and we each picked our favorite musicians. We'd opened for each other, we'd closed for each other, we'd all played in a million bands around each other. It was a really tight scene, San Francisco. There was so much music every night. And I was in three bands, so I knew everybody.

Some guy came and saw us and said, "My brother-in-law is an executive at EMI. I'm going to bring him to see you next week." And he did. He brought him to see me and Bryson playing acoustic. I was twenty-seven years old, I'd never had anyone from any record company ever come see a band I was in. I figured we needed a lawyer. We went down to meet with him on a Friday. He said, "Listen, I have some clients who are managers. They really want to meet with you." They weren't a big management company, but they had really good acts, like Joe Jackson and Sam Phillips and Danzig and the B-52's. And I suddenly thought we're either going to get signed or we're not good enough. But it's no longer about being noticed or rising up from the swamp with everybody, the anonymity mire.

We played a couple of gigs and we had this pretty big mailing list [from our other bands], so Counting Crows packed crowds in right away. And I think I took a few weeks and thought about it. I had a vision for something I wanted to do, and I wanted to do it. January of the next year, '92, there were two showcases, ASCAP and BMI, on separate weekends, and people from every record company came to one of the two. And on the Monday morning after the second one we got offers from pretty much every single record company. We didn't take the offer with the most money. We took the offer with the most control. Geffen was going to give us total creative freedom, which is what we wanted. And they gave us firm albums. I wanted three firm albums. All I got out of the first record advance was, I want to say, $4,000, and I spent $3,500 of it on a '69 Karmann Ghia convertible. I had wanted one my whole life. I loved them. Shitty, fucking little thing. I love that car. I still have it. You know, I'll never get rid of it. It's on blocks in L.A.

The band's early sound and recording August and Everything After:

We sounded a lot like late Roxy Music. That's kind of where Dave's guitar leanings were from, a lot of Stone Roses kind of stuff. But I knew it was going to be dated really soon. You can hide behind effects. You need to learn to play. You need to learn to listen. On the first album I took away all of Dave's guitar effects. We took most of Steve [Bowman]'s drum kit away. We took away Charlie [Gillingham]'s synthesizers, and we made him buy a Hammond 53 organ.