So, what does Sheryl Crow do when all she wants is to have some fun? "Oh, you know, I do all the usual things that everybody else does, like go to movies. I hang out with my friends and my family. I still go out and jog. And if I have any free time, I head to the beach and go surfing. And, you know, I have dogs. It's totally normal. I just built a pool, finally, so I, of course, pile on the 45 sunblock and hit the pool." She also reads - recently, The Human Stain by Philip Roth and Power, Privilege and the Post, Carol Felsenthal's biography of Katharine Graham.

In conversation, Crow comes across like the intelligent, down-home, small-town Missouri girl that she is -- years of Los Angeles residency notwithstanding -- perhaps still a little gun-shy from the sudden enormous success (and subsequent backlash) that first came her way eight years ago. Crow also comes across as a woman who is working, with some success, to be at peace with the world. She turned forty on February 11th, complete with a big party at L.A.'s El Rey Theater that included a miniconcert and duet with permanent superstar party girl Gwyneth Paltrow. "I just kind of lost my way for a little while," says Crow, who took two and a half years to make her new album, C'mon, C'mon. Crow says during that time she felt she'd lost her musical direction and motivation, describing the recording process as a meltdown. "I think I was placing all this importance on turning forty, and I also thought it represented something in my career. I actually think C'mon, C'mon is honest, and it feels more youthful to me than anything in the past. I mean, I'm doing things now in my life that I would be doing if I was twenty, like surfing. It just doesn't feel like what I thought it was supposed to feel like, because of what we are trained to believe."

For a record punctuated by a meltdown, C'mon, C'mon sounds full of enjoyment, even on the heartbreak cuts "Over You" and "Weather Channel." It's irresistible and delicious all the way through, a combination of revved-up rockers and slower, sadder country-accented ballads. Guest appearances from Lenny Kravitz, Emmylou Harris, Liz Phair, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, Don Henley and Stevie Nicks are lightly scattered throughout. Like each of Crow's records, it's an advance on its predecessor, but in some ways this one is also a call back. "This record is revisiting all the things that I had loved. I feel like I've turned a corner. I don't know whether that's, like, February 11th having come and gone, but I definitely feel my old self, like my old self ten years ago."

Crow, who has been linked over the years to famous beaus including Eric Clapton, Kid Rock and Owen Wilson, says that she's happily single for the moment. "Over the course of the last few years, I've had great relationships, and I've been with some fantastic people, but right now I'm flying solo," she says. "Which is odd, but necessary. I mean, right now my life is kind of dictating that, and I'm just taking a breather -- just because I've been in a relationship for the last two years that coming out of left some pretty good-size scars.

"In the end," she says, "when I finished with the whole record-making process, which was really hard and arduous, I felt like, 'Well, I guess in a weird way I wound up making a totally classic-rock record.' And you know, I like it. I feel like these are songs I would like listening to if I was a kid who had just gotten my driver's license and who was out cruising the strip with my friends."

It was really great to listen to "C'mon, C'mon," to be listening to someone who was a serious album artist and who had made an album, not an occasion for singles.

I put out The Globe Sessions four years ago, and it's remarkable how much has changed in those four years. I definitely feel that I'm re-entering a business that's changing so fast that what I'm doing really is a dying art form -- I think albums are getting ready to be a thing of the past. I mean, I'm in luxurious position in that I actually get to make a full album of music, and I have a fan base that'll probably buy the full album, because they're probably a little older than the kids who own the CD burners.

It's also kind of a bipolar record, because all the songs are either really up . . .

. . . or really depressing. There was definitely bipolar behavior during this record. I really, really hit bottom in the middle of this record, and I had to find what music meant for me, what it means to me in the present and what it's going to mean to me in the future. It's been a part of all of my relationships, it's been a part of the way I see myself in the universe, and I just got to where I didn't want to do it.

So what happens when you hit bottom?

Well, Chrissie Hynde actually made a very serendipitous appearance at the point where I just couldn't go on anymore. She came down and visited me at the studio in New York. And I was forcing myself to go in, trying to finish music. My heart wasn't in it, and I was trying to figure out what direction I was going in and why this was turning out to be such a hard project. And she said, "What do you want to do?" And I said, "Really, I want to stop." And she said, "Well, why don't you? You know, your music is not your life. Music is something you do, and your life is your life." And in a weird way, it emancipated me from the whole thing. I just put so much weight in my work and let it be sort of a big Band-Aid. Whenever my relationships slowed down, I was like, "OK, well, I'm going to get into my work," you know? I just walked away from it. I came back to it with a lot more energy, and it finished itself really quickly. And I can hear the joy in it again. I was worried that when I finished the record I would hear a pile of songs that were just overworked and full of strife.

And now you ain't taking shit off no one -- that was yesterday, as you say on your record. I wanted to ask, in relation to that lyric, do you feel like you still encounter sexism in the industry?

Well, I've had a pretty easy ride. I had some serious bouts of sexual harassment when I was first getting started, but I really wasn't a recording artist at that time. Now, I guess, I'm much more aware that almost every aspect of my business is run by men, and it definitely creates a different dynamic. But because I'm at a certain level of success, I'm a little bit sheltered from all that. I think the more interesting question is how women are portraying themselves -- it's almost as if we can't be exploited because we're willing to exploit ourselves, you know what I mean? Look at the images that are on MTV, the way women are portrayed in videos -- I'm continually shocked. And the conscious decisions are, I guess, made by the artist, otherwise you would have to assume that marketing has usurped all artistic importance.

Yes. But what about getting into those booty shorts for the cover of "Stuff" magazine?

The Stuff cover was for me sort of about not just taking the piss but about having fun. It's definitely a part of my personality, although I don't know whether it's a part of my persona. I've never relied on my looks or my sexuality to try to get credibility or even to try to up my popularity. In fact, it's the thing that makes me the most nervous, because it felt like too much of a responsibility to me. And also I hated the fact that it was so much an important part of being a recording artist that I just hid behind, "OK, well, I'm going to be credible, I'm going to write great songs and forget the rest of it -- I don't care."

That's not exactly hiding behind. It's more like being.

And I am proud of the fact that at my age, and with very little work, I am blessed with good genes, and I'm not terribly shy about my body. So it's fun to do, but I feel blessed that I got my career started when it just didn't matter that much if you had a great body, and it didn't matter if you could dance. We had to do a lip-sync recently and it really felt weird, and I know that now that's pretty much the norm with people even on their tours.

Tell me a schoolteaching story, from your day job before you moved to L.A.

I taught kindergarten through sixth grade, and I had a couple of classrooms that were predominantly autistic and handicapped emotionally. I guess the biggest impact that my teaching had on me was just watching how music can really get in and seep through the cracks of kids who are really noncommunicative. And the different manifestations of the vibrations of music are always really interesting to see with a kid -- whether it brings out violent tendencies like banging and anger or whether it's soothing or calming to a child who's extremely hyper. I dream about it still. I dreamt two nights ago that I was teaching school and I was having to explain why I was still teaching when I was supposed to be out on the road. It was like, "Why aren't you on the road? You're supposed to be on the road." "Well, I've got to be teaching; it's really important right now - kids' brains aren't developing." It was just this crazy dream.

And what interpretation do you put on that?

It's just because of my dilemma with being out here on the road spending ten hours in a hotel room talking about myself, and I'm looking out the window while I'm doing it thinking, "I would like to be doing anything but what I'm doing right now. I want to go surfing." I've been having dreams about having time off, arguing with people, like, "But I'm supposed to be off right now, I'm not supposed to be doing interviews." Just crazy subconscious stuff.

It sounds pretty conscious. Maybe it was about how, by putting out this bipolar record, you're not really doing anything that much different than you were when you were teaching -- making music that soothes or agitates people. So the dream means you really are still yourself, the same self as before you became "Sheryl Crow" in bold letters.

Now that I think about it -- when I dream, I am in my dreams the person I was before I was famous, which is basically the same person, but the public person, I guess, develops a pretty thick shell. And you're always trying to protect who you know yourself to be, and definitely in my dreams it's always me struggling to explain: "But wait . . ." So I guess I definitely have that neurosis, which I work out in my subconscious almost every night.

And maybe you teach through your records.

Yeah. That's what my mom said.

You've referred to being in therapy quite often in interviews. I wanted to ask you what kind of progress you feel like you've made.

Well, all I can tell you is I never graduate with the diploma, where the guy says, "OK, you're free to go, you're cured." It's a good investment in your art, just to get into the inner workings of the human spirit. Although that's not why I've done it. I've had to go into therapy because -- it's just such an uncomfortable topic -- but really because all the applications I ever had didn't work anymore. Like, I let myself get so overwhelmed with repressing anger or depressing it. I'm really good at just going to work if I'm unhappy, or if I'm angry or if I'm frustrated or if I'm lonely, and then it gets a little bit out of control, so I have to go in to dig myself out of the cave I've built.

There's certainly no point in suffering if you can't . . .

. . . make money out of it!

Is there anybody's career you'd like to have?

Well, it's funny: There are things that I feel like I'm missing from my life, like the husband and the kids, and I would have to think of somebody like Chrissie, even though I think there was a time in there when she was worried that her career was going to fall apart because she did stay home and have kids. But I do look at her and think, "Well, she did get to have it all." And I don't feel my life is over. I still think there's a great possibility that I'll get married and have kids.

I guess there are men I look at. I'd love to be Bruce Springsteen, he's got a family, he's been able to stay in his career, he has more and more credibility. But he's a man, and it just is different for a woman, and I don't know who the women are that have the career I'd want.

How do you feel about being categorized as a woman in rock, as opposed to just a person in rock?

I was always uncomfortable with that phrase. I was always a little bit like Chrissie, I was like one of the boys, and why can't we all be in rock & roll? And I actually thought that the attention that was put on it was almost in a weird way detrimental because it made it more of an anomaly, as opposed to it being what it should be -- good musicianship. I felt like the Lilith tour actually had some of the best musicianship that was on the road in those summers, that was out touring. But everything in the end, eventually, is going to be marketed. The interesting thing about it was, as the Indigo Girls said, that even though it was the Year of the Woman, women were still only making up twelve percent of the playlist on the radio.

So you didn't come out of it with greater feelings of sisterhood than you went into it with.

I guess that, like any tour, you come off it having made some great relationships. And for me it's unusual to get to have women friends in my field because (a) there didn't used to be as many; and (b) we don't cross paths; and (c) I think even more so than in the male rock domain, men aren't pitted against each other in what looks to be such a competitive way, and women are. I've had several reviews written about me in which they've done a complete comparison to one other female artist. And it just seems like the competition is bred more among females than males.

I think if I were in your position, I just wouldn't read my press.

I don't. I don't read any of it. I don't read any of my reviews. I actually don't read magazines, because magazines that are entertainment-driven, for me, have the same impact as reading a review of myself. It puts me in that strange place of attaching all my fears in this groove, like, "Well, I was there, I should have been in that picture." You know what I'm saying? It just creates this crazy demand that you put on yourself.

Check out an exclusive video interview

MIM UDOVITCH
(May 9, 2002)