Longtime The Black Crowes drummer Steve Gorman will tell all in a new memoir entitled Hard To Handle: The Life & Death Of The Black Crowes. The 288-book page is due out September 24 via Da Capo Press.
Gorman, who was behind the kit from 1989 until the band’s final tour in 2013 outside a handful of shows in 2005, tapped journalist Steven Hyden to co-write the tome. The pair dive into the group’s rise to fame, drama-filled days and dissolution ahead of what was expected to be a final 25th anniversary tour in 2015. Here’s a full description of the book:
The Black Crowes played big, Southern rock and became popular precisely while hair bands and grunge were rebelling against it. They stayed on the radio through hip-hop’s rise to the mainstream and dominated the charts no matter what the tastes of the day might have been. They’ve sold 35 million albums and they continued to tour up until they finally had enough of each other in 2013. Even then, more than twenty years after Rolling Stone named them the Best New American Band in a 1990 cover story, they drew thousands of fans across the country at over 120 nearly sold-out dates on what ended up being their final tour.
That last tour was so successful that they planned to do a bigger, truly final 25th anniversary tour in 2015. Unfortunately, the animosity between the three founding members didn’t allow that to happen. Instead, they reverted to their old habits of fighting, blaming each other, drinking too much, and indulging all the other demons that the music industry seems to feed upon. While Steve Gorman may have felt relief at not having to head back out on the road, he did feel bad for the band’s fans. He felt he owed them one final show. This book is that final show.
Steve Gorman talked extensively about his days in the Black Crowes during a 2017 appearance on Hyden’s Celebration Rock podcast. After the Crowes broke up, Gorman had a lengthy run hosting a sports radio talk show that ended last September. Musically, the drummer is a member of Trigger Hippy, a supergroup that last played in 2015.
