Heralded as a musician with enormous drive - even though some used that characteristic
against her.
Sheryl Crow’s success in the 90’s almost didn’t happen.
Her debut record sat in limbo, she was and she almost lost her recording contract and
despite the success of her debut album, it soon created a media firestorm with some of
her early musical collaborators.
Today, let’s talk about the career of Sheryl Crow.
Born in Kennett, missouri,population 10,000 Sheryl Crow was a self professed “moody”
music geek growing up.
wanting to know all the lyrics, and wanting to know who played what part on each album.
Her parents were also encouraging getting her piano lessons at the age of 6.
Her father, was a lawyer and trumpeter, and her mother, was, a piano teacher and music
enthusiast.
Crow would attend university of missouri majoring in music Piano performance with a secondary
degree in education.
It was following school she joined a cover band where she was the only woman, a group
called Cashmere.
She would cite her influences growing up as the Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Rod Stewart.
I’m guessing Led Zeppelin is somewhere in there too.
She would land a job as an elementary music teacher in the st.
louis public education system by the mid 80’s..
She was making $17,000 a year and got engaged to the guitar player in her band, who was
also a born again christian.
The plan was that she’d live in Missouri the rest of her life, have a family and live
happily ever after but things wouldn’t work out that way.
The engagement was broken off after Crow’s fiance told her if she wasn’t going to sing
for the lord he couldn’t be with her.
But despite her fiance’s comments, Crow loved playing in bands and didn’t back down.
One of her first big breaks would be doing a jingle for a mcdonalds that was only originally
supposed to air regionally in and around st.
louis.
But it soon got picked up nationally.
Crowe would admit that for 45 minutes of work she made $42,000.00 which was more than she
made after 2 years of teaching.
It was at this point she relocated to LA, since she was no longer engaged.
thinking that she’d make a career playing music or at least writing jingles.
She’d go home on a tuesday and tell her parents she was leaving for la on sunday.
She was 24 at the time and had a good amount of determination.
She had never been to any other city except St. Louis, so she was obviously overwhelmed
by what she saw.
She would live by the beach with several friends and one of the first things she did was to
get a list of all the studios in LA and a map mapping out all the locations.
She’d take her demo tape with her commercials and a few songs to the studios to see if she
could get any work.
She soon began questioning her decision to move to LA after going into a studio one day
and coming back out and seeing a boot on her car.
She had no money to get her car back.
She did what everyone else was doing at the time who came to LA in search of their dreams
of becoming famous.
She waited tables at a place in the valley a jazz club called Le Cafe.
It was a place where lots of well known musicians and industry people frequented.
A guy named Les Hooper stopped by the place and he was a commercial producer.
Crow gave him her tape, knowing she could fired for doing such a thing, which she was.
The next morning she was letgo, but hooper heard the tape and loved it.
He helped her get a job doing a national commercial for car maker Toyoto which paid $67,000.00,
She was able to get her car back after getting that big cheque.
She soon started getting other work like doing a studio session with johnny mathis and even
got a tv part on a show called cop rock - a detective show that was also a musical.It
didn’t last very long on the air.
I know To give you guys a timeline this was 1990.
About a year prior in 1989 she would buy a 4 track recorder and she would do covers of
Shaka Khan and Heart while also writing songs on her keyboard and programming drums.
Then Crow got her big break.
She had gotten word that michael jackson was holding auditions for his bad tour for backup
singers and got the gig.
She soon got a passport, boarded a 747 and left America for the first time to go to Japan
to do some shows in front of 55,000 fans..
One of Crow’s most surreal moments on that tour happened offstage when she got a call
from Jackson saying he wanted to hang out with her and watch some movies with her, one
of which was Amis and Andy and also around was his pet monkey bubbles.
She’d share the stage with Jackson to duet I just can’t stop loving you night after
night and the onstage chemistry soon soon led to tabloids writing stories that her and
the king of pop were an item with some tabloids going as far as saying they weregoing to get
married and she was going to have his kids.
. It was on that 18 month tour she would meet her longtime manager who was working as a
liaison between pepsi and michael jackson’s tour.
Another person she met on that tour and who was instrumental in her career was Jackson’s
musical director Greg Phillinganes.
Sheryl soon became a musical sponge learning a lot about writing and composing and expanding
her guitar playing capabilities
Crow soon got the attention of Michael jackson’s manager Frank DeLeo who wanted to manage her,
but Crow would admit she was constantly being sexually harassed with him.
When the manager threatened to end her musical career if she didn’t go along with it, she
would call a high powered entertainment attorney who told her to just stick it out, since lotso
f people would love to be in her position.
It was following the tour in 1990 Crow returned home and spent 5-6 months in a deep depression.
Despite getting the gig of a lifetime working with michael jackson it didn’t translate
to her getting a record deal.
In 1989 when Crowe began working on demos for her first solo record her publishing company
introduced her to Kevin Gilbert who fronted the group Toy Matinee.
She joined the band in 1990 and the pair soon started dating.
Gilbert would introduce her to a group of musicians called the Tuesday Night Music Club.
They would hang out, write songs and philsophise about life and the world.
Crow was the only female in the group.
One of the people who was at the tuesday night music club was a producer named bill bottrell
who had a studio where they recorded their songs.
Bottrell took an immediate liking to crow’s musical talents.
They started to write songs together and it soon became more about bill and sheryl while
her boyfriend kevin, felt like the odd man out and their relationship fell apart.
One of the songs they wrote together was from a poet named Winn Cooper who had a poem called
fun that started with the line “All I wanna Do is have some fun”.
Crow wrote a song inspired by the poem, but she thought the song was maybe worthy of being
a B-Side.
Another song written during this time was Leaving Las vegas, which was inspired by the
book, which was latter turned into an oscar winning movie.
One of the members of the Tuesday Night Music Club was musician David Baerwald who was drinking
buddies with author John O’ Brien who wrote the book leaving las vegas.
The song writing credits for a lot of Crowe’s first album include many of the musicians
who were part of the club..
We’ll talk a bit more about the controversy that ensued in a bit.
But despite getting in front of labels, virtually everyone turned her down.
Her luck would change when she met a producer named Hugh Padgham who had hired her for a
studio session.
Crowe gave him her demo tape to which he listened to and he loved it.
He had a relationship with A&M records and that led to Crow getting a record deal.
Al cafarro who ran A&M at the time would recall first meeting her to rolling stone She was
a very, very strong person, with an ultimate, overriding confidence in herself, but constantly
assessing where she’s at and what’s going on.
She’s introspective and . . . a complex person who can be different parts of herself
at different times.
That’s what provides the heat, the attraction – the power.”
But those initial sessions for her first studio record in 1991 didn’t quite go how she planned.
Since it was the first time she was the main focal point in a studio recording, she was
working with a veteran producer and she didn’t speak up about what she liked or what she
didn’t like musically.
The end result was an album that A&M chose not to release after spending half a million
dollars with Crow admitting that the record sounded too slick and overproduced.
She was now hearing rumblings that she might be losing her recording contract, so she sought
out producer and friend Bill Butrell.
Soon enough she had a tape with 4 songs on it, one of which was leaving las vegas and
strong enough, “What I Can Do For You” (which was written from the perspective of
michael jackson’s manager.)
She would even name check Jackson’s manager in the NaNa song. and told the label that
those were the types of songs she wanted to do and she hit the studio again.
When her debut album Tuesday Night Music Club was released, in August 1993, it wasn’t
an immediate hit.
The album took nearly 7 months to make a mark and it wasn’t until her first late night
tv appearance on david letterman and the single all i wanna do that the record really took
off.
The single peaked at number 2 on the hot 100 charts
All I Wanna Do
Leaving Las Vegas
Another single from the album Leaving Las Vegas was a modest success.
The song took it’s inspiration from the book of the same name, it’s about an alcoholic
who drinks himself to death in Las Vegas and is based on author John O’ Brien’s own
life.
O’BRIEN Was good friends with a member of the tuesday night music club - musician David
Baerwald.
O’Brien was told that if the song were to ever be publicly released he’d receive some
credit, but Sheryl Crowe was unaware of this promise.
She made her first major network tv appearance on the late show with david letterman’s
late show in the spring of 1994 performing the song..
She would even get a segment where Dave interviewed her.
But the interview didn’t go all that well.
When letterman asked her if the song leaving las vegas was autobiographical she said yes,
when in fact later she stated in the same interview that she never lived in Vegas.
iIt was a few weeks after the appearance the author of the book took his own life.
While his family came out years later and stated Crow wasn’t responsible for his death,
at the time the press jumped all over the controversy with one publication called her
“ruthless and grabby” O’Brien was incensed that he never got any credit for the title
in Crowe’s interview as were the players in the tuesday night music club who co-wrote
the song.
Three weeks later O’Brien would take his own life, just as work was about to begin
on the film adaptation of his book.
David Baerwald wrote a scathing piece in the la weekly shortly afterwards accusing Crowe
of causing him to betray his longtime friend.
There were many people wondering despite tuesday music night club’s success whether sheryl
crow was the real deal or whether someone else was responsible behind the scenes for
her success.
Over the next several years she landed a spot on the stage at woodstock 94 and at the 1995
grammy’s she beat out bruce springstreen for record of the year, and won best new artist
and best female vocal performance for all i wanna do.
Her debut record sold an astounding 7 million copies in America and over 12 million copies
worldwide.
It was during the making of leaving las vegas video, Crow got into a relationship with the
casting director who she actually ended up being engaged to, but being on the road and
a working musician complicated their relationship and they would soon breakup..
That relationship would provide inspiration for some of the songs that wound up on her
second record, which was self titled.
With her second record, Crowe had something to prove.
Telling rolling stone in 1996
There’s been enough reference to the old record and those guys lashing out at me.
It’s unfortunate in some ways that the record did so well, because I lost friends over it.
It all comes from the place of, ‘How much did she do on her last record?’
. . . I just think that’s something I’m going to suffer, this bruise in the apple,
until three or four albums from now.
It’s not anything I can’t tolerate.
It just makes me mad sometimes, because I know where it’s coming from.
It’s just a lot of bitterness.”
Second Album
Crow once again teamed up with Bill Botrell and headed down to New Orleans to make their
second record.
There was a massive amount of pressure.
But tensions between Botrell and Crowe led to him leaving the project.
Guitarist Jeff Trott who wa sabout to hit the road with the wallflowers, got a call
fro ma panicked Crow asking to come record some songs with her in new orleans.
She would produce the record and it would be released in the fall of 1996.
But much like her first record, the album was met with two controversies.
While Crowe would tell Rolling Stone that the goal of her second album was and i quote
.” to get under people’s skin, because I was feeling like I had so much shit to hurl
at the tape.”
Those bad feelings of the Tuesday Night Music Club resurfaced once again when Crow’s ex-boyfriend
Kevin Gilbert was found dead due to autoerotic asphyxiation prior to the album coming out.
Entertainment weekly would pen an obituary that referred to him as Crow’s piano player.
Baerwald would later write “He hated that Sheryl Crow record, and that’s all he’s
going to be known for,”
Meanwhile the san franscisco gate would pen a detailed obituary about Gilbert where he
wrote about her in his journal "I don't know if I can ever forgive her," "I don't hate
her -- I'm just soooo disappointed."
the article would go on to state Gilbert Tuesday night cohorts describe Crow -- who refused
to be interviewed for this story -- as a marginally talented singer who exploited his skills and
theirs in a ruthless grab for success.
Crow would remark to a dutch journalist that she wasn’t entirely surprised by Gilbet’s
death "Kevin was one of the most self-destructive people I've ever met.
I don't want to go into this too much, but it wasn't a nice story."
That wasn’t the only controversy.
Crow whose a strong advocate for gun control would include a song called ‘Love is a good
thing.’
The song’s lyrics suggested that the retail giant sold guns to kids, which the store obviously
took offense to.
Wal-mart refused to sell the album unless the lyrics were changed, one report was that
they wanted walmart changed to thor competitor k-mart in the lyrics.
Crow was said to lose 400,000 in album sales.
You have to remember back when people bought albums in a lot of small towns in america
walmart was the only place to buy albums so if walmart opted not to stock your record
it would definitely hurt record sales.
Crow didn’t back down and her label backed her.
Her second record was still a success but it sold about half of what the first album
did.
It produced a slew of hit singles in if it makes you happy, everyday is a winding road
and a change would do you good.
Crow would end up joining the traveling all-female tour known as lilith fair.
If you guys haven’t seen it, i’ve done a video about the history of lilith fair the
link is down below.
The mid 90’s was a big time for female artists you had sarah mcglaughlin, alanis morisette,
meredith brooks, fionna apple.
Her two follow up her record 1998’s The Globe Sessions would be another mult-platinum
seller.
It was during by the milleniumthere was major of record labels.
Interscope merged with A&M and Crow didn’t feel like a priority anymore.
She was also dealing with major bouts of depression and writer’s block.
But she persevered releasing her 2002 record C’mon C’mOn which was another smash hit.
I worked at a grocery store in high school and I kid you not Soak UP the Sun was on constant
rotation that summer.
In 2005 she returned with Wildflower, an album Crow admits went in a much less commercial
direction, but artistically it was an album she felt like she needed to do.
At the time the labels were pushing female artists who were half her age since she was
now in her early 40’s.
, but she had sold enough records that her label was supportive of the direction.
It was during the mid 2000’s she was involved in a high profile relationship with cyclist
lance armstrong and got engaged, but they broke up in 2006.
A few weeks after as she was about to hit the road to support the album, she was diagnosed
with cancer.
She would win her battle with cancer and became an advocate for breast cancer awareness.
She’d return with Bill Butrell with 2008’s appropriately titled Detours chronicling the
last several years of her life.
In the 2010’s she’s been puting over several more records with her most recent coming in
2019 called Threads featuring appearances Don Henley, Joe Walsh, Sting, Stevie Nicks,
Willie Nelson, and Keith Richards.
Most recently she was inducted into the rock n ‘ roll hall of fame.
That does it for today’s video guys thanks for watching.