The Alternative Number Ones: Counting Crows’ “Einstein On The Beach (For An Eggman)”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I'm reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it's for members only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

"Bland Guys Finish First." That was what they put on the cover of the magazine. In 1994, SPIN sent Jim Greer, the most gonzo writer in the magazine's stable, to Charlottesville, Virginia to interview Counting Crows. Jim Greer did not particularly like the Counting Crows. Neither did anybody else at SPIN. But Counting Crows were an alternative rock phenomenon, a hugely popular rookie band that came out of nowhere and sold millions of records. Theoretically, they fit under the SPIN purview the same way that they belonged in the playlists of alternative rock stations. But from a music critic's perspective, they were soggy, leaden MOR mediocrities. That critical disdain, more than anything about Counting Crows themselves, became the subject of that profile.

Adam Duritz knew what he was getting himself into. Duritz, Counting Crows' singer and public face, seems to be a perfectly lovely human being by all indications. I've read interviews and heard him on podcasts, and he comes off as a great hang with a decent perspective on his own place in the world. He had that perspective back then, too. In the SPIN profile, Duritz says, "I was kind of hesitant about doing this interview because I didn’t think anyone at SPIN liked us. I don’t really care about that particularly, but I didn’t want to participate in my own execution." He still went through with it, and an execution is what he got.

Duritz was an easy target. He sang about wanting to be Bob Dylan in a haunted, self-serious goat-bleat. Also, he had white-guy dreads. That wasn't unusual for a rock frontman in the '90s, but Duritz's were especially chunky and off-putting, and he paired them with a big floppy hat that looked even dumber. Middle school rumor had it that this was an elaborate attempt to cover a bald spot. It hadn't even happened yet when he did the SPIN interview, but Duritz furthermore dated both Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox when Friends was the biggest thing in the known universe, which made Counting Crows into a handy musical avatar for all that Friends represented even though Hootie And The Blowfish were the ones who got their own episode. Most damningly, Counting Crows' popularity indicated that there was a huge market for crunchy granola-flavored roots-rock even as the world seemed ready to turn toward harsher new sounds, and that didn't sit well with music critics.

In that SPIN article, Jim Greer wrote, "What’s bothersome about the Crows is that the band’s sudden success seems to imply a kind of musical conservatism on the part of the listening public that we’d rather not have to acknowledge." Later in the article, Greer goes to see Counting Crows and zones out during their set. I wish we still had things like that today -- major publications sending writers to profile bands where the basic question is always "you suck, but you're really popular -- care to comment on why?"

The funny part is that Adam Duritz seems to agree with this take. He tells Greer about changing the lyrics to "Mr. Jones," Counting Crows' big breakout hit, when he's onstage, bawling out, "Every time I turn on the TV, I gotta see myself staring right back at me." After the individual band members struggled for years to get anywhere, Counting Crows did everything that they could to pump their brakes on their own quick, overwhelming popularity, opting to stop pushing singles or filming videos after their first few. It didn't work. August And Everything After, the band's debut album, still sold a gazillion copies, and a throwaway demo that the band never played live became their only #1 hit on the Modern Rock charts. What can you do? The people want what they want.

Counting Crows' backstory isn't exactly the most fascinating thing in the world. They were musicians in a scene together, and they started a band and made a demo tape and then got signed and got famous. Adam Duritz was born in Baltimore, which does make me like him more, but he moved around a lot as a kid, so he didn't have any roots there. Duritz went to Berkeley to study English. He dropped out, but he stayed in the Bay Area, and he linked up with a bunch of other local musicians. One guy in their circle was David Immerglück, a guitarist for Camper Van Beethoven, a group that's been in this column, when they were at the end of their run. Immerglück later became a Counting Crow, but he wasn't in the band when they first hit alt-rock radio. He was just hanging out with him. I mention Immerglück simply to illustrate that they were the kind of group that a peripheral Camper Van Beethoven might join after that band broke up.

In the late '80s and early '90s, Adam Duritz was in a band called the Himalayans. They recorded a few things with producer David Bryson, but they never signed with anyone or released that stuff. There's video of Duritz singing a much rougher early version of "Round Here," a song that later became a Counting Crows hit, at Gilman Street, the Berkeley DIY punk venue that's just going to keep coming up in these columns. This pretty much breaks my brain. I knew that Green Day and Counting Crows came from the same general place at the same general time, but I did not think their worlds would intersect. That version of "Round Here" has some Fugazi in its bass and some squall in its guitar, and the fact that they played it at Gilman makes its own kind of sense, even though you can clearly hear two girls making fun of them in the video. Anyway, the Himalayans didn't go anywhere, and they broke up in 1991. Duritz and David Bryson had already started playing together as an acoustic duo at that point, so they just started another band with a few other guys from the San Francisco music scene.

For whatever reason, a whole lot of record label execs had dollar signs in their eyes after they heard Counting Crows' demo. That demo had 15 songs on it, including early versions of a bunch of the band's hits. It was practically a debut album unto itself. The demo led to a major-label bidding war, which means the label people could hear potential that just completely evaded critics, who already didn't like Counting Crows when they were just a local live band with no records out. Counting Crows ultimately signed to DGC, the Geffen imprint that started in 1990 and quickly became a giant in the world of alternative rock. DGC had Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Hole, Beck, Weezer, and Urge Overkill. There's at least some possibility that having a spot on the DGC roster helped make Counting Crows palatable to alternative radio programmers, despite the hippie-throwback nature of their sound, sort of like how Blind Melon might've slid in there partly just because they recorded in Seattle.

In any case, DGC treated the Counting Crows as a big deal, even though they didn't have the same indie pedigree as a lot of the label's acts. Geffen A&R rep Gary Gersh heard Counting Crows as classic rock heirs. He sent them into the studio with Bob Dylan collaborator T Bone Burnett, who's already been in this column for working on Elvis Costello's "Veronica." Gersh convinced Robbie Robertson of the Band, a huge and obvious Counting Crows influence, to come in and give them advice. In 1993, Van Morrison was scheduled to go into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, but he didn't want to show up. Robertson recommended Counting Crows, even though they didn't have any actual records out, and the group covered "Caravan" at the induction ceremony. In a 2021 Stereogum interview, Duritz tells a great story about tripping and falling when leaving the stage and finding himself face-down in Etta James' breasts.

Bob Dylan, the Band, and Van Morrison were three of the four most plainly evident influences on August And Everything After, and Gary Gersh made it so that Counting Crows were connected to all of them in one way or another. (He also accidentally made sure they were connected to Etta James, but that didn't have such an obvious impact.) The other big influence was R.E.M., who loomed so huge over alternative radio in the '90s. Counting Crows were still a new band when they recorded August And Everything After, and the band members were still getting used to one another. Duritz has said that he wanted to market the band simply by touring as hard as possible, so that they wouldn't get overexposed and they would learn how to become a proper band. He knew that this was the R.E.M. model, and he was open about following it. He told SPIN, "I was basing this whole thing on what it was like to grow up as an R.E.M. fan."

August And Everything After came out in September 1993, and it didn't get a lot of attention at first. Duritz has said that the band really caught on after they performed "Round Here" on Saturday Night Live in January 1994. (Guest host: Sarah Gilbert from Roseanne.) He has also told a story about how the band originally didn't want to do SNL because they'd have to edit their songs for time. I'm not sure that totally tracks, since you don't get booked on SNL if you don't have at least a little heat. Lead single "Mr. Jones" first made it onto the Modern Rock chart in November, though it didn't hit its peak until a few weeks later. August And Everything After also went gold shortly after that SNL performance, too, so maybe that one show really did make all the difference. I could see it. It's a good performance.

@thealmanac77 SNL Host Sara Gilbert, Musical Guest Counting Crows, If they aren't your cup of tea is ok but, hey! what a performance! (01-15-1994) #snl #snlmusicalguest #universalplus #universalplusafrica #universalpluslatinoamerica #90s #90skids #90smusic #snlseason19 #malaysiatiktok #philippinestiktok #tiktokindia #tiktkokphilippines #tiktokaustralia #fyp #fypシ゚viral #tiktokbrasil#thealmanac77 #countingcrows #mrjones #90srock original sound - thealmanac77

In any case, I definitely remember "Mr. Jones" being all over the fucking radio. "Mr. Jones" did crazy numbers across a bunch of formats. It's a classic example of a '90s song that would've done serious damage on the Hot 100 if DGC had been willing to release it as a commercially available single. I couldn't stand that song -- this fucking guy with the dreads and the floppy hat yowling about "sha la la yeah" and wanting to be Bob Dylan. I had basically zero exposure to the Van Morrison soulful-yelp singing style, and it did not hit my ear right. I still think the lyrics are pretty fucking stupid and the vocal is obnoxiously jumpy, but the song has some solid bones. ("Mr. Jones" peaked at #2. It's a 5. With respect to that song, that's just about as funky as I can be.)

I think "Round Here," the band's follow-up single, is a lot better than "Mr. Jones." It's got the same ponderous self-seriousness, but that self-seriousness has aged pretty well. The big knock on Counting Crows was that they were just ripping off bands from the '60s and '70s. At this point, though, August And Everything After is more than 30 years old, and those tracks are getting played on classic rock stations right next to the ones that they were supposedly ripping off. It all sounds like the same thing now, honestly. In any case, "Round Here" made it to #7 on the Modern Rock chart. (It's a 7.)

None of the other tracks from August And Everything After made it onto the Modern Rock charts, but I remember hearing a bunch of those fucking things all the time. Adam Duritz's yelp at the end of "Rain King" has never left my brain, unfortunately. I remember hearing "A Murder Of One" all the time, too. Maybe they were getting played on mainstream stations by then. In any case, Duritz was concerned that Counting Crows were getting too big too fast -- a real danger in the '90s. In a 2013 Songfacts interview, Duritz said, "I saw people around me putting out records that got a little too big, and that was the end of them. I didn't want that for us, so I stopped it." No more singles, no more videos. For a while, Duritz apparently even worked as a bartender to keep his head on straight, though he did that work at Johnny Depp's Viper Room, which is probably the least low-profile place that a rock star could find a bartending job.

But you can't stop a boulder that's rolling downhill. Adam Duritz ultimately didn't have any say over whether August And Everything After would get too big, and it got very, very big. The LP never climbed past #4 on the album chart, but it kept selling consistently for years. In summer 1994, August And Everything After went quintuple platinum. (It has since sold a couple million more copies.) "Mr. Jones" and "Round Here" both had long runs on the Modern Rock charts, and radio stations wanted another Counting Crows song that they could play. Duritz had said not to release any other August songs as singles, but he hadn't said anything about the random goofy thought-experiment track that Counting Crows recorded before they were even signed. DGC had that one in the chamber.

"Einstein On The Beach (For An Eggman)" was on the original Counting Crows demo that got the band signed to DGC. To hear Duritz tell it, the song wasn't even considered for August And Everything After. According to Setlist.fm, Counting Crows have only actually performed that song live once, at a random 2006 show in Florida. In that Songfacts interview, Duritz says, "It was an exercise. I was thinking, 'How do you write pop riffs? How do you write a hooky song with a guitar riff?' I hummed the guitar riff into Dave Bryson's answering machine at this place he was staying in LA. It was just me playing games."

"Einstein On The Beach" gets its title from a Philip Glass opera, and its "For An Eggman" parenthetical is an obvious Beatles reference. But Duritz really was writing about Albert Einstein standing on a beach and also about Humpty Dumpty. Here's how he explains it: "It sort of takes the idea of, what if you're someone who's a brilliant mathematician like Albert Einstein or any of us doing creative work on something that seems so clean and brilliant, and then it turns out to be an atomic bomb. It's your idea, which is so amazing and graceful in and of itself, but it turns into something not so great. Or great, because it certainly ended World War II, so that's nice." Right. Of course. Amazing insight.

I'm being a jerk, but I like this bullshit. In general, '90s alt-rock lyrics were big on tortured obfuscation, on preventing anyone from developing any cogent theory of what the songs were actually about. It's always a little helpful to know that the people who wrote the songs didn't really know, either. On "Einstein On The Beach," Duritz introduces Einstein -- or "Albert," since they're such good buds -- as "the sensitive type." As a sensitive type, Albert can't help but notice certain issues: "Albert's vision's blooming uncontrolled/ All his wings are slowly sinking." Don't you hate it when all your wings are slowly sinking?

The real message of "Einstein On The Beach" is something like: "Whoa, man, you ever think about life?" Again: I'm into it. On the hooky-as-fuck chorus, Duritz lays out all the bad things that happen because of Albert's vision: "The world begins to disappear/ The worst things come from inside here/ And all the kingsmen reappear/ For an eggman, falling off a wall, he'll never be together again." That's probably what Albert Einstein really whispered to J. Robert Oppenheimer that one time: "For an eggman, falling off a wall, he'll never be together again." Maybe Adam Duritz didn't need to go see Oppenheimer because he's already been thinking that movie for years.

God, he's such an easy target. I just can't help myself. I'm sorry. It's unbecoming. Counting Crows just bring the bully-ass '90s critic out of me. Duritz himself has described "Einstein On The Beach" as simply "cute." He didn't think the song was anything special. But he was wrong! "Einstein On The Beach" might have some supremely goofy lyrics, but the song goes way harder than I remembered. Duritz co-wrote the song with guitarist David Bryson, and Bryson produced it for the demo; the band never even recorded a version with T Bone Burnett. I can see why the track didn't fit the funereal mood of August, but I like it better than anything on that album. "Einstein On The Beach" has things going for it that none of the songs on the album did. It's fun. It rocks. I think those are good things.

"Einstein On The Beach" is built on a full-on power-pop jangle. The riff is big and sticky and catchy, and the band attacks it with lived-in precision. Adam Duritz yelps out his stupid lyrics with conviction, and all the melodic pieces slide into their places: The murmuring backup vocals, the soulfully hammering organs, the light little mandolin. It's probably the closest that Counting Crows ever came to the daffy power-pop of R.E.M.'s silliest songs. If Counting Crows had more bright, energetic jams like that, I might have been nicer about them. Probably not, but maybe.

In any case, Adam Duritz never wanted to release "Einstein On The Beach," but DGC needed a song for a compilation called DGC Rarities Vol. 1. All of the label's bands needed to have something on that record, and most of them are total studio fuck-arounds. Nirvana's "Pay To Play" came out after Kurt Cobain died, but it's just an early demo version of the Nevermind track "Stay Away." Weezer's "Jamie" is something that the band recorded as part of a school project, before they were signed. Beck's song "Bogusflow" is just him cryptically making fun of Pearl Jam's "Even Flow." Sonic Youth's contribution is literally called "Compilation Blues." A second volume never came out. Nobody took this record seriously. But Geffen knew that they had something with "Einstein On The Beach," so they pushed the song to alt-rock radio, which already wanted a new Counting Crows track.

Adam Duritz thought he was safe. He thought nobody would ever hear DGC Rarities Vol. 1. He tells Songfacts, "Those records that the labels put out, you don't remember any songs from any of them. Nobody does... Of course, it went straight to #1, which I'm sure doesn't usually happen on rarities records. And then every fuckin' other song on our record went up the charts again." Suddenly, this old and half-disowned obscurity became a radio staple. Duritz wasn't thrilled: "At the time, I was pissed off. Now, it's like, eh." I love that fucking shit. Duritz managed to score an accidental hit with an old song. Today, people are praying that TikTok will give them something like that. Duritz did that when most of us were still signing up for our first AOL connections, and he was still vaguely annoyed about it decades later. '90s rock stars are the best.

Counting Crows didn't have a hope in hell of building on the success of August And Everything After. Their first album was such a monster hit that even a castoff like "Einstein On The Beach" could became a radio beast. Duritz suffered a nervous breakdown, and he also dated those two Friends castmates in rapid succession. Counting Crows were nominated for Best New Artist at the 1995 Grammys, and they lost it to fellow young-classic-rocker type and future collaborator Sheryl Crow. Crows were so hot that year. (Sheryl Crow's highest-charting Modern Rock hit, 1994's "All I Wanna Do," peaked at #4. It's an 8.) When your first album does as well as August And Everything After, you can really only go down. But Duritz was smart enough to slow down and take some time off the road. He put real work into the band's 1996 follow-up Recovering The Satellites, and it showed.

In a lot of ways, Recovering The Satellites is your typical slightly edgier sophomore album, right down to the fact that the band picked Pixies collaborator Gil Norton as their producer. But that's not a bad thing, and a little bit of extra grit looked good on them. Lead single "Angels Of The Silences" is a convincing rocker that reached #3. (It's a 7.) Follow-up single "A Long December" might be Counting Crows' masterpiece. I don't remember thinking much about that song at the time, but it has since emerged as a modern standard. In just the past few years, I've written so many blog posts about bands covering "A Long December." The Hold Steady did it. Oceanator did it. Knifeplay did it. Duritz sang a solo version on TV at David Letterman's personal request, and then he joined Noah Kahan to sing it at some festival. Last year, two different Wednesday members covered that song at separate shows, a few days apart. If I were writing this column about "A Long December," I would have a way easier time coming up with Bonus Beats. I get it. That song fucking rocks. ("A Long December" peaked at #5. It's a 9.)

It's an old story, right? A band gets pilloried for being uncool, and then one of their old songs gradually becomes a generational touchstone. Snark doesn't last. Songs like "A Long December" last. Counting Crows may not be a canon-level '90s band, but it's at least a conversation that we could have. In any case, they're still doing just fine for themselves today, Recovering The Satellites only sold a fraction of what August And Everything After did, but it still went double platinum. Then 1999's This Desert Life went platinum. Lead single "Hanginaround" peaked at #17, and Counting Crows didn't hang around alternative-radio circles long after that. They haven't been back on the Modern Rock chart since then. But on the Adult Alternative chart, they never, ever go away.

I can't say that I've ever paid much attention to what's happening on AAA radio, but there's always a need for mellow, amiable rock music, and Counting Crows have been filling that niche for years. If you look at the band's Spotify numbers, for instance, you might notice a few things. The list of their most-streamed songs is dominated by August And Everything After tracks, and "Mr. Jones" is way up at the top, with nearly twice as many streams as any other Counting Crows song. But the band's other two most popular singles are bright, boppy numbers that showed up on movie soundtracks and did big adult alternative business in the early '00s. Consider, if you will, the cover of Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" that they did with Vanessa Carlton, which showed up in the 2002 romcom Two Weeks Notice. Regular alternative radio wasn't touching that thing, but it was a #2 hit on adult alternative.

And then there is the matter of "Accidentally In Love." Counting Crows wrote that one for the 2004 motion picture Shrek 2, and it is now the band's most-streamed song not named "Mr. Jones." It got them an Oscar nomination, too. Shrek 2 was fucking huge. Highest-grossing movie of its year. I will never understand it. The movie looks like digital barf to me, but the generation just behind mine reveres Shrek 2 as a wellspring of meme-driven nostalgia. Despite being a song literally written for a children's movie, "Accidentally In Love" was a #1 Adult Alternative hit.

Counting Crows have five Adult Alternative chart-toppers and a bunch of other songs that came close. The band's lineup has shifted plenty of times over the years. Adam Duritz finally shaved off his dreads, and he got into podcasting. Counting Crows are releasing music independently now, and they're still killing shit on AAA radio. Just this year, they reached #6 with "Spaceman In Tulsa." They'll be able to tour wineries for as long as Duritz can stand upright, so it doesn't really matter how critics felt about them in the '90s. As it happens, though, this critic is pretty into the random demo cut that serves as their only Modern Rock #1.

GRADE: 8/10

BONUS BEATS: I have legitimately never heard of New Jersey pop-punkers Houston Calls, but they recorded a pretty fun version of "Einstein On The Beach" for Dead And Dreaming, a Counting Crows tribute compilation that Victory Records put out in 2004. Here it is: