Black Crowes Crusade to Restore a Tarnished Myth

“It’s 1990. I’m 23 years old. I don’t even remember 1972.”

This has become a familiar ritual for Chris Robinson, lead singer of the Atlanta rock band the Black Crowes: explaining that the group, whose debut album sounds as if it was recorded in 1972, is not dealing in nostalgia.

“People always bring up retro ,” continued Robinson, who formed the band in 1985 with his guitarist brother, Rich. “I understand that. It’s like everybody brings up the Rolling Stones, which is cool. They’re the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band.

“Now, does that mean Rich and I sat around one day and said, ‘Hey man, let’s have a band like the Rolling Stones’? No. That’s just the sound that we felt comfortable with.

“I think the way records sound today is atrocious. ‘Exile on Main Street,’ that’s the way records should sound. Aerosmith’s first record. Any Led Zeppelin record. Fred McDowell. Chuck Berry records. Those records sound right.”

In fact, Fred McDowell’s Mississippi blues were filling Robinson’s West Hollywood hotel suite, whose drapes were drawn against the morning brightness. Incense burned on a counter, and Robinson, dressed in rock-star finery, held a glass of wine as he talked.

Obviously, it’s not just the sound of rock’s salad days that attracts him.

“There’s that myth that was rock ‘n’ roll. . . . It’s still very valid. It’s about living it. I’m in the Black Crowes 24 hours a day. It’s the way I walk and talk, eat and sleep. That’s what it’s about. I think that’s what it was about for the Rolling Stones, so that’s what we took from the Rolling Stones, that’s what we took from Chuck Berry.”

The Crowes’ crusade to restore a myth tarnished by its own excesses and deflated by the punk movement has met mixed results. They’ve been dismissed by critics as ridiculously derivative, but their album “Shake Your Moneymaker,” has sold more than half a million since its February release, and they’ve landed opening spots on tours by Aerosmith, Heart and Robert Plant (they’ll be with Plant at the Universal Amphitheatre on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1).

Robinson credits his musical eclecticism to his father, Stan Robinson, a singer whose “Boom-A-Dip-Dip” grazed the pop singles chart in 1959. The Robinson kids had records at their disposal ranging from John Lee Hooker to Ravi Shankar.

He was also encouraged to follow his literary curiosity, which makes him a bit of an anomaly in the hard-rock fraternity.

“I don’t know why I’m a James Joyce fan and maybe the guy in Warrant has never even heard of him,” he said. “I just always read. I believe that what we do is just as intellectual as anything R.E.M. does. And it’s laid out with more of an edge, I’m not trying to hide anything. I spell it out.”