Counting Crows on 'insane' major label decisions

Counting Crows made their long-awaited live Irish return at the end of June and, with 2014 album Somewhere Under Wonderland, they're back working with a major label.
In his latest Hot Press chat, frontman Adam Duritz opened up to HP's Craig Fitzpatrick about how the touring life has become his default position, their new record and his complex feelings about American Sniper. Read all about it here.
During the conversation, Duritz also discussed his relationship with labels and why they struck a deal with Capitol. Read all about it...
The band famously left Geffen Records after 18 years back in 2009. How did you find that post-Geffen period?
ADAM DURITZ: Oh, absolutely pleasant! It was kinda great. No frustration. It was nice to just not have to be pulling your hair out all the time. There's a basic disconnect between what the world is and what the record companies want to believe it is.
It's just not that world anymore and it would drive you crazy trying to deal with them in a business way on a daily basis. For years, they're really trying to pretend that the internet doesn't exist. 'Nah, we're just going to go back to radio again.' Not that radio's not important but look, there's this whole free thing out there and to not use it is just fucking stupid!
And that would drive you around the bend, trying to deal with people who don't want to believe that it exists. Good Morning America had us on and they always loved us. They were really good to us, nice to us, and they offered to put our video and our single on the front page of abc.com for 10 days leading up to our performance on there. That's a pretty huge bit of free advertising right there. Especially when you're not getting us on radio. Universal's response – it really wasn't Geffen at that point – was 'ok, but how much are you paying us for that?' ABC was like 'what are you talking about? We're not paying you anything for it.' So Universal said 'well, then you can't have it.'
They're so caught up in getting paid for everything and the only people you give anything to being radio that they're willing to pay radio to play your song but they're not willing to let ABC give them 10 days of free advertising on the front page of abc.com.
It's not so much evil as it is just insane. It makes you want to pull your hair out. Having some years off from that was awesome. All we had to do was make records and play. Alright, that's pretty cool. I like doing both those things.
So what made you decide to allow Capitol to distribute Somewhere Under Wonderland?
With this record, we had no real plans to go back to a major label. We made it ourselves. We recorded it in December and February and after we finished the first series of recordings in December, my manager came to me over Christmas and said, 'do you mind if I take this around some of the majors and some of the indies? Because we need to put it somewhere. We're totally capable of doing it ourselves and there are bunch of indie labels that want it, but I think we should take it around and see what kind of choices we have.'
It never hurts to have information. In March or so, I went to have some meetings and at this point we're dealing with a finished record.
We're not doing any more multi-record deals with anybody. No more do you get to have us for several records and you take a vacation on this one because you know you have us for another one. We're going to do records and you'll know if you want it because you'll be able to hear it.
At that point, there's no downside to major label because all you're getting is more distribution power and more promotional power. And it's not fucking with your record at all."
So it goes from you working for a label to having a partner?
Right, and that's what we really needed.
We've had a lot of trouble with this in our career. It's really not 'Mr. Jones' [that started our career]. 'Mr. Jones' was a big hit and we weren't even in the Top 200. We played 'Round Here' on SNL and later on Letterman, and our career took off.
I think it was the one time in our career when we got to represent ourselves how we really as opposed to just by a three minute pop song. Often the song they'd pick was the only one that would fit on the radio. The only one that was short enough. I think that was a real hamper on our career after that. So I wanted to make the impression on this album as it was supposed to be, which was [over eight minute long album opener] 'Palisades Park'.
But I didn't even bring that up [at the Capitol meeting]. It was the President of Capitol who did. When we were playing songs in the meeting and 'Palisades...' went by, he said 'hang on, can you play that again?' And then he sat there for another eight plus minutes and then said,  'that's got to be the first impression you make. We'll make a film of it or something.'
So I thought: 'We're on the same page. We're thinking alike.'