Posted by Bitter, Bitter Me (207.229.166.229) on October 07, 2019 at 08:32:31:
In Reply to: $1 million dollars for Lions!! posted by RIP on October 07, 2019 at 07:03:01:
: That doesn't fully make sense to me...the Robinsons were greedy, but walked away from a 5 million dollar record deal. That doesn't add up.
I could absolutely see Chris' ego rationalizing walking away from the V2 deal. He thought he would be successful as a solo artist (after all, in his mind, he IS the Black Crowes) and if he wasn't, Pete was going to get them another great deal. Here's the passage from when Pete flies to Japan to meet with the band in 2001:
Pete flew over to Tokyo, as long planned, so we could have a meeting to discuss any and all plans for 2002. I had already decided I wouldn’t be back, but of course I kept that to myself. We had a day off and scheduled the meeting for two in the afternoon in Pete’s room. Rich and I showed up exactly on time. Chris wasn’t there. He wasn’t there thirty minutes later. Or an hour. Or two hours.
He didn’t turn up until much later that night, and when Pete angrily asked him where he’d been, Chris said simply, “Kate and I were shopping and we just stayed out. What’s the fucking big deal?”
Pete said, “I flew over here, at your insistence, because you’re going on vacation next week, and you said you wouldn’t be able to speak for a while, and we agreed to meet today, in fucking Japan, to map out next year!"
Chris said, “Oh, there’s nothing to map out. There’s no Black Crowes next year. I’m gonna start working on my solo career.”
Pete was stunned. “Chris, hang on a second. You’re welcome to do something else, but you can’t just put the entire band on hold. V2 is expecting another album by the end of next year. Or the deal goes away.”
“I don’t care,” Chris replied. “I really don’t think I’m coming back anyway. If my own record does well, I won’t be back no matter what.”
Pete said, “No, no, no. You committed to deliver five albums to the label. They committed five million dollars to the band. Lemme help you with the math—you have delivered one, so you owe four more. Those four albums get the band to a twenty-year-career… you’re gonna throw that away because you can’t make your own record and a Black Crowes record over the course of a full year? If we lose the V2 deal, and then a year later you decide to get The Black Crowes back together, what then?”
Chris laughed. “You’ll just find us a million dollars for a new record somewhere else.”