Chris Robinson made his long-awaited return to The Howard Stern Show on Tuesday morning. The Chris Robinson Brotherhood frontman didn’t hold back in sharing criticisms of Dead & Company guitarist John Mayer and his brother and co-founding member of The Black Crowes Rich Robinson.
Chris’s chat with Howard Stern spanned 75 minutes and saw him bring out his wife Allison at one point. The interview started with a discussion of The Black Crowes’ 1999 tour with Jimmy Page. Robinson mentioned he received Robert Plant’s seal of approval to sing Led Zeppelin songs after the pair had a rocky start to their relationship when Chris revealed Plant used a backing track on tour. The Georgia native also talked about his upbringing and his father’s musical career.
The singer started a discussion about John Mayer when he said, “Donald Trump is president, John Mayer’s in the Grateful Dead and my brother is a Black Crowes tribute band.” When Howard pushed Chris for his thoughts on John Mayer, Robinson responded “the Grateful Dead has turned into this giant nipple that everyone sucks off of to get money.” He added, “I’m not a big John Mayer fan. Jerry Garcia is a hero of mine. Everything that Jerry Garcia ever talked about or stood for – John Mayer is the antithesis.” When Stern tried to rebut Chris’s take, Robinson offered, “he knows all the licks, there’s nothing unique about his playing. Jerry was one of the most unique musicians in the world. Jerry never played anyone else’s licks and now here’s John Mayer playing everyone else’s licks.”
Chris spent a few minutes talking about his distaste for his brother and other members of the Crowes. Robinson said he doesn’t hate his old mates, but wouldn’t perform with them again even if the group was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. The vocalist also took aim at Rich’s songwriting skills. Listen to a pair of clips from the interview:
Another interesting part of the interview came when Howard asked Chris about meeting his idols. Robinson related a story about Warren Haynes introducing him to Gregg Allman. Gregg wasn’t impressed and said “who gives a shit!” upon the introduction. Listen to Chris Robinson tell the story:
Stream the entire interview:
