Counting Crows Explore ‘A Long December’ With Vevo Footnotes
Adam Duritz recounts the overnight writing session and live recording behind the band’s 1996 single.
Counting Crows have revisited “A Long December” in a Vevo Footnotes video, with frontman Adam Duritz recalling how the song was written and recorded in under 24 hours. Presented as annotations over the original music video, his recollections trace the sessions for Recovering the Satellites. During recording, Duritz’s friend Jen was hospitalized after being hit by a car. He visited her daily before heading to the studio, then often spent the hours after midnight bartending at the Viper Room.
After one shift, Duritz visited his friends Samantha and Tracy and returned home around 4 a.m. “I wrote ‘A Long December’ sometime between 4am and 6am and then crashed,” he recalls. Around noon, he took the song to Geffen to play it for Tony Berg, then visited Jen before reaching the studio around 4 p.m. He played it for the band before dinner, taught them their parts afterward, and began recording that evening. Duritz believes the album version was the sixth or seventh take. While the others celebrated in the kitchen, he returned with the engineer to record two layers of backing vocals. Everything else, he explains, came from the live take.
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Released in October 1996, Recovering the Satellites topped the Billboard 200, with “A Long December” following as its second single a few months later. Duritz recalls being especially excited to work with producer Gil Norton, whom he describes as a hero. “The first record we had no idea what we were doing but ‘Satellites’ was much more intentional,” he says. The accompanying video features actress Courteney Cox, who was dating Duritz at the time. Asked about the clip, he admits he has not watched it in years, while naming “Hanginaround” as a personal favorite because much of that video was filmed at his home with friends.
Elsewhere in the band’s catalog, their 1993 debut, August and Everything After, recently joined UMe’s Vinylphyle reissue series. The edition was cut from the original analog master tapes by Joe Nino-Hernes at Sterling Sound and pressed at RTI as a two-LP set on 180-gram black vinyl. Its packaging includes a gatefold jacket and a four-panel insert featuring tape scans, archival images, and new liner notes by Rick Florino. The album includes “Mr. Jones,” “Round Here,” and “Rain King.”
Browse the Counting Crows’ music on limited edition vinyl and CDs here.
