Counting Crows lead singer Adam Duritz delves into his high-profile romances, history with mental illness and more in the band’s new documentary, Counting Crows: Have You Seen Me Lately?
The film, which hit HBO Max on Friday, December 19, revisits the band’s journey to stardom in the early ’90s during the making of their first two records — and doesn’t shy away from exploring how Duritz’s leadership affected their overall success, for better or worse.
“Over the years, he’s pissed a lot of people off,” bandmate David Bryson told cameras after the documentary delved into Duritz sparring with Saturday Night Live producers in 1994 when they threatened to cut back the group’s performance time. “He’s in charge of the band, he makes decisions, he doesn’t really consult anybody about it. One of the reasons we’ve stuck together over the years is because we accept that. It’s OK.”
He added: “Sometimes it’s not OK, but mostly it’s OK.”
Duritz himself is candid in his interviews, acknowledging that his mental health struggles occasionally led to tension in the recording studio, tour dates being canceled and drama in his romantic life.
“A lot of my songs are about difficult moments in people’s lives, but they’re also always sort of leavened with the idea of hope. I know I’m the kind of person who thinks about things being hopeless in a lot of situations, and I especially was when I was younger,” Duritz explained in the doc’s opening. “Because on top of everything else and whatever difficulties you may be going through, I had a mental illness that I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t understand what was happening and I just knew it was really hard to live with. It’s like, how do you move yourself more towards hope when you can’t sleep and you can’t think clearly?”
He added that while it was great to “suddenly have a career,” his celebrity status only heightened his struggles. “There were all these things that came along with [my career] that just made everything really f***ing difficult,” he said.
His bandmates, meanwhile, are open in recognizing that Duritz faced far more complications from fame than they ever did.
“I’m a Little League coach and a dad,” Bryson said. “I’m still not famous!”
Keep scrolling for the biggest bombshells from the Counting Crows: Have You Seen Me Lately? documentary:
Adam Duritz’s Mental Health Struggles Included Dissociation and Self-Harm
The Counting Crows claimed that each one of them almost quit during the making of their first album, August and Everything After, due to Adam Duritz’s strong-willed ways.
“In the studio, he would have really dark episodes where he didn’t really know how to communicate what it is he wanted,” keyboardist Charlie Gillingham shared in the documentary. “And he didn’t like the way it was.”
Duritz, meanwhile, said he struggled because he “just needed” the music “to feel a certain way,” but he “didn’t know exactly what was wrong. I just needed to feel it. And I wasn’t very good at it. I didn’t know how to tell people how to be Counting Crows.”
Mary-Louise Parker, who dated Duritz in the late ’90s, said that she could relate to his creative process but understood why some couldn’t grasp it.
“When he’s in the act of creating, he’s not the easiest person. Because he’s striving for something beyond his expectations,” she explained. “He wants it to surprise him. He wants it to be better than he could imagine. He’s going to be relentless in pursuing that. And not everybody is like that.”
Duritz said things took a turn for the worse when he turned 21. After drinking a big glass of water one day, he started to feel like he was “on acid,” a sensation that would go on to last for one year.
“I would be afraid to open my eyes in the morning. I just really wanted it to be over, and it wouldn’t be,” he recalled. “That’s the beginning of when I thought there was seriously something wrong with me mentally. And it had nothing to do with drugs. It was just happening. And that’s when I started to get medicated by a doctor because it was so scary and it wouldn’t stop.”
While the first record led to a three-year touring stint, Duritz continued to struggle with his mental health. His battle got more intense after the band’s second album, Recovering the Satellites, hit shelves in 1996.
Duritz’s therapist recommended that he take time to rest, but the musician wanted to keep his promise of touring. Instead, he did an entire tour while coming off his prescribed medication, which his therapist said was a “really rough” experience for Duritz.
Eventually, Duritz said he began to “cut” himself to feel better. “And the worst part about cutting yourself is you do it and it works,” he said. “It does release some of it, so [you think], ‘I should cut myself some more because it’s actually making it better.’”
Luckily, Duritz realized that he had enough “logic” to recognize that self-harming wasn’t “actually good logic,” and he admitted himself into UCLA Medical Center for a treatment stay — the same day Mariah Carey was allegedly checking out.
He was later diagnosed with a dissociative disorder that often leads to derealization and depersonalization. Once diagnosed, Duritz said he was able to get on the right medications, although the illness never “goes away” entirely. (According to the Mayo Clinic, dissociative disorders are mental health conditions that involve experiencing a loss of connection between thoughts, memories, feelings, surroundings, behavior and identity. These conditions include escape from reality in ways that are not wanted and not healthy and cause problems in managing everyday life.)
Adam Duritz Had Issues Adjusting to Fame
Adam Duritz explained in the documentary that he first balked at the idea of celebrity when the band was asked to be on the cover of Rolling Stone.
“I couldn’t help but think what my life was going to be after that and how it would change, because I was very shy,” he said. “Magazine stands were everywhere and Rolling Stone was at the front, and that’s your face. … Your anonymity is f***ing gone. And I couldn’t help thinking there were real repercussions to saying yes to that, even though there’s no way you’re saying no.”
The band did their photo shoot and interview in Paris, but Duritz was heavily dissatisfied with how the pictures, mostly in black and white, came out. “I look like a donkey. I”m so f***ing mopey,” he quipped. “They look like a parody of a band.”
Counting Crows’ Drama With ‘Saturday Night Live’
The band was asked to play the late-night show in January 1994, but as the night got closer, producers at SNL told them they were going to have to swap their two songs and also cut more than one minute off of each performance. Adam Duritz refused, claiming that the show “promised” them the full time to perform “Mr. Jones” and “Round Here.”
When producers insinuated there was nothing they could do, Duritz stood his ground and insisted they get the full time. “It’s the biggest moment of our lives and we gotta do it the right way or else I don’t want to do it,” Duritz explained.
Ultimately, they were given their full time slot and delivered a great performance, but they haven’t been asked back to the show since.
“In the times he’s done that over the years, he’s pissed a lot of people off,” bandmate David Bryson told cameras. “He’s in charge of the band, he makes decisions, he doesn’t really consult anybody about it. One of the reasons we’ve stuck together over the years is because we accept that. It’s OK. Sometimes it’s not OK, but mostly it’s OK.”
Adam Duritz Moved to L.A. Solo After a Phone Call From Johnny Depp
After touring for three years after the release of their first album, Adam Duritz began to feel “dissociative” and struggle once again with his mental health.
“It made it hard to want to play, and I had a bit of a breakdown,” he confessed in the doc. “We had to cancel a few shows.”
Duritz also took issue with his rising fame in Berkeley, California, noting that kids would camp out on the band’s lawn to get a glimpse at them, leading Duritz to have “panic attacks.”
“I can’t do anything here. I don’t know where to go. Everywhere I go, it’s an issue,” he recalled thinking. “You start to shy away from everybody. I was about to become a shut-in.”
After receiving a phone call from Johnny Depp inviting him to head down to Los Angeles and celebrate Kate Moss’ 21st birthday at the Viper Room, Duritz realized he felt more at home in the City of Angels.
“L.A. was a real refuge,” he explained. “This whole town of dreamers.”
Duritz ended up bartending at the Viper Room nearly “every night” — giving his tips to the owners — because it became the only place he felt comfortable and like himself.
When the rest of the Counting Crows called him up about writing another album, Duritz would say, “I’m not in a band now.” However, his L.A. experiences eventually inspired him to get back into the studio.
“I lived a completely different life, then I moved to Hollywood and met all these really cool people and I wanted to make a record about it,” he said.
Adam Duritz’s Short-Lived Romance With Jennifer Aniston
Adam Duritz had a short-lived romance with Jennifer Aniston in 1995, which he claimed was thanks to their friends working overtime to set them up.
“When I met Jennifer Aniston, my friends lied to me and her friends lied to her. They told us we both were really into each other,” he revealed in the documentary. He noted he didn’t know “anything” about the Friends star at the time, adding that he was “busy during prime time” and unable to watch any of the big TV shows.
Still, when Aniston showed up to see him play, he was intrigued. “When we were getting ready to record, we would do these shows at the Viper Room and we would test out the material, and Jen came to the show and she’s cool,” he said. “She’s smart, she’s really funny, she’s beautiful and she likes me, apparently.”
Adam Duritz Gives Rare Insight Into His Relationship and Breakup With Courteney Cox
Duritz’s bandmates and friends said in the doc that they’d seen their singer “deeply in love maybe four of five times,” noting that he would fall in love “very quickly.”
Duritz noted that his “longest” relationship was with Aniston’s Friends costar Courteney Cox, whom he began dating in 1996 after she starred in the band’s “A Long December” music video.
“She’s hanging out with us or she’s on our tour bus with us. She painted my fingernails,” former bassist Matt Malley recalled, claiming that Cox was a big inspiration for the band’s second album, Recovering the Satellites.
“I don’t think their relationship was the healthiest thing in the world because Adam wasn’t the healthiest thing in the world at that point,” Duritz’s longtime friend Randall Slavin noted.
Duritz, for his part, shared his perspective on why the pair ultimately didn’t work out. “Courteney was probably my longest relationship, but I don’t know whether we were really together for a lot of it,” he explained. “We were very, very different people. And there were moments that were absolutely wonderful together and there were moments where it was really hard. We just weren’t on the same wavelength.”
Mary-Louise Parker Throws Shade at Adam Duritz’s Exes
Although Mary-Louise Parker and Adam Duritz dated in the ’90s, they maintained a long-standing friendship. When the actress was interviewed about the “Mr. Jones” singer for the documentary, she openly confessed to not loving some of his other former romantic partners.
“My memories of Adam are 98 percent platonic. Maybe 98.6,” she insisted. However, she added, “He could have done without a few of those girlfriends, I think. I could have shaved a few of those off the list, very happily.”
Adam Duritz Gets Rid of His Dreadlocks
Adam Duritz’s current partner, Zoe Mintz, whom he met in 2017, opened up in the film about what first drew her to the singer.
“He was charming and just completely sweet,” she said. “We had dinner and we’ve been together ever since. I feel very protective of Adam. I’ve had that fear before, of being relied upon for happiness, but Adam isn’t reliant on me or anyone.”
Mintz noted that from her perspective, Duritz’s preference of wearing dreadlocks was “one of the things people didn’t understand about him” and likely became “a factor in which the public responded to him,” referencing some of the criticism he received in the ’90s. “I think there was a little bit of ridicule,” she added.
Mintz said that the dreadlocks seemed to become a type of “shield” for him over time, so she would gently try and persuade him to change up his look.
“They were a barrier, and when I could get through them and see his face, I just love his face. He’s got beautiful eyes and my favorite smile in the world, and I just always gently encouraged him, ‘Maybe you should try, you know, not having dreadlocks,’” she said.
Eventually, Duritz followed her advice and shaved his head.
“I was stunned and so happy for him because he was happy,” Mintz gushed. “He was ready for a new era. He was ready to be a new version of himself and a more exposed version of himself, and I was ecstatic for him.” (Earlier in the documentary, Duritz mentioned that he did not feel like himself while looking in the mirror until he got dreadlocks.)
Counting Crows: Have You Seen Me Lately? is now streaming on HBO Max.
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