MARC FORD

The respected SoCal guitarist explains why he chose the Black Crowes over Guns N' Roses - and how the Crowes' internal friction helped make them a compelling alternative to grunge

- Andrew Daly

IN RETROSPECT, THERE’S no denying that while the Black Crowes might’ve been a touch shy on originality, they were nonetheless outliers of an era that was simultaneously watching hair metal flame out as grunge was meteorically rising. One listen to 1990’s Shake Your Money Maker will tell you all you need to know: the young and rowdy Georgia band were dutifully beholden to the icons they grew up watching and hearing — Keith Richards, Mick Taylor and their comrades.

Still, Shake Your Money Maker was an unexpected smash success, injecting ounces of boogie-woogie into a scene yearning for something more. And the Crowes were more than happy to serve up heaping doses of said boogie-woogie, but of course, not without equal doses of the turbulence that would come to define them later in the decade.

The first sign of said turbulence — aside from the Robinson brothers’ perpetual sparring — was the firing of Jeff Cease in 1991, who, to that point, had proved to be a perfect foil to Rich Robinson’s gain-drenched heroics. And with Cease out of the picture, the Crowes found themselves needing someone who was like-minded enough to tackle blues rock in the thick of the grunge era but also calm enough to handle the rigors of life in a band that wasn’t exactly harmonious.

Thankfully, the answers to the Crowes’ prayers came swiftly in the form of Marc Ford, a slick six-stringer out of Southern California, who recalls his entry point into the fray as surprisingly nondescript. “Honestly, I don’t know that there really were any conversations about me joining,” Ford tells Guitar World. “The way I remember it is they needed a guitar player, they knew what I did, and we played well together.”