Mr. Jones (Counting Crows song)

"Mr. Jones" is the debut single of American rock band Counting Crows. It was released in December 1993 by Geffen Records as the lead single from the band's debut album, August and Everything After (1993). The song was written by band members David Bryson and Adam Duritz, and produced by T-Bone Burnett. It became the band's first radio hit and has been described as their breakout single. "Mr. Jones" reached number five on the US Billboard Hot 100 Airplay charts. Internationally, the song peaked at number one in Canada and number seven in France. In April 2022, American Songwriter ranked the song at number four on their list of "The Top 10 Counting Crows Songs".
"Mr. Jones" debuted on the US Billboard Radio Songs chart on January 22, 1994, and entered the top 10 five weeks later. On May 14, 1994, the song reached its peak US chart position at number five.
The band's surprise success happened to coincide with Kurt Cobain's death. These events took a significant toll on Adam Duritz, the lead vocalist and principal songwriter. Duritz said in an interview, "We heard that, that [Kurt] had shot himself. And it really scared the hell out of me because I thought, these things in my life are getting so out of control." These events and feelings were the basis for "Catapult", the first track of Recovering the Satellites.
According to Duritz (who was born in 1964), the song title had a hand in the naming by Jonathan Pontell of "Generation Jones", the group of people born between 1954 and 1965. "I feel honored that my song Mr. Jones was part of the inspiration for the name 'Generation Jones'."
The song incorporates two different keys, as demonstrated by verses being written in A minor with a chord structure of Am-F-Dm-G-Am-F-G before transitioning into C major in the chorus and a new chord sequence of C-F-G. In addition, "Mr. Jones" is written in 4 time and is performed at 142 beats per minute.
The song is about struggling musicians (Duritz and bassist Marty Jones of The Himalayans) who "want to be big stars", believing that "when everybody loves me, I will never be lonely". Duritz would later recant these values; and in some later concert appearances, "Mr. Jones" was played in a subdued acoustic style, if at all. On the live CD Across a Wire Duritz changes the lyrics "We all wanna be big, big stars, but we got different reasons for that" to "We all wanna be big, big stars, but then we get second thoughts about that"; he also changed the lyrics "when everybody loves you, sometimes that's just about as funky as you can be" to "when everybody loves you, sometimes that's just about as fucked up as you can be."
Some believe the song is a veiled reference to the protagonist of Bob Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man", based on the lyric "I wanna be Bob Dylan, Mr. Jones wishes he was someone just a little more funky." According to Adam Duritz on VH1 Storytellers, "It's really a song about my friend Marty and I. We went out one night to watch his dad play, his dad was a Flamenco guitar player who lived in Spain (David Serva), and he was in San Francisco in the mission playing with his old Flamenco troupe. And after the gig we all went to this bar called the New Amsterdam in San Francisco on Columbus."
In a 2013 interview, Duritz explained that even though the song is named for his friend Marty Jones, it is actually about Duritz himself. "I wrote a song about me, I just happened to be out with him that night", Duritz said. The inspiration for the song came as Duritz and Jones were drunk at a bar after watching Jones' father perform, when they saw Kenney Dale Johnson, longtime drummer for the musician Chris Isaak, sitting with three women. "It just seemed like, you know, we couldn't even manage to talk to girls, ... we were just thinking if we were rock stars, it'd be easier. I went home and wrote the song", Duritz said.
In the live version of the song, as on the album Across a Wire: Live in New York City, the first couplet of the song is a quotation of the 1967 song "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star" by The Byrds.
"Mr. Jones" is the only song on the album August and Everything After where the drums are not played by Counting Crows drummer Steve Bowman. Bowman "hated the song" because "he didn't sign up to play country music" and "thinking that way, he played it that way and ruined it over and over again" says Duritz. Producer T-Bone Burnett brought in drummer Denny Fongheiser who "nailed the song in two takes" and is on the released version. Singer Duritz also struggled with the vocals for this song and "Rain King" which appears on the same album. Duritz "must have sang the song 100 times" in multiple studios before getting a good take.
Mark Tremblay from Calgary Herald found that "they’re best uptempo, especially when they parade their youthful naivete" as in "Mr. Jones". HMV named the song Single of the Week in the last week of April 1994. Stuart Bailie from NME wrote, "On "Mr. Jones", Adam Duritz sings, I want to be a lion/Everybody wants to pass as cats, and you're on his side, even if the music and the tortured scrawl of a voice suggest that lionisation may be a long way off." NME editor Johnny Cigarettes felt the first lines of the song "are Sha la la la la in a please-let-me-be-reincarnated-as-Van-Morrison voice." He viewed it as "an inoffensive folk-pop tune that trundles along without the obscene diversions into Hothouse Flowers hell that you half expect." Clark Collis from Select wrote that "re-writing Dylan" with Mr. Jones, "the San Franciscan five-piece plot a steady bitter-sweet course between the clashing rocks of country-rock and braindead MOR."
Personnel are taken from AllMusic.