Sheryl Crow on teen sons, joining Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
For Sheryl Crow, the biggest honor of being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame comes not from the Cleveland institution, but from right at home in Nashville, Tenn.
“My kids are teenagers, and I’m wildly not cool right now to them,” the nine-time Grammy winner tells Alexa. “But I will say that my 13-year-old, [Levi], who is a sports junkie, said, ‘Oh, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — is that like the [Baseball] Hall of Fame or like the [Pro] Football Hall of Fame?’ And I said ‘Yeah, it’s kind of like that.’ And he shook his head fairly approvingly. So I felt like, for a moment there, I was kinda cool.”
The major-league mom will be soaking it up with sons Wyatt, 16, and Levi (whom she adopted in 2007 and 2010, respectively) when she gets welcomed into music’s most exclusive club at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on Nov. 3 — 30 years after making her multi-platinum debut with 1993’s “Tuesday Night Music Club.”
“It’s very surreal,” says Crow, 61, of getting inducted on her first nomination. “I mean — and this is no dig towards the rock hall — it wasn’t really on my radar [before the nominations were announced in February]. And when I got nominated, I hated the feeling of hoping that I would actually get in. It’s a weird thing. I guess it’s like being nominated for an Oscar, and you feel so honored. And then you feel like, ‘Oh my gosh, why do I want to win so bad?’ ”
But the RRHOF made Crow very happy in May, when it was announced that she would be inducted in the performer category alongside Kate Bush, Missy Elliott, George Michael, Willie Nelson, Rage Against the Machine and the Spinners.
As a girl growing up in Kennett, Mo., with singer-songwriter dreams, Crow was inspired by Bush and her alt-pop artistry. “The two albums of hers that I had, I wore out,” she recalls. “So I love not only that we’re going to be inducted in the same class, but then I might get the opportunity to meet her and just tell her how much I love her.”
Having also embraced country music in her career, the “If It Makes You Happy” songstress is also grateful for “the gift of getting to be in the same class with Willie, because he’s someone I feel like has been a cornerstone for me.”
Before “Tuesday Night Music Club,” Crow was an elementary-school music teacher and then a background vocalist for Michael Jackson on his “Bad” tour. But her world was rocked thanks to hits such as “Strong Enough” and, especially, “All I Wanna Do.”
“That song took me to Russia. It took me all over South America. It took me all over Asia and Australia,” she reflects. “People who didn’t even speak English as a first language would pound through that song trying to get every word. And every time I play the song, I feel the impact of that.”
Prize patrol
Crow’s debut LP, 1993’s “Tuesday Night Music Club,” took her all the way to music’s biggest night at the 1995 Grammys, where she won three gramophones, including Record of the Year (“All I Wanna Do”) and Best New Artist. “It was a lot of late-night hanging out in bars, drinking … that’s how it got started,” she says of the multi-platinum album. “It gave a real feel to what it was like to be in LA in the early ’90s.”
Breaking ‘Bad’
Sheryl Crow got some stellar schooling for solo stardom from the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, as a background singer on his 1987 to 1989 “Bad” tour. “I loved watching Michael in his brilliance,” she says. “For me, the experience was life-changing. I learned a lot, and I feel extremely blessed to have gotten to be a part of that.”
Love fest
In 2019, Crow was coronated as music royalty by returning to perform at England’s Glastonbury Festival.
Later that year, she also released “Threads,” which at the time she said would be her last studio album.
But the singer-songwriter has since had a change of heart: “I wrote a couple of songs a few months back and then I couldn’t stop, so I’m getting ready to put a body of work out.”
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