A Barcelona Story, featuring the Black Crowes

​I tell stories about destinations. This is very different from assuming I know how best to visit that destination, or what the current situation may be on the ground.   Sometimes I can help, but sometimes the stories I tell date back too far in the past to be of much practical use.  Which is not to say the story isn’t worthwhile, because sometimes, the stories are magical and timeless.  Take, for example, my very brief visit to Barcelona at the tail end of 1992. 
 
This was a different world of course, before social media, before smart phones, before the Internet. The famous Basílica de la Sagrada Família was decades away from being completed, in fact it was only officially inaugurated this very month, 34 years later.  It still made an impression, but has very little to do with my Barcelona story.   For that, we need to track even further back in time to a kid growing up during the global cultural boycott of Apartheid, South Africa.

​South African radio enjoyed a steady slew of music hits drawn from the best US and UK artists, but we saw few if any touring international artists.  Queen did play Sun City, a huge resort outside of Johannesburg and according to the Apartheid government, technically outside of South Africa too.  Sun City was located in Bophuthatswana, a puppet state considered an independent country by the National Party of South Africa and a sham by everyone else.  Queen performed there, along with Rod Stewart, Elton John, Frank Sinatra, and inexplicably Stevie Wonder, all drawing the ire of their contemporaries.  I was too young for any of it, although coincidentally, my first-ever international rockstar concert was in Sun City shortly after the end of Apartheid. Thanks for the hits, Bryan Adams.   With the fall of Apartheid came the arrival of touring international artists, many of them at the tail end of their careers.  Nobody was particularly eager to travel to the south of Africa, but I’m sure Duran Duran and Dr Alban appreciated the pay checks.   Mother Africa was finally opening its arms to the world, but I had missed the adolescent experience of seeing a world-class act coming up in the clubs or theatres, or seeing any world-class acts at all. 

My friends and I were obsessed with the Black Crowes’ first album, 1990's Shake Your Money Maker. It was hip-slinging blues-rock Americana containing classics like Hard to Handle, She Talks to Angels, and Twice as Hard, which we would sing along to and crank through the distorted speakers in our first cars. You might be surprised to learn that my first big travel experience was a Contiki tour after finishing high school, a possible reward for above-average grades but more likely a testament to my begging skills.   The tour would kick off in London, and reading an imported copy of NME,  I saw that the Black Crowes would be performing in London the very evening of our arrival.  I can’t recall how we managed to buy tickets…this in the days before the internet or the proliferation of credit cards, but hell hath no determination like a kid obsessed with music.  Somehow, we scored tickets to our first ever ‘cool’ show on the night of our first ever visit to Europe, and somehow it all went smoothly.  We got to the Brixton Academy, got up front, and got to see these Atlanta-born rock n’roll gods cranking their hits while we screamed every word.  You never forget that first show. ​

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29 November 1992: Catching the Black Crowes at the Brixton Academy in London, UK.

18 years old, bright-eyed and bushy on a Contiki European tour.

The Contiki European bus tour covered something like 11 countries in 18 days, a whistlestop visit to Western Europe’s Greatest Hits.  We saw the Eiffel Tower, Venice and the Tower of Pisa, but mostly we saw a lot of beer and older Australians encouraging us to drink as much of it as humanly possible.  Naturally it’s all a haze and a very inauspicious start to a long career chasing meaningful, authentic travel experiences.  
 
We got to Barcelona on a slow Sunday, and that night we decided to find somewhere to drink.  There were no screens to distract us, and the girls we were hanging out with – shout out to Nikki, Rachel and Samantha – decided wisely to get some rest.  So off we went – Brad, Sam and I – looking for a pub which really shouldn’t have been that difficult, but what did we know from sleepy Sunday nights in Catalonia?  Everything was shuttered, but eventually we found a single open coffee shop, empty and well-lit, where we ordered a round of Peroni Nastro Azzurro beer. We couldn’t have been there very long when the door of the coffee shop opened and in walked an assortment of strange, long-haired freaky looking people, also in search of a few drinks.
 
“Dude, I think that’s the Black Crowes,” I recall Brad saying.   We knew the band was on a European tour, and it wasn’t difficult to recognize the same guys who stood on stage just a few metres away from us a week earlier.   They had hippie velvet threads, dirty long hair and undernourished rockstar bods. What are the chances?   

I should emphasize that it wasn’t just the Black Crowes.  For us, the Black Crowes were like Pearl Jam and Nirvana, like 80s era A-ha and Duran Duran, like Metallica and Rush.  Yet inexplicably, here they were, just us and the Black Crowes, accompanied by security guards and several gorgeous groupies.  Of course, it fell on me to do something about it.  Gingerly, I walked up to the bar, approached the singer Chris Robinson, and remember saying something like:
“Sorry, you look like the singer of the Black Crowes.”
“Yeah man,” said the singer of the Black Crowes.
“Are you Chris Robinson,” I asked.
“Yeah man,” replied Chris Robinson.  
“We saw you last week in London. We’re from South Africa. You’re the first real famous band we’ve ever seen!”
“Yeah man!” said Chris Robinson.

This is where things get blurry in my memory, but here’s how, three decades later, I believe it went.  Chris called over other members of the band and told them we were from South Africa and they were the first real famous band we’d ever seen, a week ago, in London.  He then invited us all to the bar, where he bought us some beers.   The security guys initially looked sceptical but quickly relaxed because we were just three skinny, nerdy geeks beaming at our good fortune.  We had some conversations about weed.  I recall speaking to one of the groupies, who told me she was the girlfriend of guitarist Rich Robinson, Chris’s younger brother.   They had played in Barcelona that night, and were winding down.  They had thick southern drawls which sounded like something you’d hear in a movie, because that’s the only place we’d ever heard accents like this before.  I think one of us did ask for a photo, but Chris Robinson declined, and we were certainly not going to press it.  After a half hour or so, they packed up and left, leaving us stunned.   We walked back to the hotel, hollering and howling, hugging each other, jumping about, utterly elated for having met our heroes.  It was the apex moment of late teenage joy.   
 
A few days later, watching MTV in a hotel room, we caught the Black Crowes video for a new single called Sometimes Salvation, a bluesy number pulled from their second album, The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion.  We didn’t have MTV in South Africa, so every video we saw made an immediate impression.  And there she was:  Rich Robinson’s girlfriend, wearing I swear the same tiger print jacket, looking a little sad.  Man, we loved that album too.  

Tastes shifted, times changed. It pains me to say but I can’t remember a single song from the Black Crowes’ third album, Amorica, or anything from their seven albums since. A new one just dropped in 2026, called A Pound of Feathers.  I expect they’ve aged better than we have, and certainly have better hair. 

Concerning Barcelona, this is the story I have.  It has nothing to do with Park Güell or Gaudi’s Basilica, with Montjuïc Hill or the Gothic Quarter, but it’s a great story nonetheless.  Time plays tricks on memories, filling in blanks, embellishing details. I have a sum total of four photos from Barcelona, and none from that evening.  Yesterday I whatsapped my old mates Brad and Sam, and asked them what they remember from that night. 
 
Me: Do you remember meeting the Black Crowes in Barcelona?  What do you remember about that night?
 
Brad: Sure do - we were in a random bar somewhere and either they walked in or they were sitting there. We went to talk with them (you probably had your Lawless rebel jacket*) and they said something strange when we asked them to be in a pic with us … like yeah that would be cool but we’d prefer not to as you could take a picture of a car and it may just blow up and catch fire, so yeah no pictures … we had a laugh coz they must have been proper grilled.  I think we bought them some beers [what the hell?]. I don’t remember the girl in MTV and I don’t remember groupies … it was just us who recognized them. Was probs 30 mins … it was like Christmas for us.  Bro - that was 26 years ago
 
Sam: Believe it or not that was 34yrs ago! I remember Esrock telling them that we had the best weed in SA. They were so cool to us and then we read a bit later somewhere about issues with their bodyguards being too aggressive and f**ing up fans.
 
Brad: Thanks for making me 8 years older.
 
Sam: Hey buddy. The grey don't lie.
 
Other than Brad recalling that we bought the drinks (which would have been strange because they were genuine rock stars although clearly not averse to shaking down their money makers) and having no recollection of the girl (Brad never did notice the girls until later) my memory has served me well.  Now the moment has been apprehended, captured, and filed for the records.    What does this have to do with Barcelona?  Not much, but it was instrumental in teaching me that when you put yourself out there, you never quite know what’s going to happen.

* I got my Mom to sew a Lawless Rebel bikers patch on my bright blue anorak. I thought this would make me very cool, and had a grand old time flashing the Lawless Rebel whenever law enforcement might be around, captured below. 
​Yes, I was a total punk!