Mr. Jones

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"Mr. Jones"

Single by Counting Crows
from the album August and Everything After
Released	March 1994
Format	CD single
Genre	Rock
Length	4:32
Label	Geffen
Writer(s)	Adam Duritz David Bryson
Producer(s)	T-Bone Burnett
Chart positions
#1 (U.S. — 1 week)
Counting Crows singles chronology
	Mr. Jones (1993)	Round Here (1994)

This article is about the Counting Crows song. For other uses, see Jones.

For the 1993 movie starring Richard Gere, see Mr. Jones (film).

"Mr. Jones" is a song by the American rock band Counting Crows. It is the third track of their debut album August and Everything After (1994). It was the band's first radio hit, and remained their best-known song for nearly 10 years, after which time the Shrek 2 soundtrack introduced the band to a wider and younger audience [1].

"Mr. Jones" entered the American Top 40 on February 19, 1994, and entered the Top 10 five weeks later. On April 23, "Mr. Jones" passed R. Kelly's "Bump n' Grind", taking the number-one position (which it surrendered, the following week, to Prince's "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World") [2].

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. Said Duritz 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..." [3]. These events and feelings were the basis for "Catapult", the first track of Recovering the Satellites.

Ironically, perhaps, the primary topic of the song itself is how two struggling musicians (Duritz and bassist Marty Jones of The Himalayans) "want to be big stars," believing that "when everybody loves me, I will never be lonely". Duritz would later recant these values, and in later concert appearances, "Mr. Jones" was played in a subdued acoustic style, if at all [4]. Most directly referencing this, 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."

The song is often interpreted differently. One popular belief is that "Mr. Jones" refers to Adam's penis.[5] Others believe it is a thinly veiled reference to the protagonist of Bob Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man" [6], a theory supported by the lyric "I wanna be Bob Dylan, Mr. Jones wishes he was someone just a little more funky." Others have suggested that Mr. Jones refers to Marty Jones' father.

[edit] Track listing

"Mr. Jones" (LP version) – 4:32
"Raining in Baltimore" (LP version) – 4:42
"Mr. Jones" (live) – 4:44
"Rain King" (acoustic version) – 5:10

[edit] Covers

The band Hidden in Plain View did a cover of "Mr. Jones" which was released in 2004 on the album Dead and Dreaming: An Indie Tribute to the Counting Crows.