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Is Adam Duritz's Hair Real?

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | July 25, 2015 |

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | July 25, 2015 |


I don’t actually think about Counting Crow’s frontman Adam Duritz very often, but this morning I randomly found myself wondering if his dreads were actually real and set about exploring that question.

The answer: They are not. He’s a 50-year-old white guy. Of course they’re not. They’re extensions. Though, he does say that he tried to grow dreads himself, but that they were itchy and smelled bad.

But in researching that question, I found out more than I had bargained for, which is to say: When I followed Counting Crows in the 1990s, the Internet wasn’t what it is now. We didn’t know every detail about the musician’s and actors we followed. We knew that he dated Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox, but most of us didn’t know that he actually only slept with one of them.

In fact, he doesn’t sleep with as many people as we might have thought, and that’s because Adam Duritz is bad at relationships. He’s bad at relationships because Adam Duritz — to my surprise — suffers from mental disease.

Duritz has a condition known as Depersonalization Disorder. His mind often feels disengaged from his mind and body. He also suffers from chronic insomnia. Consequently, while the condition may help him to write moody songs about loneliness and alienation, it doesn’t help him pick up on normal social cues. He also doesn’t pick up on jokes very well.

For instance, in an interview with Men’s Health last year, the interviewer jokingly asked him how much would Kickstarter have to raise in order to persuade him to shave off his hair.

“What?” Duritz replied. “Why would you want to do that? I don’t understand the question.”

Here’s what he said, when asked about his mental illness on Reddit a while back:

I don’t think there’s anything I can say except that mental illness is a real thing and it can be devastating. It’s not that “everyone’s a little crazy” as people are so fond of saying to me. It’s terrifying and I wish it had never happened to me.

Is that a guy you really want to make fun of now?