My relationship with Kate Hudson was over before our son was two: Chris Robinson

Chris Robinson is a musician. The 57-year-old is best known for being the lead singer of the Black Crowes. Ahead, he shares how his mother fostered his love of reading, what he has learnt after being married four times, and what his daughter inherited from him.

“I’ve never been afraid to love, but I was also never the type to be a womaniser. I was always in a relationship, and being with one person is the way I like it to be.”

I met my maternal grandmother just once as a child. She was passing, and everyone rushed to say their goodbyes. As a kid, that melancholy left an imprint on me and I’m sad I wasn’t old enough to get to know her. She raised 13 children in Nashville, Tennessee; my mother, Nancy, was the 11th born.

My paternal grandmother was quite a character. Everyone called her Totsy, but her real name was Thetis. Even though my grandfather, Ike Robinson, was Jewish and my dad, Stanley, was too, they both married non-Jewish girls.

My love of food and cuisine comes from Totsy. Food was more than just nourishment to her – there was a cultural dynamic around how she made her meals. We’d go to the apartment in Atlanta, Georgia, where Dad grew up, every Sunday. I loved her leg of lamb – it was vinegary and beautiful.

Totsy was very modern in the Deep South for her time. She had a marriage before she met my grandfather, and Dad had two half siblings. She made it to the age of 94.

My mum, Nancy, was a flight attendant in the 1950s and ’60s. She went to Vanderbilt University in Tennessee and I get my cerebral side from her. She is a very Southern lady and still holds herself in that way.

As a kid in the 70s, I was at the dawn of dyslexia being diagnosed, and it was Mom who went in to bat for me. She called people she knew at Harvard University and threw a lot of energy into that, which really benefited me and helped me feel less alone. Mom helped me discover a love of reading. I was challenged with the way words looked, but she drew me into a world of literature. It was a saving grace for me.

I had a teacher at a private boarding junior school called Mrs Schmidt. I was wearing Dead Kennedys T-shirts and was troublesome in class. She had a severe, close-cropped hairstyle and taught Latin. In the first week of class, she said: “Chris, you’re very charming, but I couldn’t care less. I can see you’re lazy and I’m giving you an F.” I wanted to be a writer of some kind so I entered a short story and poetry competition and won. I remember seeing her look at me when I went to collect my prize.

I had girlfriends at high school, always girls who were on the arty side of things. Most teenage girls didn’t care about the guy who reads a lot and is into weird bands.

I’ve never been afraid to love, but I was also never the type to be a womaniser. I was always in a relationship, and being with one person is the way I like it to be. Especially after I lost my anonymity, when MTV started playing Black Crowes video clips 100 times a day.

Heartbreak has been a constant theme in my personal life, and I take responsibility when things go wrong [Robinson has been divorced three times]. All that changed seven years ago when I met my fourth wife, Camille. It’s the first time I’ve ever felt fulfilled by a relationship. She has taught me to be present.

My first marriage [to actor Lala Sloatman] was rough. We were young and it was the wild, heroin-chic ’90s, before I knew a lot of things. As a young man, I thought that if I got married and proved my love, our problems would go away. It was childish and they didn’t.

My relationship with Kate Hudson was over before our son Ryder was two years old [they were married from 2000 to 2007]. I am not afraid of the realities that befall all of us when things go wrong, and I take a lot of pride in being responsible as a parent.

I have a daughter, Cheyenne Genevieve Robinson, born in 2009, with my ex-wife Allison Bridges. Cheyenne and I don’t live in the same town, but we speak three times a day on FaceTime. She likes the same weird English comedies as I do, and like her dad, she can’t go past a bookstore.

The Black Crowes’ new album, Happiness Bastards, is out now.

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