Name	Blind Melon
Height
Naionality	California, United States
Date of Birth
Place of Birth
Famous for

The ‘90s are littered with rock albums that will undoubtedly be talked about for years to come. And there’s one group whose lone two studio albums can easily stand among their peers, the woefully underrated Blind Melon. Perhaps due in part to a career cut so tragically short that they never properly received their deserved accolades, 1992’s Blind Melon and 1995’s Soup (as well as a posthumous outtakes collection, 1996’s Nico) sound as invigorating today as they did when they first appeared. This is especially evident in the tracks that comprise the new collection, The Best of Blind Melon, and the concert DVD, Live at the Metro.

Talking to three of the surviving Blind Melon members nearly ten years after their abrupt end (Stevens, guitarist Christopher Thorn, and bassist Brad Smith), you get a sense of regret and sadness that Blind Melon never got a chance to deliver on their potential. But you also get a feeling from its ex-members of being proud of their experiences together, and of their memories of working with singer Shannon Hoon. “We all had the same kind of background,” remembers Smith, “Moving from a small town, and we kinda wore that on our sleeves. At the time, right before Nirvana and Pearl Jam dropped, it was unique for a band to have that kinda stance, and I think that was our draw and appeal from a lot of the industry folks. Y’know, “These guys are fresh off the boat and they kick ass!”

All hailing from small towns, it wasn’t until Hoon, Stevens, Smith, and Thorn relocated to Los Angeles during the late ‘80s, that the seeds for Blind Melon (whose name came from a phrase Smith’s father used to describe some ‘hippie’ neighbors) were sown. And with the arrival of drummer Glen Graham shortly after the dawn of the ‘90s, the definitive line-up was solidified.

A demo tape was soon recorded, and before the band even played a single show, numerous major labels were courting them. Stevens figures it was due to Hoon’s relationship with a certain fellow Indiana native. “I think Shannon’s sister and [Axl Rose] were in school together. Labels jumped all over us ‘cause of Shannon’s connection with Guns N’ Roses.” Right around the time that the G n’ R track ‘Don’t Cry’ surfaced in 1991 (with Hoon duetting alongside Rose, and appearing in its video), Blind Melon was signed to Capitol Records.

Shortly after the dawn of 1992, Blind Melon found themselves recording their debut in a spot that was in the midst of a musical uprising - Seattle, Washington. Setting up shop at London Bridge Studios, Rick Parashar was hired to produce; the same gentleman whose name would soon be a fixture on the U.S. album charts (producing Pearl Jam’s ‘Ten,’ Temple of the Dog’s self-titled release, and Alice in Chains’ ‘Sap’). Smith: “I look back on those times and I’m like, ‘There’s a real sense of musical purity and performance to that record.’ I think that’s what’s missing from today’s records – Blind Melon really captured that.”

Listening back today, ‘Blind Melon’ is definitely one of the more ‘pure’ sounding rock records of the early ‘90s – modeled more after Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers, rather than the usual suspects that all the grunge and industrial bands were studying at the time. While most of the tunes were finalized after the band had worked on them together, two standouts were penned entirely by lone members prior to their formation – Hoon’s acoustic ‘song of hope,’ ‘Change,’ and a quirky tune that Smith had penned about the constantly depressed state of a former girlfriend, ‘No Rain.’

Crisscrossing the states via van, it was during the spring of ‘93 that the band hooked up with ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ video director, Samuel Bayer, to shoot a clip for the upbeat ditty that always received a raucous reception at their shows, ‘No Rain.’ By combining shots of the band playing in a breezy field and of their album cover coming to life (the infamous ‘bee girl’), the feel-good video catapulted the band to the top of the charts in the U.S. during the summer.

The grind of the road (Blind Melon toured for nearly two years solid) merged with the group’s sudden success proved to be a dangerous cocktail, as Hoon indulged in his drug of choice, cocaine. But this was nothing new, according to Stevens. “Shannon’s drug use…that was from day one. That wasn’t a new thing. Coke was the problem – heroin was never the problem or anything like that. So anyway, we tried to deal with it – got him into treatment a few times and things like that. We did an intervention one time and he didn’t show up for it! Pretty classic.” It appeared as though Kurt Cobain’s suicide in April of 1994 had served as a wake up call for Hoon, who took his first serious stab at sobriety around this time – lasting only a few months, however.

Before recording sessions could commence for their sophomore effort, Blind Melon was offered a spot on the mammoth Woodstock ’94 bill, which they accepted. Thorn’s memories remain clear ten years later – “I remember Shannon showing up in a dress, and just going, ‘You’re fucking nuts, what are you doing?’ But that’s what was great about him, he was never going to give you the same old shit – you didn’t know what you were going to get from him. That’s why he was such a great performer. I remember him just going for it, giving 100%.”

With Woodstock out of the way, Blind Melon’s attention turned to sessions for their all-important second album. Selecting producer Andy Wallace due to the variety of acts he’d worked with previously (Nirvana, Slayer, Jeff Buckley, etc.), the quintet opted to record in New Orleans, Louisiana – a town which always seemed to get to Hoon. Smith: “That was total mayhem. There was a lot of cocaine, ecstasy, heroin, marijuana…whatever you wanted. It was at the studio all the time – it was a mansion. Daniel Lanois’ mansion called Kingsway. And it was fucking crazy man. We didn’t go into the studio until two or four o’clock in the afternoon, and nobody left until the sun was coming up. It was just a total vampire existence, laced with drugs, alcohol, and craziness. People were there that I had no idea why they were there. And looking back, it’s amazing that we got a record done at all.”
With such madness going on around and within the band, it would be understandable if the resulting album, ‘Soup,’ was a complete mess. Turns out, it was anything but. Arguably one of the ‘90s great lost rock albums, it certainly took the average Blind Melon admirer off guard upon first listen – gone were the loose funky jams, and most obviously, no sunny sing-alongs a la ‘No Rain.’ In its place were songs about child murderer Susan Smith (‘Car Seat’), serial killer Ed Gein (‘Skinned’), the effects of heroin (‘2x4’), a suicide jumper (‘St. Andrews Fall’), and a barroom brawl (‘Lemonade’), among other ‘pleasant’ subjects. But after a few spins, ‘Soup’ showed how much the group had grown musically, and how they had put together an album that improved immeasurably with each successive listen.

Critics weren’t as patient with the album, as they savagely panned it – suspiciously branding the group a ‘one hit wonder’ before ‘Soup’ was released (Stevens: “Shannon pissed off so many journalists that they were all taking it out on him”). But as Smith points out, the band was ready for the slings and arrows. “When people become really successful, people just can’t wait to see you fail. We were prepared for that – that’s why we made the record we did, to be quite honest. If we tried to follow up that first Blind Melon record with some more happy shiny songs, y’know, chicken fried grooves, that would have been a dismal failure. But when you come out with an art record, that’s pushing the envelope and sounds completely original, it’s hard to argue with that.”

Another tune on the album, ‘New Life,’ saw Hoon contemplating whether the impending birth of his daughter would sober him up once and for all. Fresh out of another stint in rehab, Hoon set out for a tour of European festivals with Blind Melon right around the time of ‘Soup’s’ release, on August 15, 1995. The next month, Blind Melon embarked on their first full-on U.S. tour in well over a year. Despite being upset with the album’s poor reviews and wanting to be back home with his newborn, Hoon returned to the road - clean and sober, at least initially.

Soon after, things worsened, especially when the band’s management put a ‘caretaker’ on tour to watch Hoon and limit his drug intake. The band decided to send the hired hand packing, with the idea that Hoon’s latest binge would soon end, and things would return back to normal.

A performance in Texas on October 20, 1995 proved to be Blind Melon’s last. With Hoon staying up all night doing cocaine, the bus pulled into a New Orleans hotel the next morning. While the rest of the band checked into their rooms, Hoon opted to roam the city streets, before climbing into one of the bunks on the bus. He never woke up, dead of a cocaine overdose at the age of 28.

In the wake of his death, many cast blame on the group and its management, saying that Hoon shouldn’t have been back on the road so shortly after completing a rehab assignment. But Stevens is quick to point out that Hoon’s hometown of Lafayette wasn’t the best place for him. “He had a lot of connections there. We caught a lot of flack later on, but I always told people, ‘Look, this guy is showing up to rehearsal twenty pounds underweight.’ And we hadn’t even been around him. This was one of these instances where it was a two-day situation that got him to where he is today, after being clean for a while.”

The surviving members pondered the idea of continuing on with a different singer, and issued a collection of outtakes in 1996, ‘Nico.’ But eventually, it was agreed that Hoon was simply irreplaceable, and decided to go their separate ways. Nowadays, most of the chaps are involved in other projects – Stevens is collaborating with ex-Spacehog frontman Royston Langdon in the New York City-based outfit, the Tender Trio, Smith and Thorn are now producers in Hollywood (at their own recording studio, Studio Wishbone), while Graham seems to have retired from the music biz – living in North Carolina and spending his days painting.

Looking back a decade since Hoon’s death, Smith recollects something that the singer said to him shortly before his passing. “The last meaningful conversation I had with him, I think it was after he got out of rehab. We were talking about how things were going to be better and different, and how he was sorry.” For Shannon Hoon, those days sadly never came.