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Shannon
Brad Smith was born in West Point, Mississippi (population 8,000) on September 29, 1968. He played baritone sax in junior high and then snare drum. Brad and Thomas Rogers Stevens first met when they were in Cub Scouts together.
Rogers was born on October 31, 1970 also in West Point, Mississippi. His mother was a high school English teacher. Brad taught himself how to play guitar by the age of 13 and then he taught Rogers how to play. The first song he taught him was the Scorpions' Rock You Like a Hurricane. In high school, they were in a number of cover bands together. Brad went to college but decided not to complete it and in 1989, they piled up their belongings into Brad's Honda Civic and headed off to Los Angeles.
Richard Shannon Hoon was born on September 26, 1967 in Lafayette, Indiana. His father was a construction worker and a big sports lover and pushed Shannon to follow in his footsteps. Shannon excelled in karate (becoming a black belt at just age nine), wrestling, pole vaulting, and all the usual sports but he just made the bare minimum grades to stay on the teams. He was also a trouble maker and had many run-ins with local police. Mostly fighting and breaking in and messing up the house of a teacher who had crossed him. He got a fish tattoo on his back which covered the scar from where once he had been stabbed by having been thrown onto a car radio antenna. In March of 1990, he got on a Greyhound bus and went to Los Angeles with to his name. After being there less than a month he met Rogers and Brad at a party and the three began jamming and discovered they had something in common: none of them wanted to have anything to do with the city’s metal circuit. "We hated the whole LA glam scene," says Brad. "It was just disgusting and we rebelled against that so heavily that we had something really unique."
They decided to look for a second guitarist. Several months earlier Brad had answered an ad in Music Connection magazine. He never landed with the group, Animal Farm, but kept in touch with the guy who auditioned him, Christopher Thorn. Christopher was born in Dover, Pennsylvania on December 16, 1968. His mom was in a bluegrass band. He was in a band during his high school days. Afterwards, he moved into an apartment in York with his girlfriend in preparation for his second year of college, but just before the semester was to start, he packed up a U-Haul, quit school and moved to Los Angeles.
For months, the four scoured Hollywood for a drummer but had no luck. They were looking for someone with finesse. Finally, Rogers and Brad thought of Glen Graham, a fellow Mississippian they had met on the club circuit back home. Glen was born on December 5, 1968 and was the son of an attorney. He was raised in Columbus, Mississippi in what he calls the “the epitome of the American sitcom family.” Glen was attending his second year of college at Mississippi State University when he received the call from Rogers. Ironically, the band he was in had just lost its guitarist on the day he got the call and he took the timing as an omen. He quit school and set out for California with in his pocket and a minimalist jazz kit that the other band members took great delight in scorning. “The bass drum looked like it was made out of a coffee can,” said Shannon.
With the final band member added, they were complete but needed to find a name for their new found band. They considered Brown Cow, Gristie, Frog, Mud Bird, Naked Pilgrims and Head Train. One day Brad asked, “What’s happening, blind melons?” It was how his father used to greet some hippie neighbors back home. There were about ten of them renting the house next door to the Smith’s, none with any discernible source of income so the image fit.
Without playing a single club or aligning themselves with any of L.A.’s myriad rock scenes, they landed a record deal almost immediately after forming. They managed to create a major label buzz around Hollywood on the strength of a four-song demo called The Goodfoot Workshop. These were pretty much their only four songs, but they succeeded in creating the illusion that they were a seasoned group with plenty of great material. “We only had four or five songs, next thing we know, we’re having dinners with 10 different record companies, and we’re lying to all of them. We’re like, ‘Yeah, we got 20 songs, we’ve been together for a year.’” Rogers said. On several occasions, label executives from Atlantic, Epic and Capitol would come to watch rehearsals. The band would rip through their five songs and then announce that they “didn’t feel like playing any more.” At one point during this period, God of Thunder Gene Simmons expressed interest in managing the band. They met with him at his house and talked for hours but decided not to take him up on his offer.
After realizing they were now on the brink of something big, Hoon and company started discussing among themselves just what they wanted in a record deal, and how they wouldn't allow themselves to settle for anything less. "We figured, okay, this is what we want, and if no one offers it to us, or if we just can't get it, then we don't want any deal at all. Because the only way to secure your future is to make sure that everything is mapped out in black and white. It took about a year for us to finally sign our contract," says Hoon, at which point Capitol Records came through with the terms the band requested.
"We knew we wanted to have a hand in everything concerning the band because we knew that this was our future. We maintain 100 percent creative control over everything we do, be it our CD packaging, the artwork, whatever. A lot of people go to independent labels so they can do that, because most of the majors don't want to turn over that control to the talent. But we established those terms well in advance, long before we ever had signed our contract."
It took a while for the band to become accustomed to the recording studio. They completed an EP, Sippin’ Time Sessions, with producer David Briggs but scrapped it at the last minute blocking its 1991 release. “It was too slick and studio done,” said Brad. When the EP didn’t work out, the band said they wanted a year to be together, write songs and tour before making the record and Capitol agreed.
During the downtime, Guns n’ Roses were working on their Use Your Illusion albums, and Shannon, who had known Axl Rose from his hometown in Indiana. Shannon had been hanging out in the studio with GN’R and ended up contributing backing vocals to several tracks, and Axl subsequently asked him to appear in Guns n’ Roses’ video for Don’t Cry and on select GN’R concert dates. “It was kind of an accident, there was an open mike night at the record plant in Hollywood, I was singing along with it and I’m not sure how it came about but Izzy said something to Axl that I was singing along with it. He had a couple of background parts and thought to do it, I went in and sang a couple of background parts and it sounded cool and he was like ‘fuck it’ lets just sing the whole song together.” Backstage after a New York GN’R show someone tapped Shannon on the shoulder to praise his duet with Axl. It was Donald Trump.
The band decided to hit the road. “We weren’t in any hurry to do anything,” Shannon said, “We were willing to wait ‘til everybody felt comfortable.” They played a club tour and then opened six shows for Soundgarden. It was during this tour that Shannon crafted the fork necklace which he gave to Chris Cornell while the two were eating at a Denny’s after a show. Cornell wore the fork necklace for many years, he even wore it in some of Soundgarden’s videos but he stopped wearing it when Shannon died. He said that it made him too sad to continue to wear it.
Unable to concentrate and fed up with nagging phone calls, the band decided a change of scenery was in order and moved to a $1,000 a month five-bedroom house in the college town of Durham, North Carolina. “Those days were great. It was inspiring to all of us, becoming brothers - eating, shitting, and playing together. I think that was the coolest time, being in that house and jamming from midnight until 4 or 5 in the morning. We’d just smoke dope and play, not even trying to write a song or anything” said Christopher. The “Sleepyhouse” routinely hosted all-night jam sessions. The group members put tin foil over all of their windows, blocking out the sun during the day and city lights at night. "Everybody slept all day long," Shannon stated, "then we'd get up and play from about three to six in the morning. We barely left the house. And when we did go out to visit our families for Christmas, we looked pathetic - just pale and white with dark circles under our eyes. I kept wondering what our relatives must've been thinking. We established a lot of unity in the band, which obviously made our music more real, and from what I can see, 'real' is very in now. Besides being able to concentrate full time on music, if any problems arose while we were under the same roof, we were able to resolve them immediately. And we had to, because if we didn't, it was like five minutes later we'd be running into each other in the kitchen."
Occasionally their hazy merriment crossed the line, as when their sound man, Lyle, passed out drunk on the couch with a cigarette. “A flame was burning about two inches from his head,” Christopher says. “We were shaking him and pulling on him, screaming, but he wouldn’t wake up.” Tragedy was averted thanks to several heaping wok-fulls of tap water.
While living in Durham, the band became the bar band in a local dive called “The Brewery.” It was here that the band tried out songs that they had written during the week. They tested which songs got the best reaction from the crowds.
In February 1992, the band flew to Seattle and entered London Bridge Studios with producer Rick Parashar to begin recording their debut record. Midway through the sessions, they were offered a slot on MTV’s 120 Minutes Tour, opening for Live, PiL and Big Audio Dynamite II. During that tour, word-of-mouth on Blind Melon escalated. Christopher said, “That tour helped us make a better record. We recorded half the record before 120 Minutes, the other half after, and the other half sounds so much better. We learned how to play together, basically.” By June, when they finished recording Blind Melon, it appeared there would be no stopping them.
Capitol Records tried to cash in on Shannon’s new found celebrity from the Don’t Cry video. They put pressure on the band to try and rush the recording of their debut album but the band refused to hurry. Blind Melon was released on September 22, 1992. The album cover is an old picture the band came across of Glen’s little sister, Georgia, in a bee costume. Since it took some time for the album's release, the buzz about Shannon had died down much to the chagrin of Capitol. The band made videos for Dear Ol’ Dad and Tones of Home and hit the road in support of the record. The record began selling a couple of thousand copies a week after it was released.
After about nine months, the album had shifted about 90,000 copies which was respectable but not what Capitol had hoped for. Things changed, however, with the release of No Rain and specifically the video they made to accompany it. The video featured 10 year old Heather DeLoach as the bee girl from the album cover. She danced around in fields and flowers with the band. The public immediately took to the bee girl and propelled the single up the charts to number 21. The single also had a knock-on effect on the album. The popularity of No Rain caused the album to race up the Billboard top 200, eventually peaking at number 3 almost a year after it was released. The bee girl went on the Jay Leno show, tap danced on stage at the end of the 1994 MTV Movie Awards and had plans to be in a movie with Nick Nolte.
This sudden surge in popularity encouraged the band to remain on the road for another year to promote the record. The band embarked on a world tour opening for Lenny Kravitz. During this tour, the band played Europe for the first time with prestigious gigs at Wembley stadium and the Glastonbury Festival in England. No Rain was a top twenty smash hit in the UK and remained in the charts for six weeks. While in Amsterdam, the band recorded the ripped away version of No Rain which eventually made its way onto the Nico record.
On February 7th at the American Music Awards, Shannon was arrested for kicking and punching guards and officers during an altercation that began when Shannon allegedly became loud and disruptive during the taping of the show. According to authorities, Shannon struck one guard in the face while being escorted from the arena and tried to kick out the rear window of a police car after he was arrested. When he tried to kick out the partition between seats in the car, he narrowly missed the head of the driver, said Deputy City Attorney Alice Hand. At a police station, Shannon allegedly ripped a telephone off a wall and spat twice on a detective who was interviewing him, Hand said. He was charged with battery, two counts of battery on a police officer, one count of assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest, disturbing the peace and destroying telephone equipment. He was released on ,000 bail. The band had been up for the Best New Band award but had lost out the Stone Temple Pilots.
In March, the band was nominated for two Grammy awards for Best New Artist and Best Rock Performance of 1994. However, they were unsuccessful in both categories.
Change and Tones of Home were released as singles but failed to match the success of No Rain. In the UK, Change still made the top 40 but disappeared quickly from the charts.
After doing 300 some live shows, the band took a few months off to relax then went into the studio to record their second album. It was during this downtime that Shannon, Christopher and Rogers took a vacation in Mammoth Mountain, California. The trio went snowboarding and skiing and also recorded several tracks which have become legendary amongst Blind Melon fans, The Mammoth Sessions. Some of these tracks would eventually make it onto the posthumous Nico record but the vast majority of the songs - mostly radically different versions of the songs which would appear on Soup have never officially seen the light of day and are the most sought after Blind Melon songs.
On August 13, the band played at the Woodstock II festival. They played the south stage and went on right after Joe Cocker. They played some new songs which would appear on the Soup record and a brief snippet of Three is a Magic Number. The performance met mixed reviews. Some people claimed it was excellent while others said it was dire. People were unanimous in the fact that Shannon was extremely intoxicated on some substance. He performed wearing a white dress that belonged to his girlfriend, Lisa, and wore smudged eye makeup and hair barrettes. During Time, he threw the bands conga drums into the crowd.
From November 1994 to January 1995, the band recorded their follow up album titled Soup in Kingsway Studios in New Orleans. Rogers said, “We were anxious to record another record way back into the last tour.” This time producer Andy Wallace was on board as the band's producer. The band had found an old mansion which they liked so much that they set up all of the recording equipment there and just lived in the house as they recorded.
Like the debut, Soup is loose and free-flowing, but it experiments more, adding jazzy bits, eerie cello, kazoo and the Little Rascals Brass Band to flavor the album. "These bands are a New Orleans tradition," said Rogers. "They show up at funerals playing a dirgy slow march and upon burying the person, they march away with this celebratory music, celebrating this person's transcendence into a better afterlife. We sort of had this concept where the album would be like a funeral. We'll have this slow, dirgy opening and then at the end of the album, it would be like a celebration, so the horns would exit the record."
Recording did not go without a hitch. Shannon got into trouble in bars and had to be bailed out of jail for fighting with an off duty S.W.A.T team leader in a roulette club. One New Orleans bartender remembers serving him, "Basically, I cut him off. He was drunk and couldn't understand why. I said 'cause you've had too much to drink.' He said, 'This is New Orleans. Can't I get a drink?' He was with another member of the band and they started arguing. Then he reached across the bar and tried to hit me."
Shannon’s drug consumption was also rampant in New Orleans. He has been quoted as saying that he couldn’t actually remember a single day of the 3-4 months of recording. He also told Kerrang! Magazine that he got out of New Orleans just in time. This appears to have been a thinly veiled reference to the danger of his drug intake. One of the engineer's who worked on Soup said "A couple of nights he (Shannon) went out and wasn't heard from until 11 the next morning. There was a lot of concern as to whether he'd show up. Suspicious packages arrived in the mail and sometimes, they'd blow off recording because it was more important to have a counseling session. He was a very troubled guy, and we talked about it a lot."
The other members of the band seemed to have a great time in New Orleans. Glen liked it so much that he decided to move there and the band praised the city in many interviews. “I feel like this is one of the great cities. There’s a high regard for art and architecture, music and all that stuff.” Rogers said.
Soup was due for release in August and Shannon entered into a detox program at the Exodus Recovery Centre in California in June. He discharged himself after 25 days ignoring medical advice. On July 11th, Shannon’s girlfriend of ten years, Lisa Crouse, gave birth to a baby girl, Nico Blue, named after Shannon’s favorite flower. "The flower Nikko Blue is beautiful, and the baby is an angel, a gift from God," Shannon said, "Having a child can make you re-evaluate how you need to be there. I need to start caring about myself if I'm going to be the proper father.
"I was there during the birth and everything. It's hard to take pictures when your eyes are filled with tears. I smashed my face against that little viewfinder, but I couldn't see nothing 'cause I was so overwhelmed. I'm still glowing. With the birth of the baby, I felt a part of my identity die. It was an identity that was selfish, and I felt it go away, which was good because that whole carelessness was a pain in my ass for a long time."
In an interview in August, Shannon talked with pride about the birth of his month-old daughter. “It’s the healthiest thing that’s ever happened to me.” Shannon finished the interview by saying, “Being a father, there’s a lot of things I need to take into consideration. Staying alive is one of them.”
Soup was released on August 15, 1995 and the first single to be released was Galaxie. The song made it to number 8 in the modern rock charts but failed to appear in the Billboard singles chart. The promo video for the song featured a guest appearance by famous LSD guru Timothy Leary playing a sorcerer. The song fared slightly better in the UK where it sneaked into the top 40 singles chart at number 37 but only remained for two weeks.
Soup’s release was met with scathing reviews from the press. Very few writers gave the record a positive review and most brutally attacked the record and the band. Poor reviews resulted in the record debuting in the billboard charts at a disappointing 28 and it disappeared completely only a few weeks later. The poor initial reaction to the record meant that pressure was put on the band to tour. The band’s management were warned that sending their singer out on tour could prove disastrous. The people working with him in rehab insisted that it was a mistake and that Shannon needed a further six months intensive treatment before he should be allowed back on the road. However, Rogers disagrees, “He wanted to go on tour and he felt like he was ready. This was not a pressure situation. ... I think that Shannon was healthier when he was out playing and singing every night and getting his emotions out on stage." And he insists that Shannon "was crazy from the day I met him," that fame had nothing to do with his downfall. He would veer from pulling practical jokes to displaying what Rogers called "completely irrational behavior. He wasn't doing it with a safety net and he wasn't overly cautious. He was proceeding with this sort of abandon that you did your best to try to curb." Rogers says the band forced Shannon into rehab twice and kept all mind-altering substances out of the band's circle. "There were so many times I can't even tell you that in the middle of the night, I'm grabbing Shannon by the ears and telling him, 'You're going to kill yourself and you're going to ruin everyone's life around you. There's a lot of people that you would just write off in that situation, but he was so amazing and he made up for it in so many other ways that you wanted to stay with him.”
Shannon was honest in interviews saying that he did not really want to be on the road. He said he missed his family and his baby daughter. He would record children’s stories onto tapes and send them back to Nico just so she could hear his voice. "This is all fun and youth-prolonging," Shannon said of his career, "but I want to be a father, and it's hard to be when you're away. I’d be lying if I said I was enthusiastic to be back on tour. It’d be easier if I had Lisa and Nico with me.”
The band again travelled to Europe where they again played prestigious festivals in various countries including the famous Reading festival in England. During September, they were back in North America opening for Page and Plant at some shows and also playing their own headlining dates. On September 12th, the band did an intimate and interactive show for MuchMusic television in Toronto, Canada before heading back to the states to continue their club tour. The band were also the guest presenters on MTV’s 120 minutes show for a night.
The band’s manager, Chris Jones, attempted to enforce an alcohol-free policy on the tour and sent a minder from the Exodus Centre named Bobolu, to watch over Shannon. The aim was he was to keep Shannon from taking drugs. It failed badly, within days Shannon was smoking crack right in front of the counsellor. "We really felt that Shannon was doing things to spite this guy, to get to him, to make him try to leave," Rogers said. "It just seemed like it was counterproductive. I felt that Shannon was going to get malicious towards this guy and we didn't think it was right." He joined the band on the road on October 11th and was fired on the 14th. Chris Jones admits that he regrets sending Blind Melon out on the road. But he also points out that Shannon as with any addict could be his own worse enemy. “Ultimately, there’s nothing that killed Shannon except Shannon. It wasn’t the industry. It wasn’t touring. It was that he gave up. Or that he didn’t believe that he had a problem. He lived in denial, and that’s what killed him.”
On October 20th, the band played what was to be their final gig together in Houston, Texas. They then travelled 350 miles over night to New Orleans where they had a gig at Tipitina’s the next night. While they travelled Shannon started into his new stash of cocaine, ranting and raving about the direction of the band’s career and casting blame all over the place. At first Rogers partied with him but soon realized Shannon was out of control. “I’ve already got your eulogy written, Shannon. I know what I’m gonna say at your funeral,” Rogers teased. Horribly ironic but he wasn’t talking about that night. They had all seen Shannon in a much worse state. Shannon was still wide awake and ranting when the bus pulled into the Dixie Parking lot on St. Charles Avenue at 7 a.m. the next morning. The five band members straggled through the dawn's light and checked in at Le Meridien Hotel. Shannon and Rogers rode the elevator up together. At around 8:30 Shannon called his girlfriend, and they talked for forty-five minutes. He managed to disguise how messed up he was. They had fought the day earlier but everything was fine now. Around 10 a.m., he left his room, saying he wanted to find something to eat. "He looked really happy," Chris Jones said. He took the elevator down to the hotel lobby, stopped to invite doorman Don Weaver to their concert at Tipitina's that night, then headed up Common Street toward the lake. "He seemed like he was happy to be in town," Weaver said. From the hotel, Shannon walked two blocks to L.A. Smoothie, sat at a corner stool, ordered a smoothie, paid with a bill and made a call on his cellular phone. Melanie Thomas, who was working that morning, thinks he called a psychic on a pay-by-the-minute 900 line. After an hour or so spent reading the newspaper and chatting on the phone, he ambled three blocks back to the tour bus. He got on the bus and took off his clothes except a pair of shorts and neatly folded them up, he locked the door behind him and laid down in Christopher Thorn’s bed and never woke up.
Around 1:30 p.m the crew woke up and realized that Shannon was on the bus from his feet sticking out of the bunk. They were supposed to be at the venue so they had to wake him up. The monitor technician tickled his feet, but he didn’t respond. Lyle Eaves, the sound man, pulled back the curtain to wake him. “I called out his name, shook him, turned on the light, and as soon as I saw him I knew something was wrong. I screamed at the bus driver to go call an ambulance.” They took him out of the bunk, and the tour manager tried CPR. The ambulance came, and they announced Shannon was dead.
His body was taken back to Dayton, Indiana. His girlfriend, Lisa, chose his burial clothes. He was buried in his favorite T-shirt which simply said “AMSTERDAM” and was barefoot. He always went barefoot whenever he could. The casket was opened for those closest to him. Rogers said, “It’s the first time I ever saw him not talking. I was sitting there thinking, I can’t believe he’s not going to get up and just fill my ear full of the hugest steaming pile of horse shit you’ve ever heard. I was just crushed. It was my best friend.” Each of them put in object to be buried with him. Lisa put in the most. Mrs. Hoon put in a letter to Shannon, saying she loved him and that he should sing to the angels. That’s what she figured: that the angels needed a singer, so he had to go. His niece, Grace, put in a little plastic cereal bowl so that Shannon could eat his Coco Puffs in Heaven.
Shannon was buried in Dayton Cemetery near the back close to his ancestors. The grave reads, “Beloved Father and Son” and at the bottom is a quote from Change, “I know we can’t all stay here forever so I want to write my words on the face of today and they’ll paint it.”
The record, Nico was released on November 12, 1996 as an enhanced-CD, a fitting memorial to the group and its late lead singer, complete with lyrics, previously unreleased photos, interviews, concert footage and several full-length videos. It was accompanied by the aptly named, full-length documentary home video, Letters From A Porcupine, a historical perspective of the band's personal and musical progression, with footage of early club shows from 1992 through Woodstock '94 and beyond, glimpses of the group behind-the-scenes in New Orleans during the Soup sessions, as well as glimpses of life offstage and on the road.
For the surviving members, getting back together again to work on the album served a therapeutic function. "We were able to laugh and talk about every nutty thing Shannon used to do," said Brad. "I definitely thought about him a lot. In a way, it was like easing out, getting used to him not being around. I'm just thankful I had Rogers, Glen and Christopher to help me get through it. Not having Shannon in your life is a good thing and a bad thing. He was a tyrant and an angel."
"Doing this record was a healing process for all of us," adds Glen. "As soon as we got into the studio, it just felt right. Playing again with these guys was the same as it always was, because we always wrote the music, went in and recorded and then Shannon would come in afterwards to lay down his vocals. So, instead of coming in later, he was already there on tape."
“Now that Shannon's dead, you sort of realize he was basically telling us what was going to happen to him," said Rogers. "Everybody knew he was putting himself in danger living his life the way he did. To hear those songs now can be real emotional. When we first started working on the album, I still couldn't believe he wasn't around. I went into complete denial. I kept expecting the phone to ring and him to be on the line screaming at me. It took awhile to realize he wouldn't be. I talked to Shannon every day for five years."
After Shannon's death, the group split up physically, with Rogers moving to New York, Brad and Christopher to Seattle and Glen Staying in New Orleans, where the band had recorded. After two or three months, they began contemplating organizing the remaining tapes they had of Shannon and the band into an album. Thanks to Christopher's portable ADAT eight-track digital recording unit and the 16-17 songs they finished for Soup which didn't make the record, there was quite a bit of material to choose from.
"It was really frustrating for me to read the press after Shannon died," said Christopher. "Everything focused on his troubles, his addiction. And I just kept thinking to myself, 'Jesus Christ, man, listen to the songs.’ The guy wrote some amazing songs. And that was one of the reasons to complete this third record. I hope people can just listen to the record and say, 'Hey, they were a band that wrote some great songs together.' I don't care about selling records. Part of the reason was for Nico. You realize this child will never get the chance to know her father. This is some music for her to sit down when she's ready, listen to and get a feel for what her father did, get some insight into him. Shannon's greatest creation was Nico, so it seems like a perfect title."
“I thought Shannon got overlooked," agreed Rogers. "He had a true talent that his personality sometimes overwhelmed. Or the hype around the band overwhelmed. Or the media exposure overwhelmed. If people give the album a fair chance, they'll understand more of what Shannon was about. He had a real gift for words, a real simple way of saying things a lot of people can relate to. It's hard to be simple, direct, honest and powerful at the same time.”
"These songs deserve to be heard by the people who were into the band. I want people who appreciated Shannon to get this last batch of songs. I think some of our best stuff is on this record. We had a good time working on this record. It wasn't all sombre. It's not our motivation that's important. We want to make music. We want to be heard. We want Shannon to be heard. Sure, we'd love for it to sell a million copies and make money. Who wouldn't? But that's not our reason for putting it out. It's our responsibility to Blind Melon's fans.”
“There are a lot more chapters that should have been written as Blind Melon, but that's not going to be. This is it. This is all the music we have to put out with Shannon. We're moving forward because this is all we know how to do. None of us has gone to college. It's not like we can go out and get jobs.”
Being a musician is something you can't kick. We have a few good years left in us in terms of songs and inspiration, but as far as Blind Melon goes, I wish there could've been more. I think Shannon would have gone on to write more amazing things," said Rogers.
The band donated a percentage of the sales from Nico to the Musician's Assistance Program (MAP), which offers drug treatment for musicians who can't afford it. They are hoping Shannon's death will be a wake-up call for others as it has been for them.
"When your best friend ODs, it's a real eye-opener," admits Rogers. “Especially someone like Shannon, who had 50 times the energy I'll ever have. If it got him, it can get me ... or just about anybody I know. It was a senseless thing. We learned some hard lessons. You begin to realize the impact his death had on everybody around him. I spent a lot of time getting mad at Shannon; in the end, I know he was really trying ... but his demons got the best of him."
"Everybody did a lot of soul-searching after Shannon's death," adds Brad. "I'm still learning from it. I just have to remember the positive things about him and move on."
"Shannon's death made me realize what's important in my life." states Glen matter-of-factly. "My wife, my family. It also made me aware I'm in this for the work. It's not about fame or money. I got into this because I liked playing music."
And in the end, the music remains, a loving memorial to its quixotic creator.
The remaining band members were split up physically with Christopher and Brad living in Seattle, Rogers in New York and Glen in Chapel Hill, NC. They all met up again for Brad’s wedding and decided to continue as a band with a new name and new songs.
In the summer of 1996, they placed an ad in the New York paper ‘Village Voice’ announcing they were looking for a new lead singer. After the item was picked up on MTV News and CNN, the group's manager Chris Jones received over 2,000 tapes in the mail. Rogers said, “It’s pretty depressing listening to tapes of singers at times. You realize how really amazing Shannon was.”
There were many rumors of different people landing the new singers job but there was no official announcement. On Halloween 1997, it was announced that the band had been writing and recording in Seattle for the past two months with Brad handling the lead vocals. This announcement was left on the official band web site for some time with no updates. Fans eagerly anticipated the new material but a year passed with no further announcement. On March 4, 1999 it was announced on the official web site that the band had split up and gone their separate ways.
In 2001, after over a year of on again off again rumors, VH1 aired their "Behind The Music" documentary special on Blind Melon on September 9, 2001. The show featured a lot of previously unseen footage and interviews with Brad, Christopher, Rogers, manager Chris Jones and members of Shannon's family including his girlfriend Lisa,
and his mother and sister. Since the initial broadcast, it has been shown on several other occasions. To coincide with the "Behind The Music" special, the band released their grammy nominated video "Letters From A Porcupine" on DVD with over an hours worth of footage not on the original VHS release.
Blind Melon’s music still crops up regularly. No Rain appeared in Howard Stern’s hugely successful movie “Private Parts” in 1997, and in 1999 Three is a Magic Number appeared in "Never Been Kissed" starring Drew Barrymore.
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My tribute
Shannon one of the greatest singer I have heard and one of the greatest guy. If it wasn't for him I wouldn't of write my own songs and nevered sing. So to Shannon I think you alot for everything stay in peace i hope you have fun in heaven where you belong with the other stars. |
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Nico his daughter and Shannon
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Shannon
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At site of the grave of shannon Hoon
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Up close to the grave
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This is one of my favorite images Shannon with the dreads
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Shannon with the red white and blue
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