By Michael Lindsey

    On the day that Nirvana's Kurt Cobain died, lead singer Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon appeared on the "Late Show" with a question mark painted on his head to symbolize the uncertainty of life. A little over a year later, in a cruelly ironic example of that uncertainty, Shannon Hoon died from a heroin overdose.

    Hoon's death marked the end of Blind Melon, a band that was at the zenith of its success. It had a No. 1 single, "No Rain." Its first album had just gone triple platinum. It opened for bands including Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, Neil Young, the
Rolling Stones and Lenny Kravitz. It played Woodstock '95 and packed houses for its own world tour. On that tour, however, everything came crashing down when a sound man discovered Hoon's body on the band's tour bus.

    With the loss of their lead singer and primary songwriter, the band quickly disintegrated, and Blind Melon's fans were left only with two albums' worth of music and questions of what could have been.

    A partial answer to that question was provided last November when the surviving members of the group, led by guitarist Christopher Thorn, compiled out-takes, demos and informal recordings of Hoon's singing, added their own background instrumentation and released the compilation as a tribute to Hoon's career and as a gift to those who remembered him. The album was named Nico , after Hoon's 1-year-old daughter, Nico Blue Hoon.

    To explain the band's motivation and purpose in releasing the album, Thorn agreed to a teleconference with the Thresher and others conducted from his home in Seattle. During the conversation, he addressed topics as wide- ranging as the style of the new album to the band's attempts to rehabilitate Hoon to his reaction to critics' charges of commercialism. What follows is an excerpt from that conversation.

Thresher : It has been a little over a year since the band decided to split due to Shannon's death. How long did it take before you decided to make another album?

Thorn : That record happened just a few months after Shannon died. His death obviously caught everyone for a loop, and I think the only thing we knew to do was to make music together.

We had so many songs of Shannon's, so much stuff that we had been working on and so many plans for the future that to just stop and all go home and not do a thing would just blow us into the ground.

I think it was part of our therapy to be together in dealing with Shannon's death, and working on music was a real positive thing.  We felt like he was still there -- there were moments where it was extremely difficult and there were moments when we were all
just sort of laughing at Shannon. It was a good experience.

Thresher : Who decided to name the album after Shannon's daughter?

Thorn : It was just sort of the obvious choice. Shannon had a lot of problems in life, but he sure loved that kid. That was the one thing he was most excited about. To have to deal with someone's death, and in addition to that to have to deal with who they left behind wasn't easy, and we just thought it was appropriate to dedicate Shannon's last work to his daughter. It's a gift for her as much as it is to people who have supported the band and fans.

Thresher : Listening to the lyrics on the album, it seems that many of them deal with topics of death and disintegration. For instance, the lyrics from "Hell": "I'll disintegrate over time if I expect my body to keep up with my mind." Do you consider those
lyrics a cry for help from Shannon, and if so, do you ever feel you missed something you could have done in the last year?

Thorn : Of course. Everyone feels that. That's a part of the guilt that we are all left with, but we tried. We really, really tried.  We told Shannon we'd do anything to get him together and to straighten up.

We told him we'd be happy staying home if he needed more time at rehab, whatever it was going to take. We cancelled tours; we did everything. When I hear those lyrics, of course I think they're a cry for help, but then things are easier in hindsight. At the
time, Shannon wrote a lot of crazy lyrics, but they're not as insightful until someone's gone.

Thresher : After Shannon died, the media's emphasis was on his drug addiction and mishaps. How did you feel about the media coverage of his death?

Thorn : Extremely frustrated. We lived with this guy for five years, and to have people disregard his death as if it were old newspaper or garbage was extremely frustrating. People wanted to talk about his drug addiction, his problems -- everything but
the music. So that was another reason to release the record -- to say, "Hey, he screwed up, he had problems, a lot of people do, but he was a great songwriter."

Thresher : Moving a little further back in your history --many people know Blind Melon only for the Bee Girl featured in the "No Rain" video. What was your reaction to the video?

Thorn : (laughs)

When we did that we were proud of it, but we had no idea it was going to blow up in our face, which it did both in a positive way and in a negative way. There's no way of predicting that. It made sense at the time. She was the image on our album cover,
and it was a weird, goofy image, so to have her in the video made sense. Who knew that she was going to become the huge, glamourous star that she is today?

I'm thankful that that image crossed over and excited people and got them to buy our record, but I'm a little bummed that people only think of us as that one band with that one song with that one video with the girl in the bee outfit.

I'm thankful for the success, but frustrated that forever the Bee Girl will be the history of Blind Melon.

Thresher : Speaking of selling a lot of records, what do you say to critics that say you might be trying to capitalize on the tragic loss of your friend?

Thorn : I would tell those people to go f--- themselves. That's something that's easy for someone to say who's not in the position that we're in. I think if you saw billboards of our new records everywhere, and we were touring without Shannon, and being obnoxious about it, that would be one thing. But I think we are being pretty subtle about this, and our only intention with this record is to give it back to the fans that were there first. We're not trying to win new fans. We're not out there selling, selling, selling the record. We talked to our publicist and said, "Look, we want to go back to the people who were there
originally, when we were playing to 50 people in clubs." We're not going to retire from this record, and it was never about that.  If we sell 50,000 copies, that's great. That means it got back to the original people who loved the band, and that's cool.

Thresher : What do you want people to know about Shannon Hoon that hasn't already been said?

Thorn : Forget about all the bullsh--. Sure, Shannon got into tons of trouble, but the point is, he was a great songwriter. Listen to the record --Shannon had things to say.

Everyone has problems, everyone f---s up, and he f---ed up. That shouldn't take away from the fact that he was a brilliant songwriter and a great guy.

This item appeared in the Arts & Entertainment section of the February 21, 1997 issue.
Copyright © 1996 The Rice Thresher. All Rights Reserved.
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