The Indianapolis Star/News
November 12, 1996
By Marc Allan

When he listens to the final Blind Melon album, Nico, guitarist Rogers Stevens can't help hearing hidden messages.  Lyrics such as "I'll disintegrate over time/if I expect my body to keep up with my mind" (from the song Hell) and "I never got a chance to say goodbye" (from Soul One) resonate with new meaning as they spill from the lips of singer Shannon Hoon. The Lafayette, Ind., native died in October 1995 from a drug overdose.  "Being with Shannon was like standing next to the sun, you know? " Stevens says. "It was a pretty intense situation. He had a look in his eye, almost like a fear, that he was grabbing a hold of everything because he might not be able to do that later. I don't know what drives a person to be like that." Stevens sighs when he says that, and even over the phone you know he's shaking his head in equal parts sorrow and disgust.  When Hoon died, at age 28, he left that kind of contradictory memory.  He died too young to establish a complete identity, musical or otherwise. Yet he left an indelible mark on many who listened to Blind Melon and all who knew him well.  He loved to participate in practical jokes - like turning over a  portable toilet with a bandmate inside - but "in individual relationships and circumstances, he was a really tender and generous and warm-hearted guy," Stevens says.

As Hoon sings in the new song Pull, "I'll live more than what you'll ever know/but I'll give you more than what I'll ever show."  "There was so much overwhelming energy that came out of him and so many memories of him, good and bad and weird," Stevens says. "He was always acting so much on impulse and so much on the emotions of the moment that to try to rationalize his life and death is just impossible. "Exiting with their best The tragic irony from a musical standpoint is that Blind Melon's third and last record - which arrives in stores today along with an accompanying video - also is its best work. The raw, bluesy rock suggests that the band was finding its identity after one enormous success and one colossal commercial failure.  The group's 1992 self-titled debut sold some 3 million copies and rocketed it to stardom on the strength of the hippie-rock tune No Rain and accompanying video, which featured a girl dressed in a bee costume and the band members frolicking in a field.

Blind Melon wasn't a hippie-rock band. Its music had more to do with Led Zeppelin than Blues Traveler. And with lyrics like "I don't understand why I sleep all day/and I start to complain that there's no rain," No Rain clearly was no upbeat ditty, despite its tunefulness.  "We were always toying with those sort of contrasts, making upbeat, chirpy music that was  deceptive in that way, with these morbid words over the top of it," Stevens says. "People I don't really think got that. They thought it was some uplifting little song. But it was a neurotic song. "

He was stunned Blind Melon's second disc, Soup, flopped commercially.  The eclectic mix - in which one song featured a brass band, another used mandolin and harmonica as its base and still another employed chopping rock riffs mixed with jazzy bass - sold roughly 200,000 copies and received unanimously negative reviews.

"I was, frankly, stunned when the reviews came out and said it was the worst record ever," Stevens says. "I knew it wasn't that bad." But Nico - named for Shannon's young daughter, Nico Blue Hoon - shows off the band's collective fire. Hoon's voice is high-pitched, rough and sad, the guitars in particular are swampy, and the whole disc sounds resounds with creative energy.

"I think we were in a period of pretty rapid development when Shannon died," Stevens says. "The way this record came out and the way it sounded when it was done, I was pretty surprised. We went in with the idea that we were going to listen to these tracks and we would remix things and see how it all fits together - and if it doesn't, we're not going to put it out."

The 13 tracks were recorded in hotel rooms, on a ski trip, in a hotel basement, at radio stations. Three are outtakes from the Soup sessions and an alternate version of No Rain. The final song, Letters From a Porcupine, is Shannon singing and playing guitar into guitarist Christopher Thorn's answering machine.

In chilling fashion, the machine cuts Hoon off before he's finished.  Much like Hoon did to Blind Melon.  How they met Stevens and Hoon met in California six years ago. Hoon had left Indiana on a Los Angeles-bound bus; meanwhile, Stevens and bassist Brad Smith had transferred from the Mississippi slaughterhouse where they worked ("I worked on the kill floor . . . deshouldering, gutting and beheading hogs - 6,000 a day") to similar positions out west.  "I first met Shannon at a friend's house," Stevens remembers.  "He played a couple of tunes and I was immediately struck by his voice.  Things were so innocent at that point, for lack of a better word, that we said, `Hey, let's be in a band. ' There was  no forethought or anything. We just did it."

And now, the four remaining members - Stevens, Thorn, Smith and drummer Glen Graham - will do it all over again. The plan is to find a new singer, write and record an album and change the band name.  Blind Melon is done.

"We're not going to play any of the old songs, but we still want to play together," Stevens says. "There's a bond that exists among the four of us, especially now, that can't be broken. "