Blind Melon: The Tragic Story Of the Band & Death Of Shannon Hoon

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Today we look at the history of the band Blind Melon and the death of frontman Shannon Hoon who passed away in 1995.

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The members of Blind Melon 90’s lineup all came from small towns all over the united states. Guitarist and Bassist Rogers Stevens and Brad Smith came from West Point, Mississippi, while frontman Shannon Hoon hailed from Lafayette, Indiana while rhythm guitarist Christopher Thorn came from Dover, Pennsylvania (Thorn), and drummer Glen Graham was from Columbus, Mississippi. The members seemed made for each other as they all were considered outcasts in their respective towns with Stevens remembering his early musical days
“When Brad and I were doing high-school bands, it wasn’t so much that we were outcasts, people were completely baffled by what we were doing,” Stevens explains. “I think they thought that we just lost or minds or something. And it wasn’t that it got a bad response, it got no response. Other than, ‘Well, we’ll just let them do their thing and they’ll grow out of it’.” But the pair never did grow out of it.
They would soon hatch a plan to move across the country to what they believed was the rock n’ roll mecca Los Angeles. Smith would reveal
: “We always got magazines like Hit Parader and Metal Hammer, and were like, ‘F it, man, it’s all happening in LA’. We had big balls and little brains, and moved to Los Angeles to take our chance.”
Upon arriving in Los Angeles in 199 the pair were shocked at what they saw. Los Angeles was nothing like what the press painted it to be with Stevens recalling “It was the remnants of the glam metal scene, which was ultra-sad. I was depressed from the music scene, it was just horrible.” The pair found some support though when they met rhythm Christopher Thorn who would remember
“I moved out in eighty-seven or eighty-eight, and went on some auditions,” Thorn recalls. “I was in this sorta folk rock band, and that’s how I met Brad. I put an ad in the Music Connection, Brad called, and we became friends.”

It soon became apparent that the only the trio were going to assemble a band was to find other ‘outsiders’ from other states. That’s where they met Indiana transplant Shannon Hoon. Hoon not only fled to LA to find a career in music, but he also beame very well known to police in his home town, which eventually forced him to leave. Having spent only a few weeks in Los Angeles he would eventually meet Stevens. Steven would be the first to meet Shannon with Smith remembering
Smith: “Rogers had the first meeting with Shannon, called me up, and said: ‘Brad, you gotta go down, right now, to the rehearsal space and meet this guy Shannon. I’m telling you, he’s the guy, he’s amazing.’ He just seemed like a bro’ from Mississippi. I swear to God it was like, ‘Let’s go smoke some weed and go out to the train trestle!’ He was just completely unpretentious, unaffected by LA thus far, and he felt like one of us immediately.”
Smith and Rogers immediately clicked with Hoon and they bonded over their mutual hatred of the glam metal scene in LA. But one thing the pair did notice about Hoon early on was his volatile behavior with Smith remembering“He talked a lot, he would not shut up. I remember that first night that we decided we were going to be in a band; we’d gotten really drunk. "We were crashing at my apartment, and he tried to pick a fight with me! He got mad cos I was laughing at him – he said something really stupid. That was the thing about Shannon, he’d say everything that came into his mind. A lot of the times it would be like, ‘Why did you say that?’ Miraculously, he didn’t throw a punch – it could’ve ended right there.”
The newly formed band hadn’t yet settled on a name or on a drummer who suited their style. Up until this point they had been playing with local drummers and As you would expect they wanted someone from a small town. That’s when they met Glen Graham whom they had already known who hailed from Mississippi.
With a band assembled now they just needed to figure out a name. It would be a phrase from Smith’s father when he was a child that would be the inspiration for the band’s name. Smith’s father used to call some of their hippy neighbours back home in mississippi blind melon. With a name chosen the band quickly set their sites on recording a demo tape. Unlike a lot of stories in the music business where bands slug it out in the clubs for years, blind melon hadn’t even played a single show yet and they were already courting interest from major labels

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