Back for Seconds

Just Off the Bus

The band coalesced in Los Angeles in 1990, when Stevens and Smith -- childhood pals from the same small town in Mississippi -- met Hoon while practicing in a garage. He strolled in with a mutual friend, after an AA meeting.

"He was basically just off the bus from Indiana," Stevens recalls, "but I'd already heard about him. He was that kind of guy. He just filled a room."

He arrived with a passel of songs and an exceptional personal connection: Guns N' Roses singer Axl Rose had gone to high school with Hoon's older sister. In the early '90s, this was like knowing the emperor during the Ming Dynasty, and when Hoon showed up on the GN'R video "Don't Cry," the labels were panting.

Thorn was recruited by Smith, whom he'd met at an audition. Graham was another hometown friend; Stevens called him after scouring Los Angeles for a drummer with some finesse. Blind Melon was signed on the strength a five-song demo, before ever playing in public.

At a time when metal and bombast were the rage in L.A., Blind Melon came across as vaguely retro, finding the basics of its sound in classic Southern rock bands, like the Allman Brothers and assorted folkies. Sales of the album were disappointingly weak for about a year after its 1992 release, until the video for "No Rain" hit MTV. The change was instantaneous. Stevens remembers getting ready to play a show in St. Louis and looking out of his window at a crowd standing on the sidewalk, lined up for blocks.

"My room was right across the street from the club, and I thought, 'Oh, there's a parade in town or something.' "

"I thought the president was visiting," says Thorn.

"Then, at some point," Stevens goes on, "we realized that was the line to see us."

Typically, this part of the story is told against a montage of flashbulbs, limos and giggling groupies. There are some montage-worthy moments, but success for Blind Melon made its members anxious. Thorn remembers this peculiar feeling of dread while standing at the corner of Melrose and Martel in L.A., looking at himself on the cover of Rolling Stone and realizing, to his horror, that every one of his dreams had come true. A million in sales, a tour with the Stones, publicity you can't buy.

"And I hadn't lived long enough to develop any new dreams," he says, in a tone that suggests he knows how crazy that sounds. "I just remember feeling like something bad was going to happen, like a piano was going to drop on my head. There was nowhere to go but down."

"Impending doom," Smith adds with a nod.

The problem wasn't just success. Hoon had stunning mood swings, from chilled out one moment to violent the next. He punched people who hassled him, especially if they were cops, which led to lockups and lawsuits. His appetite for drugs seemed bottomless and two trips to rehab didn't help. There were binges, reconciliations, fights, more binges. There were plenty of times when all four watched him overindulge and thought, "He's going to die tonight." But he survived, which made him seem indestructible.

"You started to think, well, he didn't die those other nights we thought he was going to die," says Thorn, "so he'll be okay tonight."

"It's crazy we didn't address it more, talk about it more," says Smith, "but it just became part of our everyday life."

Revered, Not Replaced

The crowd at the Blind Melon show this past Saturday night in the Hiro Ballroom in Manhattan is mostly in the 26-to-38-year-old range. They'd fallen for Hoon and the Bee Girl as teenagers and the group's first album gets now-and-then play on their iPods. A woman with a ponytail and a red bandana wears a T-shirt that says "Shannon Hoon, 1967 to 1995, gone but not forgotten," but nobody has come here to heckle.

That happened last time the band played New York, when a guy just planted himself in front of Warren and raised a middle finger, high and mad. This audience either likes or doesn't mind the newcomer, who's dressed like a street urchin in fingerless gloves and, truth be told, moves and sings a lot like Shannon Hoon.

"Thank you for coming out and supporting this band," Warren says, midway through the show. Then he launches into a short speech he always gives onstage. About how he's not trying to take Shannon's place, about how he'd much prefer to be out there, with you guys, watching Shannon sing. But that's not possible. He knows it's difficult. So thank you.

It's a heartfelt semi-apology that nobody here asked for. The insane, potentially embarrassing idea seems neither insane nor embarrassing in a room that's chanting and swaying together, and not just to "No Rain."

One of the paradoxes of Blind Melon, Take Two, is the sense you get that the original members are enjoying themselves more than ever, even though a return to the Big Time is hard to fathom. There's nothing like relative obscurity to make you appreciate moderate success, and once again these guys have something to dream about.