‘All I Can Say’ Is First Person Account Of Blind Melon Singer Shannon Hoon’s Brief Life And Career

The early ‘90s were a good time to be in a rock band. If you had the right look and right sound, you were guaranteed at least a couple free meals courtesy of a major label A&R person, if not a full-fledged recording contract. What happened if you got signed was anyone’s guess but you could milk a couple years touring out of it and probably get a video on MTV. A lucky few were able to turn it into a career while others got dropped, entered rehab, enrolled in cooking school, or started families.

More informed by jam bands than punk rock, Blind Melon didn’t sound like any of the alternative rock bands they were lumped in with but had one of the era’s biggest hits with “No Rain.” But just two years later frontman Shannon Hoon was dead of a drug overdose and the band was quickly forgotten. The new film All I Can Say is a first person account of the singer’s quick rise and sudden end, using footage he shot himself from 1990 up until the day he died on Oct. 21, 1995.

“I probably get more out of it than you do,” Hoon says of his seemingly non-stop video diary which documents the length of his time in the limelight. He brought his portable video camera with him everywhere he went, filming himself and random images which presciently capture the mood of the times. At one point he talks about leaving music behind to concentrate on film, a dream which would never come to fruition.

Hoon grew up in Lafayette, Indiana. Footage from a trip back home finds his parents bumming cigarettes and complaining about his pierced ears. We meet longtime girlfriend, Lisa Crouse, and see her father driving a tractor. He talks about getting into trouble after high school and working dead-end jobs. The trouble, it seems, was drugs. When not smoking pot or eating mushrooms on camera, he talks about copping heroin and getting into punch ups on speed and cocaine. He tells us drinking problems run in his family and that he turns into “Mr. Hyde” when he’s drunk.

“Searching for them dreams that everybody says comes true,” Hoon made his way to Hollywood where he linked up with fellow Hoosier Axl Rose and met the future members of Blind Melon. He sang background vocals on Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion I and II albums and appeared in the video for “Don’t Cry.” Though he makes fun of being known as “the guy from the Guns N’ Roses video,” it clearly helped his band. Despite having barely enough songs for a demo, they landed a deal with Capitol Records.

Blind Melon’s self-titled debut album was released in September 1992 but didn’t take off until the following summer when “No Rain”‘s memorable music video sent record sales through the roof. Though the record would eventually go multi-platinum, the success of the video boxed the group in, making everything else they did seem like second best. It also meant the band would spend the next two years on tour, with all the typical temptations taking their toll. There were fights, arrests, inter-band squabbles, trashed hotel rooms, and more drugs. We see images of the damage done through Hoons’ lens before quickly moving on to the next event.

At some point Hoon went to rehab. Later, he fields a call from Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready, who wants advice on his own sobriety. Sadly it wouldn’t last. The band’s sophomore effort was recorded in New Orleans, a place Hoon tells a local is, “a cesspool of things that I really have to be an arm’s length away from.” On a prior visit to the city he filmed himself wandering through one of its above ground cemeteries and focusing on a tombstone that says “Shannon.” During the sessions he has a black eye, presumably from a fistfight he says he was arrested for. As they reach the end of recording, Hoon says, “When I leave this city, I don’t ever want to come back.” He would die there 10 months later.

In July 1995, Hoon became a father. He, of course, videotapes the birth of his daughter. He has tears in his eyes. However, the release of Blind Melon’s second album a month later sent him away from his newborn and back on tour. Footage Hoon shot in his hotel room on the day he died reveals little besides how tired he was. That afternoon he was found unresponsive on his tour bus, dead of a cocaine overdose at 28.

It’s astounding to consider how many of the voices of the early ’90s alternative rock scene have been silenced forever, from Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, whose death announcement Hoon watches on TV, to Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, who Blind Melon toured with. I’m at a loss for any greater explanation as to why that is besides the fact that addiction and depression are dangerous diseases that can kill you. All I Can Say doesn’t shed any new light on Hoon’s life or death, nor does it make him out to be some genius or sage. However, it perfectly captures what it means to be a young man, hurtling through life, balancing on that wire between folly and adulthood, without a care if the good times might lead to your doom. Throughout his personal footage, Shannon Hoon seems to be taking in everything around him, giving it a second look and savoring the moment, perhaps knowing that it wouldn’t last.

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC

Where to stream All I Can Say