Shannon Hoon - Blind Melon

Blind Melon

Hoon left Indiana for Los Angeles where he met musicians Brad Smith and Rogers Stevens at a party. Smith and Stevens saw Hoon perform his song Change acoustically and invited Hoon to play with them. Christopher Thorn and Glen Graham were then brought into the fold, and soon the five musicians decided to form Blind Melon. The band was reportedly named after a term Smith's father used to describe the neighborhood stoners, or possibly after Blind Melon Chitlin, a character from a Cheech & Chong album. In 1991, the new band mates produced a four-song demo tape and subsequently signed a $500,000 recording contract with Capitol Records.

In Los Angeles, Hoon befriended his sister Anna's high school friend, Axl Rose. Rose invited Hoon to join him in the studio, where his band Guns N' Roses were recording their albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II. Hoon sang backing vocals on several of the tracks, including "The Garden" and "Don't Cry." Rose also invited Hoon to appear in the video for "Don't Cry."

In 1992, Blind Melon released their self-titled debut album produced by Pearl Jam producer Rick Parashar. Blind Melon began touring to promote the album, supporting and opening for acts like Ozzy Osbourne, Guns N' Roses, and Soundgarden over the course of 1992–1993. In the summer of 1993, the video for the album track "No Rain" was released as a single. The video for "No Rain" focused on a theme of the "normal" crowd versus the lonely outcast. It featured a young, pudgy girl, played by Heather DeLoach, in a bee costume, tap dancing to unappreciative audiences, who finally finds an entire crowd of people similarly dressed who welcome her. The video is often referred to as the 'Bee Girl'. Blind Melon went multi-platinum.

Hoon and Blind Melon spent the next two years touring. In 1993, Hoon was arrested for indecent exposure after he disrobed onstage and urinated on a fan at a show in Vancouver. After taking a hiatus from touring, Blind Melon returned to the studio to record the album Soup in New Orleans. Soup was released in 1995.