Gin Blossoms

Gin Blossoms

Pop/rock band

For the Record…

A “Bar Band” in Demand

Tragedy

“A Bit of a War”

Selected discography

Sources

Arizona’s Gin Blossoms were unlikely candidates for fame in the early 1990s, plying well-crafted, melodic pop-rock in an era of loud and anxious alternative music. However, the band’s formula of bright, guitar-driven hooks, sweet vocals, and melancholy undertow made them radio staples. “It’s just pop music,” singer Robin Wilson told the Los Angeles Times. “I want to touch people on some fundamental level, in the same way that I’ve been touched when I hear a pop song that I really love.” The Blossoms’ dedication to melody has stood them in good stead in the face of various crises, including the firing and subsequent suicide of one of their songwriter-members. Yet the band emerged in 1996 with a sophomore album, the lead single of which was soon in heavy radio rotation. As Wilson noted in a record company bio, “Everything that’s happened in the last four years has helped to make us a stronger band and stronger individuals.”

The band began in Tempe, Arizona. Bassist Bill Leen and guitarist-songwriter Doug Hopkins had known one another since childhood and previously played in a

For the Record…

Members include Doug Hopkins (bandmember 1987-92; died, 1993), guitar; Scott Johnson (joined band, 1992), guitar; Bill Leen, bass; Philip Rhodes, drums; Jesse Valenzuela, guitar; Robin Wilson (joined band, 1988), vocals.

Group formed c. 1987 in Tempe, AZ; released debut album, Dusted, on San Jacinto label, 1989; signed with A&M Records and released EP Up and Crumbling, 1990; released debut album New Miserable Experience, 1992; toured with numerous acts, including Toad the Wet Sprocket, Cracker, Goo Goo Dolls, and Neil Young, 1992—; contributed song “Til I Hear It from You” to soundtrack of film Empire Records, 1995.

Awards: Gold Records for New Miserable Experience, 1994, and Congratulations I’m Sorry, 1996.

Addresses: Record company —A&M Records, 1416 North La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90028. Internet Websites —A&M Records Gin Blossoms site: amrecords.com/current/ginblossoms/. Unofficial Gin Blossoms Home Page: www.prarienet.org/~eharty/gin_blossoms.html.

number of local bands, including the Psalms. They added guitarist and erstwhile lead singer Jesse Valenzuela and in 1987 made their debut as the Gin Blossoms. The name was inspired by a picture of film comedian W.C. Fields, the colloquial term “gin blossoms” referring to the burst blood vessels visible in his alcohol-ravaged red nose.

A “Bar Band” in Demand

Valenzuela described the group’s earliest incarnation as “a bar band” in an interview with Musician. Wilson joined the following year as rhythm guitarist and background singer, but soon he and Valenzuela switched vocal duties. Drummer Philip Rhodes signed on shortly thereafter. After gathering a sizable following—comprised largely of college students—the band went into the studio to record an album. Released independently, Dusted, with the help of Tom DeSavia, a representative of the music-publishing association ASCAP, received major-label attention. In 1989 the band performed at the South By Southwest music festival in Austin, as well as New York’s New Music Awards Ceremony and College Music Journal (CMJ) Music Marathon.

Polygram Records was one of the early industry suitors of the band. Wilson recalled a spree at the company’s product closet—where promotional copies of its recordings are kept—in Phoenix Monthly. “We reamed ‘em,” he recalled. “We’re totally poor broke and I left with, oh lord, probably thirty CDs and a bunch of tapes. And the stuff that we didn’t like we took to a store and sold.” Despite such goodies and seafood dinners in upscale restaurants that the company paid for, the band didn’t sign with Polygram, electing instead to go with A&M Records. Yet the Blossoms’ first attempt at recording an album with A&M was disastrous; ditching what they’d done, the band instead released an EP and hit the road. The regionally successful disc paved the way for a more productive foray in the studio, and the band completed New Miserable Experience, its full-length debut, in the summer of 1992.

Tragedy

Hopkins had by this time become a liability. Although he’d written half the material on the album, his drinking was so excessive—according to his ex-bandmates—that he represented an obstacle. Before the album was even finished, the band let him go, replacing him with guitarist Scott Johnson. The circumstances surrounding Hopkins’ departure are murky; after he left, the guitarist and songwriter formed another band, the Chimeras, and continued to earn royalties from the songs he’d written with the Blossoms. Yet he claimed to have been given a raw deal in the aftermath of his expulsion from the group. “I understand why they fired me,” he declared in an interview quoted by Rolling Stone, “but did they have to get so f—ing cold and ruthless about it?” Hopkins received a copy of the Gold Record that New Miserable Experienceeventually earned, but destroyed it during a binge. In late 1993, he left the hospital where he’d been receiving treatment for his alcoholism, purchased a gun, and used it to end his life.

The success that followed Experience after its initial poor sales was bittersweet for Hopkins’ ex-bandmates. “I can’t explain any personal feelings,” Valenzuela told the Albuquerque Times. “It’s a pretty devastating thing.” Yet the band soldiered on, touring relentlessly and scoring several hits, including Hopkins’ “Hey Jealousy” and “Found Out About You.” The album also scored with critics, who admired the band’s musicality and emotional directness.

After the departure of Hopkins, some doubted the Gin Blossoms would be able to write songs of the same caliber. “It’s not our responsibility,” Wilson insisted tersely in the Los Angeles Times, “to live up to Doug’s songwriting.” The band delivered commercially again with “Til I Hear It from You,” co-written by Wilson, Valenzuela, and pop-rock whiz Marshall Crenshaw, a band favorite. The single first appeared on the successful soundtrack to the unsuccessful film Empire Records. With this hit and more touring, the band returned to the studio to record a follow-up album.

In the wake of the success of their debut and of Hopkins’ death, members of the band were greeted with both plaudits and sympathy, and the second album’s title, Congratulations I’m Sorry, reflected this double-edged response. Released in 1996, the recording didn’t earn the effusive notices of Experience. “It’s clear that Hopkins brought a level of specificity and skill otherwise lacking” in the band’s songs, lamented Spin. Citing a lyric about being “like a broken record,” reviewer Jeff Salamon opined, “The Gin Blossoms are like a broken record, repeating everything they wanna say—and have already said, elsewhere, better.” Rolling Stone was only slightly more charitable. “Like mashed potatoes and meatloaf, there’s not much variety to Gin Blossoms’ guileless guitar pop,” ventured the magazine’s Kara Manning, “but then again, sometime’s there’s nothing quite so comforting as a guilty pleasure.”

“A Bit of a War”

Nonetheless, the second album scored a hit out of the boxwith “Follow You Down,” a typically driving, emotive tune. “You want to know the secret?” Valenzuela asked to the Albuquerque Tribune, referring to the band’s signature sound. “You get a really crunchy guitar and then a clean acoustic next to it…compress it and stick it over to the side.” Wilson asserted in the band’s A&M biography that “people like that sort of bittersweet quality that our songwriting has. It’s like our name; it sounds pretty but it represents something a bit darker.”

The Gin Blossoms went on tour with the Goo Goo Dolls and rock icon Neil Young, and Wilson also devoted his free time to his cover band, The Best Dave Swaffords in the World. At the end of the band’s tour, they received their second gold record. Of the rigors of fame and life on the road, Valenzuela waxed philosophical. “You know, it’s a bit of a war, really—a war inside you,” he told the Music Paper. “On the one hand you want to make as much money and grab all the security you can ‘cause you never known when this gravy train will pass by again, right? But you didn’t really get into this for the money. You got into it for the music and love of playing. And that love actually carries you through the rough times. But you begin to wonder when you can get back to the creativity of doing what you love most. So it’s a bit of a problem, really.”

Selected discography

Dusted, San Jacinto, 1989.

Up and Crumbling (EP), A&M, 1990.

New Miserable Experience (includes “Hey Jealousy” and “Found Out About You”) A&M, 1992.

“Til I Hear It from You,” Empire Records soundtrack, A&M, 1995.

Congratulations I’m Sorry (includes “Follow You Down”), A&M, 1996.

Sources

Albuquerque Tribune, February 22, 1996.

Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1996.

Music Paper, April 1994.

Musician, April 1996.

Phoenix Monthly, May 1993.

Review Monthly, April 1994.

Rolling Stone, February 10, 1994; March 21, 1996.Spin, April 1996.

Additional information was provided by A&M Records publicity materials, 1996.

—Simon Glickman