"The Pusher"

Brad: Shannon was always a fan of that song.
Rogers: Christopher, Shannon and I recorded that in Mammoth in between snowboarding, skiing and sitting around the fireplace. Shannon came up with that new verse off the top of his head, seeing it was a topic he was acquainted with. He didn't have the filter most people have where they'll selectively say things. He'd just say anything and everything that popped into his head. He'd say the dumbest thing you'd ever heard right after he'd said the most amazing thing you'd ever heard.
Christopher: Some of my best memories of Shannon are hanging out up there and having a blast. One day in the middle of winter, we just decided to pull the studio out onto the porch because we thought it would be fun to record outside. I don't know what we were thinking, maybe looking for some frosty inspiration. But it was refreshing.

"Hell"

Brad: That was something we worked on while we were on tour. I remember Shannon playing it for me and really liking it. He had maybe a verse and a chorus at the time. We had greater plans for that song, but all we were left with after he died was a DAT of him singing with an acoustic guitar and everybody's anxiety to finish it. We put that on two tracks of a 24-track machine and then we added other instruments. It was one of those songs where everybody had their parts in their head, the way they wanted to treat it. I just think it's a brilliant song and we wanted people to hear it ... this is Shannon writing his own swan song, basically. He seemed to know it was coming. He knew he couldn't keep up his current rate, survive and be a healthy person. Any core Blind Melon lover is gonna be blown away by this. I don't know if it's spiritual or metaphysical, but I can't believe sometimes what I'm hearing after the fact. It's scary. I want to freak people out and make 'em wake up. Life is short. This could happen to your best friend.
Christopher: It's not easy listening to some of these songs. When he was around, Shannon sang a lot of crazy lyrics about a lot of crazy things. And he had some really sick thoughts that were funny at the time. Now that he's gone, you realize he was screaming out to the people around him. He recorded this song with a friend of his in Indiana between tours. You can hear he was obviously struggling with some demons and addictions, trying to work through them.
Glen: I'd prefer not to speak for Shannon in more ways than I feel confident about doing. I always felt his whole deal was ambiguity, whether it was intentional or not. Some of those lyrics are amazing. You can take them on as many different levels as you want to. He was speaking from the heart and the gut at all times. He was the real deal.
Rogers: The lyrics really hit me hard. It says it all. That was him in the nutshell. Every song is like a piece of his gut that he ripped out and put on to tape.

"Soup" (studio track from the Soup Sessions)

Christopher: I thought it should have been considered for the Soup record.
Rogers: For some reason, it didn't fit into the batch of songs, which was probably just a whim on that particular day. That's just the way we did things. Shannon was in a race with his ideas and every now and then he'd reach out, grab one and throw it down into a line. He was kind of difficult to follow in a linear fashion. This was a typical song of his, very abstract.

"No Rain"( Ripped Away Version, originally on promotional "Change" EP)

Christopher: That was from a TV performance in Holland. That was at the point where we had played the song about a zillion times. We just needed a new approach to it. Fake people out a little bit.
Rogers: We recorded it with just acoustic guitars. We went in and did just all kinds of stuff on it. But we were proud of "No Rain." To us, it was a miracle it was a success at all.

"Soul One" (originally from "The Goodfoot Workshop" demo which garned the band their record deal with Capitol)

Brad: Rogers and I wrote that right before we first came to Los Angeles and met Shannon. It was either the second or third song we recorded. We finished it after Shannon joined. We wrote other songs we thought surpassed it, so we didn't even put it on our first album. If you listen to that song now, it's pretty amazing. What he's singing. I like the song, but we had rifts in the band over it. Some said it was too sappy or too commercial, but everybody came full circle on it. We recorded that in our practice hall in L.A. when we were rehearsing to put together songs for the first album. It was on an analog eight-track tape. We painstakingly made it sound good against all odds.
Rogers: Brad wrote the words and I wrote the music before we even met Shannon. He then came in, fixed up all the melodies and did the bridge part. I think it's the first song we ever wrote for Blind Melon.

"John Sinclair"

Brad: That was originally meant to be on Capitol's John Lennon tribute album. It's funny, Glen then ran into John Sinclair while we were living in New Orleans. He was a member of the White Panthers and managed MC5 until he got busted for possessing two joints. He came to my house and we recorded him reading one of his poems, "Friday the 13th," about the death of John Lennon. We want to include it on the album before the track.
Rogers: We recorded that during the same sessions that produced "Three Is The Magic Number," which is the last time we were in the studio together.

"All That I Need"

Brad: Shannon wrote that right after he read the Albert Goldman book, "Lives of John Lennon."
Rogers: One of the really simple, beautiful songs that Shannon wrote. It goes from this positive melody into a brooding thing, the way so many of his songs did. That was one of the things that distinguished Blind Melon. We'd have these upbeat songs with the darkest lyrics.

"Glitch"

Brad: {Producer} Mike Napolitano really got to know the band during the Soup sessions. He just called on the right person for the right tracks. Not everybody played the instrument they grew up with. I played flute and everybody jumped in on the congas on this one. Mike had the idea for the extensive percussive overdubs and it just kinda evolved from there. We could see where the song should be, and it wasn't there yet, so we added some more percussion, I played flute and that was that.

"Life Ain't So Shitty"

Christopher: That's recorded in Somewhere USA. I thought it would have made a great title for the record. It just sort of sums up a Shannon Hoon song for me.
Rogers: That's what Brad wanted to call the record. That song's a real slap in the face. It kinda makes you mad at Shannon. Well, then, why aren't you here? But it's such a beautiful song, it disarms your anger.

"Swallowed" (studio track from the Soup Sessions)

Glen: The first album was "This is where I came from," the second album was, "Look what I've become" and then there's the third album. It's just classic rock & roll stuff. The first time I met Shannon, I thought to myself, "I hate this person. I don't wanna be around him and I know he hates me." But I grew to understand him more and more and I think he grew to understand me.
Rogers: A dark tune left open for interpretation. I never got the clear meaning of it from Shannon, but it's easy to guess. Another song about his demons.

"Pull"

Christopher: written in a New York city hotel room, this song also came out of the Soup Sessions at Kingsway.

"St. Andrew's Hall" (demo version of a song which appears on Soup)

Christopher: We rented out a ballroom in the basement of a hotel we were staying at in St. Louis for the basic tracks and finished it in Mammoth.
Rogers: I like this version better than the one on Soup. There's a lot more energy to it.

"Letters From A Porcupine"

Christopher: Shannon had a crazy habit of calling up and not really saying anything, but just singing little fragments of ideas or songs. And for some reason, I thought, what a cool song. It just sounded great coming out of the answering machine. So I recorded it onto DAT and kept it. I had it laying around for awhile. BR> Rogers: With Shannon, you'd find all sorts of gifts...everywhere. That was something he left on Christopher's answering machine. He was probably sleeping. That was the time Shannon would always call. One time in a restaurant in Japan, he put a pound of squid in my shoes. You'd get gifts from Shannon like that all the time. But I got him back. I pushed him over in a Portapotty, sloshed him all over... He snapped after that. (laughs)

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