re: Heroin fueled great music? Another earlier thread got me thinking.

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No Rain, Blind Melon

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"No Rain" came from when I first moved to California and I was playing songs on Venice Beach for change. I was having to come up with material during the week after my construction job, and then I would get my guitar and go down to the beach and open up a guitar case. I'd play on the Venice Beach boardwalk for change, for enough money to pay for parking and chicken teriyaki. That was my weekend.

And it was inspired by just how tough it was in LA. I had bouts of depression and the whole, "What am I doing out here? Am I going to go back to Mississippi? I'm never going back to Mississippi." I would just fight it and stick to my guns. Like, "I want to be a musician, I want to be out here in California. I don't want to go back home." I had nobody out here. There was no family, I didn't know a soul out here at first.

So the song is about not being able to get out of bed and find excuses to face the day when you have really, in a way, nothing. It was like rock bottom. I wasn't even on drugs or drinking. It was just tough. It was just a tough point in my life. And the cool thing about that song, I think a lot of people do interpret those lyrics properly and can connect with it on that level, where "I don't understand why I sleep all day and I start to complain that there's no rain." It's just a line about, I'd rather it be raining so I can justify myself by laying in the bed and not doing anything. But it's a sunny day, so go out and face it.

So that's where the lyric and the song was inspired from, is just having to write songs. Then being in the state of mind I was in and having to come up with material to go play down on the beach for change. I played that song on the beach for change for over a year before Shannon Hoon actually joined the band and really made that song a hit. I think that was a good song, and Shannon made it a great song.

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