It’s a miracle that the Gin Blossoms breakthrough album, “New Miserable Experience”, exists at all.
When the band left Tempe, Arizona, in 1992, headed for Memphis’ famed Ardent Studios to record their first album for A&M Records, the mood was far from optimistic. A first attempt at cutting the record in 1991 in Los Angeles was a $100,000 disaster. The group teetered on the edge of being dropped, and, most alarmingly, their founder and chief songwriter, guitarist Doug Hopkins, was in the throes of mental illness and alcoholism.
“We were a fragile mess. We were all just treading water trying to make the record. We knew this was our last chance,” says singer Robin Wilson of the album that was just re-released in a vinyl edition. “It was an intense experience on every level.”
Produced by the late John Hampton, who engineered albums by Alex Chilton and the Replacements,”New Miserable Experience” took its cues from Alex Chilton’s Big Star and Paul Westerberg’s alt-rock progenitors, who also both recorded at Ardent.
Like those groups, the Gin Blossoms excelled at marrying world-weary lyrics with ebullient melodies. “We were always about that. The name of the band says it all,” Wilson says. “It sounds really happy, but it represents something dark.”
Superficially, the songs on “New Miserable Experience” were windows-down, carefree anthems, but underneath they exposed heartache, longing and despair. Particularly those written by the tortured Hopkins, who provided the band with its breakout hit, “Hey Jealousy,” .
“One day we get a call from the label that they were going to try ‘Jealousy’ again and make another video for it,” says Wilson, who recalls filming three different clips for the song. “The budget for the first was five grand; the second was 10 grand; and the third was 40 grand. That’s when I was like, ‘Holy shit, they’re serious.’ At that point we had been in the van for six months, just a blur of college cafeterias, interviews and opening for whoever we can.”
Hopkins, however, wasn’t on tour. Or, at that point, even in the band. As the guitarist disintegrated before their eyes during recording, Wilson, guitarist Jesse Valenzuela, drummer Phillip Rhodes and bassist Bill Leen made the decision to fire him or risk becoming a liability for the label. They finished the album without Hopkins, and Scott Johnson stepped in as his replacement.
“There was nothing easy about it,” says Valenzuela. “You’re concerned and you want to help, but we didn’t have the knowledge we have today, so we were kind of guessing and trying to do our best. We didn’t have the understanding of bipolar disease and we were ill-equipped to deal with that.” Wilson remembers an incident that illustrates just how checked-out Hopkins was.
“I came into the studio and Doug was in there with John, and I heard John say, ‘Well, someone is going to have to do these solos.’ Doug said, ‘I guess I’d rather Jesse do my solos.’ I was just floored. I could not believe that was something that Doug was considering. He was giving up. I left the room and almost threw up,” says Wilson.
One solo Hopkins did manage to put to tape was for “Hey Jealousy,” a slashing, frantic yet commanding performance that Wilson says was a scratch take fired off during initial tracking sessions. “New Miserable Experience” began moving units, Hopkins was at home in Tempe. On December 5th of that year, he committed suicide.
“Doug had so much talent. I liken him to a Noel Gallagher. He could have been this bandleader that would have really had a huge impact on the music of the day,” said Wilson . “I think he knew that was right there for him, and instead of stepping up and taking a real leadership role, he fell in the other direction. … It still is heart-wrenching to think about what could have been.”
While Hopkins’ presence is all over New Miserable Experience – he wrote several cornerstone tracks, including autobiographical opener “Lost Horizons,” the Byrds-like “Pieces of the Night” and the Modern Rock Number One “Found Out About You” – Wilson and Valenzuela provided their own songs that further cemented the album as a Nineties alt-rock favorite.
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