Doug Hopkins

Douglas Hopkins (April 11, 1961-December 5, 1993) was an American musician and songwriter from Tempe, Arizona. He co-founded the Gin Blossoms, a popular modern rock band of the early 1990s, in 1987 with his longtime friend, Bill Leen. He was the band's lead guitarist and principal songwriter.

Hopkins' songwriting credits included the hits "Hey Jealousy" and "Found Out About You."

Hopkins graduated from Arizona State University in 1984 or 1985 with a degree in sociology. During his high school and college career, Hopkins played in a number of bands and even spent time in recording studios with them before founding the band which would give him his greatest fame.

Hopkins was fired from the band in April 1992 as the band worked on its first full-length album, New Miserable Experience. He was struggling with depression and alcoholism, and his drinking impaired his ability to play his guitar parts. The band re-negotiated his contract with A&M Records, giving him half his salary.

After being replaced in the Gin Blossoms, Hopkins formed a new band in Tempe, The Chimeras, and watched as the songs he had written for his former group helped propel two of its singles into the top 10 and push "New Miserable Experience" to multi-platinum status. But while his new group quickly became the hot unsigned band in Tempe, Hopkins' drinking, combined with royalties being withheld from him by the Gin Blossoms, helped to further shake his already unstable personality.

In April 1993, after fumbling a solo at an outdoor festival with The Chimeras, Hopkins abruptly announced that he was quitting the group. Over the next months, Hopkins drifted through his inertia in Tempe, occasionally giving interviews in which he lashed out at the Gin Blossoms.

In November 1993, Hopkins' girlfriend moved out of his apartment. On December 3, 1993, Hopkins left the detox unit at St. Luke's Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona after an intake consultation, and bought a .38-calibre pistol at a pawn shop. On December 5, 1993, Hopkins laid down on his bed, in his apartment, put the gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger. It was his sixth suicide attempt in 10 years. At the time of his death, he had $498 in his pocket. It was all the money he had.

The combination of Hopkins' early death and the subsequent short life afterward of the Gin Blossoms have tended to marginalize the group's achievements during their two albums together. The band tends to be lumped together with the Counting Crows, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Blues Traveler and other melodic, alternative-cum-AOR bands that rode the wave of grunge's success to the charts in the early '90s.

While there is a clear artistic dropoff between "New Miserable Experience" and the Gin Blossoms' subsequent "Congratulations, I'm Sorry," during Hopkins' time with the group they were one of the smartest, most literate bands in the country, thanks largely to his contributions. Hopkins' long apprenticeship in the Tempe music scene gave him familiarity in a broad range of musical styles, which he employed to full effect with the Gin Blossoms.

His compositions combined an intimate aquaintance with punk riffs, Byrds-style arpeggios and an uncanny knack for melody to produce songs which were at the same time tender and aggressive, guarded and embarrassingly honest.

Over the undeniably catchy melodies of songs like "Hey Jealousy" and "Found Out About You," Hopkins added lyrics which seem effortless and conversational but which contained profound insight and self-examination into his troubled personality. They are literally the words of a man drinking himself to death, acutely aware of his predicament yet incapable of doing anything to slow his downfall.

In 2000, The Arizona Republic published a list of the top 100 Valley rock bands of all time, and Hopkins was in four of them. For over a decade, he was a commanding figure in the local music scene, as important and influential as The Beatles were to the Liverpool of the early '60s. A proven hitmaker, a brilliant musician and an immensely gifted and intelligent man, Doug Hopkins deserves mention a one of the greatest, if not most well-remembered, rock musicians of the last decade.