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Web Exclusive Interview
Blind Melon's Glen Graham Cont'd
Let's go back to when you first started playing. Who were some of your influences?
I started playing when I was about twelve. I grew up in a town in Mississippi that didn't have an FM station, so I just heard AM pop radio. So it was Hal Blaine and all that great '70s music that had fantastic drumming on it. One of the first songs to hit me was The Commodores' "Brick House." It was like, "Okay, I've got to learn how to play that beat." But I didn't have any exposure to concerts or anything live until much later on.
Did you take lessons, or are you self-taught?
I'm very much self-taught.
Do you think growing with AM pop records helped you become more of a song drummer?
Yes, totally. The pop music of that time was so good—especially from the drumming standpoint. Like I said, you had Hal, Russ Kunkel, Jim Gordon. When I got to be a little older, I started getting into heavier stuff like Bonham, Keith Moon, Ginger Baker, and Mitch Mitchell. That totally opened me up to the whole world of what was possible—especially Keith Moon. Not that I'm a Keith Moon—type drummer by any stretch of the imagination, but I do like the whole attitude of, "Do whatever the hell you want to do, its just rock music." He played crazily, but he played for the song.
What would your practice routine be like? Would you play along to records?
Oh yeah, absolutely—headphones on and playing along to records every day before and after school. I would practice like crazy when I was growing up, all the way through college.
Do you still practice?
Oh yeah. Every time we're off, I do the same thing I did when I was a kid—playing along with records I like and trying to cop off of people I respect. Basically it's just thievery, it's a lifelong process of stealing things from other people and getting it really wrong, and then these things accumulate and your style emerges from that. Learn everything you can on the drums, and then decide what you want to do with it. For me, it all started to fall away in the very late '70s, and by the mid '80s it was all gone. Rock drumming actually wasn't a legitimate thing for a while there. The '80s killed it. And it's really never come back. There are people like Matt Cameron and Jimmy Chamberlain, who I thought were great—those two guys were really interesting and were doing something that had a little bit of a throwback to that earlier time. That's what I do. We all like old music, music from the golden age of rock. That's what we are influenced by.
Do you think Blind Melon were instrumental in starting the jam band scene?
I think most people think of us as a one-hit-wonder pop band that either they can't stand or that they see as greatly underappreciated. We did have a couple songs that we jammed on, so I can see how some people would think that. But to me, the jam band thing started in the '60s with one of my favorite bands, Cream. The sort of resurgence of the Grateful Dead in the mid-'80s coincided with the emergence of Phish and all of the Grateful Dead kind of cover bands, or bands that were very much like Grateful Dead—your Widespread Panics and that kind of stuff. Then Jerry Garcia died, and they basically went away for a while, until Phish emerged and became the kings of the jam world. Then a whole group of bands sprang up around them. Now you have people like Phil Lesh & Friends, who are back and doing passable versions of The Grateful Dead. I saw them in Florida a few weeks ago, and it was kind of astonishing.
Do you warm up before you go on stage?
Oh yeah, absolutely. I stretch like crazy for about a half hour—I have to. And I start with bigger sticks and work my way down, and maybe do twenty, thirty minutes, depending on how much time we have. I like to go up there feeling completely free mentally and physically. It doesn't always happen, but it certainly helps the flow if you're not leaning on one leg or worried about something that has nothing to do with playing music—and you don't want your wrists stiff.
 After Shannon passed away, you stopped playing.
Yeah. I just lost interest, and I didn't play music for almost ten years. I suppose it sounds kind of pathetic, but to go from that level. It's one thing to lose your friend, but then to realize that, okay, you were doing exactly what you wanted to do and things were going well, and now all of a sudden it's all gone. And your prospects for getting back to that level with this band, or any other band, are slim to none. It was quite overwhelming. So basically I did a couple of records and said it's not worth it. Once you've done a project like Blind Melon, with people who are really into it and serious about it and constantly coming to the table with new ideas and material, to then be out there basically in the world of the weekend warrior guys who aren't really very ambitious, it's a little depressing. So I just stopped. Then one day about three and a half, maybe four years ago, my next-door neighbor came over and said, "What are you doing? You're doing nothing, so let's do something." And that's when we did the Meek project.
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