Doug Hopkins
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Douglas "Doug" 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."
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[edit] History
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.
[edit] Fallout
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 up to April 1993 after fumbling a solo at an outdoor festival with The Chimeras when 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, and Hopkins' girlfriend moved out of his apartment. On December 5, at the age of 32, Hopkins lay down on his bed in his apartment, put the barrel of a .38-calibre pistol into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
[edit] After his death
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.
