“St. Andrew’s Fall” by Blind Melon
St. Andrew’s Hall is a club in Detroit. And the reason this song is named after it is because it was there that the original members of Blind Melon witnessed a suicide.
Suicides tend to be such that those of left behind are usually left trying to figure out why exactly the person would decide to take his or her life. And this is definitely how the band felt upon witnessing the 26 year old woman who inspired this song do so.
And to reiterate, they were actually unfortunate enough to see it. According to Shannon Hoon, it was one of those cases “where you don’t want to look” but you end up looking at it all the same.
And of course seeing homegirl leap from a 20-storey building left the lot of them traumatized, to the point where the members of Blind Melon couldn’t even speak until a few hours afterwards.
So the addressee of the lyrics would actually be the same lady who committed suicide, i.e. Shannon speaking to her sort of posthumously. And as you can tell, there’s a lot of complex lyricism going on here.
But basically, they center on the singer trying his best to empathize with the addressee. He seems to understand that life isn’t all gravy. But at the same time, it’s like he’s not really expecting it to be in the first place. So it reads like he wishes he could have switched her brain for his beforehand. And that’s because his philosophy is more like life is simply made to be lived. So it’s sort of like just chill out and take it in stride.
Blind Melon and “St. Andrew’s Fall”
Blind Melon is a band whose original members are from three different parts of the country, but they actually formed in L.A. To date they have dropped three studio albums. And this track is from the second of those efforts, 1995’s Soup, a project that broke the top 30 of the Billboard 200.
The producer of this track, as with the entire Soup album, is Andy Wallace. FYI, he is also the guy eating the soup on the cover art.
The song’s primary writer is the former frontman of Blind Melon, Shannon Hoon, who passed away in 1995.
This track was made public by Capitol Records.
Genius
I agree completely with Juiceman 78’s “Genius” assessment. I still really miss Shannon. Shannon’s loss came to mind immediately when I first heard of comedian Norm MacDonald’s death (imo Norm was one of the most genuine human beings I’ve known of, which made his comedy so much better than many average comedians who put on an act for laughs).
St. Andrew’s Falls is my favorite of song by Blind Melon. Actually it’s tied with: 1) “Skinned,” bc I’m from Wisconsin, and bc of Shannon’s little giggle at the end of the line, “I’m just makin’ ’em into coffee tables (@1:08, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjADS3RVmUQ ), and 2) Life Ain’t So Shitty.
With St. Andrew’s Falls, I like the sudden, jarring switch of emotions from the care-free “life is to be lived for the experience” to the suddenly Very serious, “No one gets out alive.”
As for the tie for first place, I like the counter balance between the emotions and mood induced by each. From what I think of as Shannon’s default, happy-go-lucky, “the world is your oyster,” POV of life, to the much more serious “life is short, life is precious” seriousness after the unexpected and sudden reminder that many people see life as mostly made up of your own, or other people’s, suffering.