How It Began

The Rebirth of 4 Non Blondes

It’s January 5 2025, and I’m driving over the Bay Bridge to San Francisco for the first 4 Non Blondes rehearsal in over a decade.

In the thirty years since the band split up we have reunited exactly once, in May of 2014, to perform four songs at a benefit Linda produced called An Evening With Women. I was living in Austin at the time and flew out to Los Angeles a few days before the show for rehearsals. The event took place at the legendary Beverly Hilton Ballroom, home of the Golden Globes. It was a blast from the past, stepping into Linda’s world of paparazzi and celebrity. I’d long forgotten the feeling of being on the receiving end of so much attention.

I stayed on top floor of the hotel with Linda and Sara in the swankiest hotel suite I’d ever seen. In the guest bathroom of the thousand-square-foot suite, I imagined celebrities sitting on the same toilet I was perched on. Brad Pitt came to mind for some odd reason. My mind often works like that.

But there was little time for Linda, Dawn, Roger and I to really reconnect in any meaningful way back in 2014. After rehearsing for two days, performing at the event, and maxing out my credit card on overly expensive sushi dinners because I just couldn’t fucking help myself, I was whisked back to my regular life, just in time for my upcoming gig in Luckenback, Texas. It would be years before I heard from Linda, Dawn, or Roger again. 4 Non Blondes went back into hiding.

Fast forward ten years later.

In the spring of 2024, Linda reached out to me and asked about the second record, the one we started in November of 1994, in what turned out to be the beginning of the end of the band. She wanted to know if I had the rough recordings somewhere, as I’ve always been the archivist. Yes, I’d digitized the recordings I had on cassette tapes years ago.

“I’ve got it them in a folder on the cloud.” I responded. “I’ll send you a link.”

Soon after, Linda sent a text. “The record sounds better than I remember. Man, if I only knew then what I know now.” We both knew it took her thirty years of hard work to know what she knows now. It seemed Linda was feeling kind of sentimental. I wondered where it would lead.

In late summer, Linda called me while I was out on my twice-a-day routine of walking my scruffy black terrier in my beautiful North Berkeley neighborhood. We talked for while to catch up; when we last spoke I’d been caretaking my mom and she’d passed away in April. Everything felt different, Mom’s death leaving an indescribable void in my life that Linda seemed to step into.

“We’ve been offered to play at Bottlerock,” Linda said, talking about the popular Napa Valley food and music festival that will happen in May 2025. Linda asked if I thought Dawn and Roger would be into playing together again. I told her I was confident they would both jump at the chance.

Linda and I started 4 Non Blondes back in 1989 with a different drummer (Wanda Day) and guitarist (Shaunna Hall). Dawn replaced Wanda in the summer of 1991, a few months after we were signed, and and Shaunna left the band during the recording of the album later that year. Roger joined us in the spring of 1992, after the album was complete but before it’s released. There’d been a lot of drama. But when I think of “4 Non Blondes,” I think of Linda, Dawn, Roger and me. We went on a crazy, life-altering ride together that only we understand. That’s what makes us forever a band.

By the fall, the four of us have made a plan to rehearse at the beginning of the year. In the meantime, Linda promised to send us some songs we might want to play, and they come in spurts over the next few months. We listen, talk back and forth. We were all willing to try anything. Dawn, Roger, and I got together once a week to rehearse in Dawn’s studio. She’s had the same rehearsal studio for years, and it’s in the same building where the 4 Non Blondes rehearsal studio was, back in 1989. It’s a place that holds many memories. It’s where Linda and I auditioned Dawn after our original drummer was fired. I had a studio in there for many years after we’d split up. Rehearsing there again, playing 4 Non Blondes songs with Dawn and Roger, is like being in the Twilight Zone.

We’ve all continued to play music professionally throughout the past thirty years. No one hung up their instrument for a corporate job, although I did work as a 9-5 animator and production artist for a web design company in San Francisco during the late nineties, then worked as a self-employed artist jack-of-all-trades for the fifteen years after the dot-com crash. Dawn has taught drums for many years and has published several drumming instruction books. Roger, like me, is also a visual artist and supplemented his music income with a sign painting business for years. He told me he recently sold it. Timing is everything.

Roger Rocha, Linda Perry. Dawn Richardson and me January 2025. Long Live 4 Non Blondes!

From the start, this reunion has been very different than the one-off in 2014. There’s no paparazzi, no fans, no celebrities milling about, and no green room. Only a San Francisco soundstage, back lined gear, and four people who, although we used to spend every day touring the world together, have been estranged for years. Linda says that the universe told her to do it. She isn’t doing it for the money; none of us are. We all like the idea of no pressure, no real agenda, just the joy of playing music together, getting to know each other again, in some ways for maybe the first time.

It takes a while to settle into the space. Linda moves gear around to get a more cohesive sound out of the boomy room. We play some songs from the past, and a few that Linda sent us. By the second day, Linda begins churning out brand new ideas. She’s obviously happy and relaxed, and songs are spilling out of her. One of them, entitled “Hollow,” makes our Swiss sound engineer cry. It is a beautiful moment that reminds us all of how much music can touch people. How much our music touches people. After two days rehearsing and hanging out, Linda heads back home to Los Angeles and the rest of us return to our Bay Area homes excited for what the future holds.

Next stop will be Los Angeles in early February to begin recording the new songs at Linda’s studio.