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Only Wanna Be with You: The Inside Story of Hootie & the Blowfish
Experience the exclusive, behind-the-scenes story of one of the biggest bands of the nineties
In 1985, Mark Bryan heard Darius Rucker singing in a dorm shower at the University of South Carolina and asked him to form a band. For the next eight years, Hootie & the Blowfish—completed by bassist Dean Felber and drummer Soni Sonefeld—played every frat house, roadhouse, and rock club in the mid-Atlantic and Southeast, becoming one of the biggest independent acts in the region.
Thirty years after the band's major label debut, cracked rear view, author Tim Sommer pulls back the curtain on the band that defied record-industry odds to break into the mainstream by playing hacky sack music in the age of grunge. Only Wanna Be with You includes extensive new interviews with the band members and some of their most famous fans, as well as stories from the recording studio, tour bus, and golf course. Only Wanna Be with You is essential reading for Hootie lovers and music buffs.
In 1985, Mark Bryan heard Darius Rucker singing in a dorm shower at the University of South Carolina and asked him to form a band. For the next eight years, Hootie & the Blowfish—completed by bassist Dean Felber and drummer Soni Sonefeld—played every frat house, roadhouse, and rock club in the mid-Atlantic and Southeast, becoming one of the biggest independent acts in the region.
Thirty years after the band's major label debut, cracked rear view, author Tim Sommer pulls back the curtain on the band that defied record-industry odds to break into the mainstream by playing hacky sack music in the age of grunge. Only Wanna Be with You includes extensive new interviews with the band members and some of their most famous fans, as well as stories from the recording studio, tour bus, and golf course. Only Wanna Be with You is essential reading for Hootie lovers and music buffs.
355 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 5, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
May 9, 2022
10 stars🌟
It’s not an understatement for me to say that I would not be the person I am today if it wasn’t for Hootie & the blowfish. They were the first band that I ever fell in love with and I never fell out of love with. They are deeply embedded in my ❤️. I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect with this book - other than obviously I was going to buy it and read it. I was completely blown away by the level of detail and research Tim Sommer put into this story. It was a travel through time behind the scenes look at my favorite four guys that I didn’t realize I was missing. I’ve read a lot about this band and there was so much in this story I didn’t know- and so much that brought back so many memories of times in my life. I didn’t entirely agree with Tim’s assessment of their albums (Fairweather Johnson is my favorite hootie album) but good thing everyone can have their own opinion. 😄 This book is a treasure and I can’t recommend it enough- it’s worth the read by anyone who wants an incredible story.
It’s not an understatement for me to say that I would not be the person I am today if it wasn’t for Hootie & the blowfish. They were the first band that I ever fell in love with and I never fell out of love with. They are deeply embedded in my ❤️. I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect with this book - other than obviously I was going to buy it and read it. I was completely blown away by the level of detail and research Tim Sommer put into this story. It was a travel through time behind the scenes look at my favorite four guys that I didn’t realize I was missing. I’ve read a lot about this band and there was so much in this story I didn’t know- and so much that brought back so many memories of times in my life. I didn’t entirely agree with Tim’s assessment of their albums (Fairweather Johnson is my favorite hootie album) but good thing everyone can have their own opinion. 😄 This book is a treasure and I can’t recommend it enough- it’s worth the read by anyone who wants an incredible story.
June 25, 2022
Hootie & the Blowfish occupies a unique place in rock history. It’s probably the most popular act, at least of the modern era, to have become a complete joke in only a few years. In scoring a ubiquitous presence upon its major label debut, Hootie really had nowhere to go but down.
Tim Sommer does an adequate job of tracing the most convenient interpretation of the band’s career. Sommer was a label talent scout who helped discover Hootie, and his close working association with the band, during most of its tenure at Atlantic, gives him a decent view of how it played out. What he lacks is any real perspective. From the moment the second album “failed,” everyone needed some kind of explanation. But I doubt anyone is very interested in the simplest one, that as of 1996 there wasn’t room in the popular culture for Hootie anymore. And that’s pretty much it.
Hootie’s popularity, how the first album blew up so big, is competently spelled out in these pages. The American pop landscape was rapidly expanding, from the late night wars between Letterman and Leno to the last major era of the sitcom as led by Friends, both of which featured Hootie to everyone’s benefit. A music video featuring the emerging phenomenon of ESPN certainly didn’t hurt, although how it made the band look (as a bunch of goofs) probably only fed into all the concerns that Hootie was as uncool as everyone had already assumed.
But Hootie was cool, in a way that still somehow is invisible in pop culture: the college scene as it’s been for the past forty years. Hootie was always called a “bar band,” but the band formed in college and mastered the art of being a college band. Classic rock still gives the image of garage bands formed in high school. Hootie came together out of a scene that obsessed over small acts as much as major ones. Sommer rightfully emphasizes how these were guys who lived and breathed music. They patterned their ideas of success not on, say, the Beatles, but some outfit called Johnny Quest, out of their very left field origins in the music scene of their native South Carolina.
The result in their music very often eschewed the expectations of…everyone. Rock music, and not just the grunge phenomenon playing out in the backdrop of Hootie’s rise, but the whole history of it, tends to feed on itself, the successful acts. The Beatles, for instance, adored Buddy Holly. But Hootie just loved music.
And Sommer tends to be dismissive of music from the band’s later albums. His interest rapidly diminishes after the first one. But his outline of the band’s origins is comprehensive, and clearly his primary interest, as well as reporting on the successful 2019 tour. If you want to know much more than that, this book is only gonna disappoint you.
Someone else will put all this in perspective. And perhaps more people will decide it’s okay to take Hootie seriously.
Tim Sommer does an adequate job of tracing the most convenient interpretation of the band’s career. Sommer was a label talent scout who helped discover Hootie, and his close working association with the band, during most of its tenure at Atlantic, gives him a decent view of how it played out. What he lacks is any real perspective. From the moment the second album “failed,” everyone needed some kind of explanation. But I doubt anyone is very interested in the simplest one, that as of 1996 there wasn’t room in the popular culture for Hootie anymore. And that’s pretty much it.
Hootie’s popularity, how the first album blew up so big, is competently spelled out in these pages. The American pop landscape was rapidly expanding, from the late night wars between Letterman and Leno to the last major era of the sitcom as led by Friends, both of which featured Hootie to everyone’s benefit. A music video featuring the emerging phenomenon of ESPN certainly didn’t hurt, although how it made the band look (as a bunch of goofs) probably only fed into all the concerns that Hootie was as uncool as everyone had already assumed.
But Hootie was cool, in a way that still somehow is invisible in pop culture: the college scene as it’s been for the past forty years. Hootie was always called a “bar band,” but the band formed in college and mastered the art of being a college band. Classic rock still gives the image of garage bands formed in high school. Hootie came together out of a scene that obsessed over small acts as much as major ones. Sommer rightfully emphasizes how these were guys who lived and breathed music. They patterned their ideas of success not on, say, the Beatles, but some outfit called Johnny Quest, out of their very left field origins in the music scene of their native South Carolina.
The result in their music very often eschewed the expectations of…everyone. Rock music, and not just the grunge phenomenon playing out in the backdrop of Hootie’s rise, but the whole history of it, tends to feed on itself, the successful acts. The Beatles, for instance, adored Buddy Holly. But Hootie just loved music.
And Sommer tends to be dismissive of music from the band’s later albums. His interest rapidly diminishes after the first one. But his outline of the band’s origins is comprehensive, and clearly his primary interest, as well as reporting on the successful 2019 tour. If you want to know much more than that, this book is only gonna disappoint you.
Someone else will put all this in perspective. And perhaps more people will decide it’s okay to take Hootie seriously.
May 27, 2022
I don't dislike Hootie and the Blowfish, but I wouldn't consider myself a "fan". However, I totally enjoyed this book! A nostalgic trip for anyone who grew up Gen-X. I was navigating the music scene in the late 80s and early 90s as a college music student myself and remember all too well how we had to make cassettes of our music, flyers, and other promotional items had to be done without a computer or cell phone, and we literally had to call up all our friends on the phone or send post cards to get them to come to our gigs. The early 90s was a great era for music that was raw and real. I really enjoyed Tim Sommer's tale about this band. I listened to it on audiobook and the narrator did a great job as well. If you like memoirs about musicians, this is one to read.
August 25, 2022
If you were in high school or college roughly between 1990 and 1997, this book will be like a warm bath of musical nostalgia, especially if you are from the Southeastern part of the US. The chapters leading up to Tim Sommer's involvement actually read better than the ones he shares in the first person, but still, well worth the trip down memory lane.
My favorite quote is from Rob Light (booking agent/advisor): "Music defines your youth. It always has, it always will. Your favorite bands when you are seventeen to twenty-five become the soundtrack of your life. Now, that doesn't mean that you won't like music when you're thirty, or you won't find new things when you're thirty. And it doesn't mean you didn't like music when you were twelve. But that junior year of high school to the end of college is the soundtrack of your life, and that music has an impact that is indefinable. You can't put it into words. Twenty years later, twenty years after college, when you're now in your forties, when you've had a couple of kids, when everything about your life has taken on a different look - good bad, or indifferent - all you want is to feel what you felt when you were eighteen, and the only thing that really takes you back there is music."
My favorite quote is from Rob Light (booking agent/advisor): "Music defines your youth. It always has, it always will. Your favorite bands when you are seventeen to twenty-five become the soundtrack of your life. Now, that doesn't mean that you won't like music when you're thirty, or you won't find new things when you're thirty. And it doesn't mean you didn't like music when you were twelve. But that junior year of high school to the end of college is the soundtrack of your life, and that music has an impact that is indefinable. You can't put it into words. Twenty years later, twenty years after college, when you're now in your forties, when you've had a couple of kids, when everything about your life has taken on a different look - good bad, or indifferent - all you want is to feel what you felt when you were eighteen, and the only thing that really takes you back there is music."
July 6, 2022
Of course I read this hoping for hot gossip and insider details on the band members' personal lives, and potential references to people I knew in college, but I came away with a better understanding of how the music industry works (or worked, I should say, back in the early 1990s) and how, exactly, Hootie & the Blowfish produced one of the best-selling albums of all time. Sommer, who started writing about music for Trouser Press as a teen, and was the first American to interview U2, has an engaging style, full of humor. And he asked good questions. He got Darius Rucker to talk about race, and he also addressed the political content of some of Hootie's songs.
My only quibble is that there wasn't an index, which is a little surprising since this book was published by a university press. Nevertheless, it's a solid and entertaining account of a band that will down in history.
My only quibble is that there wasn't an index, which is a little surprising since this book was published by a university press. Nevertheless, it's a solid and entertaining account of a band that will down in history.
May 29, 2022
DNF.
I really dislike it when an author inserts himself into the story, and this author is a super fan boi, who thinks he’s part of the story. “Because of xx and me.” “Because I and ….” way too many times. The author def thinks the bands breaking and success has to do with him.
Also didn’t care for the flowery way the author writes and when an event (even minor) happens, he has quotes from several members of the band. He knows the band, but it reads as though someone downloaded every word any of the band members ever said, and cut and pasted together to form the book.
I really dislike it when an author inserts himself into the story, and this author is a super fan boi, who thinks he’s part of the story. “Because of xx and me.” “Because I and ….” way too many times. The author def thinks the bands breaking and success has to do with him.
Also didn’t care for the flowery way the author writes and when an event (even minor) happens, he has quotes from several members of the band. He knows the band, but it reads as though someone downloaded every word any of the band members ever said, and cut and pasted together to form the book.
August 9, 2022
I've been a Hootie and the Blowfish fan since I first heard them on the radio back in 1994, so was really looking forward to reading this book. As a fan, some of the things in the book I already knew about, but there are a LOT of things I didn't know. Lots of stuff from the early college days through to their Group Therapy Tour in 2019 (which was great). If you're a casual fan, you'll appreciate this book, and if you're a True Fan Johnson, you'll love this book!
May 27, 2022
Great look at the early days of one of my favorite bands. From their inception through their third album in 1998, this biography is super in depth. It falls off a bit in detail after that time period but does give some interesting insights, including a nice chapter detailing Darius Rucker’s solo stardom in country music.
August 9, 2022
This is a great behind the scenes look at the entire history of Hootie and the Blowfish. It's informative and dense and provides a great story of the band, the people in the band and behind the band, and the music industry in general. I know way more about Hootie and the Blowfish than before I read this book!
February 12, 2024
detailed history, the Hootie story. I liked it but if you aren't into music and H&BF you'll probably be bored. I'm not a huge Hootie fan but wanted to read this since me and Darius both live in charleston and love playing and singing on stage. I don't know him but we have mutual friends. maybe someday we'll hang and jam.
May 30, 2022
I wasn’t sure what to expect with this book, but it still surprised me. The author shares the inside story- from a music business standpoint. The book made me nostalgic for going to the store when new albums dropped- and makes me hope Hootie goes on tour again.
June 4, 2022
Highly recommended. I've loved Hootie and the Blowfish pretty much since I heard the first note of "Let Her Cry" many years ago. So, obviously, I devoured this book. An amazing and fascinating chronicle of a band that made a massive impact on music in the early-to-mid 90s.
June 13, 2023
Only Wanna Be With You has a very heavy music industry approach. It's not necessarily bad and is fitting for their story. The book just isn't as focused on the personal narrative/backstory of the band members or on the songwriting process as many books of this nature.
July 5, 2023
YOU AND MEEEEEE
Seriously though. Don’t. Ever. Go up to Hootie and call him Hootie. He will either beat the crap out of you, insult you, or leave. He don’t play around he doesn’t consider himself Hootie anymore. Keep that online.
Seriously though. Don’t. Ever. Go up to Hootie and call him Hootie. He will either beat the crap out of you, insult you, or leave. He don’t play around he doesn’t consider himself Hootie anymore. Keep that online.
April 29, 2024
I enjoyed the book from cover to cover. It included a lot of behind the scenes stories that were new to even the most diehard of fans. The in depth perspectives from all members of the band and those closest to them painted a vivid picture of their experiences.
June 12, 2022
Loved it. As one who saw the shows in the years they are talking about, including the "comeback" Imperfect Circle anniversary tour and 2 Darius solo shows, this book was very insightful.
June 21, 2022
Such a fun read. It was great to see all the behind the scenes of where the band was started. I am a huge Hootie fan. But I think even if you do t know much about the band you would enjoy this book.
May 31, 2022
Exactly what it says on the tin. A thorough history of a classic band. If you care about them, you'll enjoy it. If you don't, you probably won't.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews