Blues Traveler frontman Jon Popper has a longstanding grudge against his ’90s alt-rock radio peer Alanis Morissette — specifically against her hit “Hand In My Pocket,” which recently appeared in our Alternative Number Ones column. It’s not that Popper thinks Morissette is a bad person or that he believes the song sucks or she ripped it off from Blues Traveler or anything. It’s that she doesn’t treat her harmonica with the proper level of respect.
John Popper, you see, is a big harmonica guy. It’s his whole thing. That man loves the harmonica. Yesterday, Popper did a Rolling Stone interview pegged to the 30th anniversary of Blues Traveler’s crossover hit “Run-Around,” and he told writer Brian Hiatt that Alanis Morissette is the “worst harmonica player.” Before he even names Morissette, Hiatt jumps in and guesses what Popper’s about to say. And then Popper elaborates:
I objectively have to — She managed to fit the entire thing in her mouth… And on “One Hand In My Pocket” — I would love her songs on the radio. “You Oughta Know” is probably one of the best songs ever written. … But when she plays the harmonica, it is terrible, and she insists on still playing it. I’m that anal guy that bothered to figure out that harmonica can be like horns, and so it makes me really intolerant of people who aren’t trying to play actual notes.
I did not read this Rolling Stone John Popper interview, but our fearless leader Scott Lapatine did, and he remembered previous instances of Popper getting heated about Morissette’s alleged harmonica mishandling. That’s who Scott is. He’s a man who is able to remember all the times when John Popper had things to say about Alanis Morissette’s harmonica usage. Here, for instance, is something that Popper said in his 2016 memoir Suck And Blow: And Other Stories I’m Not Supposed To Tell…:
Where I try to draw a line is Alanis Morissette. I can hear her breaking the harmonica when she puts it to her lips. There’s a track she did, “Hand In My Pocket,” and I can hear the reeds breaking during the harmonica solo. They’re not meant to be blown that hard, and I’m arguably the only person who hears it every time that song is played. It’s like, “For a solo we’re going to smash this violin against the window” — that’s the sound I hear when I hear that song.
In a LearnTheHarmonica.com interview last year, Popper said:
I always use Alanis Morissette as the culmination of that progression of doom. I can hear [her] song “One Hand In My Pocket,” and I hear her break a harmonica! You can hear the reed give out, and I feel like saying, “Why are you killing a harmonica on the radio?”
This past summer, Popper was on Adam Carolla’s podcast. Around the 57:50 mark, he was asked to “improve” a few different songs by playing harmonica over them. When Carolla cued up “Hand In My Pocket,” Popper said, “Oh, boy.” Then he mocked Morissette’s performance by playing many notes together and once again said, “I can hear her breaking it.”
Popper riffed over the top of the song for a little while, and when the harmonica solo came up, he said, “Yeah, she broke a reed… You hear that dissonance? Ugh.” Carolla: “At what point in your career do you think you’ll be able to pull this off?” Popper: “I don’t have a wide enough face. She can literally fit — You can hear, she’s fitting the whole harmonica in her face.” Then they make a Dave Coulier sex joke. (Again, I didn’t listen to John Popper on Adam Carolla’s podcast. That’s mostly me copy-pasting Scott’s summary.)
Even beyond the torture of repeated “Hand In My Pocket” exposures, it has been a rough year for John Popper. In the Rolling Stone interview, he talks about going through a bunch of health issues. He had elbow and wrist surgery on both arms to treat carpal tunnel, and the doctors discovered that he had an atrial flutter. He went through a common procedure to address that, but the surgeon accidentally cut his femoral artery, and he lost a liter and a half of blood. This was two days before Popper’s first show of the year, a high-paying private gig. Popper says he still played that.
After all of that, Popper had to go through two more surgeries when his leg didn’t heal, which led to knee problems, which make it hard for him to walk now. He also got COVID and had to miss some shows, which led to the singers from Blues Traveler’s tourmates, the Spin Doctors and the Goo Goo Dolls, awkwardly filling in. And then, Popper slipped in the shower and bashed his head open during his honeymoon, and he needed five stitches.
Early in the Rolling Stone interview, Popper requests that someone update his Wikipedia page to say that he remarried last year, and he says he met his new wife Sherri “Gidget” Popper at a nudist colony. He says, “When I go on Wikipedia, there’s no evidence that she exists. And that’s been driving us both crazy for the better part of a year.” Popper could update the Wikipedia page himself, but perhaps he understands that his time is better spent studying and mastering the intricacies of the harmonica.
