By the start of 1987 all of the Ten O'Clock Scholars had made their way back to Phoenix. Once back in Phoenix, Doug formed his next band, in much the same way most of his previous bands were formed - with Bill Leen on bass. Unlike the previous bands, this band was set to go beyond the bars and clubs of Tempe, Arizona and become the band that Doug was to be the most remembered for on a local, national and eventually global scale.

Doug and Bill were hooked up with Jesse Valenzuela through David McKay who had previous played with Jesse in The Photos. Guitarist Richard Taylor and drummer Chris McCann were added to the lineup, and the Gin Blossoms were formed, taking their name from a picture of W.C Fields in the book Hollywood Babylon II with a severe case of rosacea. The band played their first gig at the Edcels Attic in Tempe on Dec 20, 1987, billed as Cap'n Crunch. Five days later, on Christmas Day they played their first gig as the Gin Blossoms at Phoenix's legendary Mason Jar.

At the time, guitarist Richard Taylor was on parole, and to get around the issue of parole violation, the band developed an alter ego - The Del Montes. Five brothers, all with the same mother but different fathers. Each member assumed a "Del Monte" name, Doug's being "Otis Del Monte". As the Del Montes, the band would play mostly covers and Hopkins' penned originals. It wasn't long before the band was the biggest thing in Tempe, playing four sets nightly at bars like Long Wongs. The Del Monte's moniker became so prolifent, that members of the band, including Doug, were referred to by their Del Monte name almost as frequently their actual name. Robin can still be heard yelling out "Otis!" before guitar solos (Dream With You, Cajun Song, Hands Are Tied), and Doug is often referred to as "Otis" in CD liners.

In March 1998 Richard Taylor was fired due to drug abuse and was replaced on guitar by Doug's skateboarding buddy Robin Wilson. A month later, Chris McCann left the group and was replaced by Dan Henzerling. Dan's time in the band was short lived, leaving the band 6 months later to join The Best Kissers In The World. Phil Rhodes was recruited as the new drummer. By this time, it'd become apparent that Valenzuela was a better guitarist, and Wilson a better singer and the pair switched roles, solidifying the Gin Blossoms lineup which that the world would come to know.

The summer of 1989 saw the Blossoms record their first independent album, Dusted. Although the album liners credit the whole band on the writing, 7 of the 12 tracks were written / co-written by Hopkins. These Hopkins' tracks include some new Hopkins' material, such as "Lost Horizons", material ground work started on during the Ten O'Clock Scholars period, "Hey Jealousy" and "Found Out About You", and "Angels Tonight", carried over from Algebra Ranch. Although hard to come by, Dusted is probably one of their earliest Hopkins recordings still available, if you look hard enough, or have the right connections.

By May 1990 the band had inked a deal with A&M Records. 1991 saw the recording and release of the EP, Up And Crumbling, which featured two Doug songs. "Keli Richards", and "Angels Tonight".

The following year was bittersweet for the band, as they started work on a full length album for A&M. In Memphis during the recording of the album that became New Miserable Experience, the band's double platinum debut, Doug became despondent, drinking heavily during the sessions. Towards the end of the 2 month sessions in Memphis, Doug was sent back to Phoenix, and soon learned that he'd been fired from the band.

In August 1992, the album was released, half of which contained Hopkins material, including 4 songs penned by Doug and another 2 co-written with him. In the time between the album was recorded and released, the Gin Blossoms had recruited local Tempe guitarist Scott Johnson as Doug's replacement. The album was released with little mention of Doug, other than song writing and guitar credit, instead featuring photos of Scott Johnson as a member of the band, despite not playing on the record.

Following the release of New Miserable Experience, a heated feud between Doug and the band quickly insued. At the center of this was Doug's contribution to New Miserable Experience, raising conjecture about how much Doug played on the album. Doug publicly maintained that the majority of the guitar on the record is his. While there was never a clear resolve to that question in the media, a comparison to pre and post Hopkins recordings and performances gives a fair indication.

Initially the album had very little momentum, however 7 months later started to catch on, by the end of it's run selling over 2 million copies on the back of the first two singles Hey Jealousy and Found Out About You, both written by Doug.

"This next song...Doug and I used to spend a lot of time just playing together acoustic. And we did a whole slew of songs once, in my brother's bedroom. This is from those sessions, this is a song Doug wrote, 25 Women Ago."

-- Robin Wilson
Source: Doug Hopkins Tribute - 98 Local Rock.

Note: Nothing At All is the only song listed in this discography not actually written by Doug. It is listed here because the content and Robin's spiel on the song below is quite pertinent to Doug, even though he didn't write it.

"...on the way back home, we, one the last night we, Doug and I had stayed up all night long with the engineer and we were mixing down the record and about 6 in the morning we were finally done. We'd finished Dusted in 6 days and Doug and I got in his car, which we used to call the Command Module, coz remember in the Pharoahs....in the Pharoahs we had Pharoah names.....yours [G. Brian Scott] was Fats I believe, how appropriate enough, and Doug's was Pops, because in those days, he was the oldest member of the Pharoahs, he was 27 when the Pharoahs were formed. My Pharoah name was Commander Rock. Was and is Command Rock. And so we used to call his car the Command Module, cause he couldn't drive, cause he always had his license suspended. And so I'm driving his car back, and we started arguing about the record and about each other, and about the universe and why I gave a shit about physics and stuff - which I used to be really interested in. And he used to argue...'it was stoopid to care about your Uranus when we still don't understand the human mind'. He used to argue that with me all the time. And I remember, we got out of the car and we were taking a piss somewhere between here and Tucson, somewhere by Picacho Peak. We were screaming at each other, we both had our dicks flying in the wind, we're peeing out on the highway, and we were screaming at each other about the validity of my interested verses Doug's interests. Anyway, I went home and I wrote this song, which was about this argument that Doug and I had. And I wrote this song from Doug's perspective. In the song I'm trying to sing what Doug said to me that day on the way back from Tucson. And anyway, this song is called Nothing At All."

-- Robin Wilson
Source: Doug Hopkins Tribute - 98 Local Rock.

"...I don't know if you remember Robin, this day you came in to do this interview, you and Douglas were driving up to Flagstaff, and that's when Wondering Where Those Bastards Are was written."

-- Leah Miller

"...this is a song, this was Doug and I recording in my brother's bedroom a few years ago, and this is the song we wrote the day we did that stoopid interview for the godforsaken Snickers New Music Search. And this is a song we wrote together, called I'm Still Wondering Where Those Bastards Are."

-- Robin Wilson
Source: Doug Hopkins Tribute - 98 Local Rock.

"...the truth of the matter is we sing about [girls and beer -- Doug] and porno stars and beer and stuff like that, and are songs are basically pretty silly, y'know, when it comes down to it. We try to be clever about it but..."

-- Robin Wilson (unknown interview from 1990)

"...well no, theres actually...if you...okay...if you listen to our record actually - I've thought about this. There's like certain songs that are like meant to be sorta serious, that were meant to be like, sorta like school boy poems or something, y'know? And then there's other songs that are meant to be deliberately idiotic, where it's like `let's get drunk and write a song'. That's like Keli Richards'. Okay, so you write a song about a porno star, fine."

-- Doug Hopkins (unknown interview from 1990)
Source: Doug Hopkins Tribute - 98 Local Rock.

Keli Richards is a real life Hollywood porn star, who has starred in such movies as Caught From Behind II, which is a lyric in the song.

Doug wrote Lost Horizons just before the Gin Blossoms were formed, and was one of the new Hopkins' songs that was played during the Blossoms' debut show at Edcel's Attic in December 1987.

The Gin Blossoms also performed Lost Horizons during their CMJ performance in 1990. It was originally recorded for Dusted in 1990. It and the Dusted version of Hopkins' song Found Out About You was featured in the Snickers New Music Search (and is available on the Snickers New Music Search LP). It was later re-recorded for New Miserable Experience, which it was lifted off from as a promotional single in 1992.

Hey Jealousy was originally written for the album Dusted, and is cited as a large factor in the Gin Blossoms being signed to a major label.

It become the first single lifted from the album New Miserable Experience album, after Doug had been fired from the band and became the breakthrough single for the Gin Blossoms 7 months after it's initial release, burning up the Billboard charts and months later becoming a hit all around the world.

Hey Jealousy was inspired by David Swafford's (of The Best Kissers In The World), sister, who Doug dated.

"It's July 29 of 1985, I went to see R.E.M at the Palace West Theatre, and after the concert I see her. I turn to walk away, and she runs up from behind me - she was a black strip in Twe Kwon Do - and she nailed me one, put me in hospital for a week and a half. Shattered cheek bone, shattered occipital lobe. I still have scars from this folks. Aww man. Anyway, it's about her."

-- Doug Hopkins (KASR Interview 1990)
Source: Doug Hopkins Tribute - 98 Local Rock

The second single released from New Miserable Experience, penned by Hopkins, cracked the US Top 10, peaking at #6 on the Billboard singles chart shortly after Hopkins' suicide.

"'Pieces of the Night' had a totally different ending, a piano ending, that was my idea. The other instruments faded out and the piano just continued. It's a trick I stole from Springsteen," he said, referring to the fadeout on "Incident on 57th Street" which goes into "Rosalita."

"Of course, after they kicked me out of the band, they didn't care that it was my song and my ending got junked."
Source: "Two Views Of A Gin Blossom", Where It's Hot (Sept 8 - 22, 1992)

The aforementioned version of Pieces Of The Night, recorded during the New Miserable Experience sessions will be available on the re-release of New Miserable Experience in mid 2002.

"One night we were sitting in the studio listening to it at Ardent," Hopkins said, referring to the Memphis studio where the album was recorded, "and, OK, it's like three in the morning and I was drunk and it sounded great blasting through those speakers and I turned to Robin and said, 'OK, I'll give you half credit on this song if you promise to vote with me on having this as our first single and video,' because we thought A&M (the band's label) was going to let us pick the first single and video. That's how naive we were."
Source: "Two Views Of A Gin Blossom", Where It's Hot (Sept 8 - 22, 1992)