GoW-Article 9

GoW-Article 9 BAM Magazine, Feb 27-March 12, 1998

Crusing A Whole Year

What has Third Eye Blind done since their last BAM cover 12 months ago? They've opened for U2 and the Rolling Stones, rubbed shoulders with Winona Ryder and Marilyn Manson and become the Bay Area's most loved/loathed bands.

by Bill Crandall

We critics are a noble lot. We spend our nights watching and our days listening, offering our eyes and ears to the cause of assembling your record collection. We don't ask much in return, just that you hang on our every word.

We did not turn you onto Third Eye Blind; most likely "Do do doot, do do doot do" was ringing around in your head before you ever saw the words "Third Eye Blind" in print.

And so we take issue. In a recent SPIN article, former BAM and Rolling Stone editor Keith Moerer cited the predictability of bands like Third Eye Blind as what's wrong with radio (apparently big-guitar numbers with hip-hoppy vocals about prostitution and speed are a dime a dozen). Remember, we know what's best for the kids. Sure, they may think they like No Doubt, but Neutral Milk Hotel is what they really need.

More than just critics are taking shots at Third Eye Blind; every SF bandmember I talk to seems to have a sneer reserved for their newly successful peers. In fact, just the other night, Orange Peels frontman Allen Clapp drew snickers from a sparse crowd at San Francisco's Bottom of the Hill club by playing a few bars of "How's It Going to Be."

The most extreme case of Third Eye Blind sniping came from Bay Area critical darlings Engine 88. The band broke up last year, telling BAM that there was no place for them in a world that so embraced Third Eye Blind (I guess there was a place for them in a world that embraced Ugly Kid Joe, who topped the charts when Engine formed).

Third Eye Blind frontman Stephan Jenkins, over some pancakes in the Lower Haight--the SF neighborhood where he scraped by in the early '90s--is troubled by Engine's words. "They seem pretty angry at us for making it," he says. "It's very bizarre to me. We were sorry that they broke up, and we wish them well."

A couple days later from an Iowa hotel room, bassist Arion Salazar reveals that there is a tad more to the story. "We had a picture of us looking really happy and hanging out with U2," he says. "We were going to send that to BAM with a caption reading something to the effect of 'Here's Third Eye Blind pictured moments before they heard the tragic news of the demise of Engine 88.' It was a cheap pot shot, so we figured, 'Nah.'"

Guitarist Kevin Cadogan won't even acknowledge the incident. "Engine 88, is that some new engine degreaser?"

But Cadogan is by no means immune to all of the slings and arrows. "I still care what people think," he says. "That's one of my weaknesses. It was hard coming home from a tour where I'd spend hours on the phone doing interviews, telling everyone how great the Bay Area is--and the San Francisco music scene--and reading some bitter person in the East Bay Express or whatever... I can't say it was a triumphant moment."

Drummer Brad Hargreaves, who played solely in jazz bands before joining Third Eye Blind, understands the criticism. "People feel like we probably didn't pay dues as much as other bands have around the area," he says. "There's always this jealousy when there's some kind of success story. Three years ago, I would have been the guy going, 'Third Eye Blind--they're awful.' But secretly I would have been listening to it in my car and moving my head."

So jealously is all there is to it? Well, no, according to Yvette Holtz, whose Presence Productions booked Third Eye Blind up until last year. "Stephan's always been Stephan," she says, "very confident that he was gonna do what he has done, and a lot of people thought that that was off-putting. Overly cocky. Overly self-assured. They just carried this consistent attitude with them all the way--to a positive end, obviously. But that attitude on a local level was why they didn't make very many friends. I had a really difficult time, because nobody wanted to play with them."

Jenkins admits that becoming "most popular scenester" was never his goal. "It just felt so much like high school to me," says Jenkins, "and I didn't like that in high school. With a scene, a lot of it doesn't have to do with music. And we were really into our music, not hanging out with other musicians."

Third Eye Blind's stage show certainly didn't win over fellow musicians; Jenkins played even the smallest shows like they were Live Aid, complete with his trademark flailing arms and exaggerated struts. "I want to reach everyone in the audience in a real way," he says. "Anything short of that and I might as well be home playing Nintendo."

"A lot of people can't swallow it," says Cadogan. "They can't buy you in that environment, like you're trying to be a superstar at the Bottom of the Hill."

"I think the things he does are almost too big for clubs," Hargreaves agrees. "In stadiums is where he really found his niche. He's a large person and he has big movements, and they translate perfectly in big places."

The band also chose a very different career path. While their peers were working the clubs, passing around the mailing lists and tuning up the van to convert the nearby college towns, Third Eye Blind worked the studio. "In a lot of ways, we just bypassed the Bay Area," says Hargreaves. "There's different methods of obtaining success in the record business. One of them is to play a million shows in the area around you, get a big live following and attract companies that way. Or you can spend the time really trying to hone your music and make tapes of it and send it to people, and that's the method that we used. I never thought that that method could work, but it did."

Indeed. Third Eye Blind's self-titled debut has sold over a million copies, "Semi-Charmed Life" was Billboard's No. 1 alternative track of the year, and "How's It Going to Be" and "Graduate" both reached the Top 10 on the pop charts.

And the songs are popping up in the darnedest places. ABC's TV movie Bad As I Wanna Be: The Dennis Rodman Story finds the notorious hoopster in high school dribbling to the chorus, "Can I graduate?" Unfortunately, for Dennis, the answer was no.

"I've seen the kids from Road Rules or The Real World or whatever around the dinner table on their last night together and 'How's It Going to Be' comes on and somebody has a little tear in their eye," Salazar laughs. "Cheese, man! It's ridiculous."

Luckily, such exposure means Jenkins won't have to worry about his small-club stage presence. After all, his band is currently selling out theater-size venues across the country and recently wrapped up stints opening stadiums for U2 and the Rolling Stones.

Third Eye Blind now count U2 among their friends. "There's a band that got just brutalized," says Jenkins. "That album doesn't suck. 'Staring at the Sun' is a beautiful song. And what they say about Bono being this egomaniac is just bullshit. He's this very funny, very interested, very smart, hilarious guy. The first day we got on tour with U2, Bono came knocking on our dressing room door with a case of Guinness and a case of champagne. They wanted to be friends, and they taught us a lot of things."

Cadogan especially learned a lot from his time with The Edge. "The Edge will spend an hour before soundcheck just getting his delay times right," he says. "They still really care about putting on a good show and the sound of their show. It was inspiring."

Did the Stones also want to be friends? Well, not quite.

"We got to meet the Stones once," says Cadogan. "It was just a real quick photo op. We could hear Mick saying, 'C'mon, we've gotta take this bloody picture.'"

"The Stones experience really didn't mean that much to me, frankly," says Jenkins. "It's a real corporation--they roll it out, they put on their big show and people come out. The Rolling Stones were polite to us, but I hung out more with their kids. I spent more time with Angie Wood than with Ron Wood."

Salazar sees it a bit differently: "They're the Rolling Stones. For me, they're beyond reproach. We met the Stones literally five minutes before they were about to step onstage. The moment before I go onstage I'm distracted, to say the least. But to watch the Rolling Stones play on the exact same stage you were just on 20 minutes before--that's no slim pickings. Especially sitting with my parents--my mom and my dad reunited, proud of their son. They're both old hippies."

Constant touring has revealed other interesting characters, including pop music's reigning demon. "Marilyn Manson came up to me at a show and started screaming [in Manson's growl], 'Can I get my punk ass of the street...'" Jenkins says. "He said he really liked the song ['Graduate']. I just hugged him."

And then there's Winona Ryder, who USA Today erroneously reported to be Jenkins' new girlfriend. "I don't know how it got so fuckin' widespread," he says. "We went out bar-hopping in San Francisco. We had other friends with us. She gets that shit all the time. I'm not used to it. It was really annoying to me--really annoying. I'm not used to having that evil eye on my life."

Ah, the price of graduation--more eyes and ears than ever are on Third Eye Blind. Now, the question is, Can they satisfy them?

"I do feel a lot of pressure," Cadogan admits. "I know a lot of people who I didn't even think were going to be listening to the first album are going to be listening to the second one. The Edge came up to me and said [puts on an Irish accent], 'Kevin, I can't wait to hear what you're gonna play on the next record.' I'll hear his voice booming in my head, 'Kevin, that part sucks. Try again.'"

Having witnessed a recent less-than-capacity crowd for Oasis--the band Third Eye Blind got their big break opening for a couple of years ago--Jenkins knows success can be fleeting, but he vows not to emulate his British brethren. "I've never seen a band that expects so much out of their audience for delivering so little," he says.

Instead, he defers to his friend Bono. "He said to me, 'Stephen, can I give you a piece of advice? Wait until the live album to buy a house. We've seen so many bands put out a great first record, then they get all obsessed with buying a house. They put all their energy into buying art-deco furniture and getting the perfect Persian rug, and they lose their lean, hungry impulse for music.' He was saying to stay vulnerable to the times that you live in and let life hit you." He laughs, "that's hard to do when it's said on a private fucking jet."

But Jenkins gets the gist, and, stepping out of the restaurant, he gazes upon the very block that most inspired his lean, hungry impulse for music. "You see that store? That's the one I'm talking about when I say 'I walk Haight Street to the store [from 'The Background']."

Jenkins cherishes those days of struggle. "Not everybody gets to have that time in their life. Especially in America, people rarely get that opportunity--they get up to go to a job, to advance in a career. I was like, 'Fuck that. I'm here to think about how we're going to keep this illegal party we're putting on from getting busted. I have no money and we're having a big dinner party tonight--cheap wine and spaghetti.'"

Just two years later and a dozen or so blocks away, Third Eye Blind make their triumphant return to San Francisco. Cadogan wears a long coat and sunglasses as Jenkins wiggles, hops and climbs stacks. He turns the mic on the audience and has them sing the first verse of "Semi-Charmed Life," which--for the unacquainted (are there any?)--is about as easy to follow as that of "Subterranean Homesick Blues" or "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)," but the young men and women alike nail it word for word.

I stand next to a couple of other scribes, all of us moving our heads. We know it doesn't matter what we may theorize, scrutinize or philosophize. This is rock 'n' roll...and the kids know it.

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