Third Eye Blind Gets an Eyeful

Life in a rock 'n' roll band can be unreal at the best of times. But some incidents still stick out.

"We were in Indonesia playing in an open amphitheater full of high school students," remembers Third Eye Blind bassist Arion Salazar, calling from San Francisco during a brief break from his band's current tour.

In the middle of "Semi-Charmed Life," Salazar looked out to see a young girl in full traditional dress, "with barely [any] of her face showing... singing every word. I was watching in disbelief."
"That's the coolest thing about touring," Salazar says, "bringing music to cultures that don't get a lot of that sort of thing."

Other cool things for Salazar include opening stadium shows for both U2 and the Rolling Stones in 1997, an experience he remembers as "insane and surreal."
"Playing on stage and running off and 20 minutes later watching Keith [Richards] play "Satisfaction," Salazar says, savoring the memory."Amazing."

The band was sharing stages with the superstars mere months after the release of its eponymous debut album in April 1997. Success came quickly, though not quite overnight.

Salazar hooked up with singer Stephan Jenkins in the early '90s. The lineup solidified in 1995 with the addition of guitarist Kevin Cadogan and drummer Brad Hargreaves.

The quartet got a big break when it opened for Oasis in April 1996 at a concert in San Francisco Civic Auditorium. The band found itself the object of a bidding war, with the Elektra label the eventual victor.

Third Eye Blind's catchy pop-rock, not to mention Jenkins' cocky, old-school rock star persona, made the band stars. But the group's fortunes have been a bit rougher of late.

The band drew flack from its label for "Slow Motion," a song scheduled for inclusion on its second album, "Blue," released in November.

Salazar says Jenkins had already written the song when the two met and that it "is a parody of the glorification of gangsta rap."

"The song is general enough so it applies now in the wake of gun violence among young people," Salazar says.

The label "begged us not to put it on the record," Salazar says. "We didn't want the song to be the focus of the record."

A compromise was reached: The song appears on "Blue" as an instrumental. Elektra will give the band money to release the song's vocal version on an EP on its own label.

Another uproar came in January when the band fired guitarist Cadogan. He was replaced by Tony Fredianelli, who had been the band's guitarist before Cadogan.

Cadogan's lawyers are discussing a settlement in regards to his dismissal, according to the guitarist's Web site (www.kevincadogan.com).

"It just wasn't working out," Salazar says. "You try to make it work, you try really, really, really hard and if you can't you have to do what's right for the band. It's rough but it's a good thing for us," Salazar says, "and probably for him as well."