June 8,1998
Post-Gazette
There are charmed lives and then there are semi-charmed lives.
Stephan Jenkins is living a semi-charmed life.
He's been living it ever since writing a single called "Semi-Charmed Life," the catchiest song on Jenkins' band's self-titled breakthrough, "Third Eye Blind."
The words - at least the words most people know - are "Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo, doo doo doo, doo doo-doo
doo."
David Grohl of the Foo Fighters rattled off those very words when asked by Spin to name the lyrics of 1997 he wished
he'd written.
Pulling in an estimated 40 million spins a day at your typical modern rock radio outlet, "Semi-Charmed Life" put Jenkins'
album on the road to double-platinum.
At this point, the only thing holding him back from a fully charmed life, it would seem, is the love and respect of the
critics.
As Jenkins explains, "We came out with a radio hit, which is really verboten, as you know. Most bands who do that
don't do very well by the critics. And many of you folks - not all of you - have a sheep's mentality, at least in America.
You're more concerned with trying to be cool in the eyes of other critics. There's some very strange high-school elitist
mentality. That's what I think. But you asked."
The press is getting better, though, says Jenkins, now that the airplay is digging a little deeper than "Semi-Charmed Life."
"A lot of people - I've had them admit this to me, from major publications: 'I never listened to your record. I heard
"Semi-Charmed Life." It was some catchy radio song and I tuned you out.' That happens a lot. They want us to be
Cornershop. They want us to be Sleater-Kinney. But we were embraced by radio first, rather than Spin magazine."
The flak from the critics was doubly depressing for Jenkins because he thought he'd made a critic's record.
"We thought it would be sort of a Radiohead kind of event," he says. "But that wasn't the case. Then again, nobody liked
them when they put out 'Creep.' "
He never expected radio to pick up on "Semi-Charmed Life" in the first place, what with all that talk about sex of the
oral variety.
Oddly enough, the night before our interview, Jenkins is scolded for cussing on stage by a local promoter in Michigan.
So the singer, being alternative-minded, tells the crowd, "If he knew what this song was about, we wouldn't be playing
here at all."
As gossip-worthy concert intrigue goes, a little f-word scare in Michigan is nothing compared to the recent backstage
throw-down with Green Day.
A backstage war between two bassists resulted in Green Day's Mike Dirnt being smacked in the head with a bottle,
leaving him in stitches.
"That's old," says Jenkins. "That's old news. I don't think it's very press-worthy, do you? It's not very much to do with
music. It's gossip, you know. And we're a rock band."
That may be. And yet, it is a fairly current, fairly juicy bit of gossip.
"Well, it's off the Internet now, so everyone's sort of bored with it," Jenkins says, exasperated. "If you really want to
know, the facts are that [bassist] Arion [Salazar] went out and bear-hugged Mike on stage. This somehow threatened
Mike. He thought this was some sort of challenge."
Salazar was carted off - "as any fan would be"- and everyone thought it was over.
But after the show, the Green Day bassist charged after Salazar backstage and somehow, someone hit Dirnt in the head
with a bottle.
Jenkins was out with the fans watching Prodigy at the time.
So he missed the whole thing.
He'd rather be talking about the music anyway.
With regard to the album in general, Jenkins says, "It was the record we wanted to make at the time. There's another
record we'd like to make now, but we won't do that for a while. That's the thing Billy Corgan [of Smashing Pumpkins]
was saying. They're only gonna go out and do a 12-week tour and then they're gonna go make another record 'cause
they want to stay current. And I know exactly what he was talking about."
For now, Third Eye Blind is on tour in support of the album, playing the I.C. Light Amphitheatre tonight. Since releasing
the self-titled album a little more than a year ago, the band has toured incessantly, opening stadium shows for the Rolling
Stones and U2 in addition to its own, much smaller gigs.
Jenkins wasn't exactly thrilled with the stadium life.
"It just got us used to playing the large enormo-domes of the world," he says. "The most surprising thing is how much
smaller those stadiums got for us. We just sort of got used to playing that size of room. But I don't think that's a very
good way to bring music to people at all, and I think the members of U2 would concur. In fact, I was talking to Larry
Mullen about and he said, 'I don't think we could support a stadium tour after this, and perhaps that's a good thing.' "
~ Ed Masley
Added: August 8, 1998
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