Jenkins, along with bandmate Arion Salazar, spoke with LAUNCH executive editor Dave DiMartino in Las Vegas in late 1999. Jenkins, the most outspoken of the two, ranted about a variety of controversial topics: gun control ("Charlton Heston can kiss my ass. He is the most well-spoken idiot I've ever seen in my life and has no understanding of the U.S. Constitution"), rock star behavior ("Like snorting a big line of coke between a slender 15-year-old's thighs? Never!"), and bogus comparisons between his band and Matchbox 20 ("Critics are dumb. There's no excuse for them."). Jenkins admitted that his band has made some "sh-tty" videos, and when pressed for a description of the group's style, he offered up the following tag: "chopper rock."
LAUNCH:
Do you know how many gigs you played for your first, self-titled album?
STEPHAN:
Close to 300-something gigs in two years. We pretty much played every night. We have the number...it's like 380.
LAUNCH:
When making a follow-up record, some bands just dive right in, and others get nervous when it comes to creating the sophomore record. Which camp do you guys fall into?
STEPHAN:
The dive-right-into-it camp. We definitely dove right into it. We were on tour for two years and came out of it deeply confused for about six weeks and then we went in and made a record. It wasn't anything more than that.
ARION:
We dove right into it. We weren't like sitting around talking about what we were going to do: "Man, we need another hit record." It wasn't like that. We got our songs out, demoed and jammed in the rehearsal space, and went into the studio.
LAUNCH:
The new record is much more straightforward rock. Was it a calculated move to make a straight rock record?
STEPHAN:
No, the move wasn't particularly calculated. My approach in producing the record was to try and capture the feeling of what it feels like to be at a Third Eye Blind show. The concert experience is what I was interested in. Also, catching the real character of sound and then sort of trying to make some sense musically of so many different things going on with the drums. Songs like "Camouflage" and "Walking With The Wounded" that are these are these strange, hyper-ballad jungle rhythms that are working almost totally different from what's going on in the music. But to me they work. Those are the calculations. Other than that, we went in and experimented and made a record under the same terms that we made the first record, which was the definition of what was working was exciting to us.
ARION:
At least for me, I don't think we set out to make a rock record. We just made a record. We just made our music like we always do. Some of the songs "rock" and some of the songs don't "rock." What is rocking? We just did our thing and it is what it is. There was no conscious effort to make it sound a certain way.
LAUNCH:
You guys spent a lot of time on the road with the last record--over 300 gigs. You had a lot of time to think about what went into the next record. Was there a specific thing you wanted to do this time in the studio?
ARION:
No, we didn't have much time to think about what we wanted to do on the next record. We were so busy playing shows, doing press, getting drunk, and just getting into trouble and having fun, that I didn't do a lot of thinking of what we were going to do on the next record. As far as something that we did on this record that we didn't do on the last one, I think we opened up the palate of textures and sounds and instruments that we could play and just kind of made a bigger record. We opened our eyes to using string sections and keyboards and stuff like that.
STEPHAN:
We wanted to get energy on this album. I think we got a lot of juice in us and a lot to get out. So we wanted to get the ass-whooping frenzy aspect of Third Eye Blind.
LAUNCH:
How did over 300 shows take its toll on the overall tightness of the band? How different do you sound after all that touring?
STEPHAN:
Well, I think that we're a much tighter band and also a much wilder band...a much quicker band. Everyone has much more confidence in themselves. The song "Red Summer Sun" for me was accounting what it was like to be in Third Eye Blind. A line in the song says, "I walk with the mighty," and that's how I feel when we're hitting on all fours--that there is something mighty about it. That's the feeling I have. I think at its best on the Blue album that we captured that, the feeling that I have.
LAUNCH:
On a production level, you guys really captured that on a sonic level. Your last record went four times platinum. Did you feel a lot of pressure from the record label on this time out? Tell me about the label's expectations compared to what you wanted.
STEPHAN:
Well, we expect them to leave us alone. This is the level of expectation. And they fulfilled the expectation and we are quite grateful for it. And I say that in a funny way, but there is a trust in creative freedom that we have from the label that I appreciate very much. But there are songs on the record that they were like, "Wow, you just can't do that!" But I think there is a subversive element in Third Eye Blind and there is a political element in Third Eye Blind that was evidenced on the last album--in songs like "Jumper," that deals with a friend's suicide because he was gay, and on songs like "Graduate," that just really from its core is us against the powers-that-be. So there has been sort of a political side of the band. And that's what we continue on this record. Perhaps it's more incendiary.
ARION:
No, I didn't even get nervous about...I didn't really feel any pressure...ever. We just did it. That's how I approached it" These are the songs, I think they are good songs, and let's just record them the best we can." The only time that it hit me was recently, I was like, "Oh sh-t, this is our next record, and wonder how it's going to do? I hope people like it." That just hit in the last month. I didn't feel the pressure. People talk about that, but I didn't feel it.
LAUNCH:
I heard that there was a track on the new record that had to be pulled because of the lyrics. What was the song called and what's the story behind it being pulled?
STEPHAN:
You heard correctly. There was a song called "Slow Motion" and it was written about three-and-a-half years ago. It was sort of this parody through this nightmare lullaby of a song about a culture that glamorizes violence and suffering. It's says, "Miss Jones taught me English/ But I think I just shot her son/ 'Cause he owed me money/ With a bullet in the chest/ You cannot run." In the wake of post-Columbine headlines, the label thought that the message of the song would get misconstrued and that this would be the overriding focus of the album. So the offer was that we could put this out ourselves, on our own label through some sort of an independent distribution deal. As far as "Slow Motion" goes, I strongly believe in gun control. Charlton Heston can kiss my ass. He is the most well-spoken idiot I've ever seen in my life and has no understanding of the U.S. Constitution. The British aren't coming, you fool. I believe you can address issues like gun violence, like suicide or sexual assault--as we did in the song "Wounded"--without being preachy, without underestimating the intelligence of the audience and without being de-fanged. When I say de-fanged, I mean becoming didactic about just saying, "It's got to be this way." We believe that people can think for themselves. And if Third Eye Blind had one mission statement it would be "Think for yourself."
ARION:
Yeah, I'm not really crazy about that, but I don't know what to say about it. It's kind of out of my hands. It's kind of weak, actually.
LAUNCH:
You've been involved in a number of "feuds" with other bands. Have they followed you around? Is it difficult for you to be diplomatic?
STEPHAN:
I want to be diplomatic; I love everybody. As far as feuds go, I think that's a terrible idea. I deeply respect the urge and the struggle that any band goes through to make music, regardless of the music they make, as long as they were formed by themselves and not by a producer as a corporate product. Whether I like the music or not, I respect the effort. Because I know at any level, it is hard to do it...even now.
ARION:
I think it's bullsh-t. Feuds in general and being catty with other bands. And having fights with other bands. It's just a waste of time. I'm not really big on it.
LAUNCH:
Now that you have become successful, have you engaged in any "rock star"-type behavior?
STEPHAN:
"Rock star" behavior? You mean like a big line of coke between a slender 15-year-old's thighs? That kind of thing? No, no, no! Is that rock star behavior? I don't like cocaine. But I love thighs!
ARION:
The only difference is that I have money, a little bit of money to do the stuff I couldn't do five years ago. I would have done it five years ago, but I didn't have the money. So now I have some money and I can get a little more crazy. Otherwise, I'm the same person.
LAUNCH:
Tell me about some of the criticism that you've received that you think is, a) bullsh-t, or b) that you think is kind of fair.
STEPHAN:
Criticism that I think is bullsh-t is that we are malicious. We do love everybody. We really do. But then again, there is a line in one of our songs that says, "We toast the blood of our enemies." I mean, Third Eye Blind is family and I'm not interested in having people mess with my folks. That's how I feel about it. That we're malicious...I don't think that's true...I don't think we are. I think oftentimes when you meet us that we're not the bottle-smashing bastards that you thought we might be.
ARION:
I don't really care. I do care, but I don't let it bother me. I just let it roll off me. I'm kind of in that mode where any bullsh-t that comes my way, I'm just, "Whatever." I move on. I'm positive, stay the course.
LAUNCH:
Celebrity girlfriends: Good thing or bad thing?
STEPHAN:
It depends on who you are. It depends on the celebrity girlfriend.
ARION:
It's great, if that's your bag. I think it's f--king excellent, actually.
LAUNCH:
What's the absolutely weirdest thing that has happened to you onstage?
STEPHAN:
I spent two years onstage every night. I'm always intrigued by the ingenuity and the variety of things that get thrown on the stage. It's like Rocky Horror Picture Show up there. They just chuck things up there that I cannot fathom. I've been tackled by a naked girl, and I would describe her body as plush and voluptuous. And she got on top of me in front of 8,000 people onstage and she grinded on me. And it was very rock; it was a deeply rock moment. And as this strange girl was grinding on me and she was being pulled off me and I was singing away, I thought, "This is so f--king rock!"
ARION:
A girl just jumped onstage and started freakin' me and then kind of went into a fellatio-type thing and got on her knees and was unfortunately pulled offstage, much to my regret. That was weird, I guess.
LAUNCH:
You must be really sick of people mentioning your name in the same breath as Matchbox 20.
STEPHAN:
No, we don't hear that much of it, really. There was an entire group of bands that came out at the same time that musically have absolutely nothing to do with each other. I've heard some Matchbox 20 songs and I can't fathom that they have anything to do with Third Eye Blind. People that make those comparisons are usually the critics, they're not the people who actually listen to the music. And they're dumb. There is no excuse for them.
ARION:
Yeah that does piss me off. It's f--king ridiculous because our music is totally different. Our records are just so more eclectic than those bands. They have one sound that they milk. I'm not saying it's bad, it's fine, I just think our band is so much bigger, we have much more to say. I don't understand those comparisons. But then, it's not really a big deal. Some guy wrote it in a magazine and somebody read it. Big f--king deal.
LAUNCH:
Do you think critics want Blue to fail or to be a huge success?
STEPHAN:
I don't know. The response that I've got from the record this year has been shockingly good. I just can't believe it. When we put out the first album, I thought it was going to be a critics' record. I thought it was going to sell 300,000 copies and we were going to be sort of a
Radiohead sort of band...beloved by the few and unknown to the many. And it didn't work out that way. We were pretty much ignored by the critics. Very few of them actually listened to the record. There weren't many reviews of the record. It's been a blessing in disguise, because the connection that we have to our fans and our public is very direct, it's not filtered through the hyperbole of the media. We're not a media band. I have no intention of being a media band. I see a lot of artists who make this whole career of talking about themselves and the hype and the stuff supercedes the music. We are a band that comes very much directly from the music first, and we have no intention of changing that at all. It's my life's work and I have put it out there for you, the intelligentsia, to judge.
ARION:
You know, I think some people want us to fail. Probably a lot of people, a lot of writers. They talk a lot of smack. Like Spin magazine really doesn't like our band. I don't really care. I don't like Spin, so it's no big deal.
LAUNCH:
Tell me an artist's career that you wouldn't mind emulating.
ARION:
No one, really.
STEPHAN:
David Bowie, minus all the blow. "David Blowie." He's the coolest f--ker. How old is he? 57 years old? He looks cool as f--k. He looks so young he could be in
Backstreet Boys. He looks so awesome. And whether the record is good or not, he seems intrigued by it and you see him play and he has a glory to it that I love. That's me personally, but as a band, I see us as the Police. Do you remember them? [In an Irish accent] "They were a band way back before the potato famine, there was a group called the Police. Three fine cops they were. Bottle blondes, all three of them. And to be sure, they produced some great music." [Back to regular voice] I love the Police and they were a band that took a hold of the time that they were in and made a soundtrack out of it. All the best bands were like that. Another band that I would emulate would be the Clash. Musically they kept changing and doing things differently, but it always sounded like the Clash. And I think this is sort of tacit understanding of our band that we will always change musically and move and shift and grow, but hopefully hold onto some inner feeling that we are Third Eye Blind.
LAUNCH:
If you could change just one thing about the band, what would it be?
STEPHAN:
I would have insisted that we were allowed to make our own videos--entirely and completely unfettered from any outside input. That's the one thing that we have not been allowed to do. I think the videos are cool, I just don't recognize the band and the people that are in them. And they don't really speak to my experience. An exception would be "Jumper," because that song was looking at the chaos that was the club scene in San Francisco in the early '90s. That felt good and it was funny to see how this whole industry of video began to copy that video. I saw
Cher's "Believe" video and I was like, "Hey, there's our video with Cher magically put in." And that bitch looks happening.
ARION:
Make better videos. I think some of our videos are kind of sh-tty. I'd like to make some better ones for this record.
LAUNCH:
From a business standpoint, record labels used to develop bands over time. Now, things seem to have been sped up. You guys were lucky because your first record was a hit early on. Do you think quick success is a healthy trend in the industry?
STEPHAN:
I think that there are bands where a whole industry has been set up to copy their hit. And you listen back to the record and there are other complete frauds. They become karaoke artists of themselves. That is no way to sustain a career. We had three songs on the last record that were really big radio hit singles. I think it's safe to say that there are no songs on the new album that emulates any of those three songs. We already made those songs. The basic impulse for Third Eye Blind is to do things that are exciting to us and repetition is not that exciting. Except in masturbation, which is repeatedly exciting every time.
ARION:
I don't feel that, but I know what you mean. Like I said, I honestly don't think about that stuff. I don't sit around and go, "What's going to happen? Gee, I hope they like it!" We just kind of do it. We hope you like it, but if you don't, we don't care.
LAUNCH:
What's the best description of Third Eye Blind's music?
STEPHAN:
A writer from San Francisco said about this album, "Erotic, earthy, and haunted. It's a midnight motorcycle ride through the heart. You can hear the engine rev." I said, "F--k yeah, chopper rock!"
ARION:
Subversive pop. But that's just reaching I guess.
LAUNCH:
Do you have any special skills?
STEPHAN:
I got a fast mouth and I'm really good at this game [whacks his hand]. I can kill anybody in that game. That and peeling oranges are the two skills that I was born with. What is that game called? Whack! Whatever the hand-whacking game is called. "You know the hand whacking game? I can do that one." I got all kind of skills.
