![third eye blind self titled third eye blind self titled](https://d1e9ycqe323hkh.cloudfront.net/items/113861506078.jpg)
Relationships, and the end thereof, is a game subject throughout Third Eye Blind, and fuels some of its most emotionally-charged moments. “Your daddy left you with no love, and you touch everything with a velvet glove,” he snaps as the girl, hungry for a life of drama and dizziness, cranes “her neck at the car wreck.” Opener and single ‘Losing A Whole Year’ balances Cadogan’s pop-tinged riff with Brad Hargreaves’ shuddering drums, as Jenkins laments the end of a relationship with a wannabe rowdy posh girl. Luckily, he stuck to his guns, and that intuition paid off – still something of an indie staple today, ‘Semi-Charmed Life’ mixes lyrics of chemical and sexual abandon with a thumping guitar hook – its lyrics may be grubby, but it’s covered in sun-drenched saran wrap.Įlektra were also hesitant about Jenkins’ decision to have thirteen tracks, but once again it was a move that paid off – Third Eye Blind is an exploration of different emotions and sonic palettes. Even then, Jenkins was pressured by label bigwigs to make the song’s winding motifs more streamlined. ‘Semi-Charmed Life’, the album’s lead single and most deceptively throwaway track, took five attempts to get right in the recording studio. Jenkins, living on the breadline, was determined and dogged in his approach. Eventually signing with Elektra, the band brokered the largest unsigned publishing deal ever – not bad for a band that had been around for nearly five years. By 1995/96, they were recording demos funded by RCA and playing showcases for a slew of admiring labels. Soon, they began crafting the songs that would shape Third Eye Blind, playing locally and gradually building a solid fanbase. After his rap duo Puck and Natty dissolved in 1993, he met up with guitarist Kevin Cadogan after a show and bonded over mutual interests. Third Eye Blind had been around for a while before their debut hit – Jenkins had been around even longer.
![third eye blind self titled third eye blind self titled](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/qfYAAOSwqhFgXmNh/s-l300.jpg)
Such facts, though, meant Jenkins was in for a tough ride before the record came out. Each song enjoys multiple, sometimes daring, detours, giving the tracks an elastic and excellent backbone. Spawning five hit singles, over six million sales in the US alone and a support slot with U2 (a sign of how alternative rock had become attuned to arenas), Third Eye Blind covers plenty of artistic turf, from simplistic, but effective, guitar chugs, multi-textured soundscapes and haunting acoustic laments. Now 20 years old, Third Eye Blind remains one of the late-nineties’ most transcendent records.
![third eye blind self titled third eye blind self titled](https://i.etsystatic.com/28667459/r/il/681d0c/3093467260/il_340x270.3093467260_1frp.jpg)
And it was over.”īorn out of dogged persistence, grubby living conditions and endless wrangling, Third Eye Blind’s debut album arrived at the perfect time in both Jenkins’ life and in the world of music – with alternative rock as we knew it lost in Evan Dando’s bong collection, MTV and a new generation were turning to a new brand of rock music, built to reverberate around arenas and strike a chord with multiple generations. “Like that’s all I had been doing for two years, and the two years before that, and the two years before that. “I had this moment of… I had been trying, I had been striving for something,” the Third Eye Blind frontman said. Success for Stephan Jenkins hadn’t come easy, and it wasn’t until the tail-end of 1997 did it finally sink in.