Stephan Jenkins agrees to bookings for music festivals only if his band Third Eye Blind can perform at a certain time.
“It’s gotta be around 6 p.m. when the sun’s going down,” he says, which indeed is when he’ll play Sunday at this weekend’s Stagecoach festival in Indio. “The light is in transition, and there’s a kind of energy that happens at that moment.”
He wouldn’t prefer to headline?
“Closing isn’t great. It’s great for your ego — looks big. But everybody’s gotta go home after. The molly’s wearing off, and everybody’s spent.
“This,” he adds, meaning the magic hour, “is where you really come alive: ‘The night’s ahead of us — this is gonna be amazing.’ And then we catch that.
“How we get to do that is a mystery to me.”
It shouldn’t be: Nearly 30 years after Third Eye Blind topped Billboard’s alternative rock chart with “Semi-Charmed Life” — a deceptively cheerful ditty about drugs and sex — Jenkins’ music is still huge on TikTok and Spotify, where four of his songs have more than 100 million streams each. (For the record, those are “Semi-Charmed Life,” “How’s It Going to Be,” “Jumper” and “Never Let You Go.”)
Thanks to the embrace of Gen Z and to nostalgia among those who were there, ’90s rock is in the middle of a major moment, not least at Stagecoach. In addition to Third Eye Blind, this year’s edition of the annual country festival will feature Counting Crows, Bush, the Wallflowers and Hootie & the Blowfish.
To hear what Jenkins makes of this, I met up with the singer on a recent afternoon at EastWest Studios, where Third Eye Blind was recording a cover of David Bowie’s “Heroes” as part of an Amazon Music promotion related to Stagecoach. Jenkins, who’s 61 and lives in San Francisco, had been traveling nonstop, he said, and had picked up a cold; as we sat down in the studio’s lounge, he rattled a black travel bottle.
What’s in there?
An all-in-one shake I’m about to put down. I find when I travel, it’s very difficult to get the things I need. So to get a vitamin, to get some whey protein, to get creatine, to get lion’s mane and magnesium and fish oil — some oils for your brain — I just use this product because it puts everything in one package. I don’t endorse the company or anything.
You into booze or drugs these days?
I don’t drink alcohol — it’s been almost two years. I think being convivial and getting out of your normal pathways of thinking are valuable. But I seek alignment with people, and that’s not possible — I think it’s fake — when you’re jacked on ketamine or whatever else.
One line of wellness thinking says that alcohol’s role as a social lubricant outweighs the physical harm it does.
That’s Scott Galloway. He’s super adamant about it: “Everybody go out and get drunk and have sex with each other and then you’ll find mates instead of staying home and masturbating to porn.” That’s his whole argument. I like Scott — I think we’d be friends if we talked to each other. But I think he’s speaking through the lens of his own deep social anxiety. And I don’t have that social anxiety.
How did Third Eye Blind end up on the bill for Stagecoach?
They asked me. There are interesting things about country music — a matter-of-factness that I can relate to as a songwriter, even though I’m not country and I’m not gonna go country. There’s also a MAGA element to this.
I wondered about that. You famously trolled an audience of conservatives at a concert held during the Republican National Convention in 2016.
Anybody who looks me up knows this about me: I called [President Trump] grotesque. But I don’t believe it’s a service to perform in the specifics of politics. I write about politics — I’m working on an article right now that’s an intellectually fueled argument that I would be willing to defend about political and sociological conditions as I see them. But that’s gonna do f— all at a concert.
What I’m looking for is for people to discover again that this feels good: This is who I am, this is who I want to be — and that is not. It’s a change of how you feel, and the thing the Democratic Party is just a mess with is “How do you feel?” The other side right now says, “You’re right to hate the people I hate.” That’s a feeling.
In your view, the right is better than the left at inspiring emotion.
But then Bad Bunny came out [at the Super Bowl] and said, “Everything you hate — I’m gonna put all of it in a golden light.” And it was brilliant. Next to the moon landing, that was the most important thing I’ve ever seen on television.
Whoa.
Tell me something more important than that. Chasing O.J. down the f— freeway? This was a moment where an enormous landmass of the American electorate shifted. Mark my words. And Bad Bunny didn’t do it for how it was gonna make him feel — he did it for what it was gonna do. His gratification came in that.
I think there was a little self-glorification in there. He looked really cool.
That’s different than self-glorification — that’s about being part of the ideal. It feels good to be looked at, yes, but it’s more about being a representative of something, I think.
You look great, if I may say so.
I used to be pretty — I don’t think I’m pretty anymore. But if you want to go onstage and make it in pop, you have to be young. There’s no other way to do it. You gotta sleep, you gotta take your vitamins, you gotta go the gym. I’m sick and I went to the gym today. No big deal: some pull-ups, some push-ups, a few squats.
If I say that Third Eye Blind is one of a handful of ’90s bands on Stagecoach, are you irritated to have been described as a ’90s band?
Yes, I am. Radiohead’s “Creep” came out in 1993. Are they a ’90s band?
That’s not how I’d describe them.
They got saddled with “Creep” as a hit, and that’s still the only song most people know. Nobody knows “Kid A.” I do — I like that song. But in terms of the masses, the only song anybody knows is “Creep.” That’s not what’s fueling their concerts, though, and that’s not what’s fueling mine. So what gets me to bristle a little bit is that when I have to talk about that, that means — respectfully — I’m talking to somebody who doesn’t know anything about me.
I’m making a new album soon enough, and hopefully it’s gonna be the best album I ever made. But it’s quite possible it won’t get played on the radio because I have five songs that are still in rotation on alternative radio. And I’m delighted that’s the case. So when KROQ asked us to come play their Christmas show this year, we came and played — happy to do it.
Acoustic Christmas had several bands that hit quite a while ago: Papa Roach, All-American Rejects, Evanescence.
Wet Leg also played. I wish I’d named my band Wet Leg.
I realized while prepping for this that I have no clue whether you’re married or not.
[Silence]
Same with children — I don’t know if you have any.
[Silence]
OK.
A long, long time ago, I was in a very public relationship, and that was very painful for both of us and damaging to the relationship.
Charlize Theron and Stephan Jenkins in Los Angeles in 1998.
(Jeff Kravitz / FilmMagic)
I assume we’re talking about you and Charlize Theron.
I vowed after that not to do that anymore. I make a firewall now about what is and what isn’t available.
Available to me as a journalist.
Most people who do this have this insane sense of “Come on in,” and I don’t see the value of that at all.
Most artists, you mean.
Artists, politicians, celebrities — anybody who wants attention.
I was just curious how being single or being married shaped your songwriting.
What I would say is that so many of my songs are about the impact and the friction of relationships — how we come up against ourselves and discover ourselves, or don’t. I’d say women tend to be my muse a lot.
Another ’90s question, sorry: Did it kill your soul to have to make a clean radio edit of “Semi-Charmed Life”?
I don’t remember. I didn’t want to put it on the radio.
That can’t be true.
I know that’s true — I didn’t want that to be the first single from the record. I wanted “Losing a Whole Year” to be the first single.
Good thing you were overruled, right?
I don’t know. I mean, our record company didn’t want to do any other songs after [“Semi-Charmed Life”]. They just wanted to do one-and-done. That’s where the whole culture was — there wasn’t some belief and support of us as an artist. I was no Laura Nyro to David Geffen.
Did that make you sad?
It did. I felt forever misunderstood by the record label.
Last year, Stagecoach had the Goo Goo Dolls, whose old song “Iris” keeps connecting with new audiences.
I wonder if that song got reinvigorated because Phoebe Bridgers covered it.
Do you feel any kinship with bands that broke out in a different era but have stayed relevant to some degree?
No. Sometimes there are movements of bands, and that’s great. But I think I’ve always been kind of apart in some way. It’s not by design — I like playing with people.
You don’t seem like a joiner to me.
I don’t think I’m not a joiner. But I’ve never felt like I’m part of a scene.
My theory on this is that the reason you resist being categorized as a ’90s band is because in your mind that’s putting you alongside the least respected acts of that time — Sugar Ray, Smash Mouth, the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies — as opposed to the most respected. Maybe you’d have less of an issue being grouped with Counting Crows.
What I’m hearing is that you’re just rooting around in an era. And I’m not in that era — I’m in this era. I really, really am. I’m not looking to excite the good old days — I think these are the good old days, and I’m very much equipped for them. I’m hopeful about the future, and I think I have to be my most fierce self to contribute to it. So I want nothing to do with that lump.
The lump?
You’re lumping me into a category. I don’t have any disrespect for that category, but lumping me works against my deepest understanding of myself as an artist — somebody who takes the times that they’re in and filters them through the plastic elements that they can manipulate to give some shape to other people’s understanding. That’s what I’m interested in doing. And I really like those guys in Sugar Ray. Mark McGrath’s a great guy.
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