When you do it fast, you make it slicker instead of spending more time to let magic happen. "We saw 'Blue' as an extension of the first album. The album "Blue" followed, selling almost 2 million copies.
"I thought we'd be a critic's band." Instead, the catchy rock dittys became radio favorites and 3EB was quickly dismissed by many in the rock press as a one-hit wonder - a label that faded with each new hit. "I thought maybe we would sell 300,000 copies, that we would have a Camper Van Beethoven existence," Jenkins says of the first album. In 1997, after more than a decade of struggling - living in the Lower Haight, sleeping on floors and subsisting off Top Ramen and the generosity of friends - Jenkins hit it big with "Semi-Charmed Life." The album has sold nearly 6 million copies and spawned such hits as the eponymous title track, as well as "Jumper" and "How's It Going to Be." The band is one of the biggest to come out of San Francisco in years. He is the sole owner and shareholder of Third Eye Blind Inc., a band formed in San Francisco in 1992, shortly after the breakup of a hip-hop duo Jenkins was a part of, and incorporated in 1996. Jenkins, who has been called everything from an egotist to a canny careerist, is Third Eye Blind: its creativity, charisma, sex-appeal, vision, ambition, CEO. "I hope people love this album," he says. Rehearsals, backstage boredom, tiffs and jokes and onstage antics. The first 100,000 copies sold will include a DVD of the making of the album, complete with shots of groupies, The cover art is by photographer Mick Rock and screams "rock joy," Jenkins says, hoping the image reflects the content. A lover of language (he was a literature major in college), Jenkins anguished over words and metaphors, rhythm and rhyme. Jenkins is unapologetic about the delays, saying he was winnowing the song list - from 25 to 14 - and rewriting lyrics. It is the San Francisco band's first album in three years and was originally scheduled for release last spring. The album, to be released next month by Elektra, is "raw and lovely," he says, and marks a "a new period for the band." The songs are not "decorative" and not suitable for background music, he adds. Jenkins had just finished tweaking lyrics to a final song on Third Eye Blind's 14-track album, "Out of the Vein," which he produced. "I'm now getting back to the authentic, to the nitty-gritty." "I've been in self-imposed exile for the last two years," says Jenkins, 38, sitting in a South Park cafe earlier this month, drinking coffee and eating a croque monsieur.