The United States of the late 1990s was "so innocent" in the eyes of Third Eye Blind drummer Brad Hargreaves. China hadn't joined the World Trade Organization and begun its rise to economic superpower; Russia was still sorting through the rubble of the Soviet Union; the 9/11 terror attacks hadn't yet upended U.S. culture, and America seemed to stand unchallenged on the world stage.
In retrospect, he believes it was the moment right before the bubble burst.
"It was peak America, an America we probably won't ever see again," Hargreaves says. "We have great days ahead of us, no question. But the preeminent position of America in the '90s... It was such a conflagration of different things coming together that shaped the way people think of it now and the way people think of our music."
The longtime Third Eye Blind band member recently has been thinking a lot about the '90s, back when his group's best-known hits — "Semi-Charmed Life," "Jumper," "Never Let You Go," and "How's It Going to Be" — were pervasive on the radio and used heavily in TV shows and movies. Music has a special way of connecting us to the past; we associate songs, albums, and bands with certain times in our lives. So it makes sense that Third Eye Blind's chart-topping singles would take both the band and audiences back to the late '90s, a time we tend to picture through rose-colored glasses.
"We had no worries back then," he says. "It was just a celebration."
It's possible Hargreaves is talking about his band's heyday as much as the broader culture that allowed Third Eye Blind to sell 12 million records.
In any case, he believes that his bandmate — singer and guitarist Stephan Jenkins — was wise enough to foresee darker times ahead in his lyrics. Why else describe life as merely semicharmed?
"You could peel back the curtain and hear, a little bit, 'This is great, but it's not fully charmed,' you know? It's like, wait a second — this feels good, but something's not right," he says.
Though he's prone to pondering the past just like the rest of us, Hargreaves is committed to concentrating on the present. Third Eye Blind is touring behind its sixth full-length album, Screamer, which is out via Mega Collider Records.
Or sign in with a social account:
FACEBOOK GOOGLE + TWITTER YAHOO!