Third Eye Blind Drop Lyrics At Label's Request

Elektra CEO reportedly says move is not censorship; 'Slow Motion' intended as anti-violence statement, singer has said.

Senior Writer Gil Kaufman reports:

Third Eye Blind have heeded their label's request to alter a potentially controversial song from their upcoming album that lead singer Stephan Jenkins had previously said was meant as an anti-violence message.

The band, whose hit singles have chronicled suicide and addiction to the drug crystal-meth, was asked to drop lyrics from "Slow Motion" on its second album, Blue (Nov. 23), by the label's chairwoman and CEO, Sylvia Rhone, according to an Elektra Records spokesperson who requested anonymity.

"That song is a protest song. It's an irony." — Stephan Jenkins, Third Eye Blind frontman

Though Rhone was not available for comment Monday (Nov. 15), she reportedly has said the decision to remove the lyrics, which deal with drug use and violence, was not intended to censor the group.

"That song didn't work in the context of the rest of the album," online music site RollingStone.com quoted Rhone as saying. "And it didn't work in the context of the current social climate, and in the overall vision of this band." The Elektra source said the chairwoman's comments represented the company's position.

Frontman Jenkins said in late September that the song's lyrics were intended to be an anti-violence message. The song includes these lines:

"Miss Jones taught me English, but I think I just shot her son/ 'Cause he owed me money, with a bullet in the chest/ With a bullet in the chest he cannot run/ Now he's bleeding in a vacant lot."

"That song is a protest song. It's an irony. 'Slow Motion' is about how we revel in amorality," Jenkins said while his band was finishing the album in a hometown San Francisco studio two months ago. To illustrate his point, he cited these lyrics:

"Hollywood glamorized my wrath/ I'm a young urban psychopath/ I incite murder for your entertainment/ 'Cause I needed the money, what's your excuse?/ The joke's on you."

"It is supposed to be seductive," Jenkins said. "It's almost like an opiate. It is intent on drawing you in. I'm sure I'll get a lot of sh-- for it. I'm sure nobody's going to get any sense about it at all. But I like it, I get it" (RealAudio excerpt of interview).

The spare, down-tempo ballad was recorded by Jenkins on piano and guitar. It is expected to appear on the album in a mostly instrumental version, punctuated by a haunted-sounding chorus: "Slow motion/ See me let go."

Jenkins said he is used to his band being misinterpreted. It began with what some pegged as the pro-drug message of the band's breakout 1997 hit, "Semi-Charmed Life" (RealAudio excerpt), a song rife with images of oral sex and drug use. Among the lyrics penned by Jenkins for that song are, "She comes round and she goes down on me," "Chop another line like a coda with a curse," "Doing crystal-meth will life you up until you break/ It won't stop, I won't come down, I keep stock."

Nina Crowley, the leader of anti-censorship group Mass Mic, called the removal of the lyrics from the band's album a part of the "whitewashing" of American culture in the wake of the deadly April school shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.

"This is really distressing," she said Monday (Nov. 15). "I know labels have done these kinds of things in the past and kept it quiet, but this is self-censorship, and people are running scared; it's hysteria. Here, you're getting a song censored based on the words, not the intent."

Jenkins said the band's new songs, such as the ballads "Deep Inside of You" and "Never Let You Go" and the driving first single, "Anything" (RealAudio excerpt), are about life's messier moments.

"[The new songs] have the friction and things smashing into each other that I'm always interested in," Jenkins said. He also put into that category the new album's song "Wounded" — a dramatic chronicle of a friend's sexual assault driven by a jungle-style rhythm, violins and '70s-style rock riffs.

The Elektra spokesperson said the band was interested in releasing "Slow Motion" on its own label next year. Neither Jenkins nor Third Eye Blind's management could be reached for comment for this story.

Other bands asked to change their lyrics or song titles to avoid controversy include Nirvana, who agreed to change the title of their anti-rape song, "Rape Me" (RealAudio excerpt) to "Waif Me," to get the album into some major retail chains. The arty rock group Radiohead cleaned up the chorus of their breakthrough 1993 hit, "Creep," from "You're so fucking special" to "you're so very special" to get radio play.

In June, following a protest from a religious group calling itself Be Level-Headed, the Offspring and Silverchair chose not to play songs the activist group had termed dangerously violent at the Hard Rock RockFest '99 in Hampton, Ga. A spokesperson for the Offspring later told SonicNet Music News that the band's song "Beheaded" (RealAudio excerpt) — which inspired Be Level-Headed's name and was cited by that group as offensive — was not on the Offspring's setlist.

Blue is Third Eye Blind's follow-up to their multiplatinum 1997 eponymous debut, which was a mix of Jenkins' evocative lyrics and power-pop stylings. The debut spawned a number of radio hits, including "Graduate" (RealAudio excerpt) and "How's It Going to Be" (RealAudio excerpt).

	Stephan Jenkins says he wrote "Slow Motion" as a criticism of violence in films and television. Photo by Steve Jennings

Third Eye Blind Set Sights On EP For Censored Song

After agreeing to cut lyrics from 'Slow Motion,' Stephan Jenkins says band plans to release unaltered version next year.

Senior Writer Gil Kaufman reports:

Third Eye Blind singer/songwriter Stephan Jenkins said he chooses to view the label-mandated removal of the lyrics to his controversial song "Slow Motion" as a blessing in disguise.

"To me, it worked out really well," Jenkins said, speaking from a curbside Miami restaurant last week. "It's all for the best, because now we get to put more music out there."

Elektra Records chairwoman Sylvia Rhone had asked the band to cut lyrics to "Slow Motion" (RealAudio excerpt) for its second album, Blue, due Tuesday. The song now will appear on the disc as a mostly instrumental version. But Jenkins said the band will release the original version of the song, plus six other new tracks, on an EP early next year.

"I was surprised at the amount of static that ["Slow Motion"] caused." — Stephan Jenkins, Third Eye Blind singer

The EP, tentatively titled Black, will be released on the band's as-yet-unnamed label. It will consist of songs that didn't make it onto the San Francisco rock band's upcoming album and possibly some new tunes, Jenkins said.

Far from having their voices squelched, Jenkins said the decision to alter "Slow Motion" has given bandmembers the rare chance to give fans even more music. By putting out the EP only a few months after Blue, they will circumvent the standard two- to three-year wait between rock releases.

"Slow Motion," an anti-violence song Jenkins said he wrote nearly four years ago for the band's 1997 eponymous, multiplatinum debut, features the lyrics: "Miss Jones taught me English, but I think I just shot her son/ 'Cause he owed me money, with a bullet in the chest/ With a bullet in the chest he cannot run/ Now he's bleeding in a vacant lot."

"I was surprised at the amount of static that it caused," Jenkins said Thursday. "[Rhone's] feeling was that in the context of today's repetitive Columbine headlines, the message of the song could be misconstrued. As you know, I'm not a particularly preachy lyricist, and I'm not didactic in my delivery ... their feeling was that the whole focus of this album could be skewed toward this one song" (RealAudio excerpt of interview).

Jenkins said the label took issue with the song after a first listen earlier this year. Throughout the past four months, he said, the band has been fighting to have it appear on the album as originally written.

On Nov. 15, Nina Crowley, the director of Mass Mic, a Massachusetts anti-censorship group, called the removal of the lyrics part of the "whitewashing" of American culture in the wake of the deadly April school shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.

"This is self-censorship, and people are running scared — it's hysteria," Crowley said.

Rhone was not available for comment on the removal of the song's lyrics and its inclusion on the planned EP, according to an Elektra representative, who requested anonymity. The source said the chairwoman's comments last week to online magazine RollingStone.com — that the song didn't work in the context of the album and the current social climate — still stood as the label's official word on the controversy.

Some of the group's fans said they supported Jenkins' right to speak his mind, although not everyone might agree with what the singer was saying.

"I think any band, any individual has the right to say and write whatever they feel, so I'm not saying Stephan is wrong for writing the song," 17-year-old New York fan Nicole Prokop wrote in an e-mail. Prokop, who hadn't heard the song but saw some of the lyrics, said that while some people might get the wrong idea from the provocative lyrics, the band's fans would understand Jenkins' point.

"Third Eye Blind is not the kind of band that would promote violence," Prokop, the webmaster of the unofficial Third Eye Blind page Fraudulent Zodiac, said. "They're just trying to get a message across, and it's been done before, so I don't see what the big deal is."

Jenkins pointed to the song's final verse as proof that he meant the lyrics as a criticism of selling violence in movies and television. "Hollywood glamorized my wrath/ I'm a young urban psychopath," the lyrics read, continuing, "I incite murder for your entertainment/ 'Cause I needed the money, what's your excuse?/ The joke's on you."

Third Eye Blind spawned a number of power-pop radio staples. The lyrics to the band's breakthrough hit, "Semi-Charmed Life" (RealAudio excerpt), dealt frankly with oral sex and drug addiction, while Jenkins said "Jumper" (RealAudio excerpt) was the story of a gay friend's suicide.

While the first, hard-driving pop single from Blue, "Anything" (RealAudio excerpt), doesn't deal with the kind of taboo subjects that squelched "Slow Motion," Jenkins said other songs on the album tackle similarly difficult topics.

He described "10 Days Late" as a song that's "ambiguous about abortion" and "Walking With the Wounded" as a chronicle of a friend's sexual assault.

"If we didn't have children opening fire on each other in mass numbers, we wouldn't be having this conversation," Jenkins said. "Third Eye Blind have always spoken about what's right in front of us and what's unspeakable. Sexual assault is right there, and it's unspeakable. I think music is a place where you can address gun violence, and you don't need to do it in a way that underestimates the intelligence of your listeners, and you can do it in a way that you are not defanged" (RealAudio excerpt of interview).