


“What they did subsequently to other band members is, they would take the copyright and make the band member feel like they owned their own songs when in fact they didn’t,” he said.Ĭourtesy: Kevin Cadogan and Arion Salazar “That definitely didn’t sit well.”Ĭadogan was able to secure his own copyrights to his songs-the only other Third Eye Blind member to have any ownership. “The first album featured ten of my songs, and the second, six,” Cadogan said. “I was being fed a line by everyone surrounding the band-management, lawyers, accountants-and so was, about how Kevin was making trouble,” Salazar said.Ĭadogan had found out that while Jenkins had told him and the others that they were equal partners in the band, he had filed for the band trademark in his name only and was in the process of securing sole copyright to all of the band’s songs, which were co-written by everyone. Photo: Chelsea AndrusĬadogan was fired from the band in 2000 after seven years, voted out by the three other members, including Salazar. Stephan Jenkins and Kevin Cadogan at the Bay Area Music Awards, 1998. “We are not trying to present our sides of a battle,” said Cadogan, the day before a June concert in San Leandro advertised as “ Original Members Of Influential 90’s Band Play Their 1997 Debut Album!” The two are planning a show celebrating the anniversary of the debut for late August at 21st Amendment Brewery. That has led to numerous cease-and-desist letters from Jenkins, who owns the trademark to commercial use of the name “Third Eye Blind,” and, according to previous lawsuits, referred to other band members as contract employees. But as the band nears the twentieth anniversary of writing and recording its debut, now-former members Cadogan and Salazar have begun playing the songs they co-wrote at small clubs around the Bay Area. Third Eye Blind now has five albums to its name, including 2015’s Dopamine. What followed was firings, replacement members, lawsuits, court rooms and bitterness that remains to this day. Infighting splintered singer Stephan Jenkins, bassist Arion Salazar, guitarist Kevin Cadogan, and drummer Brad Hargreaves years ago. Of course, the band that stepped on stage at Grant Park isn’t the same Third Eye Blind that’s responsible for those hits. Not that it stopped the band from drawing some of the largest non-headlining crowds at Lollapalooza a couple of weeks later. This summer has seen a resurgence in attention for singer Stephan Jenkins, who’s made headlines by reportedly rescuing paddle boarders in North Carolina, enraging Republican fans at a Cleveland fundraiser during the RNC, and following it up the next week with a Black Lives Matter song that, perhaps, didn’t quite get the reactions Jenkins envisioned.

Xeb: Ex-Third Eye Blind duo adds another member to the club Read part 2
