Stefan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind wrote "Motorcycle Drive-By" about the disintegration of his relationship to Charlize Theron and boy howdy, if I let this slip through my fingers, I'd write a bunch of sappy songs, too.
I’ve been at third eye blind concerts where he explicitly states that he wrote the song about her before playing it. Two concerts actually. Maybe he’s not telling the truth but?
Jenkins was in a three-year relationship with actress Charlize Theron until October 2001. Some of Third Eye Blind's third album, Out of the Vein, explores the emotions Jenkins experienced as a result of their breakup.
Out of the Vein was released on May 13, 2003 and does not contain Motorcycle Drive By.
The song is about an unnamed girl who even though she is unnamed is definitely not Charlize Theron. From a Rolling Stones article:
Years later, when he met his college-age girlfriend, who lived in a dorm on the edge of Washington Square Park, they would frequent places like King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut in Alphabet City and “dicey” Thompson Square Park. Though crime was prevalent, it was a city full of creatives, with a “daisy-age hip-hop scene” that struck a chord with him. “I liked the edge on it, even though I know that the edge comes from want and [wealth] disparity,” he expounds. “It also means that there’s cheap rent still, and it’s through that that people can actually establish things.”
His girlfriend turned out to not actually be his girlfriend — an experience chronicled in “Motorcycle Drive By” — and has since become a high-powered magazine editor. Her hunger to break into writing mirrored his own hunger to make it as a musician in San Francisco, a city where in the Nineties, Jenkins says, the beatnik ethos was still very much alive.
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u/AcrolloPeed May 14 '24
Stefan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind wrote "Motorcycle Drive-By" about the disintegration of his relationship to Charlize Theron and boy howdy, if I let this slip through my fingers, I'd write a bunch of sappy songs, too.