Singer Stephan Jenkins has confirmed that a scene from the new Hulu series Pam & Tommy, in which his band, Third Eye Blind, bumps Motley Crue out of studio time, never happened in real life.
“Motley Crue and I’ve never been in the same studio,” Jenkins explained to Variety. “I recorded my whole first album in Northern California. So we were across the state from each other at the very least.”
The scene takes place in episode five of the series. When Tommy Lee (Sebastian Stan) and his bandmates show up to rehearse, they find the alt-rock group in their space. Though fictional, the moment was designed to convey the changing tastes in rock music at the time, as alternative acts had taken the mantle from their hair metal predecessors.
There is, however, one tiny bit of historical accuracy to the Pam & Tommy scene. In 1996, Third Eye Blind were signed to Elektra, the same record label as Motley Crue. Still, the bands never crossed paths.
“I had never, in fact, listened to Motley Crue. I never even heard them. I actually saw Tommy Lee’s penis before I ever heard their band,” Jenkins admitted. “I was like, ‘Well, good on ya, Tommy. Well done, lad.’ I literally had never heard them. But I somehow saw the sex tape. I’d also never seen Baywatch. So I had never seen Pam or Tommy. That was my first introduction to them.”
Eventually, the Third Eye Blind singer was finally exposed to Motley Crue’s music, and he liked what he heard.
“Years later I heard this song, maybe when somebody put it on the jukebox or something,” he recalled. “But I’m like, oh my god, what is that groove? It’s so nasty like aggressive and heavy. And it was ‘Shout at the Devil.’ And so I got this blind introduction to Motley Crue and I was like, this shit is great. And so we never kicked them out of the studio, but my drummer Brad said that what inspired him to play drums when he was a little kid was Motley Crue. He loved that metal shit. So there is a part of Third Eye Blind taking some kind of inspiration from Tommy Lee’s drumming.”
One person who didn’t enjoy the Third Eye Blind Pam & Tommy scene was former Motley Crue singer John Corabi. The rocker took to social media to share his outrage about the series, as well as their use of “Semi-Charmed Life,” Third Eye Blind’s hit single from 1997, at the end of the episode.
“The Tommy And Pam miniseries on Hulu, is so full of bullshit, it’s ridiculous!” Corabi wrote in part. “I shared 5 years of my life with Tommy and although it was at times INSANITY it’s sooooo overblown in this SHIT they call TV entertainment! Tommy never walked around in a Speedo, didn’t act at all they way they portray him, and now I see that THIRD EYE BLIND ‘bumps’ us from a studio, because they’re more relevant???? DID NOT HAPPEN…!!!”