The emo godfathers bounced back from major label rejection to sell millions. Now they’re drawing on their past teenage energy to ride a major punk revival
In the age of the Great Resignation, everyone is having doubts about their career paths, even million album-selling musicians. Take Jim Adkins. His band, Jimmy Eat World, are nearing 30 years together and the emo godfathers are still touring relentlessly. But Adkins, 46, only conceded that his band might be a going concern around a decade ago – “I thought: ‘Huh, I guess this is what I do’” – and remains dubious about their long-term prospects. “I still don’t take this seriously as what I’m going to do in my life,” he says.
That scepticism may have something to do with Jimmy Eat World’s strange trajectory, which saw the Mesa, Arizona band whisked from the DIY emo scene of the mid-90s, where they’d be playing in “the craziest of places” – basements, friends’ houses, the back rooms of churches – and on to major label Capitol, a place where, in Adkins’s words, they had “no business being”. He remembers visiting Capitol’s New York offices – “back when labels had actual buildings in really expensive cities” – and being greeted with giant double-door-sized posters for P, a short-lived alt-rock band fronted by Johnny Depp, the sort of superstar Capitol were more accustomed to dealing with. Adkins mimics the baffled faces of the employees. “They were like: “Err, can we help you guys?’”
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