Following the release of Clarity in 1999, Arizona quartet Jimmy Eat World were dropped by Capitol. Then, after a brief European tour and a disagreement with their management, they were free agents and in charge of their own business decisions. "[The label] really didn't believe in us," remembers Zach Lind in an interview with Modern Drummer. "But in a way, that was sort of a good thing, because it let us take control of what we needed to do. We learned we had to do it ourselves, because no one else would do it for us."Life on a major label in the prosperous 90s took a sharp turn and the four took jobs to fund their next recording. Frontman Jim Adkins sold art supplies, Lind was a driver at a car dealership, while guitarist Tom Linton worked on a building site.
"Oh, man, I was so poor. I was dying," Linton told Phoenix New Times. "I don't even know how I made it. For like almost two years I was totally broke. I was just barely scraping by."
Step forward Drive Like Jehu drummer Mark Trombino, who'd previously produced their albums Static Prevails and Clarity, and offered to work for free and get paid later on.
The songs on their fourth studio album were more direct and full of vim and vigour. And hooks? Like a fisherman's hut. The band were snapped up by Dreamworks, and the subsequent album was titled Bleed American.
It was on record shelves for barely four months. Then on the morning of September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked several aeroplanes and flew them directly into the World Trade Center towers in New York and one into the Pentagon, just outside Washington DC and sparked a war in Afghanistan and later in Iraq.
