Over the weekend, Jimmy Eat World headlined the Crystal Palace Bowl where they told their thousands of attendees that it was one of the biggest crowds they had ever performed to. And from the middle of the audience, it was hard not to believe it. The American icons headlined the outdoor venue to bring their seminal 2001 record, ‘Bleed American’ to life – in full – as a celebration of its 25th anniversary. And thousands of fans turned up to scream every single word of the 11-track record.
Just before Jimmy Eat World went on stage, we caught up with the band for a quick chat on ‘Bleed American’, and how it feels to play these songs so many years later.
“It’s interesting to do this,” Jim Adkins exclusively told the Daily Express. “As a, like, album sequence. Because it’s really not how we would structure the arc of a gig. Like with the energy flow of it.”
“But it still works,” he added. And it did. The band opened up the show with some of their more contemporary hits before evolving the stage into something a bit more frenetic; they stripped back all of their lights and props before kicking off the album’s first track, its namesake.
Throughout the night, Jimmy Eat World fed off of the energy of the thousands throwing themselves at the gargantuan stage in the South London grounds.
The excitement and frantic nature of the UK’s audiences is something the band have come to treasure, they revealed. “The previous couple gigs have just reinforced that even further,” bassist Rick Burch said. “Good audience. Jim says it very well when he says [Brits] decided to come out and have a good time, and it’s obvious that they have.”
Still, it must be bizarre seeing the same kind of fans come out in their droves for their music 25 years after the album was released, right? “It’s incredible, you know?” Jim smiled in disbelief. Like, are you kidding me?
“I don’t know. None of us can really believe that we’re here still. Yeah, to this day, it’s like: What? We get to do this right now?”
Speaking directly to the fans, Adkins added: “It’s just incredibly humbling that people still find something they can connect with in our music. You know? There’s so much else they could do with their time. It’s just special.”
