Wrestling With Addiction

I’ve lately been revisiting the albums of Jane’s Addiction, a band with whom I’ve had a tumultuous, tempestuous relationship.

They have the honor of being one of the first bands to get me into music outside of a radio DJ’s playlist. It was 1994: My brother and I were recent transfers from a culturally cloistered private Christian school, now attending a public school filled with kids who were shipped in from the tougher parts of town. Needless to say, we didn’t fit in. Our perfect bubble of social harmony had since burst, and people everywhere were looking at these two shy, preppy kids like the new meat in prison. It was our first taste of being outsiders, so it was appropriate that the three or so kids we eventually came to befriend happened to be into music and movies that actually celebrated outsider culture.

I knew that my one friend really liked Jane’s Addiction, but I myself had never heard them. One day, I noticed that my older sister had a copy of Ritual de lo Habitual, and so I got her to play some tracks for me. Coming from someone who, not long before, considered the 10,000 Maniacs’ cover of Because the Night to be “weird,” heavy qualification is necessary, but I was totally blown away when I heard “Been Caught Stealing.” It was just so…different…from everything I’d heard before. A bit later, I got my own copies of the albums, and a love affair had begun.

Jane’s was the first band that I really obsessed over. I was slowly getting into more authentically underground bands at this time, such as the Cramps and Siouxsie & the Banshees, but Jane’s Addiction had most of my attention for at least a year. In truth, I had fallen victim to the cult of personality of Perry Farrell, whom I regarded as equal parts audacious and profound. His lyrics opened me up to ideas of hedonism and bohemian decadence, and his quasi-philosophical navel-gazing was revelatory for an adolescent whose analytical faculties were just reaching their peak. The remaining chips of my childhood shell—unquestioning conformity, a morality shaped by belief in a Christian God—were beginning to fall away, and Jane’s Addiction had a significant part in this process.

But as I immersed myself deeper and deeper into the sights, sounds, and philosophy of outsider culture, I began to regard my once beloved band as not being radical enough. Their albums sounded too flashy and overproduced to someone now absorbing the Germs and John Waters. And Perry’s pontifications had helped to stir my own ruminations about the world, but at some point his lyrics began to seem vapid and narcissistic rather than profound. I eventually abandoned JA in favor of bands that were rawer, more direct, more extreme, and more underground than this prog-rock revival act from the LA Strip.

Time thankfully has softened my scenester elitism, though it wouldn’t be at least until 2000 or so that I would give my old favorite band another listen. And even then, I would only listen to their first LP, a live album, free from (most of) the production trickery that, in my eyes, marred their reputation as an underground band. Then I brought back Ritual, since it is relatively cleanly produced compared to Nothing’s Shocking--and then finally I just gave in and went back to all of their stuff.

I had been blinded by my expectations of the group for so long, but at long last, I saw them for what they were, and embraced them. Yes, Perry is indeed a hopeless narcissist, a spoiled trust fund wannabe posing as a bohemian street rat. Yes, Jane’s arrangements and solos can be ostentatious, and yes, their production really takes away the effect of a band playing live. But that’s okay.

All those years, I had been shocked and ashamed to realize that, despite their reputation as a punk fusion act, or an alternative legend, Jane’s Addiction had so many trappings of a metal band. Not punk at all!

But who the hell cares? They do have the grandiosity (and the egos) of progressive rock and metal musicians, but thankfully they temper that with beautiful, hypnotic melodies. And the production sure doesn’t fit a neo-punk band, but I’ve since stopped caring about what is punk or not, and instead appreciate the hazy, syrupy quality that the studio effects bring to their sound, adding to their feel of sensual mysticism. I still can’t really take most of Perry’s lyrics seriously anymore, but he does have some gems, usually when he sticks to being vague and poetic, as on Ocean Size and Three Days. The lyrics on No One’s Leaving still make me cringe, but, hell, I can still enjoy the music.

I never gave their reunion album “Strays” much of a chance, but given this quote from Porno for Pyros bassist Martyn LeNoble about the album’s producer:

‘Bob Ezrin didn't really understand Jane's Addiction musically. I remember arguing with him, "Like man, have you listened to Ritual?" He goes, "Frankly, I can't get through it. I think it sounds horrible. I'm going to make this a real rock band instead of an art rock band." Well, he succeeded. He took all the magic out of it. He made a rock record.’

I think my evaluation of the songs as neutered, contemporary rock dilutions of the Jane’s sound is probably accurate. I hear that the band has reunited once again, this time with original bassist Eric Avery, and that they’re working on a new album. Here’s hoping they make something worthy of their legacy. Over the years, I have come to appreciate just what they brought to the music world, and it would be great if they could bring it back just one more time.