Classic or dud : Jane's Addiction

It depends on the cis-(ish) man doing it. It depends on the position of the audience watching it. Something that works in a queer-friendly punk rock show space, does not scale up to a stadium full of frat boys with their extreme male gazes.

I consistently find myself disappointed by self-consciously recorded rock epics b/c they aren't Three Days. It's basically perfect.

Why is Three Days such an absolute monster rock epic? Tons of people on this thread have nailed that - it's a rock epic that is built from the *bass* up, centreing the rhythm section. It seems to me that Eric Avery was coming from the post-punk tradition of Bauhaus and Siouxsie and the Banshees, where the bassline was absolutely central to the construction of the song. (Which post-punk plagiarised shamelessly from disco, reggae and funk, to be sure.) Or at least, that's what I responded to in the music. It reminded me of goth/postpunk bassline centrality. It's not a rock epic that just exists as distribution method for rain-stopping SOLOS (Even though there are solos, oh god, so many guitar solos.) which is where rock epics tend to go wrong. If your groove isn't right the whole time through, then it's not three-day mutual lovemaking, it's just a wank-prop.

The wild thing about Three Days is, thematically, it addresses a subject which is... potentially really problematic? Heterosexual couple meet a bisexual unicorn and share a three-day threesome of sex, drugs and mysticism. But what comes out of this story isn't "two girls, one guy, woot!" in an icky male-gaze kind of way of bravaggio boasting - if it were that kind of song, it would be awful. It repeatedly emphasises the centrality of female desire, female sexual pleasure, a man sidelining his pride to make it a good experience for everyone. Even though, in this song, the male is the speaker, he constantly and consistently references the importance of the women in his life, and his deep and mutual connection to them, the next song in the cycle (I always forget 'Then She Did...' is a separate song and not just the continuation of Three Days) addresses the importance of other women in his life, starting with his mother. It's a subject that, in another setting, could have been so icky and so tacky, but is actually transformed into something deeply spiritual as well as erotic.

The whole thing works together in that way - what if a rock epic was not about guitar solos, but about the rhythm section? What if a threesome were not about the jesus, but the marys?

I consistently find myself disappointed by self-consciously recorded rock epics b/c they aren't Three Days. It's basically perfect.

It's everything people tell you as a kid Stairway To Heaven is, and isn't.

The wild thing about Three Days is, thematically, it addresses a subject which is... potentially really problematic? Heterosexual couple meet a bisexual unicorn and share a three-day threesome of sex, drugs and mysticism. But what comes out of this story isn't "two girls, one guy, woot!" in an icky male-gaze kind of way of bravaggio boasting - if it were that kind of song, it would be awful.

Also, Xiola was 15 when Perry became obsessed with her, and after she died, her family told him that she was actually his cousin?? Farrell was telling me last year that a large portion of the song is him singing "about man preying upon man, how technology is changing us, our weak, corrupt leaders…", but definitely the powerful part is this sexual/spiritual connection between those three.

The whole thing works together in that way - what if a rock epic was not about guitar solos, but about the rhythm section? What if a threesome were not about the jesus, but the marys?

I love this - tho I have to interject, that's a pretty fucking awesome guitar solo, too. Then She Did was my favourite of the two tracks as a kid - I'm a sucker for the sad, dark song over the ecstatic one - but after seeing them play Three Days live, the sheer glory of Navarro's solo, and those drums in the last section, made it their absolute apex for me.

That oral history of Jane's is a terrifying/brilliant read, right up there with the same author's book on the Germs et al in terms of "Fucking hell how are any of you still alive?"

Oh no, I did not know about Xiola's age, but that's another... how do you address the problematic aspects of those kinds of relationships without diminishing the agency of the girl involved?

Farrell was telling me last year that a large portion of the song is him singing "about man preying upon man, how technology is changing us, our weak, corrupt leaders…", but definitely the powerful part is this sexual/spiritual connection between those three.

I'm gonna go a bit Blixa Bargeld here, and insist that... the person who wrote the song is not always the ultimate authority on ~what the song is about~? But I really saw that the sexual relationship in the song taught Perry something which became political. (Referenced again in the later song about his brother.) Sex can be violence, but in a sexual setting which is about non-domination, sex doesn't *have* to be violence, it can be something more. It is natural in the ecological world, that there are predators and prey, that's how nature works, and predators becoming prey is just part of the great ~cycle of life~ when it's in balance, but nature in balance also holds a whole host of other symbiotic and mutually beneficial interspecies relationships that Nature produces. Humans can be both predator and prey, or they can live in mutual balance - but leadership doesn't *have* to be predatory, in the way that sex doesn't *have* to be violence? That was my interpretation anyway, it is only one available interpretation of many possible interpretations.

I'm not saying the solo is bad! The solos are wonderful, but the solos are merely one tiny part of what makes the song epic.

Oh no, I did not know about Xiola's age, but that's another... how do you address the problematic aspects of those kinds of relationships without diminishing the agency of the girl involved?

It's hella tricky, isn't it? From every story I've heard Xiola knew her own mind. But...

I'm gonna go a bit Blixa Bargeld here, and insist that... the person who wrote the song is not always the ultimate authority on ~what the song is about~?

Oh totally. Also, his take on the song was very unfocused and all over the shop, I'd hazard a guess that he's editorialising the song long after the fact. I mean, some of the greatest songs are just slivers of ideas we flesh out in our own imaginations, aren't they really?

My point is, the Perry Farrell of 2019 is a somewhat unreliable narrator, or was that evening.

my head hurts from that sentence :)

Nothing's Shocking actually holds up better for me than Ritual. I think I just find the songs more cohesive and I really like the big guitar sound; also have an easier time hearing what Farrell is singing (although I never knew that line was "Ms Smith" until this thread). "Had a Dad" and "Mountain Song" are easily my favourite songs of theirs and "Jane Says" is my favourite slower thing they did. As much as I appreciate their more ambitious ideas, I seem to be a Jane's Addiction poptimist.

I don't really know why "Mountain Song" freaked me out as a kid tbh, since I liked all the FNM/Living Colour/King's X songs that were getting radio and video play at that time. Maybe the video? Maybe harder to find the tune?

I seem to be a Jane's Addiction poptimist.

I don't like "Been Caught Stealing" as much, though, somehow.

I do think it's funny that just about everywhere else on the board, fucking a 15-year-old is pretty consistently summarily dismissed as rape / something that can't be "consented" to, but Farrell spins a good yarn and the tune is real good so we can let this one slide maybe

I do agree with Branwell that the "fucking strippers" rhetoric is gross, weird and reductive

Simon H, I don't get into those kind of conversations, on ILM, for some very good reasons. Please do not confuse that with "letting it slide". Thanks.

ooooook!

tbc I do not place judgment on any of the posts itt, I just think this thread stands out, tonally, on 2020 ilx

She was wise beyond her years, you see.

lol

She wasn’t 15 at the time of the weekend chronicled in the song, was she?

19 I thought?

I do think it's funny that just about everywhere else on the board, fucking a 15-year-old is pretty consistently summarily dismissed as rape / something that can't be "consented" to, but Farrell spins a good yarn and the tune is real good so we can let this one slide maybe

Yeah I don't think that's what any of us were saying but if you want to stir up trouble where there isn't any go for it champ

18 when she died in 1987. The song Xiola by Psi Com was released in 1985.

I knew she was his cousin, which made me go o_O when I found out, but I didn’t know she was 15 and now I’ve gone full O_O

I don't care about digging up and cancelling perry farrell or antagonizing anyone itt but I think it's probably a good thing overall that this sort of behavior from a contemporary rock singer would provoke a much more visceral response

behavior

You are now banned from the Canpol thread.

hisser par mon propre pétard

The fact that he released the song and (in particular) album cover several years after she died of an overdose doesn’t seem very... respectful of the deceased?

(I’m not scolding him or anything, it’s just something that strikes me as I read the backstory.)

when i was a melodramatic early teen, i swore when i died i would hear "summertime rolls" gently lifting me off to heaven

Can I just ask you, what about the song cycle, or indeed the cover, seems like it’s disrespectful, and not like it’s a memorial or tribute from her former lovers?

ffs

The grooming part.

personally I am not sure there is a "respectful" way to memorialize someone who you (allegedly) gave heroin when they were 14

publicly, anyway

It may not be my place to judge – but knowing she was only 17, and died the next year, does put the song and album cover in a somewhat different context for me.

Yeah this has been an eye opening thread fer sure

Hooking your 14-year old trust fund baby cousin on heroin is peak Robin Hood Romanticism amirite.

i didn't know until now that she was PF's cousin? also did not know she was 14-15. what i knew amounted to "xiola" + "heroin" + "died young"
i was a teenaged magazine reader and i have a feeling the music mags weren't dwelling on the inappropriate nature of that relationship very much? idk. i am embarrassed to admit that i cut pics of this band out of magazines and taped them to my wall with all the other pictures i cut out of magazines and taped to my wall.

"I was the first guy she ever did heroin with": https://youtu.be/zNR8JitAWo8?t=1609

yikes

I don't think anyone needs to feel bad or defensive or whatever, but it is interesting that for such a mythologized band, the potentially uglier angles, which I gather have never been hidden, have not often been mentioned in the press as problematic or whatever (AFAICT). speaks to some pretty specific blind spots I guess?

such was the state of music journalism in the late 80s/early 90s
no one gave a shit iirc

Yep.

This isn't an indictment of Jane's Addiction fans btw, it's just sad how this behaviour remained entrenched even in groups that partly defined themselves in opposition to the overt machismo of their predecessors.

In the same clip, he talks about discovering she was his cousin after the fact.

Well, going back to my comparison to Motley Crue, even as recently as whenever The Dirt came out, I don't recall any reactions to those sleazy tales that went beyond mundane shock and titillation. Just lots of "lol, that's Motley Crue for you." It's possible that for many years/decades, fans as well as writers viewed rock stars of all stripes as sort of exotic animals, yet somehow never made the connection that this kind of bad behavior was shockingly/typical, and that if all of these acts had all of these stories then, well, maybe they're not that unique or exotic after all, just pervasive. They were just par for the seedy, scumbag course. A feature, not a bug, as it were.

Huh, can't say I've ever been a Jane's fanatic, though I have the first three records. I had no idea about Xiola at all so, yeah, this has been an eye-opening revive.

Not to pile on – but according to this 2001 piece, the “Jane” featured in the band’s name (and most famous song?) wasn’t too thrilled with the name (“I didn't take it as a tribute at all”), and I wonder if she consented to this:

Bainter's photo appeared on the insert of the vinyl version of the first Jane's album, and on thousands of posters that appeared all over the world. "It was very hard for my family," she says.

whenever The Dirt came out

The book, or the movie? I wrote about the movie for Stereogum and had...some thoughts.

I wrote a thing about that whole era of winking at "bad rock star behavior"

https://slate.com/culture/2019/03/the-dirt-netflix-movie-motley-crue-book-adaptation.html

xpost The book. By the time the movie came out the tide had turned pretty dramatically, so that even Nikki Sixx wasn't even trying to defend their behavior, he was iirc claiming Neil Strauss made the worst of it up.

But, like, Crue, Jane's Addiction ... I'm willing to believe the worst anyone says about demonstrably gross people and their respective bad behavior.

This revive is fantastic. I'd missed it. Wow. Thank you, ILM :)