One Song - Jane's Addiction's "Mountain Song"

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

Cash in now One Song Nation, because this week Diallo & LUXXURY are going deep on Jane’s Addiction’s “Mountain Song,” a song that helped kick-start the wave of alternative music that defined the sound of the late 80’s and 1990’s.  They break down the band’s place in the Los Angeles music scene, how the band synthesized disparate influences - from funk to metal to psychedelia - to create a cohesive and original new sound, and the complex relationships between the band members that ultimately lead to their breakup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One, two, three, four. One song, listen here in stereo, watch the show on you. We'll take a song that you've heard before. A cold, classic, or major hit, we'll play some stems and drive some gems. Some gems, some gems. And you'll learn more.

about it we're luxury together we're luxury oh oh oh oh I think we've nailed that that was 2025 worthy hell yeah man luxury today's song is from a band that helped bring alternative music to the mainstream with its blend of funk bass metal-influenced guitars and poetic lyrics this song redefined the sound of los angeles at the turn of the 1990s and in 2009 VH1 named this song the 71st best hard rock song of all time take that number 72 that's right diallo and this band's alt rock bonifides are no joke henry rollins once called their guitarist one of the great guitarists of all time and their lead singer has been dubbed the godfather of alternative rock

you know we were talking a lot about this band recently because this is one of those like big la bans such a big and obviously l.a is such a part of their identity yeah la is such a big part of identity and and we've talked about like warren g but that's more like Long Beach. We've talked about, you know, Snoop and Dre, that's, that's Compton. Yeah, these guys are Hollywood. This feels like Hollywood. This feels like Hollywood. This feels like the West Side, maybe even Malibu. And LA is like on our hearts right now. L.A. is like, you know, hurting. And so we kind of wanted to do an episode about an L.A. band. This felt like the right L.A. band to talk about. This band has also been in the public eye after a recent

reunion tour where it ended with an onstage fight. I know. So I'm so brokenhearted about it, man. Oh, yeah, because it ultimately led to the band's most recent dissolution. And if you're wondering why we did a parody of Jane Says and not Mountain Song, which is clearly the name of this episode, well, we're going to get into that too. Cash in now because it's one song and that song is Mountain Song by Jane's Additch. Visit BetMDMDM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right Fortune Pick.

BetMDM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly, 19 plus to wager. only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees can grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddell. And I'm producer, DJ songwriter and musicologist Luxury, aka the guy who whispers, Interpolation. If you want to watch one song, please go to our YouTube channel and watch this full episode.

And while you're there, please like and subscribe. All right. Before we get into Mountain Song, Luxury, can we just take a second and just say, we're choosing Mountain Song over Been Caught Stealing. Jane says some of their bigger songs because we feel like it plays a big role, not just in Jane's Addiction's career,

but also in the sound of alternative music, wouldn't you say? Yeah, and I'm personally speaking, as we mentioned on the concerts that made us episode a few weeks ago. You know, this band is one of the most core bands, music bands for my identity. At least it was in my teen and into my 20s. And this song, as a huge fan,

was one of the songs that, like, drew me into the band. I had a band in college, and it was, we played a cover of it. Like, it's very important to me personally and emotionally it still resonates. I still get tears in my eyes listening to this whole record that it's from, nothing shocking. So I'm really excited to do this episode with you today. That's so interesting because I think that, look, 1988, I know where I was, you know, musically.

Like I was probably listening to, you know, some hip-hop, maybe like some public enemy. I was probably listening to Prince. Our pop station was probably playing swing-out sister and some of like the bands that I know. Swing-out sister. I'm going to wear that shirt next week. Propaganda. Propaganda. It was another group from that period.

I love propaganda. I feel like this sort of like what would have probably been considered metal in some form in Atlanta radio terms. Probably missed me. I wasn't listening to like college radio, I think. I mean, don't get me started. The genre thing, this is a big part of the story is naming genres, especially a band like this requires you to really rethink how you decide what a genre. They're one of the first. Like labels were like, are you guys in four different bands?

They're not a metal band, but they sure have a metal guitar player. Yeah. But one thing about Jane's addiction is that they're simultaneously bringing a whole bunch of different sounds into the mix in a way that hadn't been heard before. There wasn't really a name for it. So what we get in this moment is a lot of different alternative and like college rock and things to try to describe something that doesn't really have a description previously. We're totally going to talk about this. I think you raised a very good point. I was shocked to learn that this song came out in 1988 because it sounds full on in the 90s.

Yeah. And I think that they have to be given credit for sort of finding what. you know, finding that sound that was absolutely going to become sort of the signature of the decade that was, that was coming up. And we're going to break down why that is once we get into the stems. Yeah. Listen to the isolated. We got the stems. We can't wait.

Each individual part is doing something a little bit different, genre-wise. And somehow, when they come together, it makes this incredible song. It's a little bit like our show. Welcome to 2025, everybody. Jay's Addiction is a staple of Walt Rock Radio. And they actually emerge, proud to say, from the L.A. post-punk scene. What can you tell us, Lux, Lux, about. the early days of the ban and that post-punk influence. All right. Well, the story begins in Queens

in 1959 when when young Perretz Bernstein is born. Perry's real name is Perry Bernstein. Perry Farrell, for those of you haven't noticed, is a play on words on peripheral. I was actually shot to hear his birth name wasn't Perry Farrell. And I love the story about him going around the early days saying like Perry Farrell, get it? Perry Farrell, get it? Like nobody's getting that it's supposed to sound like peripheral. It's a dad joke already. Speaking of his dad, his dad is actually apparently a really interesting character who like moves the family out of New York to Miami is walking around. He's a jeweler. Yeah, he's a jeweler.

But he's also like that guy who in a pre-Miamy vice in Miami is like got the shirt open. He's got the chain, a feline headband and, you know, just known to be sort of like a wild man. So like it's just, you know, sometimes these apples don't fall incredibly far from the tree. And listen, it bears stating at this point since we're talking about it. is a really important part of Perry Farrell's story, which is that his mom was a suicide. She was an artist. His mom was an artist. If you go back actually, our very literally first episode of one song, I talk about how one

song of Jane's Addiction called Then She Did, which is about her, drives me to tears because it's a love letter that Perry writes to his mother who passed away, who died sadly by suicide when Perry was only three years old. Because she discovered that the father was cheating on her and had a child by another woman, Perry grew up without his mother but knew her to be an artist and sings about it really beautifully in the song, which I just learned researching this episode. This whole time, the song Then She did about his mom, I learned that Stephen Perkins revealed that the original title was then she died. Oh, wow. And that just did a number on me. I had to like lay in my bed for a whole

day, like recovering from that. But it's a really beautiful and sad part of the story and really explains a lot of the motivation that Perry has to sort of go off and build a new tribe in Los Angeles and a new family. But you're absolutely right. He moves to Los Angeles. And, you know, when the fires recently hit the city, and they came far too close to our own house, you know, we got the artwork off the walls. We got the dog to a friend.

And then we went, you know, we got out of the city. We went down to Newport Beach. And I found it so interesting as we started talking about Jane's Addiction that that's the first place he goes to. He goes to Newport Beach with like nothing more than like an ounce of weed and a phone. number but he talks about arriving there you know in his car and he's like you know there's showers at the beach so he could basically you know stay active take showers stay clean he kept a you know some nice clothes nearby and i will say being down there just last weekend that is one of those places in california where you still sort of get that vibe of like i've just arrived here the beach

is like paradise and you know as long as i can take care of myself i might be able to to achieve my California dream. Now, I don't think I could move to Newport Beach because, like, you know, in the brief time I was there, like, I was like, ooh, culturally, this place is very different. It's on a very different page than me. But the natural beauty is there, and you get the sense that that is where the California dream still lives. And that's, that's the California where Perry arrives. And he immediately, you know, I love the story about how like he was driving, you know, a truck for a liquor distributor. And then he got a job being a David Bowie. and Fray Sinatra impersonator at this bar.

And so suddenly, like, he quit his day job and just became a full-time artist. And he never looks back. And his first rock and roll experience, he's not a musician, but he wants to be in a band. It's that impulse to just that punk kind of helps enable in the late 70s and early 80s. It's like, you want to join a tribe. You want to be musically part of something exciting, but you don't have an instrument. Perry Farrell is part of a group called punks and post-punks that are finding each other and finding new sounds and rearranging them in new ways,

in large part, super influenced by what's happening post-punk in England. So there's Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy, Joy Division. These bands are making a huge influence on Young Perry. And he joins and helps start a band called SciCom. That's his first band in 1985 or so. And one of their songs, which was super underground, like it's only years later that we can even, we're fortunate enough to hear music like this.

But here is one of SciCom songs. it's called Hokohay. Right? And even in this little snippet, you can kind of hear, I hear so much like British, like the cult and the Joy division, right? Well, it's that driving baseline,

that driving, the eighth notes on the baseline. And who's his basis at this time? So while he's in Saikom, he meets another gentleman called Eric Avery, who is a bass player, and they're conversing about maybe joining the band, but ultimately they kind of splinter off, and they start just making music together.

And Eric Avery is a bass player who is a huge part of the James Addiction story. We really want to give him his flowers on this episode. We're going to give a lot of flowers to some unsung heroes. Some great unsung heroes. So Eric and Perry meet around 1985. And I love this quote. Eric says, my first jam with Perry eventually turned into Mountain Song.

So what blows my mind about that is it's just two guys, I suppose, in the garage. And Eric Avery is a bass player who had prior to this moment, similar to Perry, been looking for a home musically and hadn't found one either. And the idea of the two of them together, with Perry kind of just singing and Eric just playing bass and that's enough. They come up with this song. Just picture the song. You know, maybe when we get to the stems, we'll do that.

I'll just have the bass and the vocals and we'll hear it's enough. It's the core idea that launches them into this project together. So early days of this band, it's just the two of them working together with a lot of bass lines that Eric's already come up with. But what Perry brings to it is this poetry he's been working on, this drive and this incredibly distinctive voice. And it's kind of funny because Eric talks about how. how Perry said that he thought, this is a quote from Eric Avery, Perry said he thought that I was either

a genius because I didn't do anything other than play the same notes over and over, or that I just didn't know how to play at all. And it's possible a little bit of both. And that is part of Eric's genius. If you listen to across the catalog, Eric Avery's baselines are extraordinarily, it's hard to write a baseline that is succinct and you want to hear repeated that many times without a lot of alteration or change. But he does it. You can listen to his baseline in Mountain Song, which is relatively unchanged across the song. And it's just infectious. And it's a trance-inducing, hypnotic thing.

Again, we'll get into that a little bit later with the stems. But importantly, and this is a quote from Casey Nicoli. So we're going to just give a little heads up. We'll be talking about her a lot on this episode. But Casey Nicoli is one of the unsung heroes of this story. Casey was Perry and Casey were dating from 1983 to 1983 and pretty much the entirety of Jane's edition going from zero to top of the world, on top of the Alt Nation world. happened with the two of them collaborating, art, lyrics, album titles, where one begins and the other ends is unclear, except that it seems like Casey really hasn't gotten her due.

Yeah. So we'll be giving her. We'll be giving Casey, what do we can do. We can do. We have a great quote from her, though. She said, Eric could play superb, melodic grooves, but he couldn't make them into complete songs. But Perry could cherry pick the best grooves and make songs out of them. And I love this because it really just, I can picture being in that room.

I can picture Eric having this mountain of incredible baselines that may not have ever become a song. Had it not been for meeting Perry who heard and found in what he had done, the gems. And that's the beauty of the collaborative process a lot of times. So that really happens in the story of Jane's Addiction. And that comes into play later because there is some tension about who gets paid for these songs. That's a big part of the story. We'll be talking about that later. We'll be talking about it.

They have a lot of shared influences at this point. The Bauhaus, the Joy Division, the Susie, like we were talking about. But at a certain point, there's also kind of like a strange Led Zeppelin Doors, like classic rock thing in the mix. A little bit of that is happening later when Dave was in the band. He got offered the chance to sing with a lot of what they were calling the Paisley Underground scene. Yeah. I was a fan of the Pandora's or a band that were around at that time. But what's happening is that they're kind of finding between the two of them a new sound, which ultimately as the story progresses, becomes the sound of a new generation. for lack of how to put it.

There's college music, it becomes modern rock, alternative, alternative nation. My favorite description of James Addiction comes from Perry's mouth directly. Well, what kind of music do you do? It's kind of like a cross between, I would say, Duke Gellington and bad brains. And bad brains. I like the disdain on. sort of middle-aged man with glasses. Bad brains.

It was clearly never heard of, possibly never heard of Duke Ellington even. Maybe. Do you hear this combination? Do you hear the Duke meets HR? It's not the first combination that came. Yeah. That came to mind.

But I do think, I absolutely hear it because I think that, you know, listen, there were other bands on this scene, like when they would do those shows off in the desert that you had to like get the invitation to and then you go out there. Some of these groups were literally just blowing stuff up in the desert.

Right. Some of them had like great crews. I think Dave Navarro says like there was one group. I'm blanking on the name. But they were like, he was like they would do 10 minute songs. But like there was no song structure there. They just felt good. And I think where it is the Duke Ellington part, which is probably the bigger stretch,

is that Perry understood the song structure and the need to sort of do like the hook or the verse. So I'm 100% on. He's absolutely crucial because he's not himself a musician with instrumental skills. He plays acoustic guitar. Ron Jane says, but for the most part, he's the melodic and lyrical genius, for lack of better work. And on stage, whirling dervish, but also he's the one with the musicians, is able to sort of arrange, piece together, the ideas that he hears into something that is a finished song. As far as music goes, it does feel like postmodernism.

I always say that like grunge and a lot of alt music in the 90s were, because even in hip hop, like, they were taking like literally Duke Ellington and pairing it with like, you know, a bomb squat type of production. But in this kind of music, it reminds me of how people said Nirvana was the Pixies meets the Beatles. Yeah. Because it was like kind of the pixies, but it had the songwriting of the Beatles. And the eclecticism, too, a lot of sensibility. Once again, Perry, one of the first people to the 90s table to eat his lunch because he got there early.

And set the stage for Nirvana and smashing pumpkins and Weezer and a new metal for that matter. A lot of that comes out and rage against the machine. So much of the table gets set in. have a nephew's song who some of the listeners know who's an artist and he says that james meant a lot to him because you know he later really got full on into punk but in the 80s he was a kid and he really liked metal and he was like james meant a lot to him because it was to him it was like metal for people like him people who sort of felt like outsiders and that that really worked for him and let's just take a second and really thank brennan mullen uh his book horrors uh the title is

horrors it grew out of an article where he basically did an extensive interview with all the members of the group, all the people sort of on the periphery of the group. Pun intended. That, exactly. That article grew into the book. And it's actually called Hors for a

very interesting reason. There's an early Jane's Addiction song called Hors. Right. And their first live album. Right. And while at first you might be like, what the hell, no, it's actually, it's almost like a salute to sex workers. And it's own unique way.

Trigger warning, you're going to hear Perry Frell used the N-word in that song. Thankfully, he wasn't using it the way that Asharoos did in that infamous Guns N Rosa song. But, you know, it's really talking about the sex workers, and they had a sex worker named Bianca, who in his SciCom days

was basically footing the bill for Perry and all his. And, like, she would, you know, apparently, you know, her clients were like these middle-aged guys who she would drag out to these sitcom shows, which were notoriously crazy. Like to hear Dave Navarro talk about his first experience at a SciCom show before he later joins his later bandmate, he was like, it was

really just like a bunch of punk LA kids, you know, whacked out throwing chairs, going nuts. And it wouldn't have happened and they wouldn't have necessarily found the sound that eventually leaves the Jane's addiction without these shows. I think very little is known about Bianca these days. Feel free to do the research and tell us in the DMs if you know anything about her. But like she plays a crucial role because she basically took her earnings and she was like, I think you guys do great, great music. And I think that that's, you know, that's somebody who I want to just give flowers to because I think that unfortunately, given all the stigma of sex work, sometimes they are the

patrons of some truly unique voices. So Perry arrives in California and he starts putting together his own community. And it sets this age for Perry for the rest of his life. He's somebody who brings people together all walks of life, all types of creativity. Later on when Lala Ploosa comes into play, like think about it. The first Lala Ploosa was. music, but it was also a side stage with Jim Rose Circus and live painting. It was crazy to me that you could have rap and rock and all these different genres on one eclecticism within his own band, eclecticism within a festival stage and the shows he's doing eclecticism within the things that are happening outside of music. He's creating a festival,

a circus environment. He's creating a community. It was a circus. I like the story where they say he convinced the guy with the house. He was like, Perry says, I convinced him that I was a super quiet, gay interior designer. And he's like within days, they're like 12 musicians, photographers, artists, junkies. Like everybody's up in the house. I'm just realizing, too, as we're saying this out loud, I'm like, you know, clearly I've mentioned on that concerts episode and at the top of this one, I suppose, how big of an influence Jane's was.

And how big of an influence Perry was for me personally. I had my dreadlocks. He had my dreadlocks with little metal things at the end. I had little metal things at the end of mine too. But also when I wrote my first songs and started performing, I brought together it was just not, It wasn't just me in the band playing. We had live, we had video, we had dancers, we had outfits, we had makeup, we had, I had a whole operation going.

I had my own little mini Lala Paloosa. I wasn't thinking at the time that I was influenced by that. But this is the beauty of Perry Farrell is that he inspires other people. His creativity is bursting at the scene with ideas. And he brings out the creativity and others. But he also has a let's put on a show mentality, which leads to like landing the plane. So many creative people and probably all of our. our lives, like have the drive, have the talent, but don't maybe necessarily go anywhere.

Eric famously, there's a quote, I think it was Casey Nicola who said, like, without Perry in Eric's life, he may have just been, he may to this day be going through that same baseline rotation in his garage, never coming to a B idea or a chorus idea for it, because you need both of the things. You need the musicians and you need the orchestrator. You need the conductor. I also think in some ways you need that structure because there's like a tiny window that you can fit through and suddenly you're like a mainstream artist who can live off the records forever. And I think you probably as well. I've seen a lot of artists sort of like splat around the side of that hole because they just

couldn't figure out how to make it through that. And it's power to them. It's still important in the world. But it's a rare moment that we have a Perry meeting in Eric and he's about to meet a couple of other people we'll talk about. And that becomes this phenomenon that changes the culture. So the literalization of this idea, the first one is that he gets a house. It's called Wilton House.

And it's a shared. it's a bunch of artists and creative people and frankly it's a fun place it's junkie Wilson house is a terrible name for a group don't do it but there is an important junkie in their lives in the house and her name is Jane Jane Bainter yeah and she is so it's an arts collective slash crash pad it's a bunch of musicians from a bunch of bands they have a rehearsal studio in the garage and famously apparently according to legend the residents of this house would blame their escalating problems on Jane's drug habit which was escalating quote, it's all because of Jane's addiction.

Sounds like a running joke in the house. No, I know. It's like that scene in the movie where they inevitably say the title of the movie. My kids are always like, you got to call those moments. I once heard that like Penn and Teller when they are in a movie where that happens, they stand up and applaud, which I love. I want to say about Jane real quick, this is a person who has a day job. She works in Century City. And so she goes there to her normal gig.

and but by night she is putting on wigs and she's going out and she's partying in the L.A. underground scene. And she has a nasty drug habit apparently. And they were originally going to name themselves something different. Yeah, no, apparently they were contemplating it being called Jane's heroin experience. But that didn't quite make the guy. That was got problems. That's a hard.

That's a harder. It's a little clunky. So the band Jane's Addiction is coming together. But they're part of the scene and they're playing with a lot of other bands like the chili peppers. The red-out chili peppers are starting to come. up at this time. Fishbone are starting to come up. And it was actually, I want to say during this time that Perry says, I didn't want to do that psychedelic stuff anymore because he's like, I saw what was happening with the chili peppers.

He was like, I want to rock. Yeah. That was like a major moment for him. But it wasn't, it was, it was like a friendly competition thing, I suppose. Like they loved each other's bands. Right. To the point where you literally have flea years later joining Jane's as as the touring baseballers. And Navarro joins the chili peppers. So I love the love. I love the collaborative spirit. I love that there's friendly comp. They're prompting each other to go to higher heights. So I have some incredible footage that I jog out. This is January 10th, 1986, and it's the Mountain Song.

And although Dave and Steve from Jane's Addiction are in this footage, they're in the front row watching the band. And they're about to join it. And it's just incredible. So here is the Mountain Song early days before they join the band. What's incredible to me listening back to that is that, you know, the song, Mountain Song exists because Eric and Perry had already written it. And it kind of sounds like what we just heard. And in late January, sometime early February 86, Eric's like, I need a drummer. It's not working out with this guy. So his sister and introduces him to her prom date. It's Stephen Perkins. He's an incredible drummer. He's a metal head. Like he's literally in a metal band with another kid named David, who we'll talk about in a second. So he replaces him. And soon thereafter, they are having a- He shows. up to the gigs. Their last guy was such a terrible drug addict. He was not showing up to gigs. So Perkins came in. Yeah. And he showed up. So that was, that was. It helps when they show up. Yeah. And by the way, he's the cleanest member of the band throughout their career.

Yeah, yeah. So, and they're also needing a new guitar player. It's not working out with the current guy. So Perkins recommends his high school marching band buddy, Dave Navarro. Again, they had been fans of Jane's Addiction. They were head banging in this, the clip we just heard. They were head banging in the front row to this song. A quote from Dave Navarro. They gave me a tape. I heard a few songs I really liked them. Stephen picked me up from my apartment, took me over. They started playing a groove, which is now known as the Mountain Song.

And Perry said, wow, that sounds completely different when you play it. And he was hired on the spot. And this is the beginning of the four members of the core Jane's Addiction that we know and love, those first three records. So we finally have all the pieces of the band. It finally comes together right here. Well, that's how the band was formed. But after the break, we'll dive into the stems and we'll break down what was going on behind the scenes that led. to the band's very public demise and will determine definitively who's at fault.

Perry or the rest of the band? We're going to give you the answer. We know who's at fault. Yeah, we have opinions. We have hot tapes. Stay tuned. Have you ever been to a dentist who wants to chat with you while they're cleaning your teeth? Or a therapist who only has openings in the middle of your workday or a primary care doctor with a literal six-month wait to get in for a visit?

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Go to RocketMoney.com slash OneSong today. That's rocketmoney.com slash one song. RocketMoney.com slash one song. Welcome back to OneSong luxury. Walk us through how Mountain Song got made. Okay, let's talk about Mountain Song. there's an early demo I found. This is with Dave actually replacing the guitar player that he replaced on the demo. In other words, it's the same demo that they already had, but then Dave overdubbed his

parts onto it. So this is the first recording with the four members of Jane's Addiction, as we know and love them, in this canonical period. So they get signed to Warner Brothers really quickly on the basis of their live show and the buzz they built in L.A. And they make an interesting decision. They decide, as Perry tells it, And I think the band would agree. The strength of that live show was so, that was what they were known for. Perry on stage, I've had the fortune of seeing them three times. And it's magical. You saw them early on.

I saw them at the Stone, as I mentioned, on our concerts episode. What year was that? That was 89. Yeah. Yeah, I saw them early days. And it was exciting. And there was something special happening and you felt it. So they got signed to Warner Brothers, but rather than put out a major label debut with, you know,

big fancy production and gleaming, shining perfect everything, polish. They put out a live record. And that first record, it's their debut record. It's on Triple X records, which actually was, they were already signed to a major label, but they wanted to appear indie. So they took on the name for a fake record label, basically, based on their management being called Triple X. So it's not really an indie record because they're a major label band. It's really a self-release.

It's a self-release live record. It's great. And it gives you that feeling of what it must be like to see a Jane's Addiction live show. And it set the stage. it sort of lay a seedling for this band is a powerhouse when you're in the room with them. How do you self-release in the 80s? That seems very hard to me. Well, this speaks to what is a record label. It's a source of money to get the record made. And then it's distribution and marketing. So it's kind of everything but that first thing, right?

So they're still getting the Warner Brothers distribution and marketing. That money is still the expense. The only thing that they're not doing is putting Warner Brothers anywhere on the package. Pretty much. But there's one more member of the team. Yeah. And he is. That's Dave Jordan, who is another unsung member of this episode. He's a really special producer in that he calls himself an engineer. And his role in this process, he's literally credited with Perry Farrell as produced by Dave Jordan. By the way, this is a person who prior to Jane's Addiction had already worked with and mixed the David Byrne and Brian Eno record, My Life in the Bush of Ghost, which is incredible. He did the talking heads, remain in light. He did Herbie Hancock Future Shock, which is also a classic. record. But what an interesting thing that he is an engineer or a mixer in a lot of these, not the producer,

not the kind of like mastermind. And that was important to Jane's addiction. But in Dave Jordan's own words, he went to see the band at Scream, quote, I'd seen Jimmy Hendrix at the Hollywood Bowl in 1968. And Jane's Addiction were just as good as Jimmy. They blew my hair back. And he goes, I got the gig because I didn't want to change anything. One producer wanted to make them sound like you two's the Joshua tree, which was like, you know, the big record of the moment. And another guy wanted to kick Perry out of the band. Jordan was just like, the way you sound is what we need to capture. I think production-wise, as we get into stems, you'll hear this. There's a lot going on, which doesn't necessarily sound like what you think a polished

record like a YouTube Joshua dream that sounds like. So one last thing I should say, which was really interesting, co-producer Dave Jordan listens to their demo tape. So they've got 18 songs at this point. And actually, it should be said at this point, most of the 40 to 45-ish songs that Jane's Addiction ever put out are kind of written by this point. This is a three-year period of great creative productivity. But they've got 18 songs for their demo, and Jordan's job is to decide, okay, what's the album?

Yeah, what are the 10 or 12? Right. He ends up picking nine songs and sequins them, and that is what nothing shocking is. But interestingly, the other nine songs become ritual to do lohabilisual, their next record, their third record. So all those songs are actually completed at this point. And fun fact, by the way, both of those two albums, the very first lyric is, here we go. on nothing shocking, it's up the beach. And on Ritual Dola Habitual, it's obviously the great single stop.

All right, luxury. Let's get into the Stims. Why don't we start with the bass? Let's hear that bass. Let me just set it up for you a little bit. This is a really slow song. This is an 80 BPM rock song, right? And it's really simple.

There's only two chords in the entirety of the song. The first eight bars are just one chord, and then there's a B section with a second chord. It's E to D. So what we're going to hear now is the entirety of that seven. criminal Eric Avery bass line that happened on day one of Eric meeting Perry, Perry would have heard this and reacted and been like, I got something. So that's it. I mean, it was repeating. It was about to go on for quite some time. There's only one other section of the song. It's the B section.

And when we get to the cash in, I'll bring some vocals in. And this will give us a chance to do what I alluded to before. This is what would have happened in that garage on the day when they wrote the song. You would have just heard the bass line and Perry singing. So I'll play that for you. And then Perry says Cash in. And then we're back to that rolling groove. That's the entirety of what Eric Avery plays in the song. You've heard the two things he does.

I think bass was so important to what eventually became the sound of the 90s, the sound of grunge. And the 80s post-punk stuff too, the Bauhaus, the Joy Division. Yeah, but it didn't get there. Like, it didn't go immediately from post-punk into this, except if you count Jane's addiction. it's like that wasn't the sound of like so much mainstream i'm just i'm making the case that like i think bass was really important to defining the 90s sound not just in rock in hip hop i always

come back to a tribe called quest's song excursion kicking off a low in theory album like there was just something in the 90s where you just wanted that like sort of darker sound that sort of like bass yeah well we've talked about this too in part there is like advances in technology that enable you do your bass better and differently yeah both in the recording part process and on the consumer side. And on the consumer side, right. So we're taking advantage of that and we're starting the song with this hypnotic baseline is really gratifying. Yeah. Well, let's move over to the drums. And that's where we have Stephen Perkins, who's one of my top three drummers of all time. It's him, Jimmy Chamberlain from the Smashing Pumpkins, who we gave flowers to on our

Spashing Pumpkins episode. Go back and listen to that. And John Bonham from Led Zeppelin. So Perkins is right in the mix. And what he does is just really special. And just to set it up a little bit, Eric Avery is bringing this like rolling the Joy Division. It's the Peter Hook meets, you know, Bauhaus. It's this sort of post-punk early 80s, maybe Goth, maybe Sisters of Mercy are in there too. But what we're about to hear from Stephen Perkins in the drums is completely different. Now, it's a little tribal, maybe budgie from Susie and the Banshees, but it's definitely a driving. It's got some syncopation in it, which is unexpected.

And we're starting to hear what's going to be across all these layers and the stems, which is almost every instrument sounds like it could be a different band, different genre. bordering on a different song. So I'll set this up a little bit. This is just going to be kick and snare, and then I'll bring in the tombs, and you'll hear how it all works. This is a really hard beat to play.

I know, because I tried to play it in my college band. So listen to that. We already have the syncopated snare. And then the tombs are in there going like this. So Perkins is playing that throughout the entirety of the song. That's what's going underneath that main bass groove. And then in the chorus, we heard what Eric Avery does with that kind of chord,

the D major chord. This is what Stephen Perkins plays underneath that. So satisfying. See, I can't, this is so me. I can't listen to this and I go, I mean, it all comes flooding back into my body. And you hear all those like different drum sounds. And like there's all those palms. Yeah. That makes a big difference. What he's doing is more than most of them, he was like very much like I want to bring in like these like African and like sort of an untraditional for rock music. Yeah. Drums. Yeah. I mean, again, going back to the, these guys were teenagers when they joined the band. They were metal heads. And Perry obviously unlocked in them this idea of,

idea of let's strive for something that hasn't been done before. He wasn't a teenager. That's what's interesting. Yeah, he was older than the rest of them. He was about seven years older than the rest of the band. And I think it was maybe Casey Nicoli who says, you know, because he was considered old, because when you're 27, 28 and you're around. And you haven't made it in a band here.

You haven't made it yet. It's time to give up. It's like an element of like, so what do you do it with your life? But he brought in all these younger guys and obviously worked for him. I mean, it's you saying that in the room is another moment of revelation. It's like, I also started making music late. And I do think that I thought of Perry throughout my life when I wasn't making music yet. I had another career.

I was in advertising. I was doing other internet stuff. And I was always like, well, Perry didn't start till he was a certain age. Yeah, no, that always helps. That was in the back of my head. Yeah. And when I started for the first few years, I was like, I am behind. I'm catching up.

I'm catching up. And I finally got to a point we're like, okay, this is as good as it gets. Listen, Harrison Ford was 31 when he does American graffiti. Is that right? Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I think that Larry David is broke and doing standup work when he's 40. Right. I was always thinking about like, well, John,

Stewart didn't blow up when he was young either. I think that when you're an artist and it doesn't pop off for you at like 19, like Tom Cruise or Eddie Murphy or something like that. Which is insane because our culture perpetuates this like youthful ideal, but it isn't necessarily a good thing for a creativity. The more experience you have, the more you have a story to tell. People would be like, oh man, the y'all had a podcast. I thought he was always old like Morgan Freeman. Perkins is always making really cool, unique choices. His use of steel drums on the previously mentioned Jane says, kind of makes that song stand out in a way that I don't think it would without the steel drum. I think the band found it corny at the time or they weren't sure about it but like it makes the song. It gives it one.

It's another melody. They're like is this a little mermaid? Why do we have steel drums on this? It's like Calypso. Are we in Trinidad? What's happening? Listen, steel drums, very underrated in my opinion. That is a nice, clean sound and more people need to experiment with it. Let's talk about the guitarist. One of my favorite guitarist, Dave Navarro, who I did think was black, but in Atlanta, if you look like that, you probably are. Tell us about Dave Navarro and his contribution to the song. Dave Navarro is a really special person. I'm a big fan of him musically, but also very moved by his story. Famously, when he's 15, his mother is unfortunately murdered by an ex-boyfriend,

not his father, but his mother's ex-boyfriend. Really awful, tragic case. And so he's 15, and he joins the band a few years later. And clearly, you know, and he has drug issues throughout his life. And I'm just, I'm moved by his story. And music and this band are obviously a huge part of. his salvation, his release, his opportunity to sort of get beyond that as much as he possibly can. But it also plays a part because him and Perry have a bond. Yeah, they both lost their mothers

at an early age. So this will come into play, you know, at the end of, towards later in the episode, we'll obviously be talking about the moment that Jane's Addiction is currently having as maybe a band that's broken up. I think part of that story to me that makes it poignant is that connection. But getting back to the musicality of Dave Navaral, he's one of my favorite guitar players in no small part because when I was an up-and-coming musician myself, I read an interview with him that stayed with me to this day. And preparing for the episode, I was able to track down the interview that made such a huge impression. The quote that I read said from Dave Navarro in Guitar Player Magazine in 1990-something, my favorite guitar players play nothing like me, like Daniel Ash from

Bauhaus and Love and Rockets and Tones on Tail, coincidentally. I'm wearing the shirt. Love Tones on Tail. He's amazing, but he never overdoes it. He has brilliant sounds, but you never hear him playing like an Inwe riff. And he also named drops Robert Smith from The Cure, not a technical wizard, but who says you have to be to make great art? Reading this was another punk rock moment for me. This was permission to not be technically incredible. And in the moment especially that I'm reading this,

we are coming out of like a metal technicality era, especially in the culture. There's a lot of like nothing wrong with technical proficiency, but there's still a lane available for like you have a vision, you have enough skill to strap the guitar on you. isn't that what we learned from punk rock or garage rock or whatever? So that gave me a lot of permission to move forward and try and be an artist, a musician, without necessarily having crazy chops, without having gone to Berkeley and knowing all my modes and scales and Mixal Lydon.

Berkeley School of Music, yeah. In Boston. And no shade at all to that. We frequently talk about it. But what matters is ideas and execution of those ideas your entire life will always be improving. So Dave shows up with his metal guitar background. He listens to the song, and he plays this. This is the best part.

That's the metal right there. That's Metallica, literally. That is all, he's playing underneath that riff. I hear Sunset Boulevard. I hear night's... I hear knights racing into guitar center to grab that chord. This could be a rat B-side or a Motley crew, A-side. Totally.

Absolutely. I hear guy liner. A lot of guy-liners. You hear that in that side. Yeah, I hear all that in that. know what it is metal. I was trying to think of where is the line between metal and hard rock? I think that this song is not a metal song, but it has a metal guitar, literally because the sound, the amount of distortion, the pedals he's going through takes it from, I guess, maybe the Queen Led Zeppelin

Hard Rock Zone into the metal zone is once you get a certain past the six on the dial on the distortion pedal or something. But it's that metal sheen, that sort of high-end metal sheen. Record this, record that riff on some slightly older equipment and a Steppenwolf. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And let me give that to you in the mix a little bit. I'll bring back some other instruments. Here are the drums.

And that slow tempo. Coming down to mountain. Right? Because you'd almost expect the drums to go, Dono, don't know, don't. That's why I thought about step. Right. You'd expect it to be 160 BPM, but we're half time.

We're in 80. And it gives it more of a groove, slow. It gives it more of maybe a heroin vibe, which is a little bit what the song's about will be getting into. So one more section for the guitar is that. that B section and I'll do the same thing. I'll play what Dave is playing and then I'll build back some of the other instruments. Here is Dave in that D major, that beautiful D major. By the way, there's some extras which in the stems is part of the joy of the show is the stuff that's so buried in the

mix that you might not have noticed it when you were listening to the song. But there's some shakers and there's even a piano. And it evokes another song to me. I'll play it for you and tell me if you hear what I'm doing. Okay. So here is, I'll play you the shaker and the piano and everything. and I'll sort of show you contextually where it is. I'll put the bass in first. Do you hear the Rolling Stones a little bit? Yeah. Sympathy for the devil.

Yeah, I was just about to go, woo-hoo! Right? Yeah, totally. Woo! Slow down. Yeah, we'll slow it way down. And there's also an acoustic guitar in there, if you can hear it. I mean, it's so interesting because this song comes out, you know, in 88.

That to me is still like peak sort of like cocaine 80s. fast kind of music and everything. But like these kids, they're dressing alternate, like he's got dreads. One guy's kind of looks sort of hippie-ish, you know, like they look. Again, they look like they're in four different bands. They look like in sound like they're not doing a lot of booze and coke, even though Navarro says that there was plenty of that around. Their main thing is heroin.

Yeah. And so they're, like you said, they're not speeding up. They're slowing down. Yeah, it's slower. Once the Cape Moss 1990s explodes. Yeah. that's going to have even more of effect on the music, on the sound. You've heard everything but the vocals.

But before we got there, Dave's beautiful solo, which, according to legend, is part of why he got the gig, playing the solo on this song. Here is the solo isolated, and you'll hear a lot of really interesting stuff swirling around. Oh, wow. So he's playing with a lot of delay, and there's a very Hendricks.

There's a Jiminess to it. I was just going to say, it's so Hendricks. It's so Hendricks. It's an expressive sound almost more than the, than the actual notes or being technically like, you know, like Inouye, like he says. But, you know, again, like like Sycom, like so much of the other stuff that was happening on the LA scene back then, I feel like the 60s had an outsized influence on the LA scene, especially of the late 80s and early 90s.

Like it was almost unavoidable. But it's almost interesting that you say that because there's almost the layers of 60s nits post-Manson, post the hippie disappointment becoming yuppies. So it's filtered through the late 80s. it's a version that has the cynicism built into it. It has the darkness built into it. It has all the stuff that at the time we may not have known about in 1967 that later became clear is absolutely baked into this.

And I'm really becoming interested in that. It's come up in the last few episodes, this idea of how it is different when you bring in previously existing genres and sounds at a later date. They invariably bring with them what came after. Whatever was happening in the culture at that time. And therefore it is different in its new context. You can't create the music of it. year without considering the cultural, you know, me.

Right. It's going to be different. It's going to be completely different. Yeah. Let's get into some peripheral vocals, peripheral vocals. I think you kind of kind of start at the beginning. It's got one of those classic introductions. Some say that coming down the mountain is one of the greatest, you know,

lyrical beginnings to any rock song. Oh my God. It's incredible. It's exactly what that moment needs. I love how messy that is. And do you notice how that first line is chaos and dirt and. My first question is, is that all parry on coming down the mound or is that the other band members? What do we know?

That's all parry. And it's very importantly, it's a couple of things. One, I mentioned that Jordan was the one that they chose because he understood the vision of let it be messy. Let it be imperfect. Let it sound a little live. And what we just heard in that first half, interestingly, the second half, it cleans up a little bit. But that first bit, it's multi-tracked. It's multiple notes.

It's harmonies that kind of don't necessarily cohere in like a church kind of, you know, root, third, fifth kind of way. It's not, it's not coming from the duop perspective. It's not coming from the duop perspective at all. It feels very spontaneous. Yeah. And by the way, James Murphy talks about doing the same thing too. He'll go in and he'll sing a line and then he'll go back and sing a harmony that he hasn't thought about whether it mixes. And that gives it that more spontaneous thing. Sure. So we're hearing that. But another thing we're hearing that I really want to point out because it's important. And Perry added something to his repertoire, which is really unusual for vocalists. He brought in this idea of live looping or live delay pedal.

So he literally had a rack mount of a guitar player's delay. And that'll come up as an important factor in a second. Here's a quote from Perry. I noticed as a singer that no one was really using effects the same way guitar players were. So to add to the party, I began to develop the art of dubbing vocals. So when he's on stage and I saw this live and it changed my life too because I was like, oh my God, as a singer, he would sing a line and then he would go over to this device and manipulate what he just saying.

the delay would be delaying, but then he would sort of scoop up the delay and turn it into a weird loop. Kind of like a guitar player, kind of like what we just heard Dave doing with some of the notes he played. Like there's a sustain to the note and then you bend it and then you use the whammy pedal, then you maybe put your guitar in front of the speaker and play with feedback. There's a lot of stuff that guitar players can do and Perry realize, oh wait, vocalists can do that too. So another example of that is in the very beginning, I'll play you a little moment before those vocals come in and you can really hear it. You hear that repeating thing.

That's Perry taking his own vocal. That's Perry using his own voice as an instrument, both in the real-time moment of singing a note. But then after that note is sung, he's like scientist or at least scratch Perry or Teen Tubby, dubbing it out. I love that. I can't believe more people don't do it. I can't believe.

The human voice is such a great instrument. And I feel like there are other Peripheral songs where he does a lot of scatting. Yeah, exactly. He uses his voice as an instrument, whether he's using the, effects pedal or just sort of thinking, I'm making sound. It doesn't have to be a lyric or a note. Right. A lot of hooks, a lot of his hooks, too, are, they seem like they're very spontaneous, just communication animal noises almost, right? I like it because, you know, when you hear something that you feel like was like the artist really having fun, really creating in the studio,

you get excited. Like, you start feeling like, oh, man, you know, like it's the reason why a lot of us aside, I can do this one day, you know. They really recognize the importance of spontaneity and imperfection. I don't think they did a lot of. lot of takes, but I do think they used a lot of what wasn't perfect. They just left it in to give it more humanity and more of that kind of artsy, for lack of a better word, artsy feel. So here's a question for you. Is this the chorus? This is a song that may or may not really have a proper sing-along chorus. I guess it's truly. Yeah. I mean, if there is a course, I think it's probably the cash-in, isn't it? Let's listen to a couple of choices. Is this the chorus? Because that's it. That's all that's

happening during that four-bar, ostensibly the D major, which is the chorus. I'll give you in the context. Or is this the chorus, the thing that comes right after? Cashin now. Maybe it's this. And you hear him harmonizing and you hear him kind of talking. Cashin now, baby. You hear that at the bottom of it.

Veal's very spontaneous, very free-flowing. I think this song doesn't really have a chorus. And that's maybe part of the Jane's Addiction story is they make it pretty far in terms of becoming kings of the underground. and they are on MTV and they have And there is structure, but you know, it makes me think about does Jane says really have a chorus? Yeah, got to kick tomorrow.

I'm going to kick tomorrow feels like it's the chorus, but then when he comes back to Jane says it's literally a refrain. So like literally a repeated thing. Right. But I don't know if there's a proper course for it. But does it get to pop radio? Not in the same way that later on you would have Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana, kind of knocking it out of the part with what the radio kind of craves,

which is a repeatable, you know, lengthy. Sometimes, of course, at the beginning in old school Beatles style. Yeah, totally. It doesn't lack for it from my perspective. I love this song, but it is, I think, a little bit a part of why this record sold 200,000 copies and not 2 million copies. It's almost, it reminds me of Lil Wayne's a millie, which we always say doesn't really have a chorus, but it has that bed of, oh, Millie, oh, Millie, and that's the hook. That sort of brings you through the whole song. Right. Let me ask you this. As a Jane's Addiction fan, what do you think these lyrics mean?

What is this song about? So I've given that some thought. There's a few things that are, I think, kind of obvious about, you know, lyrically. I think one of them being the drug connection. You know, she talks about coming down the mountain, first of all, coming down from the high. And then I met a child she had pin eyes. Yeah, I think for the un-initiated pin eyes is slang for having very small pupils, which means that you are on drugs. Yeah, probably.

There's also the line cash in. And I found a quote, Perry said, an interview in 1988 in BAM magazine. Do you remember BAM magazine? I miss BAM. I miss BAM too. You get that free music magazine on the corner next to the Tower Records. He said, Cashin now means do it now, don't let anything stop you. I look at Life like, I do what I want, and some things are illegal.

That's a very Perry Farrell quote. That does sound like him. But the last thing, and I only just recently learned this in an interview that Perry gave, very recently, where he talks about that line and then the line that comes after, Cashin, Miss Smith. And he revealed, to my knowledge, for the first time that Ms. Smith was, his mother's maiden name. Oh, man.

And when I read, when I, when I saw that interview and I just kind of froze in my chair because it goes back to this like his personal story. I didn't know that until you just said it. And I was going to say the line, you know, the only line that I would even attempt to try and say, oh, I thought that meant this. Cash and now, honey. Yeah. You know, it could go any number of ways.

And I think it's meant to have multiple meanings to your point. Yeah. I mean, to me, that was almost like him saying like his mom saying like, hey, you want a rock go on and and cash in oh that's beautiful yeah like kind of permission giving him permission maybe her that's really sweet yeah because i lost my mom too and one of the last things she said to me was um you know you're gonna be fine and i think sometimes you need that yeah you know i hear that i get tears thinking about the paris the his line she was an artist just as you are i would have introduced you to her i mean that's that's the other line that's we are a mess in the city

All it took was one mention of mothers who aren't here. Yeah, I hear you, man. The beauty of this band is it evokes these emotions. To this day, decades after hearing this music. And for you, I mean, I'm so sorry about your mom. Almost 80, but definitely not long enough. Yeah, I hear you about it. Yeah, I mean, it's so poignant when he talks about her.

You can tell he's choking back his own emotions. But he said he talks about the story of him. he was only three, but in retrospect, kind of thinking back to learning what he learned that she was being cheated on by his father. She found out about it. She took her own life. He said, she was in love with my dad and my dad was not faithful to her and it broke her heart and she was very desperate and she did something that I know she regrets. And what you just said about him, I think communicating, getting communication from her, I think really does come through in this line of your song. What better medium to try and work those issues out than through our

Well, actually, you've hit it at some tension going on to the band around credits, around songwriting splits. So tell us a little bit more about what's going on there. Well, this show was called One Song. Every week we talk about how songwriting is not math, but there's math required in order to pay people and how it often has consequences for those bands. And boy, is this a story of that? Eric Avery says it was an unstated thing that it operated like a partnership until it started to take a off. And in my, when I hear that line, I think back to the story of the two of them meeting, being in the garage coming up with this song, Mountain Song, and there's nobody else around. And that's the origin of the song, which as we heard in the demo didn't really change that dramatically till the final product. However, apparently what happened was Perry called a meeting to talk about the publishing. His lawyer apparently, he tells-

Not ever a fun group meeting. This is not a fun group meeting. And by the way, I've got the perspectives of a number of the band members here because I don't think it's an easy answer. I think I went into this episode seeing the splits which will reveal in just a second and being like man this is unfair and it's so obvious and I've come out of it feeling like man this still feels unfair but man this is tricky tricky business however you want to slice it so yeah Perry Farrell's lawyer explained to him how publishing splits work right learned that he bit the apple of knowledge because prior to that they're just in this band they're a band of four dudes making this music on the scene don't having fun. There's no money to be spoken of, but suddenly there is. And so he learns how,

and in Perry's words, different bands do differently. And he's thinking, well, I'm writing the lyrics, the melody and the music, according to him. I guess that, I don't know what that means since he's not playing instruments. But I don't want to be one of those bands where the other guys get no publishing. So in his mind, he's being a hero, that he's not taking everything. Oh, I like where this is right. Right. I want everybody to have some. Like, I'm being a hero. Exactly. He goes, I want everyone to have some even if they didn't write anything. Let's just say I wrote all of a song. Once I get into rehearsal, they're writing too. They're being creative. So they should get some too. So that's, that's Perry's brain going into the numbers that he comes up with. So Perry Farrell is 60% of the publishing

royalties on the song, Mountain Song. And Eric, Adam Avery, gets 13.36%. As do his bandmates David Navarro and Stephen Andrew Perkins. So Perry's like, I'm taking 60, you all split the 40. In his mind, because he wrote the lyrics and melody, the top line, 50% right off the bat. And because he participated in the music as well, wasn't necessarily playing it. Can I say what also is annoying about that? Three does not go into 40. So all of a sudden, you got some weird numbers in there. You got that like 3.33333 into infinity.

That's extra mean. I did oversimplify. Perry Farrell technically gets 59.94%. Oh, now I can't do the math. And Steve Perkins gets 13.35%. So it is a little bit gross in there with that. Just go off into infinity or is at a hard number. That's all like that.

Right. There's a, there's a bar on top of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a pretty major split, especially given what we know about Eric and Perry starting the song together. I know. And Eric probably be having that baseline before Perry showed his face. That's right.

Well, Eric says things were never really the same after that. I was saying, I think we- meetings that ruin everything. Yeah, I mean, he was saying, I think we should all have the same. We did technically break up for a day or two. So this meeting is the beginning of the next chapter, where the band that we, you know, those three albums start to be like the canonical band.

Eric is the first to go. We're going to get into the legacy in just a second. But clearly this is a conversation that changes the nature of the power dynamic. And maybe the motivation and incentive to continue in a situation that doesn't super feel fair. So guys got a house that's worth three or four or five times in the same room as you singing the same songs. That doesn't always feel good.

He goes on to say, I wanted the publishing to be split equally among everybody because I believe in the U2 model where no one. is changing his lifestyle dramatically over anybody else. But suddenly Perry wanted 50% for writing the lyrics, plus another portion of the remaining 50 for the music. I was going to bat, this is Eric, more for Stephen and David, because I'm sure I could have gotten a much larger percentage. We were stunned. We all ended up getting 12.5%. And he goes on to say, famously, Dave played one of our shows wearing a shirt that said 12% in terms of being kind of, that was the amount that was left for him in Perry's system. So there was a little bit of a like,

so even at that point on stage, the tension is already starting to develop as a basis of this conversation, of this unfair split. And it's not just with the members of the band where this tension around money is happening because we want to talk about another unsung hero with the band. We're talking about the

artist Casey Nicoli, who dated Perry Farrell starting way back in 1983. She's responsible for a lot of their iconic stuff. You know, she posed for and co-created the sculptures on the cover of their albums. Nothing shocking. And ritual did La Hibitual, which is a hard thing for me to say, I'm going to call it

ritual from here on, as well as directing the videos for Ben Caught Stealing. Classic Girl, Stop, which you just mentioned, and Ocean Size. Her style and creativity was essential to the band's image. You know, I don't think she's being, you know, self-aggrandizing when she's saying that the Jane's Addiction we know would not be, if not for this amazing, talented female artists and I just you know I was I will say that as a guy who was going into record stores in the early 90s even before I knew the sound of Jane's addiction yeah nothing shocking shocked me you know like I'm just talking about the album the album art yeah gets a reaction ritual yeah it's with its it stands out

in the culture in the world a hundred percent and she's still an artist and she talks about it an article that uh that I read and she says that you know I'm not the artist that I was when I was making that with Perry, but we were very much a team and we helped carved and create these things together. I think in the same way Perry's in the room with these musicians and it's like, where does one idea begin at the other end? The same between the two of them as a couple clearly is they're having conversations. They're going to change the world. Perry is trying on Casey's clothes and then she wears them on stage and suddenly they're Perry's clothes. Somebody said it. They were like, you know, when you're first starting out, the band's stylist is each, you know, each guy's girlfriend. Yeah.

Or like one, you know, like, to this day, like, for a reason. Yeah. Post. My wife picked out the sweater. Post David Bowie, that's how it works. Once David Bowie existed from them, that point forward, all girlfriends of guys in bands where they were the stylist. And they often don't get, you know, any, any points, so to speak.

Absolutely. And specifically Casey Nicolie, we think got, gets a little bit robbed in terms of the public perception of her contribution to this band's aesthetic, even some of the names and lyrics and album titles, which she apparently came up with. So in 1990. 93, she and Perry broke up after years of drug use and art and arting. Active arting. But there's one quote that I wanted to put out there that she laid out.

She said, I knew if I stayed, I was going to die. Desperate and homeless, I settled for a small sum of money out of court to compensate me for work I was never paid for. Money that barely lasted a year. Don't we know about that? In return, I signed away all rights to profit from the art or any future profits related to band. That sort of... Clearly, she was in a desperate situation and signed what was put in front of her that had a dollar amount. That to me is coercive. There's such a power dynamic. There's such a power dynamic. Right. And she's... Lala Palooza is on year two or three blowing up. Whatever happened seems pretty

unfair to my eyes and ears looking back on it. But you know, she is still an artist and she still is out there. So if listeners want to check out whatever she's got going on right now, I think that's clean and sober. She's thriving. Her Instagram I just subscribe to. Like I, we wish her well. What an incredible artist and she's part of this story. Tears after the release of nothing shocking, the band released their follow-up Ritual DeHillabitual. They embark on a 13-month tour in support of the record, but the drug use gets out of control and they start basically thinking about breaking the band up. Farrell says that 13-month tour behind ritual was half the reason we wound up unable to

stand one another. The other half is that I'm an intolerable narcissist who can't get along with anyone. Look, if someone is an intolerable narcissist, but they say they're an intolerant narcissist, it actually diminishes the intolerableness of their narcissism. No, it might be they're intolerable, but very honest. They're a tolerable narcissist at that point. This breakup eventually leads to perhaps their biggest cultural imprint on the world today, which is Lollapalooza.

It was originally created in 1991, put together as Perry Farrell as a sort of farewell tour for Jay's addiction, but it also showcased other bands in the alternative music scene at the time, as well as some really unpredictable hip-hop influence, folk funk, like, It was such a crazy mixture of things. I went to see the first two. You went to see the first one? I went to the second one. But I appreciate the fact that they included bands like, you know,

living color, not to be confused with the show in living color, living color, like, you know, these other bands that- Body count, Ice T's a punk band, Rockland.

They had, they had, um, Ice T and Body Count. That's right. They had like a real good mixture of, you know, bands that they like,

the LA bands, Fishbone, another huge band, you know, for L.A. Heck, one of my favorite bands, Lush. I have a photograph somewhere in my, I got a, in my archives of me with Lush who I was in love with at Lalo Palooza,

but like that band doesn't, quote, fit in with the ministry and who else was on that tour? Oh, exactly. It's really important, nine-inch nails, which is going to become very big in a moment. Like, you have to put it in its historical context. Bands of different genres didn't typically do stuff together. They were friends. They knew each other, but they thought that the people, if you show up for a Sisters of Mercy show, it should be all bands that sound like.

That's a lesson that Perry had learned in the LA Underground with all these other bands. Yeah. People were listening to everything. And eventually we all got Apple products and then everything was mixed in together. Now we're back to being the same. Imogenized.

Exactly. And this is interesting enough. At the very first performance of Lollapalooza, Perry and Dave get into a fight on stage with the show eventually ending in Dave throwing his guitar into the crowd. I mean, foreshadow.

They eventually break up. Dave goes on to join the red hot chili peppers from 1993 to 1998. The band mostly reunites in 1997, this time with Flea for the Red Hot Chili Peppers in place of Eric Avery, and they release a compilation kettle whistle with two new songs,

but after that, they're pretty sporadic here and there to release some music. And then among other things, you know, the entourage theme song, superhero. Which I only recently found out. Like now I'm like, oh, that's clearly Perry Farrell's voice. All this time I was thinking that was probably like, you know, like Mark Wahlberg's friend

who was like, I got a song, and it's kind of Hollywoody. Yeah, it's a fine song. It's James Addiction Mark 2, though. It's not the canonical band. No. By the way, do you know what the name of Perry Farrell's publishing company is? Like when you look on the record label, you know, what is it? It's all hit you back music. That seems like a man who wants to be a beautiful. Yeah, I mean, look, he's obviously telling us something about like what happens when you mess with him.

Yeah. Oh, my God. Well, that brings us to this unfortunate moment we're experiencing right now, which is really heartbreaking for us, Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro and Steve Perkins and Eric Avery fans and James addiction fans, which is that just a few months ago in Boston, September 13th, a Friday the 13th, that will live in infamy among the fans. You know, we've all seen the footage. I mean, they just gotten back together. They reunited the original lineup. Touring with love about releasing new music. Touring with Love and Rockets. Daniel Ash, another unsung hero of this band's story. David Jay Haskins, reach out. We're big fans. Yeah, we love you guys. They're playing ocean

size on stage. And if you haven't watched the footage, what basically happens, And there's a lot of deconstructing based on different, you know, perspectives. But after Perry, what seems like flipped out on Dave Navarro, it seems like he's yelling at him. He's swearing at him. It seems like he's frustrated about something related to noise. Can I just say he looks like a guy who probably went sober, but then decided to get back on drugs when they went on tour? That feels like what happened. And there was a great podcast, Beantown Beatdown, which the sound guy who broke up the fight was talking about his

perspective. He's the guy in the video who takes Perry and pushes him away from Dave. And he's the sound person. He's there for years being part of this touring family. So his insight was significant to me. It should be mentioned that Eddie Lau Farrell accused Eric Avery, the bass player of pummeling Perry. So she goes on Instagram and sort of defending her husband understandably. But yeah, we saw the video. I wouldn't even call that pummeling. I think it's pummeling. I think it's breaking up a person who's obviously not in his right mind. And Dave, by the way, looks so. sideswipe. It's so, my heart breaks like a little puppy who's disappointed.

What are you doing? It's like his older brother beating him up and like, why are you still doing this? I thought we were friends again. The bottom line is that it seems to be related to, as you suggest, substance issues. I mean, it looks that way. I mean, like, I don't know. We don't know. We don't know.

This doesn't seem to be the peri-ferral that we all know and love. We don't know what's happening in his life. It's a lot of stress. But the bottom line is it doesn't seem like Jane's addiction. Is it going concern right now? So Diallo, knowing that we probably won't be hearing again from James Diction for quite some time, what do you think is the legacy of Mountain Song and the band? I think the band has its catalog to speak for itself.

I mean, even though I wasn't a contemporary fan of the group, I later became a fan. I think I actually went back and discovered even more Jane's Addiction after being exposed. Thanks again to MTV, being exposed to porn for piros. Their song, Pets, just a really cool song. Fine song. Cute. that I love that. It was almost like, now that I know more about their history, it was almost like Perry going back to the psychedelic underground years of his early, like, you know, really making something very psychedelic, very 60s and sort of unironically beautiful. Yeah. And by the way, with a proper chorus per se, I mean, like, you know, we'll make great parts. What do you think is the legacy of Mountain Song? I mean, like I said, I'm still sitting in this moment post Boston Brawl, where the legacy of this song and this band to me personally, um, You know, one thing it's important to remember is that at this time, there was a little bit of an oversimplification, but there was some degree of like mainstream and everything else.

Yeah. I was listening to an interview recently with Perry Farrell talking to Daniel Ash from 11 Rockets. And the two of them were talking about, and this language really struck me. They were talking about like the jocks as a term representing the mainstream. And I think to this day, they still think of themselves as like the not the jocks. So that binary of like you're either the radio, the mainstream, the jocks, or you're this sort of. David Bowie fan underground and we all kind of know each other and there's lots of eclectic bands but like it's an us versus them thing before there were lots of sub genres and you know multiple

scenes there was almost kind of like one scene in Los Angeles it seems so what I'm struck by is how far we've come from that I'm not sure if it's a bad or good thing but it's just really different right now I'm not sure that there is a mainstream in quite the same way that they're used to be no it's very hard we talk about this all the time it's very hard to find shared culture in society nowadays, even shared facts. So it was a simpler time. It was a simpler time. And the legacy of this band is they represent that moment before everything, I think,

transformed really in a major way culturally. Well, look, if nothing else, we can say that they were a very important part of the LA scene as L.A. being a home for artists. Yeah. And I hope despite COVID and, you know, strikes. and fires and everything else is coming along. I hope that LA continues to be a place where the dispossessed and the, you know, the talented and the outsiders still come to create great art and great music.

Well said. Okay, luxury. It's time for one more song. This is the segment where we share a deep cut or a hidden gym with you, the One Song Nation, and with each other sometimes. Hey, you go first. All right. Well, this song has been on repeat for me for the last two months.

This band is called Magdalena Bay. It made a lot of end of the year 2024 best of lists, but I have not been able to stop listening to this song. It's called Image. That line, oh my God, just pops into my head constantly recently.

Listen, I admit, I've been busy doing some stuff. I did not know Magdalena Bay and I did not know this song. But Image, I really like that. That's a great tune. What about you, Diallo? What do you got for me this week? My one more song is by an artist,

A.J. Tracy. This is Dinner Guest featuring most I love me as a den against you I love it I'm not a winnie yet I love it because it's got that sample of push the feeling on by night crawlers I hear what you're hearing

is it I just want to make sure it's a sample or an interpola or a replay You know what? Because these days The replays are getting so good because it's the smart solution to not out of your pay so much for a sample You pay less for an interpolation

Basically half Basically half because you're not paying the master just to publishing. So let's listen. But I love it anytime that, you know, hip hop. And this is British hip hop. But anytime that, you know, hip hop samples some of my favorite house, I'm a sucker for that. So that's A.J. Tracy, dinner guest featuring MoStack. Right.

And that sample from the night crawlers push the feeling. We discussed this, not just the song, but the sound, that organ sound, that distinctive don't, that patch on the M1 keyboard, which is also used in Beyonce's Break My Soul, among others. On the Beyonce episode from last year, go check that out. We'll have a big deep dive about that sound. Archives are fun. We have really great archives, guys. As always, if you have an idea for one more song, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok and DM us. You can find me on Instagram at Dialla, D-L-L-O, and on TikTok at Dialla Roodle.

And you can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-X-U-R-Y and on other platforms at L-U-X-X-U-S. You can find us for now on TikTok. Oh, boy. And big news, everybody. One song officially has its own Instagram. Yes. For now, TikTok account. Yes!

Go follow at One-Song podcast for exclusive content and all the music debates that you love. You can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube right now. Just search for One Song podcast. We'd love it if you like and subscribe. And if you've made it this far, I think that means you like this podcast. So please don't forget to give us five stars. Leave a review. Share it with someone you think would like the show.

It really helps keep us going. Luxury help us in this thing. Well, I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist, luxury. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle. And this is one song. We'll see you next time. This episode is produced by Casey Simonson with engineering from Marcus Homm and Eric Hicks, additional production support from Razak Blaken.

The show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stom. Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Wyle, and Leslie Guam.