Nothing's Shocking

Warner Bros. Records gave Jane's Addiction a list of producers to choose from. The band's frontman, Perry Farrell, appreciated Dave Jerden's work as engineer on David Byrne and Brian Eno's album, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Jerden said he "jumped" at the chance to work with the group.[6] "I had a demo tape of 18 songs," Jerden recalled, "and I listened to it every night all summer. I picked nine songs from the tape and put them in an order. And then I said to the band, 'Let's do these nine songs. You'll rehearse them in this order, and we'll record them in this order.' And that's what we did."[7]

During the recording sessions, Farrell stated he wanted 50% of the band's publishing royalties for writing the lyrics, plus a quarter of the remaining half for writing music, adding up to 62.5%. Bassist Eric Avery said he and the other members – guitarist Dave Navarro and drummer Stephen Perkins – were stunned by these demands.[8] One day Jerden drove to the studio to find Farrell, Navarro, and Perkins leaving; Farrell told him the band had broken up and there would be no record. Warner Bros. called an emergency meeting to resolve the situation. Farrell received the percentage he sought, and the other members received 12.5% each. Avery said the incident had a profound effect on the band, creating an internal fracture.[9]

Not long after the royalties dispute, Farrell and Avery – who had cofounded the band – had a falling out. This was the result of Avery's newfound sobriety as well as an incident in which Farrell believed Avery had drunkenly tried to pick up his girlfriend. "Unfortunately," Farrell recalled, "the tensions between Eric and I affected the whole family. Some people were asked to take sides, and others just moped about because they didn't know what was going on."[10] Perkins, however, is reported to have got along with Navarro, Avery, and Farrell.[11]

The writing process varied from song to song. "Some came from Eric's bass lines," noted Navarro, "some from guitar, some came from Perry, some came from drum riffs, and some just came from free-form jams. There was really no formula." Avery wrote several songs, including "Mountain Song", "Had a Dad", "Jane Says", and "Summertime Rolls" (the latter two of which he also created the guitar parts for). For his songs, Avery came up with lyrical concepts that Perry Farrell would create lyrics for; for example, "Had a Dad" dealt with Avery discovering he had a different biological father.[12]

"Jane Says" and "Pigs in Zen", which first appeared on the band's self-titled 1987 debut, were rerecorded for Nothing's Shocking. The later version of "Jane Says" features a steel drum while the spoken interlude in "Pigs in Zen" is completely different.

"Mountain Song" – originally released in 1986 on the soundtrack for the film Dudes – was also rerecorded. Musically similar to the original, it is sung in a higher key, to be consistent with the rest of the record. The 1986 original saw a more widespread release when it was included on the band's 1997 outtake/alternate/live and new compilation Kettle Whistle.

Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea played trumpet on "Idiots Rule".[13]

Farrell created the cover image, which features a sculpture of nude female conjoined twins on a rocking chair with their heads on fire. He hired Warner Bros. employees to create the sculpture, but – after learning how to create sculptures by watching them closely – fired them and created the artwork himself.[14] "The idea came from a dream I had," he recalled. "There were these two women swinging back and forth. They were joined at the hip and shoulder, and their hair was on fire. I just went from there, and [girlfriend] Casey [Niccoli] assisted me. We had a fellow come and do a plaster body-casting of her, then we made the twins' hair and head gear from pipe cleaners. You'll notice the chair rocks from side to side, as opposed to back and forth, so we had to have that made specially. We also went shopping for fake eyeballs."[15]

Owing to the cover, nine of the eleven leading record store chains refused to carry Nothing's Shocking. It was issued covered with brown paper.[16]

"Mountain Song" was released as a single; however, MTV refused to air the song's music video owing to a scene containing graphic nudity.[17] Farrell decided to release the video commercially, adding twenty minutes of additional footage to create the Soul Kiss home video.[18]

Lack of airplay on MTV and modern rock radio meant Nothing's Shocking sold only 200,000 to 250,000 copies in its first year of release.[19] By 1998, it had been certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America for shipments of one million copies in the United States.[20]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[4]
Kerrang!	5/5[22]
Los Angeles Times	[23]
NME	7/10[24]
The Philadelphia Inquirer	[25]
Pitchfork	9.3/10[2]
Q	[26]
Rolling Stone	[27]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[28]
The Village Voice	B−[29]

Reviewing Nothing's Shocking for Rolling Stone, Steve Pond praised Jane's Addiction as "the true heir to Led Zeppelin" and called the album "simultaneously forbidding and weighty, delicate and ethereal", while also distinctly more "hardheaded and realistic" in sensibility than Led Zeppelin's music.[27] Los Angeles Times critic Richard Cromelin commented that Jane's Addiction "sounds supremely assured as it alternates its taut, brutal metal alloy with oddly endearing moments of reflection", describing their style as "a bracing throwback to rebellious sources and forces of excess like old Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper".[23] Ken Tucker, writing for The Philadelphia Inquirer, found the album's lyrics incomprehensible in meaning, but viewed them as secondary to the music, which he deemed "first-rate – deceptively slapdash, passionately messy, thoroughly exhilarating."[25] Kerrang!'s Phil Wilding hailed Jane's Addiction as "the second coming" and posited that their innovation would be "understood" over time,[22] while Q's Martin Aston wrote that the band manages to recall acts such as Led Zeppelin and Van Halen without resorting to "the plagiarism that plagues the HM/hard rock genre."[26] Jack Barron of NME credited Jane's Addiction for having "breadth" and concluded that they "come from a town ruled by glam where talent is only mascara deep, but this is no five-year-old's IQ on show here."[24]

At the end of 1988, Nothing's Shocking was voted the 34th best album of the year in The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop critics' poll.[30] The poll's curator, Robert Christgau, was lukewarm toward the record, summarizing Jane's Addiction as "Alice Cooper revisited" while conceding that "if they stick at it like the pros they'll be, they might land an 'Only Women Bleed.'"[29]

In a retrospective review, AllMusic's Greg Prato called Nothing's Shocking a "now classic" album and "a must-have for lovers of cutting-edge, influential, and timeless hard rock."[4] Steve Hochman, writing in the 2004 edition of The Rolling Stone Album Guide, regarded it as an "often stunning" work whose songs juxtapose "slinky Zeppelin thunder with personal/poetic imagery recalling Lou Reed."[28] "Even with all the baggage of prophecy and influence," wrote Ian Cohen of Pitchfork, "Nothing's Shocking lives as a poignant, almost quixotic work of Hollywood imagination".[2] Pitchfork listed it as one of the 1980s' best albums in 2002, ranking it 90th,[31] and in 2018, ranking it 134th.[32] In 2006, Q named it the 32nd best album of the 1980s.[33] Nothing's Shocking was ranked at number 312 on Rolling Stone's 2012 edition of its "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list.[34]

Jane's Addiction

• Perry Farrell – vocals, piano
• Dave Navarro – electric and acoustic guitars
• Eric Avery – bass guitar, acoustic guitar
• Stephen Perkins – drums, percussion

Additional musicians

• Angelo Moore – saxophone
• Flea – trumpet
• Christopher Dowd – trombone

Recording personnel

• Dave Jerden – production, mixing, and recording engineer
• Perry Farrell – production, mixing
• Ronnie S. Champagne – recording engineer
• Andy Harper – recording engineer
• Jeff Piergeorge – second recording engineer
• Steve Hall – mastering (original album)
• Kevin Gray – mastering (2012 remastered album)

Additional personnel

• Perry Farrell – album design, sculpture and photography
• Casey Niccoli – art assistant, photography
• Kevin Westenberg – band photography
• Kim Champagne – art hostess
• Paul Fisher – castings
• Roberta Ballard – production coordinator (2012 remastered album)

Bibliography

• Mullen, Brendan (2005). Whores: An Oral Biography of Perry Farrell and Jane's Addiction. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-81347-5.

• Nothing's Shocking (Adobe Flash) at Radio3Net (streamed copy where licensed)