Jane’s Addiction – Nothing’s Shocking
I remember I first heard it in 12th grade, like the last year of high school, and I remember how it started, with that little introduction: "yeaaahhhhaawwwweeeeeuuuwwee" [yelps the intro to ‘Up The Beach’ down the phone] with all the echo and shit on it, and I remember thinking "well, I guess I’m moving out of home and starting to do drugs!". That signalled such a huge change for me – and Ritual De Lo Habitual too, I guess, to a certain extent – but Nothing’s Shocking man, everything changed. As soon as I heard ‘Ocean Size’ my whole life fucking changed, it was like this song was the song that I’d been waiting to hear because up until that point I was really into technical shit – like I liked Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Tony Macalpine and Vinnie Moore and all these awesome guitar players – but it was so regimented and when I heard that and Perry Farrell’s voice, it was the same thing that I liked about K.K. Downing, it was this out of tune thing that just didn’t give a shit – it was like, "no, it’s out of tune. And not only is it out of tune, we’re going to put 20 seconds of echo on it so everybody knows that we don’t give a fuck".

Nothing’s Shocking was really such a huge deal to me man; I remember my first car; I painted the logo on the side of the car and all this shit! And then when I fell out of love with Jane’s Addiction I fell out of love immediately, it lasted for like a year and a half. Ritual…? Yeah, I still dug it – I thought ‘Three Days’ was a fucking amazing song – but then when Porno For Pyros came out I was like "oh shit, I’m over it, this does nothing for me". But at the same time, y’know, you’re out of school, you’re living with a girl or some shit, and you need at soundtrack, right?