Jane's Addiction vocalist Perry Farrell gives Adam Reader some heartfelt insight into Jane’s Addiction's hard rock manifesto "Mountain Song", which was the second single from their revolutionary album Nothing's Shocking. Mountain song was first recorded in 1986 and appeared on the soundtrack to the film Dudes starring Jon Cryer. The version on Nothing's Shocking was re-recorded in 1988.
"'Mountain Song' was actually about... I hate to say it but... drugs. Climbing this mountain and getting as high as you can, and then coming down that mountain," reveals Farrell. "What it feels to descend from the mountain top... not easy at all. The ascension is tough but exhilarating. Getting down is... it's a real bummer. Drugs is not for everybody obviously. For me, I wanted to experience the heights, and the lows come along with it."
"There's a part - 'Cash in now honey, cash in Miss Smith.' Miss Smith is my Mother; our last name was Smith. Cashing in when she cashed in her life. So... she decided that, to her... at that time, she was desperate. Life wasn't worth it for her, that was her opinion. Some people think, never take your life, and some people find that their life isn't worth living. She was in love with my Dad, and my Dad was not faithful to her, and it broke her heart. She was very desperate and she did something that I know she regrets."
Beneath a paranoid cluster of falling stars, in the big black belly of the universe, old rotted out lumber and abandoned cars, bring your friends and family, flashlights, tape recorders. Random stacks of letters, pens, postcards unmarked, cellphones smashed and scattered, plastic body parts, acre upon acre, layer upon layer, photographs of jesus, brando, joan of arc, post it notes and stickers glowing in the dark, abstract grids and patterns in the shape of a ladder, how to books on life and why it does not matter, some say radiation, some say divine light, alien invasion, ain't it about time, some great overwhelming nothing humming climb, climb, climb, we have gouged out the ocean with our toxic eyes, shrapnel, prophylactics, expired anti-biotics, empty spray cans, burned out rockets, heaps of soil and stench and garbage, centuries accumulative, death defiant, burning bright, beneath a paranoid cluster of falling stars
Lyrics submitted by modernalgebra
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