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."
starshine when you gonna find me
starshine, they ain't gonna find me
starshine when you gonna find me
starshine, never gonna find me
stand easy with my self, with myself
jumping up, i'm low, low, low, low
show me down
starshine, they ain't gonna find me
starshine when you gonna find me
starshine, never gonna find me
stand easy with my self, with myself
jumping up, i'm low, low, low, low
show me down
Lyrics submitted by shut
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Mountain Song
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Sunglasses at Night
Corey Hart
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In the 1980s, sunglasses were a common fashion for people who wanted to adopt a "tough guy" persona (note all the cop shows from that era -- Simon & Simon, Miami Vice, etc. -- where the lead characters wore shades). So I think this song is about a guy who wears shades as a way of hiding his insecurity after learning that his girlfriend is cheating on him. He's trying to pretend that he's a "tough guy" to hide the fact that his girlfriend's affair is disturbing him.
the first time I heard this song it was like 11 pm and I got so creeped out. Especially cuz I live really close to a big shopping mall, and its light drowns out the starshine. starshine never does find me. and it's so messed up, cuz it's like that all over. You can't see the freaking stars. Starshine never does find us. I don't even know what the big dipper looks like. and if you do see a star, you dont even know if it is a star, or if it's a satalite.
Really hard for me to explain, so bare with me: In terms of depression, it could refer to life feeling like an empty, black sky with nothing really worthwhile in it. The stars are like the friends and family who help you through it all, and just anything that helps keep you going. But there aren't even any stars out in this person's world. It's just pitch black, without even starshine to light his way - he can't find his way out, and no one can find or help him. He just feels way too deep into it to think he there's a hope of making it out. With the 'jumping up' line, that could also be a failed attempt to get out of this depression, but only ends up showing him how low, alone and insignificant he is. I'm not sure about the line "stand easy with my self, with myself" though. Maybe something about how it's easier to be by himself than actually being with someone else? Or him not admitting he needs help, trying and failing to help himself. I really don't know, just pulling that out of the air, lol. I think the simple, rambling nature of the song also shows how numb, overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted this person is, it's like they can barely even function anymore. Like when you're so overwhelmed with an emotion you're practically speechless.
I feel like a bit of a wanker writing all this about a song that's like 7 lines long, but oh well, lol. It's a bloody good song. Haunting.
@violent_midget I think the mood of the song tends to give credence to such an interpretation ... is very eerie!
@violent_midget I see it in a similar way. I felt it from the first moment I heard it in the documentary "bananaz".<br /> At first, vaguely, I thought of the past, one not so distant for me, adolescence. People who come and go from our lives, the banality of the moments lived, everything seemed to matter so little. Time passed, burning every moment of the present, almost like a cut to these days.<br /> Then, after thinking more about it, I began to relate it to my existential problems that I've carried since that time. I always thought, that a solution would emerge eventually. That a path was simply going to emerge and I'd just have to take it.<br /> "Starshine", the stars we all rise to see, I interpret it as the hope that this light will guide my path, that it will help me find reasons.<br /> "Never gonna find me", time passed, this light seems to never come. And I begin to accept, that it will never find me. Because I learned that these kinds of answers don't work with me, they don't alleviate my existential conflict.<br /> It leaves me no choice but to assume this absurdity. Assume it, but not let myself be consumed by it, because although this absurdity surrounds the whole damned existence, I know with all certainty that I have myself in this chaos, and I intend to cling to that security, to cling to my own hope. "Stand easy with myself, oh myself", "Jumping up and low low low", and it's not about looking ahead and thinking positive. It's about recognizing these miseries, learning to live with them, to cling to what really matters to us.
seriously darkpop, you need to realize that although lots of songs are about drugs, there a quite a lot more of them that are not. This song, for example is most definitely about a bout with self-loathing, and general disgust with the world around him (2-D), and drugs may or may not be part of his exit from the corporeal. And your friend was probably lit to begin with.
lol @ about a bout. Good observations btw.
I think he is lamenting the fact that he lives in a smogged out hood and never gets to see the stars, this has a connection to the Jumping low bit too, as stars are often symbolism of something to reach for, wish upon, aim for, ect..
This could also very well be about magic dust in gladd bags though....cause if youre any kind of artist you know that the most successful approach to every song is complexly hidden metaphor for drug use and that doesnt bother your intellectual integrity one bit, nope!
^_^
@elwoood13 Starshine must be my favorite of all. First time I heard it was very late at night, I was 10 years old (year of the album release) and my brother was playing Metal Gear Solid on Playstation in the dark and cold winter night. I also got pretty creeped out. This constant "White Noise" and this opacity where no gamma rays or any sort of light can't go through, desolate snowy land, steril and barren landscape, absorbing and swallowing the slightest spark of joy or phosphorescent pigment. A monochromatic sky a pernicious blizzard. You can't scream, the sound will be annihilated. Anyway, it's a forgotten area where you're all alone. Like an Arctic explorer who'll never be able to get rescued...
When damon albarn (which is the genius behind gorillaz) was the frontman of britpop band Blur, he got so famous that he couldn't take it anymore, so he made gorillaz where he could hide behind cartoon characters and that's what this song is about. Him saying: "starshine (the press and all the fame) they never gonna find me"
"Starshine" must be my favorite of all. First time I heard it was very late at night, I was 10 years old (year of the Gorillaz album release) and my brother was playing Metal Gear Solid on Playstation in a dark and very cold winter night. I also got creeped out. This constant "White Noise" and the opacity where no gamma rays or any sort of light can't go through, desolate snowy land, sterile and barren landscape, absorbing and swallowing the slightest spark of joy or phosphorescent pigment. A monochromatic sky and a pernicious blizzard. Idf you scream, the sound will be annihilated. Anyway, it's a forgotten area where you're all alone. Like an Arctic explorer who'll never be able to get rescued...
This song makes me fall asleep
one of @D's most personal songs
one of 2D's most personal songs
...yes....its so depressing....and yet...in some way,it makes me fell less-depressed....(i guess its juzt tha fact that im listenin' ta gorillaz and that ALWAYS makes one feel better..) ^.~