For a brief time, Jane’s Addiction were one of the most exciting bands in rock’n’roll.
Just as the rock scene of the 1980s started to feel a bit stagnant with familiar/well established production values and fashions that looked more fabricated than genuine, Jane’s Addiction came along just in time to mix things up again. They moved the focus out of the mainstream and back toward the alternative and dangerous. They bridged the gap between the sameness of the late 1980s and the arrival of Grunge, which started happening more or less as Jane’s Addiction were imploding.
For a short while in the late 1980s/early 1990s they gave rock music a solid kick in the patootie. Their second album and major label debut Nothing’s Shocking certainly made that clear. It rang in a new breed of rock music and a new attitude, just like Guns N’ Roses had done for metal with Appetite For Destruction a year earlier.
Jane’s Addiction’s musical palette was however wider than that of GN’R, drawing from different and more wide-ranging inspirations. They were as much hard rock as art rock; as much Led Zeppelin as they were The Cure as they were PiL. They swung between genres with ease and curiosity, finding their own sound in the process. While managing to be many things, they primarily managed to hone in on their own identity that made them uniquely themselves.
In 1990, they were the darlings of alternative rock as they released their third album Ritual de lo Habitual. Behind the scenes, however, the band had already begun fragmenting. A key reason would be vocalist Perry Farrell’s ongoing drug use, which led to on-stage bust-ups between Farrell and guitarist Dave Navarro. In the end, Navarro and bassist Eric Avery left the band as they could no longer work with the “drug-taking part of the band” (i.e. Farrell and drummer Stephen Perkins).
Still, their music was trailblazing and left its mark. Amongst the people whose minds were blown thanks to Ritual de lo Habitual, you’ll find Alice Cooper. He said, “I can spot traces of other people on this album, us included, but that’s all they are: traces. They were a really original band. This is their peak album, where they really went out on a limb. Sometimes I get so caught up in these songs, I can actually feel the band pushing themselves to their limits. Sometimes I can’t believe how strong it is. I wonder if this will have the same effect on some kid as Chuck Berry had on me …”
Perhaps bands like Jane’s Addiction are destined not for longevity, but to burn brightly for a short time and leave their mark. (They did reunite years later, although the classic line-up would not last.) Ritual de la Habitual was an instant success upon release, selling 500,000 copies within a month. In the US alone it was awarded double platinum, and the singles Been Caught Stealing and Stop! were huge hits.
There was a thought behind how the album was organised. Side 1 (tracks 1-5) are standalone hard-edged rockers, whereas Side 2 (tracks 6-9) are conceptual and in memorial of Farrell’s deceased girlfriend Xiola Blue, who died of a heroin overdose in 1987 at the age of 19. (Previously, the group had been named Jane’s Addiction after Farrell’s roommate at the time of the band’s formation, Jane Bainter, who was also addicted to heroin.)
I originally bought the album on cassette tape, and remember wondering why Side 1 ended with ten minutes of silence. It seemed to me that the album could have been sequenced better to avoid that, but if they wanted Side 2 to stay the way it was they obviously had no choice. The cassette tape had zero liner notes (the innards being completely blank), a trait it shares with the LP and CD, so there wasn’t much info to get that way either.
Primarily, the first Side 2 song Three Days is directly about Xiola Blue. It is a three-part song that meditates on sex, death and rebirth. It is the longest track on the album at nearly eleven minutes, making it a cornerstone of the album. It is also the main song about Xiola Blue, the others being linked while including other themes/concepts.
In looking briefly at the rest of the second side, the following song Then She Did chronicles Farrell’s mother’s suicide when he was four years old. Originally titled Then She Died, it was written in 1987 shortly after the death of Xiola Blue. In the final verse of the song, Perry is asking Xiola to visit his mother in heaven. Navarro would later cite this as one of the reasons they connected, as he lost his own mother when he was 15. “I have memories of us being onstage,” Navarro later said, “and before we played Then She Did Perry would grab me and say. ‘Let’s do this for our moms.’ I still get chills when I think of it.”
The album ends with the hypnotic Of Course, written about life lessons given to him by his brother who held his hands and made him slap himself in the face, and what it inadvertently taught him about predatory behaviour, and Classic Girl, a love song dedicated to Perry’s then girlfriend Casey Niccoli.
In 1986, Xiola Blue travelled to Los Angeles to attend her father’s funeral. While she was there, she ended up staying with Perry Farrell and his partner Casey Niccoli. The song title Three Days refers to the length of her visit. The trio spent three days together experimenting with drugs and sex, which is the basic premise of this song. This was the last time Farrell ever saw her.
The song itself is not about Xiola Blue’s death, as it was written shortly after the events in the song in 1986. Blue died of a heroin overdose in New York City the following year, in June 1987.
The song does however open with a spoken-word bit performed by Farrell which is clearly written in memoriam after her death. Never a band for straight-ahead solutions, the poem audio appears to diverge and sections sound repeated. Only the first part is easy enough to make out.
At this moment you should be with us
Feeling like we do like you love to
But never will again
I miss you my dear Xiola
Transcription of the poem is especially difficult once the music kicks in. While some sections are easier to make out than others, the full set of words has been debated for years, and will likely continue to be until an isolated recording of the voice surfaces.
The song itself goes through several sections and contains three distinct parts, making it a bit of an ‘everything’ song as far as moods and passages.
The introduction is mellow, the soothing bass line leading the band through a melodic, calm verse and chorus. When things pick up, it happens gradually. Slightly more urgent drumming brings it forward to more intense playing and singing.
Three days was the morning
Three lovers, in three ways
We knew when she landed, three days she’d stay
I am a proud man anyway
Covered now by three days
We saw shadows of the morning light
The shadows of the evening sun
Till the shadows and the lights were one
Rather than containing a very long narrative which fills the full eleven minutes, the song actually have more instrumental passages than vocal ones. After the first four and a half minutes, the song is largely instrumental except for a final verse before the eight-minute mark. The song launch into an extended, fabulous solo section well before the halfway point. The evocative guitar solo is particularly good, even making it onto Guitar World’s “100 best guitar solos” ranking a few years ago (just about, at #100). What makes that acknowledgement particularly nice is that the solo is very emotive. It’s not designed to display technical brilliance (although the solo definitely does just that towards the end), but to connect with the feel of the song and add to it. The song really features some very tasteful playing on Navarro’s part.
The song continues through several instrumental passages until it ends. The end section can be described as the climax of the song – both musically and lyrically – literally. Given its lyrical content, that phrase has probably never been more apt than when Farrell launches into the final verse, band playing intensely and furiously behind him.
Erotic Jesus lays with his Marys
Loves his Marys
Bits of puzzle, fitting each other
All of us with wings!
It really is a tour de force of a song with a very satisfying build and release. (Sorry!) That is probably exactly what it was meant to be.
In addition to the band, John Phillip Shenale performs strings, Geoff Stradling plays piano and Charlie Bisharat plays electric violin on this song.
The album cover consists of a collage featuring of a sculpture created by Farrell and Niccoli. The sculpture has been described as a visual interpretation of the song Three Days. There are three figures centrally in the image, where Xiola Blue is the centre figure with Farrell and Niccoli on either side of her. The depicted nudity would get them into trouble again, just like the nude Siamese twins with their heads on fire had for the Nothing’s Shocking sleeve. This time, an alternative cover was produced. Its motif? The band name, the album name, and the full text of the 1st amendment.
Three Days was the third of four singles from Ritual de la Habitual, released on 2 August 1990. It was the only single from the album that didn’t chart anywhere. This may not have been a huge surprise given its length and structure, and the band must have suspected that getting radio play would be difficult. For this song in particular, though, perhaps charting may have been less important to the band than just putting it out there.
A live version of Three Days appears on the band’s 1997 rarities compilation Kettle Whistle. The original version also made an appearance in the 1992 film Singles, a romantic comedy set in the alternative rock scene in Seattle at the peak of grunge music. However, the song was not included on the soundtrack.
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