Just Because Mountain Song Irresistible Force Jane's Addiction

Just Because Album: Strays (2003)
Mountain Song Album: Nothing's Shocking (1988)
Irresistible Force Album: The Great Escape Artist (2011)
by Jane's Addiction

"Just Because" was the first single from Jane's Addiction's third album.

Strays was released on July 22, 2003, on Capitol Records. Released 13 years after Ritual de lo Habitual (1990), the album marks the band's longest gap between full studio albums, although the group had recorded and released two new songs six years prior on the compilation album Kettle Whistle (1997). Strays is the first album to feature bassist Chris Chaney. Regarding the decision to record a new studio album after such a long hiatus, drummer Stephen Perkins stated that the band had already completed two reunion tours performing old material, and that Jane's was ready for "a new challenge."

Upon its first week of release, the album sold 110,500 copies in the United States, debuting at number four on the Billboard 200, and was eventually certified Gold. The single, "Just Because", was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2004.

"It's not hard to see why 'Just Because' has been chosen as the first single," noted Classic Rock. "It has a punishing yet radio-friendly groove, plus enough gloss and polish to sit among the flotsam on MTV2. Yet unlike many of the youngsters jostling to get their spiked hairdos on the box, Jane's have taken the trouble to add a song and go easy on the quasi-adolescent self-pity."

Just Because was one of the most successful in the band's history. Their third number one on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, it also charted at number 72 on the Billboard Hot 100 – their only appearance on that chart to date. It was also their first top-ten entry on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, reaching number four. It hit number 14 on the UK Singles Chart, making it the band's highest charting British single.

"I keep kind of asking, 'Hey, want to work on something fresh? Let's just see where we end up,'" remarked singer Perry Farrell in 2001. "I don't want it to be premeditated, but my wish is that we do kick into it and do a full, new Jane's Addiction album… I made the best music with these guys."

According to drummer Stephen Perkins, "It all started around March or April 2002 with Bob Ezrin producing a Porno for Pyros track for the movie Dark Blue: an incredible song called "Streets of Fire" which was just epic. That segued into the Strays project."

The band entered Henson Recording Studios in 2002, with producers Ezrin and Brian Virtue. Of the former, Farrell said: "He raises the bar for all of us. It's like training for the Olympics - something you're aspiring towards in creating art. You're trying to make the most beautiful music, you try to break new ground creating sound that no one's ever heard before. When working with Bob, doing that becomes a very real possibility."

Bassist Martyn LeNoble was fired halfway through the recording. "I recorded pretty much the whole Strays record," he said. "And Perry erased it. He suddenly fired me on the spot in Japan when we still had a whole flight back to the U.S. That's the last time I talked to him. Perry and Bob (Ezrin) replaced all my bass parts on Strays. Perry was saying everything I played sounded like shit, but then they had the new guy pretty much play exactly my parts, maybe a couple of little changes, so I guess they couldn't have been that shitty." LeNoble was aggrieved by the band not paying him for his studio work after his firing, which caused him financial hardship.

LeNoble was replaced by Chris Chaney, whom Dave Navarro described as "perhaps the most intense musician I've ever worked with." "Dave and Stephen have been playing together since they were 13 years old," Chaney noted. "They have quite a synergy or chemistry – and for me as a bass player to be able to come into that is really remarkable. It gives me a great opportunity to shine. I did a record with Tommy Lee and we needed a drummer to go tour with, and what better drummer than Stephen Perkins. I was only able to do it for about six weeks because I was playing with Alanis Morissette and I had to go back to that. But, in that short time, Stephen and I had a great relationship and last August he called me and asked me to do some shows."

Despite the title "Mountain Song", there are only two uses of the word "mountain" in this song: the opening lyric "Coming down the mountain," and in the second verse, which starts, "I was coming down the mountain."
The liner notes for the 1997 Addiction compilation album Kettle Whistle include extra lines in the "Mountain Song" lyrics:

Well I, spoke to the mountain,
I listened to the sea,
they both told me that the fountain,
was the best that you could be

The lines were removed from "Mountain Song" and instead used for "Had A Dad."

Irresistible Force is from the fourth album The Great Escape Artist and highlights the influence of Dave Sitek. The TV on the Radio multi-instrumentalist played bass and co-produced the record and in doing so helped the Los Angeles quartet embrace synths and other digital technology for the first time. "We are taking great risks and writing in ways that we have never written before," vocalist Perry Farrell told Spin magazine. "[The Great Escape Artist] is a really amazing piece of art, an amazing piece of music. It will make people say, 'This is strangely beautiful.'"

Farrell told Q magazine October 2011 he still keeps in touch with the Jane, who inspired the band's name. He said: "Every once in a while I get an email. She was just a gal I met when she was looking for a roommate. Her addiction was heroin."
Farrell explained in a behind the scenes clip for the video that the song is his take on the Big Bang theory. "The Big Bang was actually sexual intercourse, like cosmic sexual intercourse," he said.

Drummer Stephen Perkins told Billboard magazine the song harks back to classic Jane's tracks like their 1990 tune, "Then She Did..." "Its lyric and emotion [is] connected and completely tied [to that song]," he said. "No one's faking it; no one's trying too hard."

Farrell explained The Great Escape Artist album title to Spin magazine: "I love being able to escape my past, even though my past was great. I just love the future even more. I can personally not give a s--t about what I've done in the past; I don't want it to handicap me from doing something even better in the future. The only way to do that is to have courage to escape the past -- both the mistakes and the remarkable things. You have to take risks. When it comes to being a musician and especially a live musician, I've thought long and hard about what type of music I've wanted to make. There have been people that have made protest or social commentary music, then there's music made to escape. Jimi Hendrix's music was escapism. Ziggy Stardust is escapism. Iggy Pop. They're not hung up on making people bummed out or angry. Their intent is to have people escape, like they have amnesia as to what their life is really about. It's about going to a place where they can be happy and wild and loose and sexual."

Perry Farrell explained the song's meaning on the Jane's Addiction website. Here's what he said: "The song is really a love story, and a theory on creation. Combining the science of the big bang, and the theology of the Old Testament. Adding the notion that it was in fact a conscious male-to-female act of cosmic love. I know of no life that was ever created without male-female union. A sexual explosion caused the creation of our galaxy, and all earthly life. We- in both his and hers image- continue this process. The line 'We've become a big business' has nothing to do with Jane's Addiction- but speaks about God and his bride. 'A galaxy merger. Two of us a big bang!' A true romance in the cosmos..."