Jane’s Addiction were the pivot around which the 1980s turned into the 1990s. They emerged wild-eyed and wired from LA’s kaleidoscopic underground scene to spearhead the all-consuming alternative rock movement that would remodel the musical landscape. Other earlier bands had done the spadework, but Jane’s were the pharmaceutically fuelled pied pipers who led a parade of freaks, misfits and malcontents out of the shadows and into the light.
It was an unlikely of success story. Formed in 1985 by surfer-turned-gigolo-turned-singer Perry Farrell and bankrolled by a friend of the band who worked as a prostitute, they landed like corseted, nose-ringed alien deviants amid the Aquanet-choked glam scene of late 80s Hollywood. Their music was a mad-genius mix of goth strangeness, hard rock muscle and psychedelic woo-woo, simultaneously tribal and grandiose. Their name, inspired by Farrell’s heroin-addicted housemate, gave a clue to their own chemical predilections, which was pretty much anything and everything going.
