Source:       Maxim Magazine
Issue:           December 2000
Page:          263

CLASSIC ALBUM PICK
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Stephan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind
Jane's Addiction - Nothing's Shocking (1988)

We're not shocked, but we are curious.
Nothing's Shocking came along a the end of the '80s and, as far as I'm concerned, jumped up on that decade's back and killed it.  I never liked metal, and then Jane's Addiction showed up and made something as hard as they can make it, but also sublime and beautiful.

Did it hit you on a personal level, too? 
I think albums can be fight songs or companion pieces to times in your life.  I backpacked across Europe with that album and kept finding things in Perry Farrell's lyrics that just continued to speak volumes.  "I've seen the ocean break on the shore, come back together with no harm done."  To talk about being vulnerable and then resilient at the same time was like a call to me.  And there was a longing in that music that really echoed in me, and it's the longing that I often speak of in my own music.

What about Dave Navarro's guitar?
I loved the way he poured it on.  He had this cascading kind of style.  Metal guitar was always so uptight, so stiff and technical.  It didn't have any earthy grit in it.  And Dave put that in there.  He was like dirty jeans instead of white spandex.

How did it stand out from other stuff of the same era?
I don't thin a lot of bands had the loud sense of possibility that Jane's did.  But I also think that album has haunted me in a way.  It had spirit in it, and I think I use that as a test.  In the song "Graduate," on our first album, I ask, "Will the song live on long after we do?" and that's almost a reference to "Jane Says," because that's a song I always feel will last.  And, hey, it's just two chords.

(Picture of Jenkins) "He's got a gold album in there somewhere"