My Gen X Playlist: Jane Says – Jane’s Addiction

It’s Saturday night. We are at a local bar drinking. A friend drunkenly suggests that we all get tattoos the next day. We all lift our glasses and cheers yes!

The next morning, we plan our trip to the tattoo parlor. One of my roommates looks up and says, “Oh, you were serious?”

Four of us flip through books looking at the different tattoo art. A few of us had already been thinking about getting tattoos for awhile. We are a little nervous, but it wasn’t only a drunken thought. When the tattoo artist calls, “Next!”, my roommate hesitates.

Now, tattoos are permanent. It also goes without saying, this was thirty years ago when tattoos were not the mainstream everyday norm. So if my roommate said, “Hey guys. I’m having second thoughts. I need to think about this some more”, we’d surely give him a pass. Who wouldn’t? But he said something entirely different. Even if it was his honest to goodness thought, you don’t says this in front of the guys.

I have to ask my girlfriend first.

The silence was deafening.

Personally, I was going to let it pass. After all, it’s a tattoo. It’s not an easy decision. Regardless of the reason, it’s OK to take your time deciding. Unfortunately, my other friends were not so forgiving. No one cared that he was hesitating about the tattoo, but the fact he needed to get permission. . . My roommate was bombarded with a barrage of comments questioning his manhood. I just shook my head in silence. Poor guy.

Needless to say, he went back weeks later and got a tattoo. Did he get one because he wanted it? Did his girlfriend give him the a-ok? Was the peer pressure too much? Questions we’ll never truly know the answer to. I suspect it’s probably a little bit of each. Some things can be more scarring than a tattoo. After all, a tattoo is only ink and it eventually dries. But the sting from a barrage of man up comments from your friends sometimes never goes away.

Because Dave Navarro was a host and judge on Ink Masters, it seemed fitting to add a Jane’s Addiction song to the playlist. Jane Says was released in 1987. It turns out, there really was a Jane.

According to lead singer Perry Farrell, there was an actual Jane – with an actual heroin habit and an abusive boyfriend named Sergio – who lived with him and nearly a dozen others in a group house in Hollywood as the band was forming in the early ’80s. She talked endlessly about scrimping for a jaunt to Europe: “Jane says, ‘I’m going away to Spain, when I get my money saved,” and she took an occasional swipe at a housemate, but she never seemed to connect: “She gets mad and starts to cry, takes a swing but she can’t hit.”

 “Around 1984, I rented a big house on Wilton, near Hancock Park, right in the heart of everything good in Hollywood, but the whole neighborhood seemed deteriorated. I deceived the landlord into thinking I was a gay interior decorator rather than a Punk rocker, and one of my housemates was Jane, this strangely beautiful, well-to-do girl who got caught up in the drug scene and fell in love with a dealer named Sergio. Jane was an intellectual and knew how to act aristocratic, even with a needle and a spoon on the table. I’m not sure if the song mythologized the neighborhood – St. Andrew’s Place is nothing special to look at – but I do think it glamorized her life in a way. That was a great time, though. When the landlord found out I wasn’t a gay interior decorator, he came after me with a gun.”

– Songfacts

Jane inspired both the name of the band and their hit song. Not a bad day’s work. Not that they needed to, but I doubt they asked her permission to use her name. It’s a good thing my roommate wasn’t in the band. There’s no telling what the name of the song or the band would have turned out to be. Maybe we should ask his girlfriend.

–

For a complete playlist, please click here.

For the Spotify playlist, please click here.

Jane says 
I'm done with Sergio 
He treat me like a rag-doll
She hides
The television 
Says I don't owe him nothing, 
But if he come back again
Tell him, wait right here for me
Or
Try again tomorrow
I'm gonna kick tomorrow
I'm gonna kick tomorrow

Jane says 
Have you seen my wig around? 
I feel naked without it
She knows 
They all want her to go 
But that's O.K. man
She don't like them anyway 
Jane says 
I'm going away to Spain
When I get my money saved
I'm gonna start tomorrow
I'm gonna kick tomorrow
I'm gonna kick tomorrow

She get mad
and she start to cry
She take a swing man
She can't hit
She don't mean no harm 
She just don't know (Don't know, don't know)
What else to do about it

Jane goes
To the store at 8:00
She walks up on St. Andrew's
She waits
And gets her dinner there 
She pulls her dinner
From her pocket
Jane says 
I ain't never been in love
I don't know what it is 
She only knows if someone wants her
I wonder if they want me
I only know they want me

She gets mad
And she starts to cry
She takes a swing man
She can't hit!
She don't mean no harm 
She just don't know (Don't know, don't know)
What else to do about it

Jane says
Jane says