Nirvana and Nevermind usually get most of the credit for pounding the grungy nail in hair metal’s Spandex-lined coffin. But it was a band of artsy L.A. street urchins, Jane’s Addiction — frontman Perry Farrell (who always fulfilled the promise of his name, “peri-pheral,” fearlessly dwelling on the lunatic fringes of L.A. rock ’n’ roll), guitarist Dave Navarro, drummer Stephen Perkins, and bassist Eric Avery — that broke major pre-grunge ground. By artfully mixing heavy metal thunder, jam-band jungle boogie, and piñata-smashing punk-funk into a cacophony of (Tijuana) biblical proportions, against all odds Jane’s Addiction orchestrated a seismic shift beneath the Sunset Strip’s asphalt — becoming the unlikely hottest draw in an ’80s Hollywood scene otherwise overrun by bubbleglam bands with misspelled monikers like Tuff and Lixx Array.

The rest of the alternative nation took notice after the release of Jane’s debut studio effort, Nothing’s Shocking, released 30 years ago on Aug. 23, 1988. With its grotesque and Walmart-unfriendly cover art, ocean-sized guitar bombast, chilling lyrics about serial killers and parental neglect, and disturbing incantations like “sex is violent” (a line that Nirvanabes Bush later seemingly interpolated), it was a druggy death-rock masterwork that no doubt influenced the Seattle scene as well as Hollywood’s.

Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready, who calls Nothing’s Shocking “one of the greatest records ever,” even laughs, “Green River [Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament’s pre-Pearl Jam band] opened up for Jane’s Addiction at [Los Angeles club] Scream, and they broke up the next day because Jane’s Addiction was so good! For that reason — they were like, ‘We’re never gonna get this good, so let’s do something else.’ There’s a huge influence there.”

“What we were doing at the time, we didn’t think we were necessarily doing some great, original thing,” Navarro says humbly, reflecting on the early Jane’s days. “If there was any element of trying to make it that way, it would have bled through and been apparent. But the fact was we were just doing what we were doing, because at that time a band like us wasn’t going to get a lot of traction. So, we were like, ‘F*** it, let’s just do what we do.’ And then that’s what people caught on to.”

Jane’s Addiction formed in 1985, at a time when hair metal bands like Poison and Faster Pussycat were the Strip’s main (or mane) attractions — but the band members’ musical backgrounds extended far beyond that. “I think that we all had different influences, so when we got together to write or record, those influences sometimes clashed, and then again, sometimes they worked really well. In the cases where they worked, we would go with it, and in the cases where it clashed, we would find a way to work around it,” says Navarro, the self-described “metal kid” of the group, who joined in 1986, at age 19, after the band had gone through several other guitarists who hadn’t gelled. “It gave us the opportunity to have some really unique ideas creatively among the four of us. Perry had just done a Goth record, Eric was really interested in Joy Division, and Stephen and I had more of a heavy metal background. We creatively clashed but in a really beautiful way.”

View photos Janes Addiction in 1988. (Photo: Paul Natkin/Getty Images) More

Understandably, Jane’s appealed to people both within and outside the L.A. metal scene who were hungry for something dangerous and different. “We had a community of fans; they were from all walks of life. They all had different T-shirts,” Navarro explains. “One guy would have a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt on. Another guy would have a Fear T-shirt. One guy would have a Flock of Seagulls T-shirt. Another guy would have a Bad Brains T-shirt. We got Deadheads out there. We just attracted a very unique group of fans that were interested in lyrical content and were interested in musicianship.”