Lyrics from JanesAddiction.org
Lyrics:
my sex and my drugs and my rock and roll…
all my brain and body need…
sex and my drugs and my rock and roll…
are the only thing that keeps me here,
alright, so get your fucking piss-cup out of my fucking face…
my sex and my drugs and my rock and roll are my fucking own business…
I didn’t ask your wife about what position she’d fucking like it…
Cut-out!
I am skin and bones, I am pointy nose;
But it mother fuckin’ makes me try
It makes me try, and that ain’t no wrong
I’ll tell you why…
There ain’t no right! Ugh!
Ain’t no wrong now, ain’t no right
Ain’t no wrong now, ain’t no right
There’s only pleasure and pain
And then Mother fuckin’ bad wind came, blew down my home
Now the green grass grows
Bad wind came, blew down my home
God damn goodness knows!
Where the green grass grows, there can’t be wrong
And goodness knows, there ain’t no right!
Oww!
Ain’t no wrong now, ain’t no right
Ain’t no wrong now, ain’t no right
Only pleasure and pain
Ooh yeah!
Bumped my head, I’m a battering ram
I god damn took the pain
I cut myself, I said “So what?”
Mother fuckin’ took the pain
I said “So what?,” I can’t be wrong
I thought so but, there ain’t no right!
Oww!
There ain’t no wrong now, ain’t no right
There ain’t no wrong now, ain’t no right
There’s only pleasure and pain
Listen to my daddy-o! (oh…. oh…) [Trivium edit: I suspect this is “listen to me,” not “my”]
Song Intro:
According to the February 7, 1991 issue of Rolling Stone magazine, the intro to Ain’t No Right is Perry’s response to a request by Lippman Kahane Entertainment, Jane’s Addiction’s management agency at the time, to have Perry take a drug test. Perry declined the request, get your fucking piss cup out of my fucking face, and the band soon parted ways with the company.
The first two lines of the intro, my sex and my drugs and my rock and roll, all my brain and body need are taken from the song Sex And Drugs And Rock ‘N’ Roll by Ian Dury & The Blockheads
***
So, what to make of this one… [cracks knuckles.]
0. The prelude to this song, is the really cute “I am skin and bones/ I am pointy nose/ But it motherfuckin’ makes me try!” This is actually one of the most important philosophical statements on the whole album. The point is that, with very little physically to recommend him (although most people would probably say that they think Farrell is a pretty arrestingly handsome fellow actually), this actually has caused Farrell to buckle down and work hard, and try to succeed. So this is actually a very rightwing, if you will, sentiment: it suggests that the main way to get through in the world, is to work hard, and to keep working hard, until you succeed. Obviously, Farrell has a very strong work ethic, or he would never have been so successful. Once again, Farrell is suggesting that being an outsider makes you work harder, and so he sees value in being rejected, by being abnormal; this fuels his drive. He suspects, he is stating, that if he had been born priviledged, standardly handsome, a jock, with a wealthyish family, etc, then he would not have been as tough and as hard working as he is.
He says that working hard is good, and trying to succeed and be seen as successful; he makes a value judgment about that, which is arguably problematic in a song which is ostensibly against making value judgments, but we’ll talk about that later. This statement goes with the other songs on the album which posit the artist figure, the genius figure, as ‘the best of men,’ and this is endorsed here as well with this very memorable opening phrase..
1. On the surface of it, the main body of the song is a rocker’s “fuck you” to the establishment regarding his druggy lifestyle. He gets lots of sex, he does lots of drugs, and he’s a rock star. Awesome!
2. But, there is also, the ‘is the only thing that keeps me here,’ line; which is a borrowed line, as everyone will tell you, but the idea is that, this makes life worth living for the speaker. Here we have a bit of the addict’s credo; but also that of the beleaguered/depressed person, who can’t see beyond the haze of drugs and addiction to something better. Farrell elsewhere provides a more positive view on things, so this shouldn’t be taken as his overall view. He is actually very committed ideologically.
3. The song is a response to him getting a drug test at the behest of his management firm. In some ways, this is a big violation. No one should have to take a drug test because their employer says so, unless they are potentially endangering people as a result of their drug use; even then, it should be fairly obvious to most bosses if an employee takes drugs or not. A rock star is hardly going to endanger people because they take drugs. So the drug test is a pretty strong invasion of the state on the person of the speaker. Thus, the justifiable outrage.
4. Rather than lash out at the political establishment or ‘capitalism’ per se, however, this song looks at the issue as a moral one; in moral terms. Thus, the question of taking drugs is a moral one, and Farrell says that most poeple’s disapproval of drug taking is merely a moral issue, and implies that they are hypocrites, or meddling for the sake of power tripping; which is to some extent true. There are of course other issues: people realize that being an addict is bad for most people: Viola, the subject of the 2nd half of the album, had after all died of a heroin overdose when she was 19, and so forth. So yes, there are reasons not to take drugs, and for people to be concerned when those around them are taking too many drugs. But, Farrell’s statement comes down with the usual taker’s point of view.
Even the little end statement should not be dismissed: “Listen to me daddy-o!” is a again an assumption that his opponent, is the bourgeois, the older establishment male, the president, the bank president, the mainstream media presenter, etc., is the enemy of sorts; the person to whom Farrell is addressing his challenge.
5. The song becomes a bit more interesting, however, because it justfiies its moral standpoint by invoking Nietzsche; who in Beyond Good and Evil and other works suggested that good and evil were merely philosophical constructs, made by bourgeois society, to oppress people, to oppress the masses, and also the artists, and keep them down. And Nietzsche suggests that the superman, the true artist figure, will move beyond this, needs to break these bonds, in order to fulfill his destiny, to do the work for which he was intended.
This philosophy had been current in intellectual circles since the later 19th century, but Farrell is here invoking a pop version of it, and spreading it to a pop audience; which normally had been raised in traditional christian upbringings, during the 1970s and 80s in the US, these were normative; and so this was a sort of new conditioning fot them, an introduction to the Alternative Audience of this idea of moving beyond good and evil; of course, some people had heard this from their understanding of modern art; the idea that “what is art?” art is whatever you make of it; all beauty is subjective, etc.
6. Logically, this entails rejection of any Beauty, Truth, or Good, in an absolute sense; it’s a rejection therefore of God, who is supposed to have created these things, in their Platonic sense. So Farrell here puts forth a radical subjectivism: life, experience is only what you, the individual, make of it. If i’m not hurting anyone, who cares what I do with my body.
7. His examples of good and evil not existing are naturalistic:, Darwinistic even; Nature, he says, is beyond good and evil; it’s not good… although he does imply this. Nature blows down his house, and now the green grass grows: it can’t be bad; by implication, though, Farrell is suggesting his own view that natural spaces are much nicer than built up places; he’s an anti-developmentalist, in this sense of the green movement, and we know this from his to the mosqitues proem at the beginning of the album.
This is a bit of a problem in several ways; first, good and evil tend to, in most definitions, involve people, who are sentient; and therefore things which are done by people to cause pain to others, in other words, are generally considered evil; and acts which are done to cause pleasure, happiness, easing of pain, such as being a doctor, a philanthropist, are considered good. So Farrell’s wind and hurting oneself by accident examples are threfore sidestepping many much more developed scenarios, which any ethics or philosophy 101 textbook will illustrate for you.
Epilogue: As philosophy, this is in some regards too simplistic; but we get the idea; it’s an assertion of the artist to live a countercultural lifestyle. It sets a philosophical background for many of the other songs and statements on the album – although again, Farrell himself makes many value judgements about the value of nature, the value of the life well lived, and the beauty of women, and the evil of bourgeoisieness and capitalism, which don’t entirely gel with such a black and white statement as made here. More deeply though, it’s his assertion not to judge one another, in a negative way, and, certainly, not to force people to conform to your ideas of what is “moral,” as the Republican Moral Majority were doing in the 1980s. So there is a definite political message here. It also introduced the Alternative Audience to the possibility of ‘beyond good and evil’ and so in that way, it inspires them to think about “deep thoughts,” to question authority, for sure, and to puzzle these things out for themselves; and indeed to explore further in philosophy. That is a lot more than many pop songs accomplish to be sure, and compared with much in modern music, this message sounds positively philosophically heavyweight.
Trivial Alternatives 