Dave Navarro Reveals What Was Actually Censored in Jane’s Addiction’s ‘Nothing’s Shocking’ Artwork
While Jane's Addiction's Nothing's Shocking album art certainly raised a few eyebrows in 1988 with the two nude female models sitting with their heads ablaze with flames, that iconic image has stood the test of time. However, guitarist Dave Navarro revealed that another piece of artwork from the album actually did receive an alteration due to a complaint.
According to Navarro, it was the back cover shot that had them forced to make a change. The back cover as it stands features the band members amidst a mountainous backdrop, but there was something else in the image that first had to be removed.
"A little piece of @janesaddiction trivia. For our 1988 release of Nothing’s Shocking, we drove out to these windmills as a backdrop for the photo on our back cover," stated the guitarist. "Soon after, we received a cease and desist letter from the company who runs the windmills. They had to be airbrushed out of the photo that is still on the back cover today."
The Instagram shot shows the desert-based solar-power windmills in one slide with the airbrushed back cover photo in another. Check it out below.
As it happened, the front album cover also caused a bit of controversy at the time as well, with a reported nine record chains refusing to carry the record or utilizing a brown paper cover to hide the front cover nudity.
Nothing's Shocking certainly made an impact upon its debut. The influential album yielded the singles "Jane Says," "Mountain Song" and "Ocean Size," topped out at No. 103 on the Billboard 200 Album Chart and has since been certified platinum. It's also considered one of the albums that paved the way for the boom of alternative music that would come a few years later.