Songfacts®:

• "Had A Dad" has two layers of meaning. One is about being abandoned by an earthly father, the other is about being abandoned by the great sky-Daddy himself: God.
  
  As was the process on multiple Nothing's Shocking tracks, Addiction bassist Eric Avery came up with the thematic concept while frontman Perry Farrell wrote lyrics around it. Because Farrell wrote the words and sang the song, it's often assumed to be about his life, but the story actually stems from Avery's.
• The song goes deeper and more philosophical than earthly abandonment. In a 1989 Hot Metal piece, journalist Steve Mascord shared that Farrell stated explicitly that "Had A Dad" was about God. Mascord doesn't expand on that claim and never mentions it again, but he's not the only one to report it. The factoid popped up a few times in stories from the era.
  
  There's also the song's lyric, "With that funny feeling, God is dead, he's not there at all" (Friedrich Nietzsche would have loved this tune)." At a 1988 spoken-word performance at the Roxy in Los Angeles (which was MC'd by 1960s acid guru Timothy Leary), Farrell was talking about the state of the world when a phone started ringing beside him. He answered and said, "No Mr. Record Producer, I'm not singing 'God is dead' in that song, it's 'God is Dad.'" Shortly after, the phone rang again, Farrell answered and said, "Oh, hello Dad. No, I'm sort of busy. Dad, I have some people over" (referring to the audience). Interpreted this way, "Had A Dad" is about God abandoning the world to confusion, violence, and chaos.
  
  It works both ways.
• Avery and Farrell wrote the song in late 1985. It wasn't released until 1988 on the Nothing's Shocking album, the debut for Jane's Addiction.
• Well I, spoke to the mountain,
  I listened to the sea,
  they both told me that the fountain,
  was the best that you could be
  
  These lines were written for "Mountain Song," the second single released off Nothing's Shocking. They're included in the "Mountain Song" lyrics in liner notes for Kettle Whistle, a 1997 Addiction compilation album, but aren't sung on any recordings that anyone knows of.
• The version of "Had A Dad" that appears on Kettle Whistle is an outtake originally meant to appear on Nothing's Shocking. Warner Bros. rejected it because they felt it was over-produced. In a press release for the album and its associated Relapse tour, Addiction drummer Stephen Perkins said that the band felt the rejected version was the best: "We had tried some new ideas, and we thought we'd really achieved something. This version has lots off cool textures, as opposed to the more rock thing that Warner's was looking for. Now, the people at Warner's love the track!"
• "Had A Dad" was the third of four singles released off Nothing's Shocking.
• French television made a music video for "Had A Dad." It used a demo version of the song rather than the one that appears on Nothing's Shocking and mixed images of the band performing on a cliff with scenes from a live show.
• The song opens with Farrell singing, "Ah, boogah, boogah." Nine Inch Nails sampled the line on "Ringfinger," the closing track to their debut album, Pretty Hate Machine. Most of the samples used on the album were distorted beyond easy recognition, but this one can be heard clearly at about the 4:05 mark. In a 1991 interview with Guitar World, NIN creator Trent Reznor said the song also samples the drum fill from "Had A Dad" and uses a guitar loop based on its pattern.
• In a 1989 Rolling Stone article titled "Jane's Addiction: Hardly a Plain Jane," Michael Goldberg relates a story in which Farrell altered "Had A Dad" lyrics to "suck my d--k" before dumping wine on a concertgoer's head. Goldberg doesn't explain what it was about the guy that got Farrell so heated, only that he "didn't care" for him.