Jane’s Addiction (Pt. 2): Nothing’s Shocking, Not Dead Teenage Girls or Onstage Brawls

An onstage brawl in Boston. A dead teenage girl turned into art. Warehouse shows and a freak scene bankrolled by transgression. Listen to find out how Jane’s Addiction helped build the alternative nation – and how the freedom that they worshiped eventually turned into control, violence, and collapse. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://disgracelandpod.com/membership. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://mailchi.mp/doubleelvis/disgraceland-email-newsletter Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/disgracelandpod/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@disgracelandpod ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://twitter.com/disgracelandpod (formerly Twitter) ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/groups/491024204626127/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠ https://tiktok.com/disgracelandpod To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This is exactly right.

• 0:13Speaker 01

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• 1:17Speaker 04

  She'd throw things, wander, and started hoarding. Mom's Alzheimer's was already so hard, but then we found out she had agitation that may happen with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease. And that was a different kind of difficult. So we asked her doctor for more help.

• 1:33Speaker 05

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• 2:07Speaker 04

  I'm glad I asked for help.

• 2:10Speaker 05

  Ask your loved one's doctor about Rexulti.

• 2:14Jake Brennan?

  Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.

• 2:29Jake Brennan?

  This is a story about freaks and frauds, about the underground going mainstream, and about some of the people who dragged it there. It's about sex, drugs, and a teenage girl whose memory was turned into a shrine for the alternative nation. It's a story about Perry Farrell, the outlaw who built a church for the weird and then crowned himself as its high priest. And it's also about the cost of control, about what happens when the carnival barker becomes the cop. This is the origin story of Jane's Addiction, so it's a story about great music.

• 3:11Jake Brennan?

  Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called Venice Beach Sweatbox MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Vision of Love by Mariah Carey. And why would I play you that specific slice of multi-octave vocal run cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on August 21, 1990. And that was the day that Jane's Addiction released their second studio album, Ritual de Lo Abitual, a record inspired by the tragic death

• 3:54Jake Brennan?

  of one of Perry Farrell's muses, a death that foretold much darker days ahead. On this episode, freaks sings, alternative nations, outlaws, weirdos, Perry Farrell, and Jane's Addiction. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace Land.

• 4:46Jake Brennan?

  Jane's Addiction lied. It turns out that everything was shocking. Or I should say that everything still had the capacity to shock. Even in 2024, when we, the audience, the fans, those who had seen it all before, especially that well-worn chestnut of a tail, the one in which a band always splinters apart from the inside out, we sat there on a day in September, miles agape, jaws on the floor, watching on our screens at the smartphone footage taken at the previous night's Jane's Addiction show in Boston. There's singer Perry Farrell, dressed like Johnny Depp on safari, striking that rock

• 5:27Jake Brennan?

  star pose, standing 10 feet tall and letting the music shoot through him like lightning. To his right, Dave Navarro rips into a guitarist solo during the band's song "Ocean Size", a fan favorite, and a favorite of mine as well, I guess because I've always been a fan. Anyways, Perry, he's onstage grunting into the mic, rhythmic, tribal, finally in step with Eric Avery's bass and Steven Perkins's drums, after a night in which his timing had been alarmingly off. The grunts become shouts, then they become screams. Perry turns to Dave and quickly closes in, body checking the guitar player with hate in his eyes.

• 6:12Jake Brennan?

  Dave is momentarily stunned. What the fuck? And then Perry is screaming again, or this time, not into the mic, but in his guitar player, Dave Navarro's face. Fuck you! Dave has to stop shredding for a moment so that he can hold up his picking hand and keep Perry at bay as the singer is pushing into him again. What? That word, what, it keeps cycling through Dave Navarro's head and coming out of his mouth. It's the only word that he can think of at the moment. Perry, on the other hand, is done with words. He goes full jock now, his elbow pushing into Dave again like a right wing pushing past a defenseman into the crease. And then Perry winds up quick and throws a stiff right hand at Dave's chest.

• 6:57Jake Brennan?

  It connects with a thud, and suddenly the band's guitar tint, Dan Cleary, jumps into the fray and pulls Perry away. But Perry doesn't want to be pulled away. So Eric Avery, the bassist, has to throw down his guitar, get Perry in a headlock, and start punching him repeatedly in the stomach in order to subdue him. Meanwhile, Dave Navarro takes off his guitar and places it gently down on the stage, but not before turning the volume down so that it doesn't feedback, you know, this is a total professional, even in the churning eye of chaos. And after which Dave just walks offstage. And those of us watching all of this transpire on our screens, again, mouths agape, jaws on the floor, we're all thinking the same thing. I think I just witnessed the end of Jane's Addiction.

• 7:41Jake Brennan?

  Now, as I said at the top of the episode, this moment, which was quickly disseminated all over the internet, was capital S shocking, no doubt. But for anyone who's ever been in a band before, a touring band, a band with numerous, wildly different, and frequently competing ideas of creative direction, you know what it's like. Even I had to admit that, yeah, back in the day when things got heated, I could have been one thumbnote away from either being Perry or Dave in that situation. But cooler heads typically prevail in moments like these. Dirty laundry remains stuffed way down inside a duffel bag in the backstage green room. And you know that Mick and Keith or Bono and The Edge have had moments like this in their decades of fragile brotherhood.

• 8:25Jake Brennan?

  It's only natural, and it's more than a little inevitable. So why haven't guys like that come to blows publicly in the way that Jane's Addiction did? Because the Rolling Stones, or U2, or whoever, they don't have a Perry Farrell. A wholly unique eccentric frontman who made it his job to champion the freaks and the outlaws and the mystics and the dopers and the wanderers, the one and the same Perry Farrell who had once And flamboyantly brought the so-called "alternative nation" to the front door of the corporate mainstream, only to grow up and find that that transformative power of freakdom which he wielded with strung-out pride went and transformed him into the very

• 9:08Jake Brennan?

  thing he vowed never to become: an authority figure. 1984, Los Angeles. The cops were relentless. Two LAPD officers, one on either side of him, asking all sorts of questions. Where was he from? Why was he here? And what did he do for a living? Perry Farrell didn't want to answer that last one, or I should say, he didn't want to answer it truthfully, because if he was being honest, he was a 25-year-old rogue musician, a feral artist, raconteur out on the margins, a free spirit blown by the wind who'd spent the last six years living out of an old Buick Regal down in Newport Beach. He made a little

• 9:51Jake Brennan?

  money waiting tables over at Oscars, but he wasn't cut out for shift work, or work-work for that matter. He was dubious of the promises made by others. His mother had taken her own life when he was young, and his father had filled the maternal void with lots of young women and hard drugs. But Perry wasn't about to say any of this to a couple of LA's finest. Instead, he told them he was a successful interior designer with a steady income. And at that, the two cops were satisfied. They handed Perry the keys to the house they co-owned at 369 North Wilton, between Melrose and Beverly, just outside Hancock Park, and told him that rent was due on the first of every month.

• 10:34Jake Brennan?

  The irony was almost too much. Perry Farrell was about to fill this six-bedroom house with other like-minded, rule-breaking artists, musicians, photographers, painters, junkies, their girlfriends, their dealers. 24/7 partying and conniving and criminal mischief, all of it taking place under the roof of Johnny Law, his new landlord, in an apartment he was renting in a house owned by a couple of cops.

• 11:01Jake Brennan?

  At the height of mayhem, there were about 12 people living in what would become known as "The Wilton House," including Perry's friend, Jane. Jane's habit, along with her fucked-up relationship with an abusive dealer named Sergio, inspired the name for Perry's new band, Jane's Addiction, formed after Perry's brief tenure in the post-punk group Psychon, even though the name Jane's Addiction was also Perry's Addiction. And I'm not talking about heroin addiction solely, but the additional addictions to life's dark corners, to its tattered, lunatic fringe, to sex, to violence, and things far beyond any socially accepted norms. As a band, you didn't find these sorts of things out in the more hallowed rooms on the Sunset Strip.

• 11:46Jake Brennan?

  The Whiskey Yagogo, Doug Weston's famous troubadour, these venues were notoriously "pay-to-play," meaning that you, the band, had to pony up cold, hard cash before the powers that be would put you on a bill. What's that all about? Anyways, Perry didn't want to be on a bill with some slick asshole like Axl Rose, who Perry found to be nothing more than a market-corrected second-calling of Vince Neil. And sure, some of this could be chalked up to sour grapes, as Perry and his band didn't actually have the funds to get themselves to be able to play the Whiskey Yagogo, or on the troubadour stage for that matter, but they had something else. They had the ingenuity of the fiscally challenged. They had the backing of the criminal underworld.

• 12:28Jake Brennan?

  Specifically, they were bankrolled by the earnings of a sex worker who turned her tricks with B-list actors into capital for early Jane's Addiction shows. And soon, Perry, Dave Navarro, Eric Avery, and Steven Perkins were clawing their way out of the underground and knocking on the mainstream's door. And the only problem: you knock loud enough, and sometimes, the mainstream answers.

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• 13:47Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.

• 14:25Jake Brennan?

  Bianca sat on a stool outside the banged-up door of an abandoned warehouse somewhere on the outskirts of LA's underground. She was naked from the waist up, with small strips of black electrical tape covering the nipples of her exposed breasts, a sight which attracted welcome attention from pastors by while also ensuring that the entire operation which she was overseeing remained on the right side of the law. Not that she wasn't familiar with the wrong side. Her primary source of income came from the wrong side, from her regular gig as a sex worker. But tonight, she was turning that hard-earned money into a legitimate side hustle. She was the one who'd rented out this dump and was now collecting the $5 cover from

• 15:09Jake Brennan?

  any and all manner of Hollywood freaks looking to experience something they couldn't find anywhere else. Bianca knew it was a losing proposition.

• 15:21Jake Brennan?

  It was 1986, and in Los Angeles, the cohort of freaks, which was strong but finite, had many options for music venues in which they could hoist their flags. There was lingerie on Sunset, where you could catch Fishbone's ska-metal hybrid; and the anti-club over on Melrose, where the Circle Jerks and the Tube Sock-wearing pre-John Frusciante Red Hot Chili Peppers did their aptly-named Freaky Styly thing. And then there were the pop-up clubs like Scream and Power Tools, which operated in basements, lobbies, and rooms of local hotels, stomping grounds for only the fringe of the fringe. And so, to attract attention here, now, for a little-known art-metal band called Jane's

• 16:05Jake Brennan?

  Addiction, a band that was the perverse inversion of more popular local groups like Guns N'. Well, that was a tall order, but that's what the tape on the nipples was for: anything helped. And Bianca, for one, wanted to help out her friends, so she posed with her very being an invitation to something illicit and darkly seductive: a cigarette burning between her lips, cash money in her hands, and all the while taking the financial hit, so that Perry Farrell, Dave Navarro, Eric Avery, and Steven Perkins can make a name for themselves. Inside, the room was sparsely populated. Smoke machines and flashing lights provided a dramatic backdrop for fire-eaters, strippers,

• 16:50Jake Brennan?

  hot-dog vendors, and of course, Perry Farrell and nothing but pantyhose, leading Jane's Addiction through a deafening tribal groove. Since forming the year prior, the group had quickly found a voice as unique as any of their so-called "alternative peers," while also sounding like none of them. And they walked the same wide-open spaces as Latter Day Led Zeppelin, to whom they were frequently compared. And Perry's high-pitched wail was admittedly in conversation with Robert Plant's.

• 17:20Jake Brennan?

  But if Zeppelin was muscular and mountainous, Jane's addiction was wiry, scrappy, and almost maniacally horny. They sounded as if a post-punk band, Wire, or Magazine, or Gang of Four, take your pick, had swallowed Zeppelin whole, and then the ensuing indigestion had brought on some sweaty night terrors. And that was the music. Or, as the LA Times put it, "psycho metal." That psycho metal was being made mostly by guys who were barely out of high school. The rhythm section, Eric Avery and Steven Perkins, laid down hypnotic foundations, which Dave Navarro would then smother in effects-laden guitar shrapnel.

• 18:02Jake Brennan?

  And then there was the odd guy out, Perry Farrell, on vocals. Odd guy out in this case because he was the one pushing 30. And also because he was just odd, period. The way he sang, what he sang, the way he dressed, or didn't dress, the drugs he did. He was provocation incarnate, pushing right up against the line of what was socially acceptable, and frequently crossing that line, too. Not that some of the other guys, like Dave, weren't doing hard drugs as well, because they were. But Perry was the one introducing those drugs to a girl who he allegedly began dating when he was an adult, and she was still in her early teens. And to be clear, I'm not saying that's provocative. I'm just

• 18:46Jake Brennan?

  pointing it out because it's gross, not to mention illegal. I'm also now getting ahead of this story, so more on all of that in a bit. But a funny thing happened in the mid-'80s when Jane's addiction was working hard to be the weirdest, most psycho metal band in Los Angeles. They began to gain momentum. They graduated from Bianca's independently-funded warehouse one-offs and got themselves a real reputation in an otherwise crowded music scene. They found themselves at the center of a record label bidding war. It was all because there were others out there who were just like them. And maybe these others, maybe they were hiding behind a starched shirt or inside a three-piece suit, but maybe they were having a three-martini corporate lunch or

• 19:31Jake Brennan?

  smoking a pipe while wrapped in the warm embrace of tenure at UCLA. But deep down, they were all freaks, too. And they, just like Jane's Addiction, were tired of the same old things that the mainstream kept force-feeding them, as if they were some chirping little pet. They were bored with that shit. They were bored with Madonna, and Cyndi Lauper, and Prince, and Tom Petty, and Prince was just a horn dog, and Cyndi Lauper was nothing but an older punky brewster. These were safe monoculture-approved versions of the rebel. Jane's Addiction, on the other hand, were not. They were actually dangerous. They were actually rebellious. They were actually transgressive.

• 20:14Jake Brennan?

  And they were on their way out of the Hollywood underground and into the storefront windows on America's busy Main Street. Or so they thought. January 1987. Late. A long, black limousine pulled up along the Sunset Strip, just outside the legendary Rainbow Bar and Grill. The limo's back door opened, and 49-year-old Jack Nicholson, in all his raised eyebrow, Cheshire Cat-grinning glory, stepped out. He straightened out his suit jacket, adjusted the black sunglasses that he wore even at nighttime, and wondered if he'd find that giant mutton chop having Lemmy Kilmeister

• 20:54Jake Brennan?

  of Motorhead nursing a Jack and Coke at the end of the bar inside. The year prior, Jack Nicholson had been nominated for his eighth Academy Award for his role as the lovestruck hitman in Prizzi's Honor, which took place just two years after he'd won Best Supporting Actor for Terms of Endearment. And now, executives from Warner Brothers were pressing him to play the Joker in Tim Burton's radical new vision for Batman. Suffice to say, at this moment, Jack Nicholson was at the top of his game, not to mention the consummate embodiment of a Hollywood icon.

• 21:31Jake Brennan?

  And Jack was only a few feet from the Rainbow's door, when a scrawny figure came running down the block from the nearby Roxy Theater. Yo! The scrawny guy was yelling now, and as he got closer, Jack saw the clash of clothing styles: the silver jacket, the white boy dreadlocks. And this was a familiar scene: some homeless dude looking for a fistful of dollars from the A-lister who just stepped out of the shabby black car; some stray dog chasing after a Rolls Royce. Yo, yo, Jack! Shit. The scrawny dreadlocked homeless guy knew his name. Jack panicked, looking for his bodyguard while simultaneously gauging how fast he'd have to move to make it to the Rainbow's front door unscathed. Jack, my man!

• 22:15Jake Brennan?

  The guy was now mere feet away from the movie star. Jack, my band, we're playing over there, tonight! With this, the guy motioned back to the Roxy next door. We're actually making a record there tonight. It's our first album, a live album, Jack. Would you come over and introduce us to the crowd? It would be so good, Jack! By this point, Jack's bodyguard had stepped in between his boss and the scrawny silver-jacketed dreadlocked guy who just stood there vibrating, looking equal parts strung out and anxious and waiting for an answer. "I'm sorry," the bodyguard said, putting a hand out to keep what Jack had clearly clocked as some completely delusional crackpot at a safe distance. "Mr. Nicholson doesn't do requests."

• 22:58Jake Brennan?

  And then, Jack Nicholson was whisked to safety inside the Rainbow Bar and Grill while Perry Farrell walked himself back to the Roxy, where Jane's Addiction recorded their debut live album in front of a packed house that included members of Fishbone, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Thelonious Monster watching from the audience, but no Jack Nicholson. Didn't matter. The little freak show that Bianca had once financed and that Perry conducted: the nipple tape, the pantyhose, the psycho metal, that was all kindling, and now a fire was starting to catch somewhere far beyond the strip. And something else followed, something darker, something the band carried with them, something that would take center stage right along with the music.

• 23:48Speaker 07

  We'll be right back after this. Word, word, word.

• 23:55Speaker 01

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• 24:26Jake Brennan?

  I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.

• 24:58Jake Brennan?

  After sending Jack Nicholson reeling with terror and confusion straight into the safe and capable arms of his bodyguard, Perry Farrell and his freaks came from mainstream America next.

• 25:11Jake Brennan?

  But why did they succeed? Why were weirdos like Jane's Addiction suddenly being willfully injected into the bloodstream of Western popular culture? The answer was actually quite simple. It wasn't personal, it was business. To paraphrase Michael Azerad, who has written extensively about the indie rock that defined this moment in history, when Jane's Addiction signed to Warner Brothers in 1987, all the other major labels opened their eyes to this organic movement that had been steadily growing beneath the surface. And in that organic movement, the major labels saw dollar signs. But even as it was quickly becoming corporatized, so-called alternative rock proudly saw itself

• 25:54Jake Brennan?

  as the antithesis to the corporatization of music and art. One of the alternative nations selling points was its sense of freedom. There was the freedom to express oneself with sounds that were distorted and dissonant. Freedom to ignore long-held and well-established conventions or expectations. And those freedoms could be heard on Jane's Addiction's self-titled debut live album, and then again on Nothing Shocking, their second album, a studio effort this time, which came out in the summer of 1988 and which features one of the only songs I know about Ted Bundy, but I digress. Perry Farrell flaunted his own freedom every time he got onstage and went full Jim Morrison, tossing aside the shackles of that evening's scantily clad outfit,

• 26:38Jake Brennan?

  a corset perhaps, or a pair of rubber pants, to let both his inhibitions and his penis run wild. But there was a price for all that freedom. Many record stores refused to carry Nothing Shocking because they took offense to the cover art, a sculpture created by Perry and his girlfriend Casey Nicolai, which depicted a pair of naked, conjoined female twins with their hair on fire. And MTV refused to air the music video for their single Mountain Song because it contained graphic nudity. And that was just the commercial cost of things. A few disgusted retailers, some pearl clutches at cable TV in the age of the PMRC, the real price was paid elsewhere.

• 27:23Jake Brennan?

  Because when you live with that much freedom, without rules, without limits, in a world of your own making, where anything goes and everything is fuel for your music, your art, eventually, someone gets burned.

• 27:40Jake Brennan?

  Eighteen-year-old Lisa Chester, aka Ziola Blue, walked inside her New York City apartment and dropped her keys on the counter. The place was a mess, but she told herself she'd pick it up later. She had so much on her mind, her head was spinning. The last few weeks had been a blur, especially those three days she spent out in LA with her ex-boyfriend Perry Farrell and his current girlfriend Casey.

• 28:06Jake Brennan?

  Three Days of Sex and Dope. Three days of getting high, shooting up, and listening to the flicker of candle flames lap at the sticky air while two pairs of naked arms and legs wrapped around her body. But had she really heard that? The candle flame? Or was it something else? She heard it again now, almost like an echo. It followed her around, like Perry. And even though Zaiola was no longer in a relationship with him, it was like some kind of spell he'd cast. She was young and impressionable when they first met, Zaiola in her mid-teens and Perry ten years older. Perry gave her heroin for the first time, and from then on, she was hooked.

• 28:51Jake Brennan?

  She was still hooked. And maybe that's what was calling out to her. She realized she was sweating. She got out her gear so she could fix. And a few hours later, she was dead.

• 29:06Jake Brennan?

  The freak scene had devoured Zaiola Blue. And while she was being mourned, Perry Farrell turned his grief into something he could memorialize, something that he thought would hold meaning. And the place he chose to do that was Jane's Addiction's next album, Ritual de Lo Habitual. He put the pain and loss on tape, specifically on the record's centerpiece, "Three Days", a nearly 11-minute epic inspired by his three-day tryst with Zaiola and Casey. And for the album's cover art, he and Casey created a mixed-media sculpture out of chicken wire, newspaper, flour paste, and twine that depicted the two of them along with Zaiola during their three-day tryst.

• 29:50Jake Brennan?

  And the graphic image got Jane's Addiction in hot water again. And this time, the record company created a sanitized, text-only, alternate cover to appease the stores that were refusing to stock a record with three naked people on the front. But regardless of which version was on sale at Tower Records down the street, Perry Farrell had done what he had set out to do. He turned a dead teenage girl into a saint for the alternative nation. The Ziola's family did not approve. They blamed Perry for glamorizing Ziola's junkie life. They said he was cashing in on a tragedy in order to line his pockets, just like all those major labels that cashed in on LA's music underground.

• 30:32Jake Brennan?

  The Ziola was gone, and now she was nothing but raw material, the emotional clay that Perry was molding in his exploitative hands. Similar claims emerged later when Casey Nicolai accused Perry of stealing her ideas, her input, and her influence. Casey made music videos for the band. She made a bizarre docu-drama for them called Gift. She was the muse, and those were her clothes and her style that Perry appropriated. But in the end, again, according to Casey, she was essentially erased from the Jane's Addiction lore. By the time Ritual de Lo Habitual was released on August 21, 1990,

• 31:14Jake Brennan?

  Jane's Addiction had nearly erased themselves. Eric Avery, newly clean and sober and suddenly acutely perceptive to the exhausting bullshit of artsy-fartsy freaky-deaky dudes on a lot of drugs, could hardly be in Perry's presence for more than a few minutes at a time. And Eric's old buddy Dave Navarro, who used to split a joint, a line of blow, and a six-pack of beer before high school every day with him, was now a full-blown junkie. And Jane's Addiction wasn't really a band anymore, not in any traditional sense. They had built alters to sex and transgressive self-destruction and to the promises of freak-centric freedom no matter the cost. They were, in their own way, and also in the same way

• 31:57Jake Brennan?

  that many bands are worshipped, a religion. And Perry Farrell had become their self-appointed high priest.

• 32:18Jake Brennan?

  All right, guys. Earlier in this episode, I mentioned the band SciCom, which was Perry Farrell's first band before Jane's Addiction that he had formed in the early 80s. Now, what I didn't have time to get into here in this episode was this crazy incident in 1985, when Perry was attending this huge free music festival in Los Angeles, part of which was shut down by well over 100 cops, many of them on horseback. And more specifically, I didn't get into how the ensuing riot actually wound up playing an important part in the origins of Jane's Addiction. But if you want to hear that wild story, we've got you covered, as always. You can hear it as part of this week's mini-episode of Disgrace Land, which is available exclusively for All-Access members. To become a member and get more content like weekly bonus mini-episodes,

• 33:00Jake Brennan?

  ad-free listening, and more, just go to disgracelandpod.com for more info and to sign up. All right, now for the conclusion to our Part 2 episode on Jane's Addiction.

• 33:12Jake Brennan?

  When Jane's Addiction came to their inevitable end the first time around in 1991, they went out with a bang. I briefly covered the inaugural Lollapalooza Festival Tour in our Part 1 episode on Jane's Addiction, mostly about how the festival doubled as a traveling farewell for Perry, Dave, Eric, and Stephen. But what made Lollapalooza so impactful and so cutting-edge was that it embraced a sense of freedom in its curation. It brought together bands that you normally would never have seen on the same bill. For example, here's who took part that first year: Jane's Addiction, Ice-T, Nine Inch Nails, The Rawlins Band, The Butthole Surfers, and Living Color. In effect, the programming of Lollapalooza was an attempt

• 33:55Jake Brennan?

  to tear down some of the walls that had been put up for decades by music obsessives. Music was identity. It defined the social or ideological group in which you fit. It was shorthand for who you were, what you believed in, and what you hated. Therefore, if you rolled with Ice-T, chances are you didn't also roll with Nine Inch Nails. And honestly, it sounds a little nuts now, but back then, if you were into Living Color, you probably didn't give a fuck about Jane's Addiction. Those two bands represented very different ideas, different cultures, different styles of thinking and playing and dressing. I mean, Living Color had a bona fide top 10 hit album, which is something that Jane's Addiction was never able to accomplish. That divide between mainstream and alternative, it's a big part of what I'm talking about.

• 34:41Jake Brennan?

  And at the time, Jane's Addiction was often pointed to as the anti-sunset strip band. They weren't slick and radio-friendly, and they didn't attract jocks and meatheads like their LA neighbors Guns N' Roses. And so, in that same year, 1991, before Jane's Addiction called it quits, when Dave Navarro got a phone call from Axl Rose, Dave was torn. Axl was obsessed with Jane's Addiction. He loved everything about the band. But most of all, he loved Dave's playing. And Axl had news. Izzy Stradlin, Guns N' Roses' rhythm guitarist, the Johnny Thunders foil to slash his meat and potatoes pentatonic scale shredding was on his way out. GNR needed someone to replace him.

• 35:25Jake Brennan?

  And Axl wanted it to be Dave. Okay, so again, at the time, this was practically heresy. This is like Robert Evans calling up John Kessavettis and asking the alternative indie director to direct the mainstream studio film Love Story. Dave Navarro didn't know what to do. Here was the opportunity of a lifetime for any guitarist to join the biggest rock and roll band on the planet and to make all the money, for Christ sakes, and to get all the chicks, too, by the way. But Dave knew what would happen if he said yes. He'd be called a sellout, a turncoat. He would expose himself as a phony, no longer a card-carrying member of the freak scene he'd aligned himself with. Sure, he'd get the paycheck, but he'd also lose the street cred. So Dave Navarro said no.

• 36:11Jake Brennan?

  And Dave remained with Perry and the others because the stigma of crossing over that invisible divide between the alternative and the mainstream was that intense. Over the years, after Lollapalooza, that invisible divide, those walls, they went away. And Dave joined the Red Hot Chili Peppers for one album in 1995. And the Chili Peppers bass player Flea joined Jane's Addiction for their reunion tour in 1997. And Dave even wound up playing on a Guns N' Roses song called "Oh My God" in 99. And in 2024, Dave reunited once again with the band he had chosen to be faithful to decades prior. But just as things had changed when it came to the musical divide over genre and popularity,

• 36:54Jake Brennan?

  things had changed within Jane's Addiction. All that freedom at the core of the band's genesis, the freedom of expression, to be whoever you wanted to be, no matter what it looked or sounded like, that was gone, almost like it had never existed. Now it was replaced by control. Perry wanted to assert control. According to people in the Jane's Addiction camp, Perry attempted to control what the shows looked like, involving other people onstage, when the rest of the guys just wanted to play, just the four of them. And when Perry didn't get what he wanted, he lost control. We all saw that, the meltdown onstage in Boston, the shove and the punch. But what we didn't see was that it continued backstage. Backstage, Dave confronted Perry.

• 37:39Jake Brennan?

  He wanted to know what the fuck was going on. And Perry responded by throwing another punch and hitting Dave in his face. And Dave vowed to never play with Perry again. And the remaining 15 dates of the 2024 Jane's Addiction tour were immediately canceled. But just recently, more than a year after the violent incident, a year in which Perry and the other members of Jane's Addiction spent suing each other, the band released a statement on their Instagram account. It read in part, "After that show, without notice to Perry, we unilaterally determined it would be best not to continue the tour and made inaccurate statements about Perry's mental health, which we regret. Today, we are here to announce that we have come together one last time to resolve our

• 38:21Jake Brennan?

  differences, so that the legacy of Jane's Addiction will remain the work the four of us created together. We now look forward to the future as we embark on our separate musical and creative endeavors. Jane's Addiction will forever live in our hearts. We are proud of the music we created together." And with that, they can only hope that the legacy of one of the defining bands of the alternative nation wasn't left in utter disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is DisgraceLand.

• 39:06Jake Brennan?

  All right, guys. Thanks for rolling with me through this Jane's Addiction episode, part two. If you haven't heard part one, yikes, get back there and listen to that one. Yeesh. Get a listen to part one before the part two. Listen to Apple Podcasts listeners, get auto downloads turned on so you never miss an episode of Disgraceland. Give Disgraceland a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and win some free merch. The question of the week this week is, is Jane's Addiction the band that best embodies the 90s for you? Who is the most emblematic band of the 1990s in your opinion? That is a tough question to answer. So many great bands that define that era. Hit me up 617-906-6638. Voicemail and text to let me know your answer to the question of the week. I'm available on Instagram and everywhere else at @disgracelandpod. And here comes some credits.

• 39:51Jake Brennan?

  Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook @disgracelandpod and on YouTube at youtube.com slash @disgracelandpod. Rock or roll.

• 40:26Jake Brennan?

  He's a bad, bad man.

• 40:30Jake Brennan?

  Hey, guys. Time to dust off your detective skills while unwinding in the Caribbean on Virgin Voyages' second true crime voyage. It's back by popular demand. This five-night, adults-only escape sets sail March 20, 2027, to Grand Turk in the Beach Club at Bimini. The difference between this year and last will be that I will be on the cruise this year, along with Zeth, and he and I will be taping a live version of Disgraceland along with podcast host from Exactly Right's Buried Bones, Podcast of the Year Award winners Wisecrack, and other fan favorites. Get on this cruise with us, guys, and enjoy live podcast recordings, behind-the-scenes storytelling, exclusive

• 41:10Jake Brennan?

  Meet and greets and immersive true crime programming throughout this one of a kind voyage. Head over to www.virginvoyages.com/truecrime to secure your spot. I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.

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