Guess they’re not getting the band back together after all! Jane’s Addiction lead singer Perry Farrell shocked fans by punching guitarist Dave Navarro in the middle of their Boston concert.
The footage of the incident on September 13 was shared by Perry’s wife Etty Farrell on Instagram.
“Rather than speculating, I thought to post a first person account of what happened on stage with @janesaddiction last night at the @lenderpavilion in Boston,” Etty, 49, wrote alongside the video. “Clearly there had been a lot of tension and animosity between the members.. the magic that made the band so dynamic. Well, the dynamite was lit. Perry got up in Dave’s face and body checked him.”
Etty continued, “Perry’s frustration had been mounting, night after night, he felt that the stage volume had been extremely loud and his voice was being drowned out by the band. Perry had been suffering from tinnitus and a sore throat every night. But when the audience in the first row, started complaining up to Perry cussing at him that the band was planning too loud and that they couldn’t hear him, Perry lost it.”
The rocker’s wife added that the band began playing the song “Ocean” before Perry, 65, was prepared.
“The stage volume was so loud at that point, that Perry couldn’t hear past the boom and the vibration of the instruments and by the end of the song, he wasn’t singing, he was screaming just be to be heard,” Etty explained.
She also revealed that Eric Avery, the Jane’s Addiction bass guitarist, got in some blows of his own when he came up behind Perry “in the dark” and proceeded to put the frontman “in a headlock and punched him in the stomach three times.”
As for the aftermath of the brawl, Etty said, “Dave still looked handsome and cool in the middle of a fight. Perry was a crazed beast for the next half an hour – he finally did not calm down, but did breakdown and cried and cried. Eric, well he either didn’t understand what descalation [sic] meant or took advantage of the situation and got in a few cheap shots on Perry.”
The original members of Jane’s Addiction reunited for the first time in 34 years in July when they released their song “Imminent Addiction.” While the band has come back together and broken up several times since the ‘90s, this marks the first time the “core four” returned since they originally split. Jane’s Addiction’s fell victim to an “incessant tour schedule” in 1991.
However, Perry felt the tour schedule and album promotion was the root of the problem.
“The breakup was based on emotional reasons,” the New York native said in an interview with Guitar World in June 2018. “I felt that I couldn’t go on expressing ideas because they were getting constantly knocked down. Everything I brought up was looked at with disdain, negativity. We were at the top—the top of our game, the top of the world. But artistically, I had run up against a wall. I just needed to go in a different direction. I wasn’t going to smash through the wall. I wasn’t going to try to climb over the wall. I would just simply walk in a different direction. And I knew I’d be okay, but I wish it never had to come to that.”
Dave, 57, on the other hand, alluded to Perry’s “intensity” and addiction problems.
“The ‘why’ isn’t the big mystery to me. We all know why,” Dave explained. “What’s unusual is that we never talked about it. I know that I went home and slammed a bunch of coke and heroin, and I know those guys did too, and we never picked up a phone again.”
