Jane’s Addiction Cancels Reunion Tour in Wake of On-Stage Band Fight; Dave Navarro Says He Hopes Perry Farrell Will ‘Find the Help He Needs’
The remainder of the reunion tour by the original lineup of Jane’s Addiction, the group’s first in 14 years, has been canceled. While a general statement issued under the band’s name collectively did not lay blame, guitarist Dave Navarro laid it squarely at singer Perry Farrell’s feet in a separate statement issued on his own social accounts and co-signed by the other two band members, saying Farrell is experiencing mental health issues and saying they “hope he finds the help he needs.”
It’s a development that came to seem inevitable after the world witnessed footage of an on-stage melee that saw Farrell taking a punch at guitarist Navarro, followed by bassist Eric Avery going after Farrell as he and two crew members struggled to get the singer off-stage.
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A brief statement posted on social media Monday morning read, “To all the fans, the band have made the difficult decisio to take some time away as a group. As such, they will be cancelling the remainder of the tour.”
The announcement goes on to say that refunds for the cancelled dates will be “issued at your point of purchase — or if you purchased from a third-party resale site like StubHub, SeatGeek, etc, please reach out to them direct.”
Navarro posted a separate statement on behalf of himself and two other members of the group, writing, “Due to a continuing pattern of behavior and the mental health difficulties of our singer Perry Farrell, we have come to the conclusion that we have no choice but to discontinue the current US tour. Our concern for his personal health and safety as well as our own has left us no alternative. We hope that he will find the help he needs.
“We deeply regret that we are not able to come through for all our fans who have already bought tickets,” the guitarist continues.” We can see no solution that would either ensure a safe environment on stage or reliably allow us to deliver a great performance on a nightly basis. Our hearts are broken.” The statement is signed “Dave, Eric and Stephen.”
Previously, the band had only canceled its show Sunday night in Connecticut in the wake of their on-stage physical altercation in Boston Friday. But reports had emerged that band members had already flown separate ways over the weekend, and Dave Navarro had gone on his Instragram account to post a photo of himself holding a guitar with the Jane’s Addiction logo that bore the simple caption “Goodnight.”
The confrontation between Farrell, Navarro, Avery and crew members near the planned climax of a concert at Boston’s Leader Bank Pavilion was caught on video by dozens of audience members, and widely shared on social media, shocking even some veteran observers who’ve witnessed their share of intra-band tension over the years.
The group’s first official response after the fracas had been to issue an apology on Saturday and announce the cancellation of the next show, which was to take place Sunday night in Connecticut, with no mention at the time about whether the rest of the 14 tour dates left on the itinerary would proceed or not. But Navarro seemed to indicate which way things were going to go, when he took to his own Instagram account on Sunday afternoon and simply posted the word “Goodbye…” as a caption to a pensive photo of himself bearing a guitar with a large Jane’s Addiction logo on the back.
If the band members had been almost entirely silent after the stage fight, Farrell’s wife, Etty Lau Farrell, was vocal Saturday on her Instagram account about what had gone down. While she expressed differing opinions about the behavior of other band members in the melee (coming off as pro-Navarro and anti-Avery), she didn’t pussyfoot around her husband’s issues, which she described as having more to do with mental health than drinking.
In the comments section on her original post about the incident, Etty Lau was candid, using the term “spinning out” and adding that Perry’s current state represented “the most devastating mental health of all” that she had seen since being with him since 1997.
Most of the footage shared on social media from Boston Friday night began with the band well into a performance of the 11th song in the set, “Ocean Size,” with Navarro taking a guitar solo and Farrell fiercely grunting at the audience. It soon became apparent in the videos that Farrell was genuinely enraged — although about what, it wasn’t clear from the footage — as he turned toward Navarro and continued with the same grunting, in his bandmate’s face. He then aggressively slammed his shoulder into the guitarist’s, and although Navarro kept soloing for a moment, he soon put up a hand to try to maintain some distance between himself and his angry bandmate. At that point, Farrell was seen throwing a punch at Navarro, though it wasn’t clear from the footage whether it really landed.
As soon as that punch was thrown, three men stepped in to subdue Farrell, including two who entered from the wings, plus Avery. The footage grew murkier at that point, as the stage lights were turned down. Navarro gently put his guitar down onto the stage while the three men grappled with Farrell. Once the agitated singer was forcibly removed from the stage, the other three members stood and made silent, sentimental gestures to the cheering audience, hugging one another and giving the peace sign before making an exit.
In her Instagram post, Etty Lau Farrell offered a detailed explanation of why, in her mind, her husband had a reason to be upset — it had to do with sound issues letting the band drown out his vocals, she said — and why she blamed Avery for “winning the fight,” in her words, by escalating it. In her accounting, Avery took advantage of the situation by putting the combative singer in a headlock and punching him three times in the stomach. That is something that is difficult to confirm definitively just from watching the fan-shot video, but it hasn’t kept fans from vigorously debating whether Avery overreacted, as Etty maintains, or was within his rights to finish a band fight that Farrell started.
In the immediate aftermath of the fight, some fans who had been in attendance at the fateful show correctly predicted that they had just seen the abrupt end of the tour, if not of Jane’s Addiction for the rest of time.
For all the joking comparisons with the newly reunited Oasis, many were taking seriously whatever personal demons may be bedeviling band members to have turned the reunion so sour, with nearly half of the tour still to go at the time it was canceled. More than one review of Jane’s Addiction concerts this month had used the word “chugging” in describing Farrell’s wine consumption on stage, both at the good and not-so-good shows.
Etty Lau Farrell insisted that alcohol was not the real issue. “Unfortunately, that bottle of wine is more of a prop nowadays. I have gotten angry at him multiple times, that he would leave a beautiful bottle of wine 3/4 full on the stage, when I would’ve loved a glass after the show.” It was then that she offered her alternate explanation: “Spinning out. The most devastating health of all (since she was first) with him since 97.”
In her initial post, Etty wrote, “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… 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.”
She continued, “The band started the song ‘Ocean’ before Perry was ready and did the count-off. The stage volume was so loud at that point that Perry couldn’t hear pas(t) 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 mentioned the “body check” by her husband against Navarro, although not the punch. After asking the rhetorical question “who won the fight?,” she answered: ““Why, Eric Avery of course. While Dave was keeping Perry at arm’s length to de-escalate the situation, Dan rushed over to de-escalate as well by holding Perry back. Dave walked away to take his guitar off. Eric walked up to Perry, upstage, in the dark, behind Dan, put Perry in a headlock and punched him in the stomach three times. Kevin, crew member with long hair, pulled Eric away. Then Eric nonchalant(ly) walked off to the front of the stage to apologize to audience for the show end(ing) early.”
In the aftermath, she wrote, “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 break down and cried and cried. Eric, well, he either didn’t understand what de-(es)calation meant or took advantage of the situation and got in a few cheap shots on Perry.” At the end of her post, she added hashtags that read, in part: “A man can only be pushed so far.” “Dave took the high road.” “Cheap shot.” “Mother eagle.”
Clearly there’s much more to the story to be told, even if Farrell’s wife account is largely accurate, as she left unanswered questions like Farrell went directly after a surprised-looking Navarro if he was upset about sound issues that the guitarist presumably didn’t control.
A review of the band’s Tampa show earlier this month in Creative Loafing may have offered a hint of where some tension between Farrell and Navarro could be found. The Florida critic reported: “Farrell launched into many nonsensical rants about cow pastures, mushrooms, surfing, living in Florida, and arguing with his brother about politics, among other undecipherable comments” while “chugging from a full bottle of wine throughout the performance. … At one point, during one of his ramblings, Navarro deliberately cranked out a loud, piercing chord on his guitar, as almost to silence Farrell and get the show back on track.”
And then in New York City, two concerts at the Rooftop at Pier 51 presented two very different levels of performance. The first night of the group’s two-night stand went poorly — according even to the band itself. “Ladies and gentlemen, I have to be honest with you. Something’s wrong with my voice,” Farrell said. “I just can’t get the notes out all of a sudden.” The next day, Avery posted to Instagram: “Looking forward to getting another crack at this spectacular rooftop venue tonight. I’m optimistic we will be better.”
On Wednesday night in New York, things indeed took a turn for the better, according to a reviewer for JamBase who wrote, “I had seen the reports of Farrell’s condition on Tuesday, so I had trepidation as Jane’s Addiction came on. All my fears quickly eased away as my first Jane’s experience was a great one. Farrell sang well, Perkins crushed it behind the kit, Navarro shredded and Avery anchored the band with his steady work on bass. … Some of (Farrell’s) stories were engaging and others rambled as he chugged from a bottle of wine. … However, when it came to singing the songs, Farrell nailed most of them.”
The tour by Jane’s Addiction was a co-headlining one shared with another veteran ’80s/’90s band, Love & Rockets. Their outing began Aug. 9 in Las Vegas and was scheduled to wrap up at L.A.’s YouTube Theater on Oct. 16, where the band already performed one successful show.
Jane’s was said to have an album mostly completed, and there’s no word yet on whether the record will still come out. A single was released, “Imminent Redemption,” that was said to be the band’s first recording with all of its original members in 34 years.
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