Karyn Cantor: photographer, dancer, jeweler. Best early photography.
Chris Chaney: session bassist, member of Jane’s Addiction, Panic Channel.
Chris Cornell: vocalist Soundgarden, Audioslave. Another Seattle rock icon gives props to pioneering Jane’s.
Chris Cuffaro: photographer. Documented many Jane’s tours.
Jonathan Dayton: filmmaker, video producer. Worked on Gift with Perry and Casey.
Alan di Perna: journalist who interviewed Navarro numerous times.
Peter di Stefano: musician-songwriter, member Porno for Pyros, surfing bud of Eric and P.
Willie Dread (aka Willie McNeil): musician, former roommate. Member of Tupelo Chainsex, among the first local L.A. musicians PF hung out with.
John Eder: photographer for Porno for Pyros, shot cover of Good God’s Urge.
Bob Ezrin: rock producer from the ’70s (Alice Cooper, Lou Reed, Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel), tracks and mixes the 2003 reunion album Strays.
Valerie Faris: filmmaker, video producer. Worked on Gift with Perry and Casey.
Perry Farrell (PF): leader, lyricist, songwriter, co-founder of Jane’s Addiction, Lollapalooza, Porno for Pyros. Aka DJ Peretz.
Kurt Fisher: owner, Club Lingerie, Razzberries.
Norwood Fisher: musician, member of Fishbone who occasionally recorded as individual session musicians and gigged with Jane’s as a band. Card-carrying member of the mythical Best of the West Club.
Flea: Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist. Pal. Hires Navarro as the Peppers’ guitarist to cover for John Frusciante to take four or five years off. Filled in for Avery on a reunion tour after failing to talk him into rejoining.
Bob Forrest: songwriter, leader Thelonious Monster. Peer. Played early shows together.
Modi Frank: Filmmaker. Directed Mountain Song and Live at John Anson Ford Theater. Taught P and C filmmaking basics.
John Frusciante: lead guitarist-songwriter-arranger for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Disciple of PF.
Ted Gardner: Jane’s Addiction tour manager, band manager, a co-founder of Lollapalooza.
Pleasant Gehman: West Coast punk legend. Author, poet, editor. Her band Screamin’ Sirens played at one of Jane’s first gigs.
Marc Geiger: William Morris booking agent; conceptualized and co-founded Lollapalooza with PF.
Rhian Ghittins: Navarro’s ex-wife. PA to aristo-rockers.
Dayle Gloria: DJ, club booker-promoter. Scream booker during its heyday.
Kevin Haskins: musician-songwriter, member of Bauhaus, Love & Rockets.
David J: musician-songwriter, member of Bauhaus, Love & Rockets.
Dave Jerden: producer of Jane’s two studio albums for Warner Bros.
Texacala Jones: lead vocalist, Tex & the Horseheads, legendary 80s goth-a-billy punk band.
Donusha Kibby: Walt’s wife. Dancer for Jane’s seven-night run at John Anson Ford Theater.
Walt Kibby, Jr.: former member Fishbone.
Anthony Kiedis: Singer, Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Martyn Le Noble: former bassist Thelonious Monster, Porno for Pyros, Jane’s (post-Avery), The Cult, and others.
Mariska Leyssius: former keyboardist with Psi Com, P’s first original club band. Organizer with Stuart Swezey of the Desolation Center shows in the Mojave Desert (beyond L.A. County). Video producer, filmmaker.
Inger Lorre: leader of Nymphs, a mid-80s glam-punk outfit; og riot grrl, predating the Washington shriek-babe scene, who inadvertently became a feminist icon for jumping on a big-time record exec’s desk and urinating all over it and him after he’d allegedly made repeated unwanted sexual advances.
Dennis Martino: bar manager, Club Lingerie.
Patrick Mata: musician-songwriter. L.A. goth icon. Former leader of Kommunity FK. PF’s first inspiration when he arrives in L.A.
Angelo Moore: musician, singer, dancer, poet. Member of Fishbone and the Best of the West Club.
Keith Morris: former singer with Black Flag and the Circle Jerks. A&R rep, V-2 Records.
Bob Moss: performance artist, mime, comic actor, friend of Jane Bainter.
Dan Navarro: first cousin of Dave. Early inspiration. Musician, songwriter (Lowen & Navarro).
Dave Navarro: guitarist with Jane’s Addiction. Later plays with Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Johnny Navarro: first cousin of Dave’s, journalist, ad copy writer.
Dean Naleway: partners in Triple X Records. Helped finance the classic Live at the Roxy record.
Casey Niccoli: PF’s girlfriend, collaborator, filmmaker.
Erica Paige: well-known doorperson at numerous underground clubs, including Scream. Now a TV producer.
Matt Paladino: musician, software writer. Former neighbor of the Navarro family in Bel-Air.
Stephen Perkins: drummer, percussionist. High school bud of Navarro. Member of Dizastre, a pre-Jane’s metal band with Navarro.
Bryan Rabin: club promoter, party planner.
Twiggy Ramirez: bassist for A Perfect Circle and Marilyn Manson. Friend of Dave’s.
Lee Ranaldo: musician, Sonic Youth member.
Heidi Richman: designer, promoter/marketer.
Josh Richman: club promoter, party planner, amusing hypeman/ raconteur.
Henry Rollins: former singer with SOA, Black Flag. Leader Rollins Band. Actor, publisher, author. Toured with Jane’s during Lolla ’91.
Adam Schneider: former manager Jane’s Addiction; former agent Jane’s Addiction, Porno for Pyros. Producer Lollapalooza.
Jon Sidel: co-promoter of Power Tools. Major player in L.A.’s proto-rave downtown dance club scene. Director, West Coast A&R, V-2 Records.
Slash: musician, member of Guns N’ Roses, Slash’s Snakepit, Velvet Revolver.
Mike Stewart: DJ, club owner, original promoter of Scream.
Stuart Swezey: promoter of the proto-rave “Desert Shows” with Meat Puppets, Psi Com, Redd Kross, and Sonic Youth. Lived with PF in the house with Jane Bainter, Karyn Cantor, etc.
Paul V.: former promotions person at Warner Bros. Records, former co-manager, Porno for Pyros; DJ, club promoter.
Allan Wachs: producer of Gift.
Don Waller: veteran rock journalist.
Brian Warner: former rock writer becomes showman known as Marilyn Manson.
Mike Watt: former member of Minutemen, firehose. Toured and recorded with Porno for Pyros while Martyn Le Noble recovering.
Pete Weiss: member of Thelonious Monster, chartered “Best of the West” band.
Michael Zimmerman: musician. Former high school mate of Navarro.
Eric Zumbrunnen: editor of Gift.
“I’m a pretty good-looking fellow. Verily, I end up fucking a lot.”
“If anybody wants to talk trash about me, I’ll guarantee it’s probably seventy percent true.”
“What’s up, sluts? I like your drinkin’ and your attitude . . . ”
“Jane’s Addiction was definitely degraded. . . . Oh man, we were definitely wasted and deluded.”
“I wanna fuckin’ take my clothes off!!”
“Name something degrading and I’ve done it . . . ”
“I’m bored shitless! I want something weird to happen!”
“Sometimes I want to be serious, sometimes an idiot.”
PERRY FARRELL
“HAD A DAD” (1959-76)
PERRY FARRELL (né BERNSTEIN, co-founder, leader of Jane’s Addiction, Porno for Pyros, Lollapalooza): I was a Queens kid. I lived in Flushing for a few years, then moved to Woodmere, Long Island. But in the 70s and 80s everybody thought Miami was the spot and Scarface was reigning. So my family moved down there when I was about 15—ninth grade—the first year I ever gotten head—and got into a better life. We had a lake in our backyard and a little sailboat. It was fun, swimming and surfing. (I had older brothers and sisters, and the best times I remember are when they’d crank up the radio or play records out on the balcony where we lived in Queens. I’d hang out with them, and I could dance pretty good. In high school [in Florida
], I was into David Bowie and Lou Reed, but I didn’t know they were punk rock. It wasn’t labeled yet, but these guys were fucking out there. When I got to California, I saw it firsthand. Pretty awesome.)1
JANE BAINTER (former housemate of Perry Farrell, the lyrical muse of the band’s name and the song “Jane Says”): Perry’s dad, Al Bernstein, was a jeweler, a goldsmith from New York City. The Bernsteins were the type of New York Jews who moved to Florida. His sister wore white-fringe leather jackets.
PERRY FARRELL: My dad was a real character, a fun guy. Sharp, with a ton of style. Cared about his hair. Always had a Corvette.
STUART SWEZEY (promoter, film producer, book publisher): I’d heard his dad was some Jewish mobster guy, so I asked Perry about it. He told me stories, like Sopranos, Goodfellas stuff. Some guy would be found in a trunk with his dick cut off, stuffed in his mouth. I couldn’t tell you if he was pulling my leg or not.
PERRY FARRELL: Celebrities and regular people gravitated toward him. The wise guys knew my dad, too. Everybody knew Al Bernstein. He was one of those guys walking around Miami Beach in the 70s with a Fila headband and a bikini bathing suit with gold around his neck. You didn’t want to get in a car with him because he would hit ninety if he didn’t see a car in front of him.
CASEY NICCOLI (former girlfriend, creative collaborator, stylist for Jane’s Addiction, co-director of Soul Kiss and Gift): Perry’s mother committed suicide when he was a young boy. I met Al Bernstein when he was a little more mellowed-out. Family legend has it that he was pretty hardcore in his youth. Perry blamed him for his mother’s death. Al was bringing a lot of women into the house and doing drugs and stuff when he was younger.
PERRY FARRELL: I was a rebellious kid who just didn’t like what I saw.
CASEY NICCOLI: The Al I met was an old man who was very sweet.
PERRY FARRELL: My father was an old 47th Street kind of jeweler. I got a lot of creativity from him. He was a hardworking designer and repairman who’d cut you a good deal, the kind whose thumb is jet black with hundreds of saw marks, who’d come home with his nostrils black from sucking up buffing and polishing rouge all day. We didn’t go to Temple that much. But my father sent me to Hebrew school so that I could sing before the congregation.2 Every weekend we’d go in from Queens. He’d grab me by the hand and drag me through these people up the street and on the subways. I would be the salesman. All the Yentas thought I was adorable. He’d put me up on a tall chair with a little display box. They’d say, “Can I see this ring over there?” And I’d pull the rings out. My mother was a fine artist. She loved to take throwaway things and make art out of them, or refinish them.
I barely made it out of high school. Surfing was very high on the totem pole, more important to me than school. Surfing just became it. You didn’t have to pay a lot of money—you could buy a second-hand surfboard and just go. But the thing I appreciate most was that it balanced me out as a human being.3 I just wanted to get out of there. I was seventeen. What did I have to lose? My surfing buddy [the late] Jimmy Mulali was this big Samoan dude who also played football and was living in San Jacinto about six hours from the beach. He told me if I wanted to come out to California he was on the coast. I looked at a map of California and San Jacinto looked like it was very close to the beach, but actually it was like a six-hour drive down to Tressels which is the first place I surfed out West. I just jumped on a bus and took off. I started my affair with California in a Greyhound bus station with all my belongings—a surfboard, some art supplies, an ounce of weed, one phone number—and no place to go. The first place I lived was the Californian high desert, a place called Hemet. And I lived there for about a year or so working construction. I was a rough carpenter. Then I moved down to the beach and I was going to school. I did everything from driving trucks and I was a liquor deliveryman. I was a graphic artist. I designed jewelry. But I also waited tables, bussed tables, washed dishes . . . you name it, just to keep going . . .
“UP THE BEACH” (1976-83)
PERRY FARRELL: I was living in my car in Newport Beach, an old, red Buick Regal big enough for two people to live in. If you park down by the beach, you can always shower or go surfing in the morning to stay clean. And you get yourself a banana or an orange for breakfast. You keep your clothes in the trunk folded neatly so you’ve always got nice clean threads to go looking for work in. I was a dishwasher and a bus-boy for about a year, moved up to waiter. I was living at the beach for six or seven years before I got in my first band, Psi Com.
CASEY NICCOLI: Perry’s family weren’t poor by far. They had a nice house and stuff. But his father did not give him money or support him when he moved to L.A.
PERRY FARRELL: Two years later [circa ’78] my father found out where I was in California. Time makes things soften up—water under the bridge—and you feel like you want to talk to your family again. I was cleaning myself up. I was thinking my dad is going to get me off the street. And he did help me. He called a friend who had a liquor distribution company. He says it’s a good business. Says it’s got a good future. Eventually I could be a district manager or something like that. But it was one of those asshole schmooze jobs where you’re going to have to wear a tie and shake somebody’s hand and ask them, “Hey, how about putting the Midori ad up front by the cash register this month?”
For like three weeks or a month I worked for my dad’s buddy. I went to these condos that have brooks running through them and maybe some ducks and tennis courts and a pool. I thought, “Man I want to live in one of these . . .” I’m a crafty guy. When you’re left to your own devices you’ve got to figure out how to move ahead into better situations in life. Everybody was dancing and modeling down there [in Newport Beach]. Their aspirations were to be a bigger model, a bigger dancer, a bigger actor, a bigger actress, right? One day I was making a drop at one of those swanky Newport places—this private club—when this lady asked me, “Do you model?” And I said, “Oh yeah, I’m a model. I’m an actor. I’m a singer. I’m a dancer. Sure.” So she said, “Do you want to audition for our Friday night show?’ I went in there and said, “Look, I’ll help you organize your show.” Within a few weeks I was impersonating people like Bowie and Jagger.
CASEY NICCOLI: He’d do Sinatra for them, too. Perry loved Frank Sinatra.
PERRY FARRELL: I thought, “Man, I’ve got a great future.” When I did these impersonations I got a reaction. People wanted to sit me down for a drink. Girls wanted to get their picture taken with me. I had made my beginning in show business. I had never thought I was going to be a musician. I didn’t start singing until I was twenty-one. Now I wanted to really practice because I could tell innately that I could sing. I quit my job and my girlfriend started selling bud. I put fliers up in the laundry areas of these fancy condos and this divorcée guy let me move in. Two weeks later I moved my girlfriend in. It quickly became a nightmare. We’d have these battles and be breaking things so this guy booted us and so I was living in my car with her in Newport. There was no real income and we had no backup plan other than, “Let’s head to L.A. . . . there’s gotta be some work up there.” Sometimes we’d all go up to the Odyssey disco [West Hollywood], and get up on the risers, to try and take the place over. We were just dancing like maniacs and goofballs, taking our shirts off and swinging them around. These talent agents would chat us up. One weekend one of them said, “Look, I need a roommate. Come up here for good and I’ll get you into show business. I’ll get you on a soap and we’ll move from there.” So this guy took me in. That’s when I moved from the beach to the city.
PF IS TAKEN BY THE HOLLYWOOD GOTH SCENE (1983-85)
PERRY FARRELL: When I reached L.A., I started hanging out with the underground, subversive people that worked at the trendy clothing stores, and the best up-and-coming bands, like X, the Minutemen, Black Flag, Saccharine Trust, Savage Republic, Redd Kross, even the Bangs who became the Bangles, and the Go-Gos. The English stuff from Factory and 4AD was coming at us—the Cocteau Twins—and it was ver
y anti-rock ’n’ roll: you don’t do anything similar to the Old Wave.4 I became a waiter at Oscar’s Restaurant at the base of Laurel Canyon [Boulevard] and Sunset. I’d drive my motorcycle up into the Canyon. I had a place in the basement with no windows. I saved up my money and got myself a P.A.
WILLIE DREAD (aka WILLIE McNEIL, musician, co-founder Tupelo Chainsex, Jump with Joey): I did my first gig with Tupelo Chainsex in September ’82. We used to headline the Lingerie. That was a big deal at the time. We also played the Sunday Club at the Cathay de Grande [restaurant], the Music Machine, Al’s Bar, the Anti-Club, the O.N. Klub, Blackie’s, the Lhasa . . . anywhere we could get in . . .
PERRY FARRELL: I started hanging out with Willie Dread and Tupelo Joe. They were outsiders. People who were having fun. Every night they’re going to the smallest, darkest little club to see germinating music. They’re going out Monday. They’re going out Tuesday. I’m tired, but they’re still going out Wednesday. Those guys became my initial circle and introduction to many of the local musicians.
WILLIE McNEIL: I was playing in two bands, Tupelo Chainsex and Animal Dance, and working part-time at Flip [iconic used clothing emporium on Melrose Avenue]. Perry used to just come along to our shows to hang out.
PERRY FARRELL: The kids in the city were trying to come up with new things. Punk rock had given them new fuel to be different. You had new indie labels [SST, Dischord, Alternative Tentacles, TwinTone, Subpop, Epitaph, Touch & Go] hatching all around the country. Suddenly college radio mattered to the record industry. R.E.M. helped to propel the notion of indie rock across the country. Los Angeles was just a great place to germinate as a musician at that particular moment in time.
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