DAN NAVARRO: Writers were saying “thinking man’s metal.” Dave was going some places that none of the hair bands were going musically on the guitar. Alternative radio was very boing, boing, boing, synthy sounds and bouncy Depeche Mode sounds. The dreaded new wave. Hard rock was either anachronistic like Led Zeppelin was considered at that point, same goes for Deep Purple, The Who . . . or it was an endless stream of Triumph, Poison, Ratt, Warrant, Saga, Night Ranger. Hair bands.
ERIC AVERY: I remember the phrase “art metal” or that we were an “art band” but whenever they said that there was frequently an edge of derision to it, like that was the quickest way to discount something that wasn’t proletarian enough, not populist enough for the rock ’n’ roll masses. Some people didn’t know how to differentiate us from the other bangy guitar hair bands topping the Billboard charts at the time. . . .
PERRY FARRELL: Of course we’re an art band, and damned proud of it. Isn’t music an art form, too? Art had gotten so far away from popular music.28
JOSH RICHMAN: Whatever it was, everyone was hyped up for this new jam rock style. . . . Perry was calling it “groove-metal.” . . .
FLEA: As time went by this band Jane’s Addiction definitely influenced us, particularly John [Frusciante] and I.
JOHN FRUSCIANTE (musician, songwriter, member Red Hot Chili Peppers): I was eighteen when I joined the Chili Peppers. I was caught totally off balance. I quit when I was twenty-two and I just thought everything’s over. I needed time to do absolutely nothing and I needed time to have no responsibilities other than to experience life. Jane’s Addiction guided me in ways that would be embarrassing to explain in detail, but their music was important to me during that period. I was figuring out what kind of feelings I wanted my music to represent. With the song “I Could Have Lied” by the Chili Peppers, my intention was to write a guitar part that was the same vibe as the bass line on “Three Days.”
DAVE NAVARRO: Jane’s Addiction created its art through a self-destructive process, whereas the Chili Peppers create their art through the healing process.29
GOTH-METAL TRANSMISSION: The TVC15 Connection
Circa 1985-86
Motley Crue. Several veteran club scenesters earnestly believed at first that they were a parody dress-up joke band patterned on the Tubes, Kiss, and the NY Dolls. The archetypal obnoxious, beyond-punk big-hair “New Wave of American Pop Metal” counterpart to the NWOBHM phenom in the U.K., which spawned a million wannabes. Jane’s Addiction eventually became a sort of feminine counterpart to this band and Guns N’ Roses in the hard-rock sweepstakes. (Lynda Burdick)
DJ JOSEPH BROOKS: We were mixing the first Motley Crue record with Bauhaus and Sisters of Mercy [at the TVC15 club, another Joseph Brooks-Henry Peck weekly promotion that followed the closure of the original Fetish Club]. We thought this was going to be the next thing, glam metal. It was very much like the goth-death rock look. Christian Death was very close to what Motley Crue was looking like and doing. We started playing with that and then added Hanoi Rocks and New York Dolls and all this glammy metal sounding stuff . . . we put it together with Siouxsie. Siouxsie and the Crue are also connected . . . each band covered “Helter Skelter.” The Crue had their first record come out on their own label, Leathur Records. We did a window display at Vinyl Fetish [record store originally on Melrose] for it and people were shocked. We took a lot of shit. How could you do a window display for this record? This isn’t alternative; it’s cheapshit Gazzarri’s pay-to-play heavy metal! But we thought it fit perfectly with this punky gothic thing.
MIKE STEWART: As the DJ at Scream I probably was closer to the old Fetish format than TVC15, bearing in mind TVC15 came after the Fetish. TVC15 was trying to be more glam, metal, and rock. Joseph took out all the dancey stuff because he had already done that with Fetish and he was so over those two crates. He was trying to push the format toward what he liked, and he just really liked heavier guitar rock at that time. Scream was definitely not a “rock club” but it had some rock parts to it. The Scream became more popular [once it moved from Mondays to Fridays and basically killed off TVC15] because we had a more open format. We didn’t specialize or push one way or the other. I’d play what I wanted that I thought people would dance to. I never played Motley Crue or Ratt at the Scream, that was way too rock for me. As rock as I ever got was playing The Cult’s first record, which had all the big hits on it, but that was considered “alternative.”
JOSEPH BROOKS: This was major crossover time. This new crowd would listen to the Banshees and Motley Crue. [Around ’85, ’86] I had the [Vinyl Fetish] record store and Henry owned Wednesdays at the Glam Slam [the pre-Roxbury Imperial Gardens sushi restaurant on Sunset]. People wore the appropriate kind of clothes that liked both kinds of bands. The kids that hung out at our store during the day went to all these metal . . . gothic . . . glam . . . clubs at night; people that ended up starting bands like Guns n’ Roses, L.A. Guns, Faster Pussycat. . . .
The Glam Slam convened by pioneering rock club DJ Henry Peck at the Imperial Gardens, a sushi bar-restaurant on Sunset Strip, circa 1985. Eventually the same space morphed into the legendary Roxbury sleazepit immortalized in some daft forgotten movie. Peacocking, mooching, brawling, and slamming unlimited sake with beer chasers paid for by girls with day jobs became the weekly Wednesday ritual for a gaggle of gnarler dudes who eventually morphed from Hollywood Rose into L.A. Guns, Guns N’ Roses, and Faster Pussycat. (Publicity photo)
MIKE STEWART: TVC15 was at the Ebony Theater of the Arts on Washington, in a predominantly black area of Los Angeles. That’s how we knew about it. It was just a seated theater and a little lobby. Two doors down there was this little gymnasium. We booked both rooms for the Scream and I DJ’d the main floor and had three bands play: Jane’s Addiction, Cold September, and Damn Yankees. It was Scream’s first night ever having bands, although the club had previously existed as a Monday night DJ-only promotion, first at the Seven Seas, owned by Eddie Nash. . . . Later, we moved it to the Probe for safety, a few weeks after the Cathouse took over Tuesday nights there. Jane’s Addiction were brand new. They’d only played one or two gigs, if even that, but they said they’d help us out with some extra promotion. I didn’t know what to expect. As soon as they climbed onto the stage you could feel the vibe in the room change instantly. Perry was standing motionless, striking a total Bowie stage pose, covered with this long coat. He drops the coat off his shoulders onto the floor vamp-style, just like a stripper, and he’s completely naked except for a pair of nylons. You can see everything he has! So he grabs the mic and goes off at the crowd, like, “Hey, you . . . I’m Perry, man . . . and I came here to do two things: one, to rock the fuck out!” and he grabs himself; “Two, to show my cock off!” and he just went straight into the first song, probably was “Whores.” The four guys on stage looked like they didn’t belong with each other. Dave was so pretty he looked like a girl, Perry looked like the Domino’s Pizza noid on drugs, jumping and vibrating and screaming and singing. The drummer Steve had this real kinky hair and looked like a stoner-surfer dude from the Valley. Eric was in the corner, the slow, but very sly Venice Beach guy.
DAVE NAVARRO: My first memory of the Scream was the Ebony Theater. Perry performed the whole show in a shopping cart, like literally we had a shopping cart on stage and I was wearing a floppy hat and a tie-dye and no shoes . . . some of that Grateful Dead influence still there!
MIKE STEWART: Perry brought this shopping cart on stage and while he’s in the cart singing we were divvying up the money. We were already real nervous about the gig in general. Someone supposedly drove by earlier and said, “You guys don’t belong in this neighborhood.” I had a gun with me. We called it the Value-Pac. I hid it in a McDonald’s bag. Bruce was out front when someone drove by in a Cadillac and threw a Molotov cocktail at the front door. Now the front door’s on fire! Bruce came running in with the money. I said, “Shit, better get the dough!” and so I grabbed all the money in this briefcase and ran to my car and s
plit from this hood as fast as I could.
“GONNA KICK TOMORROW” (1986)
FLEA: There was a very distinct, very L.A. music scene, and it was very quirky, and artistic, and bisexual, and punk at the same time; it was angry, and effeminate, and cool . . . that’s what Jane’s Addiction brought to the table. They also brought this macho heavy metal, this dirty rock ’n’ roll thing together. Those two things had major links to two totally different parts of the L.A. music scene.
Into the Mystic. Prophet Peretz ponders the Stairway to Heaven. (Chris Cuffaro)
CASEY NICCOLI: When you’re twenty-seven in rock ’n’ roll with nothing really happening you think you’re old. That’s why Steve, Dave, and Eric were seven or eight years younger than Perry. He felt like he could mold them and they would forever do what he wanted. Eventually, they’d grow up, but by then he’d have gotten what he needed out of them.
PERRY FARRELL: I got into music kinda late. I didn’t get into it to be a rock star. It seemed really cool to try to put together some creative interesting music—but not rock. I didn’t even have a record player or a radio when I was growing up.30
DAN NAVARRO: I was aware Perry was quite a bit older than the rest of them. He was articulate, real interesting to talk to, and I was impressed by how polite he was. He was like twenty-seven or twenty-eight, and they were like eighteen-twenty.
PETE WEISS: People in our little L.A. scene of the 80s were following in the footsteps of the first punk rockers, we were the generation after them. We looked up to them, we liked their ideals. We took that shit to heart! A lot of us distilled the real message of it—and lived it out. We thought we were exactly like them because we rejected the status quo, we were inventing our own lives, creating our own lifestyles, not living by someone else’s rules. We applied old punker ideas about leading the DIY life—just do it yourself ’cuz no other fucker will. Punk rockers spoke to us, they taught us you don’t have to work within the mainstream to make your way. We also loved their music to pieces.
PERRY FARRELL: Punk was a catchphrase for so much more than punk rock. It didn’t matter how old you were. It didn’t matter how much training you had; you could enter at any level, do anything you wanted with it. . . .
THE BE LIVE SHOW
March 23, 1986
PERRY FARRELL: I would drive around looking for warehouses and find out who owned them.
CASEY NICCOLI: The Be Live show was another legend in early Jane’s Addiction lore.
PERRY FARRELL: Bianca said she’d put up some money for a show and so we found a place. You set up once, do it once. If you can get out of there without cops arresting people and confiscating your money, you did a good job. You just started looking around for dilapidated warehouses that might need a little bit of spending money and you’d say to them, “How would you like to have a party here?”
Be Live flyer.
BOB FORREST: This was years before born-again psychedelia and electronic dance culture came out of the underground warehouse parties. . . .
PERRY FARRELL: I had no money of my own. Bianca put up for all these shows. Bianca always took the money with old black tape on her tits. That was to draw people in. Bianca always worked the door because she wanted to show her tits. We got Thelonious Monster and Jane’s Addiction, we got a laser light show. Smoke machines. Spinning lights. PA. We set up in this warehouse on Beverly Boulevard near Silverlake. I found a place that does custom motorcycles, and I said, “Hey, man, how’d you like to display at a rock show?” This stunt pulled in like ten custom choppers, but I didn’t tell them I was also having a transvestite dance review.
REBECCA AVERY: The Be Live show was just bizarre. So much prep work went into it, so much excitement. So much hope had been placed into this one night. It’s going to be great. It’s got everything! But in the end it was just awful, it was a big flop. Nobody came except us diehards, close friends of the band and a few others. . . .
CASEY NICCOLI: Hardly anybody showed up!
BOB FORREST: Luckily, our band had seven people in it . . . made it seem like there were more people there.
DAVE NAVARRO: It was a wild night, but an obvious financial disaster. Poor Bianca lost her shirt financially.
PERRY FARRELL: . . . literally, as well. She was strutting around with the cashbox topless, with duct tape on her nipples.
CASEY NICCOLI: We had fire-eaters on stage. We had a hot dog stand going, too.
ERIC AVERY: The guys in Thelonious Monster and Fishbone were there, and I think Anthony Kiedis was humping some girl in the pit.
CASEY NICCOLI: It smelled really bad. The hot dog cart was smoking. You couldn’t breathe or see anything. We didn’t realize there wasn’t any ventilation!
BOB FORREST: We [Thelonious Monster] were playing at this weird storefront garage warehouse thing that Perry set up. It had the greatest PA and there was lights and a motorcycle exhibit with bondage girls all tied up. We played and Jane’s Addiction watched us and then they were playing and we watched them.
DAN NAVARRO: Perry stripped down to sheer panty hose and nothing else. The opening act was a group of transsexual strippers.
PERRY FARRELL: It was quite the cast. Macho biker dudes mixed with punk rockers, artists, drunks from the Zero Zero Club, and Bianca’s clients—bow-legged old guys in sweaters reeking of cologne, with white shoes and hairpieces. There were also some under-age, metal-rocker kids from the Valley, friends of Dave and Steve’s. But the kids couldn’t handle their liquor. One of them passed out, and when he woke up, his pants were down around his ankles, and somebody told him that one of the trannies had sucked him off.
DAVE NAVARRO: My friend drank himself into a blackout. I left him crashed on this couch, and when I came back later, his pants were down around his ankles and he was sound asleep with an erection, and there was a transsexual hovering over him. I kind of shooed him away.
PERRY FARRELL: The kid should have just gone with it, chalked it up to experience, but he lost his mind. . . . It was the old panic trauma, “Oh, no-o-o-o . . . my cock penetrated a man’s skull . . . now I’m gaaaaaay!!!!!”
DAVE NAVARRO: It was our first exposure to this elaborately seedy, fabulously filthy Hollywood underground scene that we’d only ever heard or read about. I was, like, eighteen years old—in awe. I was over the moon. I’d finally made it at last.
PERRY FARRELL: That was the Be Live show. The name makes no sense, but Bianca, because it was her money, she had the say. She named it the Be Live. I still don’t know what it means.
PAY TO PLAY
Circa May 1986
DAVE NAVARRO: Perry and I went to see whoever was booking the Troubadour who agreed to let us perform, but then asked us for money. We were stunned. We couldn’t believe we were being asked for money . . . pre-sold tickets, deposits on microphones, or whatever they claimed it was for, but we were hungry and eager. We were in such shock that we paid it and went on our way to try and sell these tickets.
PERRY FARRELL: The whole pay-to-play plague was happening in Los Angeles where a band couldn’t get a gig on Sunset Strip or the Troubadour without paying for rental of microphones and pre-buying the tickets. We were so against that we said, “Screw you all! Let’s find a warehouse!”
Adorable Dave, dear to every woman. (Valerie)
JEAN-PIERRE BOCCARA (club owner-talent booker): From a club booker’s perspective, most of the local bands were overexposed; always playing too much in the same geographical area, always diluting their draw. Some local bands played more than twice in the same week . . . and then kvetch there wasn’t anywhere to play! Places like the Lingerie, the Anti-Club, the O.N. Klub, Al’s Bar, the Brave Dog, Theoretical, Phenomenon, the Music Machine, plus my club, the Lhasa Club, although we were more diversified with spoken word, avant-garde cabaret, and live performance art. All these small bar-driven clubs were competing for the same bands, but I’ll say it . . . it did create a thriving scene. None of these clubs had pay-to-play policies like the Troubadour in West Hollywo
od and Gazzarri’s, the Whisky and the Roxy up on the Strip. Bands would argue, “How are we to develop a following if we don’t play around?” The big daddies who ran the Strip turned it around; they put their foot down and made the bands pay them for the honor of playing their world-famous soundstages.
TEXACALA JONES: The very first places I ever played at were the Lingerie and the Cathay de Grande and they weren’t charging anybody to play at those places, mister! The bands that I hung out with or played shows with just wouldn’t do that, couldn’t afford to, even if they wanted to. We played with the Sirens, Blood on the Saddle, Tupelo Chainsex, the Blasters, X, lots of other bands, even Jane’s Addiction refused to pay to play. They played it our way.
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