DAVE NAVARRO: I made some flyers and underneath the Troubadour logo I wrote, “Where you pay to play.” I handed out all these flyers at Scream and the Cathouse. I also drove by the Troub and just threw a stack of them on the sidewalk. The following day they yanked us from the bill, so we got a whole bunch of people calling the club asking what time we go on and they were told that we’d pulled out. We looked at it as a small victory of some kind.
The Troubadour, “Where You Pay to Play.” (Courtesy Rebecca Avery)
WALT KIBBY, JR.: We wouldn’t pay to play. Hell, no. That’s not the way to do it. The club scene was mostly done on just hard work. Just playing, promoting yourself, filling the clubs. If everybody knows it’s the thing to go and see, if they know it’s a good bill of bands, they’ll go and see it.
TEXACALA JONES: Mostly all the hair bands did the pay-to-play scam. Maybe their parents helped them out and what not. Nobody I ever knew did that. We didn’t really hang out with many metal people. We would play at dives like the Cathay and then Raji’s and the Underwear Club [Club Lingerie] before it shut down. Music Machine, Al’s Bar, Anti-Club, Club 88, those places didn’t charge you money; only the Strip clubs got away with it ’cuz they had the cool address, they had the famous location. . . .
KURT FISHER (club owner): At Club Lingerie there was no pay to play. My booker [this book’s author], Brendan Mullen, was always saying, “If you can’t book a great show that people will come out for . . . then just forget it . . . go home . . . get out of the business. . . .”
POWERTOOLS, L.A.’S LAST MONOLITHIC MEGA CLUB
BOB FORREST: There were so many changes going on with the downtown scene. Jane’s was the complete band of their time. They played in the lobby at Powertools. Sometimes acoustically in the siderooms. The residency at Scream came later that same year.
JOSH RICHMAN: I hung out weekends at Powertools. I was the guy with the no shoes, and the cane and the bowler or the cowboy hat. The promoters Matt [Dike] and Jon [Sidel] were my friends. One time they were doing a huge rock ’n’ roll theme night. . . .
JON SIDEL: We were big on Area-style [legendary 80s N.Y. disco] shifting installations and themes. . . .
JOSH RICHMAN: I told Sidel, “Get this band Jane’s Addiction to play the base of the stairs and everybody will be blown away.”
JON SIDEL: Josh called me because we sometimes did live shows but rarely full-on rock bands with cranked guitars. We were a DJ-driven dance club with emphasis on r&b/funk, soul and hip-hop, sometimes with a little bit of rock thrown in, depending on [DJ] Matt Dike’s mood. Josh said, “Check out this band that Matt Chaikin of Kommunity FK got goin’ with Perry Farrell, the singer from Psi Com.” We were producing a special rock ’n’ roll theme night so I jumped for the idea.
JOSH RICHMAN: Sidel was like, “Matt from Kommunity FK is the drummer—dude, there’ll be goth chicks!” Sidel and Dike were really into goth chicks but had been unable to get anywhere near them on their own. Now these two East Coast transplants had the hottest dance club of the decade on their hands. It didn’t matter how the band sounded, they just prayed some goths would come down from Hollywood because the Psi Com guy and somebody from Kommunity FK had this new band.
BOB FORREST: I saw the first Jane’s Addiction show on the steps of Powertools at the Park Plaza Hotel. The crowd was just ignoring them, walking past them on their way upstairs to dance [in the main ballroom]. That dance crowd just didn’t care about any live band. They wanted to pose and listen to [70s and 80s] funk tracks with Matt Dike DJ’ing, hoping to get mentioned in Details or La Di Dah. Jane’s set up on the steps, just a tiny combo busking away like they were on the street with only a few people watching. . . .
JOSH RICHMAN: Jane’s set up on this beautiful marble floor, no stage at all, below these wonderful old chandeliers. There were 100 people sitting on the stairs gawking. . . .
BOB FORREST: Later, we played with them a few times in the side lounges downstairs at Powertools . . . big rooms with these amazing high ceilings, they had like these classic Masonic columns and carvings. . . .
REBECCA AVERY: They were like huge carpeted rooms with no stages. Just set up on the floor . . .
BOB FORREST: We had total freedom to decide our own set times and the length of them and we got to play anything we wanted.
DAVE NAVARRO: Sometimes I jammed with Thelonious Monster downstairs at Powertools. I’d sit in on a song or two. It was real loose and fun with those guys.
BOB FORREST: There was a medium amount of people there because we were like sideshow bands near the bar area; that’s when the Jane’s guys got into more experimental acoustic things, something they were always real good at. People would come in to buy drinks and then maybe hang for a few numbers then wander out again to peacock around the lobby and the stairs under these old chandeliers. . . .
Early Jane’s line-up plays a sideroom at Powertools, a two-story, multi-room pre-rave dance club with themed installations, which convened weekly at the Park Plaza Hotel, MacArthur Park. (Karyn Cantor)
PERRY FARRELL: I remember these cool chandeliers, wrought iron . . . beautifully crafted woodwork . . . the interior and the exterior [of the Park Plaza Hotel] was a trip, an L.A. monument overlooking MacArthur Park. Used to be some kind of Elks’ Lodge back in its day. . . .
BOOTED FROM CLUB LINGERIE
October 1, 1986
WALT KIBBY, JR.: Melvis, this door chick from the Lingerie, was pissed off at everybody and everybody was pissed off at her! When we played Lingerie, we were all way under twenty-one, too young to get in anyway. She always tried to keep us in the back, and one time Angelo snuck out and ran upstairs just to see his father, and Melvis saw him and just threw him down the stairs and tossed him out! She was just a hard-assed chick. After a while all the bands started talking to each other about that club and what they were going to do when they were going there next. People looked forward to going in and messing up, like you had to go in there and prove something because they were such assholes, well maybe not all of ’em, but Melvis for sure. . . .
DAYLE GLORIA (DJ, Scream booker): I was DJ-ing at Lingerie the night Perry flew off the stage and jumped up on the bar, and knocked everything off. Every glass, all the ashtrays, the cherries, everything.
DEAN NALEWAY: Perry said, “Fuck it, I’m not doing this show.” And I said, “Perry, you’ve got to. Important people are coming down, we can’t get a rep as fucking flakes. You’ve gotta do this show.” And he’s like, “Dean, there’s only one way I’ll do it.” And I’m like, “Anything, just name it, ’cause we gotta do the show,” and he’s like, “You let me run across the bar in the middle of the set.” And I’m like, “Oh-oh.” I said, “Perry, that’s like a lawsuit waiting to happen.” He’s like, “That’s the only way I’ll do the show.” I said, “Okay, but do it with only two songs left, at least get most of the set done.”
DAVE NAVARRO: Perry jumped off the stage and ran down the bar and kicked everybody’s drinks over and so we got blacklisted. . . .
CHARLEY BROWN: Perry got pissed off at something. It was like an antelope the way he leaped from the stage to that railing and made this spectacular jump to the bar. I remember being pretty pissed. The Lingerie was an important room at that time . . . and now he’s got us booted from there. . . .
KURT FISHER: I don’t think they were too worried about it. Many of the bands I 86’d from the Lingerie went on to bigger and brighter things, some became big-time legends: Gun Club, Top Jimmy & the Rhythm Pigs, Red Hot Chili Peppers—I remember tossing Fishbone and Jane’s Addiction. El Duce and the Mentors. Thelonious Monster hit the curb a few times, too.
BOB FORREST: Top Jimmy and Carlos Guitarlos were booted all the time. . . . Jeffrey Lee Pierce also made Kurt’s Hall of Fame Shitlist. . . .
PETE WEISS: Flea pissed all over the stage into the monitors at Lingerie, that got the Chili Peppers bounced for sure. . . .
DAVE NAVARRO: Stephen and I were like eighteen years old, so we weren’t all
owed in the Lingerie, except to play. It was strictly twenty-one and over. We’d be headlining there and be waiting in the car outside until it was time to go on. Since we had nothing to do, we got so drunk one time I blacked out and kicked the monitors off the stage and smashed my guitar and broke my equipment. Had I been allowed into the club in the first place I can assure you I would just never have gotten so wasted right before I had to play. . . .
DEAN NALEWAY: Later, the owner guy Kurt—still paid us some, but he took off for the shit that Perry and Dave broke. He said, “This band will never fucking play here again. But, I have to tell you, this was one of the best shows we’ve ever had.”
WALT KIBBY, JR.: It was a good spot for a club, and there was always great shows booked there, and if you packed it, there was a good vibe, but some of the people running the door there were just horrible, man.
DENNIS MARTINO (bar manager, Club Lingerie): It became like a club, this weird all-male fraternity of bad boys. Getting bounced from the Lingerie by Kurt or Melvis [our over-heated platinum-quiffed star doorperson of the time] bonded these guys into a larger group which only increased their notoriety; it just made ’em get more popular! A few months later, Brendan would talk Kurt into lightening up and he’d promote a bunch of these bands together on special “amnesty” forgiveness theme nights . . . and there would be lines around the block to see them. . . . Worked like a charm every time . . . and Melvis would get even more pissy that her authority had been undermined!
WALT KIBBY, JR.: It was like, if you get banned from that club, that puts you up there. The Beat Farmers was another one that always used to get kicked out.
DAYLE GLORIA: Jane’s was banned from the Lingerie so I said, “Come and play for me, I don’t care if you break anything.”
THE SCREAM (1985-89)
Circa November 1986 through 1987
Jane’s Addiction plays regularly at the Scream and explodes locally (basement of the Embassy Hotel, 851 S. Grand, downtown Los Angeles).
CHARLEY BROWN: We got kicked out of virtually every club we played, which is why we played parties so much, and why Scream became our main L.A. play.
JOSH RICHMAN: The scene that [was gathering] around Jane’s was ancillary to this thing that was going on with Guns N’ Roses and Faster Pussycat, L.A. Guns and Jetboy. Those bands were playing the Troubadour and the Strip, but Jane’s was selling out the Lingerie, the Palace in Hollywood, the Country Club in Reseda; they also got the Lhasa Club and the Powertools downtown art crowd. Then, they started to play regularly at the Scream.
BRYAN RABIN (club promoter, party planner, PR guru): As just another scrappy little teenager finding myself in L.A. [mid-to-late 80s], Jane’s Addiction were really exciting. At the time they broke, the predominant thing was heavy metal, which was gross and disgusting. Poison, Warrant, Motley Crue, and others come to mind. Punk rock, the more intelligent wing of aggressive hard rock had been marginalized years ago.
JOHNNY NAVARRO: It was pretty girls lined up around the block and guys lined up to see the girls and then everybody goes in to see the band. Smarter, more creative pretty girls really loved Jane’s; chicks with sharper intellect who generally found Motley and Ratt dumb and repugnant. . . .
FLEA: To us, all the new hairspray bands were just ridiculous. The whole glam metal pop thing didn’t make sense to us. We didn’t even pay attention. It was a totally different world.
BRYAN RABIN: Sunset Strip was a horrifying mess, this gross metal thing had taken over when “alternative” still really meant something. It wasn’t just another banner at first, another mall chain marketing niche, it wasn’t just another dopey radio or MTV format. The Scream became such a phenom in L.A. . . . it was such a great alternative that everyone kind of glommed onto it as if it was their own.
PAUL V.: Nothing had really crossed over yet, but in those days it was like, “Who cares about alternative?” It was just sort of “Oh, that’s that weird music that’s on college radio.”
BRYAN RABIN: People were living outside the line and experiencing different things, creating their own art and music. Jane’s Addiction spear-headed the scene in a way that needed to happen, no matter how small that window was.
MIKE STEWART: Suddenly in the late 80s everyone liked everything. It was bizarre how everything opened up all of a sudden. There were all these small factions: punk rockers, mods, rockabillys, the goths, all the different factions, but the timing of Scream was just right: We were able to draw a little bit of everybody. They all liked looking at each other and hanging out together again and it all came together at one time.
CHARLEY BROWN: The Scream booked mostly the same headlining bands that were already doing the circuit, except they’d go after-hours, it was weekends only; that was its main appeal. . . .
MIKE STEWART: Scream lasted from December ’85 till ’89 at various locations. I thought of the name because I loved this photocopy I saw of the famous Munch painting and my best friend Steve Elkins created the logo. I thought it was a really disturbing image and a great name for a club. My first flyers used that exact painting. We were first at the Seven Seas, then the Probe on Mondays before we took Fridays at the Berwin. After we moved to the Embassy we hired Dayle Gloria to help with band booking and stage management. We booked all the bands by committee at first. There was definitely a crossover between bands that would regularly headline Lingerie and Scream because the Lingerie was a lot more alternative than any other club at the time. Then the Music Machine in West L.A. jumped in on the action, and they were raiding many of the same acts. . . .
JON SIDEL: Two blocks away from the Scream at the Embassy, the Variety Arts Center would be having these awesome national touring bands like the Butthole Surfers, The Replacements, Husker Du, Red Hot Chili Peppers. Bands like that who were regarded as “alternative” could sell out two nights there easily. It was just an incredible time. One night the Beasties and Run-DMC did this spontaneous jam [at one of the dance clubs held at the VAC]. They got up on stage unannounced with the DJ [Afrika Islam] and there was only one mic to go around, so they were just passing it around. Afterwards, we’d literally walk up the street to Scream to catch Jane’s Addiction . . . they’d play all night while some people danced to records in another room . . . sometimes the whole area would be heaving with like three or four thousand people between both places. . . .
The Scream, with second location address. Promoters Mike Stewart and Bruce Purdue moved from a hostile neighborhood, which firebombed their club while Jane’s Addiction was inside playing one of their first shows (the occasion also apparently marks the first time that Perry whipped out his member onstage). The Scream began to blow up after moving to the Berwin Entertainment Complex on Sunset Boulevard, following a sold-out show with Siouxsie and the Banshees at the Hollywood Palladium, literally a few blocks away, when the two savvy promoters promoted Scream as the after-party hotspot.
MIKE STEWART: We could see each other from the two buildings, it was like having not one, but two Danceteria-style clubs, like two club minimalls within two blocks . . . this was downtown L.A. of the 80s. . . .
KARYN CANTOR: After Scream moved into the basement at the Embassy Hotel in downtown L.A. it became an integral part of Jane’s career. Playing there constantly, people seeing them a lot helped to consolidate and expand the fanbase they’d already accumulated fom all the different little music scenes they’d touched on. . . .
MIKE STEWART: Perry told me he loved that space because it was sweaty. People were like a bunch of bugs rubbing their wings together and creating this energy together. It was a nasty room for me. It was always hot and you felt like the dirt was dripping on you.
PERRY FARRELL: Fire marshals would come in and break things up. It was really cool; it was one of the first clubs to have a separate video room. They built rooms where you could see . . . strange things. Anything went. Then they moved it to a hotel right downtown so it had this air of danger. Outside, kids would get mugged. Everything was busting out wild. Becaus
e I didn’t have to play every night. I could go all out when I did. I would break ribs and ankles, get black eyes, shit like that. I can’t do that now. You’ve got to pace yourself. But you can really impress people breaking limbs. . . .31
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