MIKE STEWART: There was a certain core amount of people who’d go to Scream no matter who played, probably about 500. We averaged probably around 1,000 to 1,200. If the band was bigger we’d go up to 1,500. In the beginning Jane’s Addiction benefited from Scream’s basic draw. I’m sure in the end we benefited due to Jane’s Addiction’s draw. On our last night we drew 3,000. A really good night would be 1,500-2,000 people. That main room could hold 1,000 so you’re talking 1,000 sweaty people. People would do their drugs on the patio or have sex in the bathroom or in the dark video room, others just wanted to dance to the records and have a good time. There are a million stories about Scream and what went on there. We kept going until 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning.
KARYN CANTOR: Perry and Casey would go to the Scream and get treated like the royal couple of the scene. . . .
PERRY FARRELL: You knew you were going to see the same people every Friday at Scream. Afterwards, you went back to somebody’s house until the sun came up.
DAYLE GLORIA: Jane’s played monthly at Scream [from mid-’86, well into ’87]. The club grew with them. We grew together. I kept booking them because if somebody would cancel, it was like, “Let’s call Jane’s Addiction.” They became like the house band.
PERRY FARRELL: The club clicked and we clicked.32
Scream becomes home to Jane’s Addiction. (Karyn Cantor)
ON-STAGE BRAWLIN’ JANE’S ADDICTION IN NEW YORK SCREAM NIGHT AT THE LIMELIGHT
Circa early January 1987
CHARLEY BROWN: Every time we left town they broke up.
ERIC AVERY: It was the first time Jane’s went on a trip. We were taken by Mike Stewart and Dayle Gloria. They were trying to open up a club, Scream East, in New York. The Limelight space.
MIKE STEWART: The New York gig created a lot of drama.
Scream East flyer. Mike Stewart: “There was a lot of drama in New York.”
CHARLEY BROWN: The best show they ever broke up on was at the Limelight. The band got in a huge fight onstage. Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy from the Cult were in town trying out their Led Zeppelin stuff for the Electric album. The Cult were huge then and we were nobody.
DEAN NALEWAY: So the Cult guys jump up [at the finale of Jane’s set] and Dave hands his guitar over and the Cult guy was playing it for a while until Dave suddenly snapped. He went up and unplugged the guy in the middle of a solo . . . just ripped the guitar back from the guy . . . and started wailing on the solo like a madman . . . this was beyond Spinal Tap!
CHARLEY BROWN: Billy and Ian came out with Eric and Steve and started doing Led covers. Backstage, Dave was incredibly drunk. He staggered out and unplugged Billy, and Duffy was left just kind of strumming on air, like, “What the fuck just happened?” Then Perry came out all jealous and they had a fucking major rip. He was ready to kill the whole band. He and Dave got in a fistfight.
ERIC AVERY: There was a huge tussle and I remember drums getting knocked over.
CHARLEY BROWN: They just went wild. Perry threw Dave into the drums and the whole set just fell apart.
TOM ATENCIO: Every night was theatre with Jane’s Addiction.
PERRY FARRELL: I never thought pro wrestling was high entertainment. Led Zeppelin is high entertainment.33
GETING SIGNED TO RECORD LABELS WARNER BROS. ERA COMPARISONS TO ZEPPELIN
Circa January 1987
AGENT AVA: I told Perry everybody’s calling KXLU, asking when they could get music in the stores. He said I can’t talk about that right now because there’s some stuff in the works. I just knew at that point it wouldn’t take long before they would go straight to the top.
DAVE NAVARRO: KXLU was the first local station to play our music. The first time I heard us on KXLU—I think it was the “Mountain Song” demo—you would have thought I was signed up to be on the first civilian flight to the moon. It was just the biggest deal. I was so excited.
ERIC AVERY: I was prouder of hearing a song that I made on KXLU than on regular radio. . . .
STEVEN BAKER (Warner Bros. Records executive): I was driving to work [at Warner Bros.] listening to KXLU and they played . . . “Jane Says.” The first thing that struck me is, God, it sounds like Led Zeppelin. . . .
DAVE NAVARRO: Of course there is a [Zeppelin] influence there, you can’t help an influence that you’ve grown up listening to. It’s second nature when you pick up an instrument to play like a particular person but I’m not going to say I’m duplicating it. I think I have my own style. Then again our bass player really does hate Led Zeppelin.
ERIC AVERY: I was totally perplexed when people referred to us as like Led Zeppelin. In retrospect I can see some aspects of it.
PERRY FARRELL: We probably do sound something like Zeppelin. But I don’t sing or look like Robert Plant. They compare me more to Iggy Pop but I don’t move like Iggy Pop. I don’t deny the feel. I really do love funk, more than rock.
ERIC AVERY: I also shared a love of funk [with Perry], which makes sense on the surface with the Peppers and Fishbone in a way that doesn’t immediately with Jane’s. Perry and I both really liked rhythm-based music like funk and rap.
PERRY FARRELL: These guys [Stephen, Dave] like metal, so that’s where that blend comes from, funk and metal, and that’s also what Zeppelin was doing. One thing we never play is blues, and that’s something that Zeppelin did. Our music has a very hard vein, it’s very raw rockin’. So how do you get an intelligent audience out of that? I’m really into the poetry, and the slower stuff, and I don’t want that end of it to drop off.
DAVE NAVARRO: A lot of people compare the band to Zeppelin and the Doors. But if you listen to what Eric’s doing in Jane’s Addiction, it’s very English, kind of . . . Bauhaus, Joy Division. That kind of stark, intellectual stuff.
STEVEN BAKER: I called Anna Statman [A&R rep at Slash Records] and asked her about this band Jane’s Addiction. Our messenger came back from her office with a four-song demo. I thought it was great and played it for Roberta Petersen, one of our A&R people, since I wasn’t from the A&R department, but I knew she liked hard music.
DEAN NALEWAY: It was a team. The three of us, Charley [Brown], Pete, and myself. We started Triple X together in late ’85 as a record company that branched out into management. We were out in the clubs all the time looking for new bands to build a roster. We’d already staked out a few bands when we saw Perry handing out flyers, and we were like, “Pretty interesting-looking guy. Who is he?”
CHARLEY BROWN: I was out every night in clubs and saw Perry first and then dragged those guys out to see them. I was director of sales at Greenworld [a record distributor] and Dean [Naleway] and Peter [Heur] were the buyers, but the company was going down and we knew it. I showed those guys how to get fired so we could get unemployment, like a six-month window of cash to start Triple X. We had $100, our credit cards, and we hocked everything to get that [Jane’s Addiction live at the Roxy] recording happening.
DEAN NALEWAY: We wanted to do a three-record deal with Jane’s at first. They were unknown, we had a little bit of clout. But Perry had his eye on the big picture. He knew that three records for us was too much.
CHARLEY BROWN: We had them signed for five records for 5,000 bucks and then Perry brought up managing the band. I felt that was an incredible conflict of interest and that I could get them a better deal. I suggested we do one record and split it 50-50 and I’d go on and manage them. That’s how the Triple X Management wing of the company came into being. . . .
PERRY FARRELL: At the same time Warner Bros. Records was hot for us.
STEVEN BAKER: We wanted the band bad.
PERRY FARRELL: [Warner Bros.] weren’t sure about us [at first]. Some people didn’t get it, others said they were crazy not to sign us. Typical big-table rock-business talk. They assigned Ted Templeman’s sister to be our A&R rep [Roberta Petersen], but first we met with Lenny [Waronker], Mo [Ostin], and [Steve] Baker. I liked them. It felt safe because of who had previously been on the label, people like Hendrix and the Talking Hea
ds. And I thought, “There’re some artists for you.” If I’m not sure about the men, I’m always sure about the artists. Lenny had the posture of a guy who’s perpetually concerned and he had this endearing worried look, especially when he was listening to the music and thinking about things.
CHARLEY BROWN: At first, the L.A. music industry didn’t understand Jane’s Addiction in the slightest, which is why we stuck our record out there. The industry basically hated them for the first year we were working with them.
DAN NAVARRO: A famous A&R guy told me, “I could listen to your cousin play all night and day, but I’m not going to sign a band where the audience is going to be turned off because the lead singer wears a dress or a girdle or some crazy effeminate thing like that. They’re going to turn off the very audience that’s made for them.” I thought, OK, fair enough. I don’t agree with you, but fair enough. So it was really heartening to see Triple X and Warners really believing in them enough to let them be who they were.
BRUCE DUFF (musician, journalist, PR honcho): One A&R bigwig said he felt that Perry’s image simply would not appeal to the kids most likely to go for [Jane’s] their music. Another manager called Perry “the Birdman” with a derogatory tone of voice. Everyone who didn’t like the band said they just “couldn’t get into the singer.”
PERRY FARRELL [to Bruce Duff in May 1987]: So what does that mean? Does that mean I should calm myself down? Does that mean, like I better behave myself? Oh, fuck it, I’ve thought 200,000 light years ahead past whatever that fuckin’ guy was. I’ve thought and thought and thought, it’s all I do; that’s why I fuckin’ am going crazy. All I do is think. I know what’s up. Half the people are gonna hate my guts and half are gonna like it. You want everyone to like you? If you don’t have controversy you’re not living, because everyone’s trying to homogenize. So you step out of line, you’re making a problem. It doesn’t bother me. That’s what rock ‘n’ roll is all about. You better be ahead of everybody else—really far ahead—even to the point of being absurd, slightly.34
BRUCE DUFF (writing in Music Connection): The important thing isn’t so much that [Jane’s] nabbed a major record deal, but that—for a left-of-center band—signing with WB is the ideal deal. This is the label that let Husker Du self-produce a two-record set, that let Prince develop slowly over four albums, that had the guts to sign the Replacements. This could be the start of something big.35
PERRY FARRELL: There were all these A&R people at the Roxy in January, but we were already recording for ourselves. It was a little of a slap in the face.36
STEVEN BAKER: The Triple X indie album came out after we made the deal with Jane’s Addiction.
CHARLEY BROWN: Soon everybody copied us with the fake indie release while they’re already signed to a major label. Exhibit B: the Soundgarden record on SST. Soundgarden was already signed to A&M when they released it. Geffen did the same thing with Guns N’ Roses, put out a fake indie record on their own bogus label Uzi Records, or whatever . . . it was like a blatant major corporate ploy to basically buy out the “alternative” scene, to purchase instant indie street cred. . . .
PERRY FARRELL: We told Warners we definitely wanted to sign, but we wanted to come out on our own label or an indie first and then grow organically from there. It just made more sense. We said, “We appreciate all the money you’re offering, but we need to come out on Triple X with a live record first.”
BIDDING WAR BEGINS
January-May 1987
PERRY FARRELL: Things were hot. Record companies were all buzzing around.
CHARLEY BROWN: We couldn’t get anything happening until we all came together at the Music Machine show [January ’87]. The band broke up but was still obligated to do one last show and it turned out that’s when all the A&R people showed up and that’s when everything got hot. Don Muller was great, Marc Geiger’s assistant. Muller would come to all the early shows, but he wouldn’t have any authority.
ERIC AVERY: All of a sudden, we had MCA, Capitol, and Geffen feting us with dinners, but we knew we were never going to sign with them because Warner Brothers was just the right place. It was like visiting a college dorm. You could walk down the hallways and hear music blaring out of everyone’s office. What a great vibe. We just knew it was the right place for us.
DAVE NAVARRO: I don’t remember much about the bidding war. All I remember was they took you to Hamburger Hamlet on Sunset for record-label dinners back in the 80s. Always the same place. I don’t know why.
HEIDI RICHMAN: Guns N’ Roses and Poison were signed quite a bit before Jane’s. However uncool that may be to some—it definitely affected how things went down in the business side of the new rock ’n’ roll faces of the 80s. . . .
CHARLEY BROWN: Irving Azoff, who got called “The Poison Dwarf” behind his back, was one of the big guns coming after us. Goldie Goldsmith was his point person at the time he was running MCA, which had this terrible rep as “The Music Cemetery of America,” and so one of the things they were trying to beef up was their rock roster. They were just throwing silly money at us. I had a meeting with Irv and Goldie to hear out their pitch of why they were the right place, but I knew I wasn’t going to go there. No way. It was all just a charade. We knew we were going with Warners, but the only way a new band has any power in a record deal is if the label wants the band more than the band wants to put out a record . . . in other words, the band has the ability to walk. I had to create competition. Play these fuckin’ sharks against each other.
DAVE NAVARRO: We went with Warners because they offered us more creative control. Other labels offered more money, but [with Warners] we could basically do what we wanted, production-wise, and with artwork and videos.37
CHARLEY BROWN: Azoff was the classic little guy with a gigantic desk to compensate. He also had a miniature basketball court in his office. While he’s running down all the great things that MCA was going to do for Jane’s and all the money they were going to give us, this weird little fellah, like out of a circus sideshow with a big head and stubby little legs, is shooting baskets and Goldie had to rebound. It was hilarious to watch this big-time A&R dude having to scramble under tables and fetch like a dog. Irv says to me, “You may have heard that Goldie is going to be changing companies but you know he won’t really be changing any time soon—he knows I’d have his arms and legs broken.” He’s . . . like, little big guy East Coast gangster talk, very funny, straight outta Goodfellas.
DEAN NALEWAY: Their hearts and minds were already set on Warners. We could get anybody on the phone, from the top man down, which impressed the hell out of Perry. And the Warners deal gave them 100 percent creative freedom. But we played around anyway and milked it for some good meals.
PERRY FARRELL: I never ate so well in my life. . . .
CHARLEY BROWN: Tom Zutaut, Geffen’s point guy, didn’t come out of his house for three weeks after he didn’t get the band . . . and he would never sign a band that I worked with after that. Where is he now?
INGER LORRE: Hah-haha. . .
PERRY FARRELL: I knew I wasn’t inevitably going to end up with David Geffen, although that was the informed bets. We would have gone with Geff’s company if we could have worked with David direct. I was just so tickled to meet him. I remember the amusement in his eyes. I’m the kind of person who is probably up his alley. I’m not afraid to be myself and sometimes I’m kinda flamboyant.
We almost could have worked together. Too bad. It would have been fun. Unfortunately, I sensed we wouldn’t be seeing very much of this man as soon as the blood dried on the scroll.
JIM BARBER (record exec-manager): I’ll never forget sitting in on this meeting when Charley and Perry came to talk with Fred Bestall at Big Time [Records, a fairly prominent indie at the time]. It was the hugest charade of a meeting I’ve ever attended. They were so high on the big bucks they knew they were getting elsewhere that a Gigantor $40K Big Time commitment wasn’t even going to cover their catering bill for the album.
CHARLE
Y BROWN: I negotiated the biggest advance that had been done at that point. We tied Guns N’ Roses because Warners wouldn’t go beyond what Geffen gave them. They gave us the exact same deal. It was about $250,000 or $300,000.
INGER LORRE: The Nymphs got a crazy amount of money for our first record [she claims $800,000]. We never would have gotten signed or got anywhere near what we got without the momentum created by Jane’s Addiction.
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