Whores

by Brendan Mullen

  ERIC AVERY: Sometimes we’d do acoustic jams on the porch at the Wilton House.

  DANUSHA KIBBY: Flea and Angelo would come over a lot and jam with Perry. We had a huge wraparound porch and they would play outside on it. I met a lot of cool local people through the parties and barbecues. . . .

  JANE BAINTER: It was very communal in a hippie-ish way. We were into cooking and the guys would sit out on the front porch and play acoustic guitars and bongos. . . .

  ERIC AVERY: We played barbecues in the backyard and that was the beginning of people starting to dig us. I’ll never forget when Jane asked us if we’d play a sad song for her, and I had to shake my head and say, “Jane, we just got through playing ‘Jane Says,’ one of the saddest songs in the world.”

  JANE BAINTER: When I was in college, my parents had gotten divorced and my mother and her new husband moved away. They sold up in the U.S. and bought this house in the south of Spain. I had the opportunity to go but couldn’t because I was so strung out and everything was so bad over here. It was this idea, this big reward of mine that if I could just kick I could go to Spain. Spain became like a metaphor for sobriety and a better life. . . .

  PERRY FARRELL: “Jane Says” wasn’t even released as a single, but it became its own anthem. . . .

  DAVE JERDEN: When I first heard “Jane Says,” I just thought it was another good song they’d written. I didn’t know it would become like a sort of modern rock “Stairway to Heaven.”40

  DAVE NAVARRO: It’s not long enough to be the new “Stairway.”

  GUNS N’ ROSES

  SLASH (musician, member Guns N’ Roses): When I first became aware of Jane’s Addiction, Guns N’ Roses, at least for me, was pretty much in its own bubble. We just did our thing and fuck everybody else. I liked Jane’s, though. I respected them because they had their own trip and they were sort of wild with that footloose thing going on. I think Perry is fucking great. I love Perry and David and Stephen. They’re all fucking awesome. I don’t know their bass player that well, but they’re just great musicians....41

  PERRY FARRELL: Maybe there was a bit of posturing between the two bands in the early days. I admire their accomplishments and I’d love to see them back together. I think it’s really a shame that they don’t play together anymore. Look, I’ve got a guy who won’t play in my band, either.

  SLASH: We rehearsed in the same little hole in the wall off of Santa Monica and Vine. One day those guys were coming out as we were going in and it was sort of like one of those high school things where two football teams quietly face off. We never exchanged words.42

  ERIC AVERY: Perry, Casey, and I went to see Guns N’ Roses together at the Troubadour. I remember walking out and sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette, waiting for them to come out because I was just so uninterested in Guns N’ Roses. And they followed soon after with the same feeling.

  CHARLEY BROWN: We hated Guns N’ Roses. Guns were our mortal enemies as far as scenesters and stuff. The first Guns record came out right before ours, and, oh, man, Perry was just nearly losing it. Guns were suddenly getting all that attention. We kept telling him, “Perry, calm down, dude . . . you’re gonna happen, you’re gonna happen . . . it’s just gonna happen in a different way.”

  JOHNNY NAVARRO: Dave and I listened to Guns N’ Roses and NWA a lot. Those were the cassettes in our tape player all the time when we went to score drugs. They became our official cop records. I still can’t listen to those records without remembering that time.

  HEIDI RICHMAN: Guns N’ Roses had a crazy rivalry with Poison, but not particularly with Jane’s, as I remember it. Guns and Poison both came up through the same club scene, more or less, but were so incredibly different. Guns N’ Roses were somehow a reaction to something.

  PETE WEISS: G N’ R and Faster Pussycat were a whole scene apart from the generic pay-to-play hairspray bands; if anything, G N’ R even seemed to be a reaction against them. I remember Axl Rose trashing all the posey hair bands . . . he didn’t want to have anything to do with that scene, either . . . his crowd at the Cathouse was beginning to blur into the Poison-Ratt crowd and Axl wasn’t diggin’ it. . . .

  JOSH RICHMAN: There was no wimpy prefab geekiness about G N’ R in the beginning. They were absolutely the real thing. . . .

  HEIDI RICHMAN: Their extreme surliness, the brattishness, was coming much more from a punk sensibility, whereas the guys from Poison moved out here from Pennsylvania to become rich rock stars who got all the chicks. They were all about being glamorous and having fabulous blond exotic dancer girlfriends and hangin’ out in the jacuzzi with champagne every night at the Playboy Mansion. Guns N’ Roses certainly didn’t form with those illusions.

  SLASH: Guns attracted punk rockers, pickup drivin’ heavy metal dudes, fuckin’ preppies, skate kids, and the Allman Brothers stoner crowd. I mean we got fucking tattoo guys, college students, bikers, office workers, glam rockers . . . dude, we had cops, strippers, surfers, marines coming . . . and on and on, you name it, man . . . just this bizarre fucking mix of people.43

  PETE WEISS: The metal kids, the glam kids, the art punks, the goths, the gays, the longhairs . . . the whatevers, all rallied around Jane’s because they appealed to all these different things. They were who they were, and it just attracted all these diverse groups.

  SLASH: With Jane’s you got bizarre people coming, too. The only thing Jane’s and Guns had in common was that both bands were never part of any one scene. There was no scene as far as we were concerned. Jane’s got their own crowd, but it wasn’t like the whole fucking Sunset Strip thing. Or like the L.A. punk thing. Even the Peppers were more L.A. than that. Guns hated everybody, we weren’t part of any scene, either.44

  JOHNNY NAVARRO: Jane’s and Guns N’ Roses both kind of ruled the town but then Guns went up to this other level, like stadium rock, which Jane’s never really wanted to do at that time. It was like, “We’re with the art alternative crowd. We have street cred.”

  JOSH RICHMAN: Jane’s would end up at the Cathouse. You’d see Perry in his girdle and long droogie gloves with pancake and dreads looking like no one else in the building. Everybody else is all gypsied out in bandannas and leather.

  JOSEPH BROOKS: Later, I was resident DJ at Bordello [offshoot of Cathouse], promoted by Riki Rachtman Thursdays at Peanuts [iconic dyke bar in West Hollywood]. I played some stuff that I wouldn’t necessarily play at Cathouse. I started mixing Jane’s with the regular rock set and people really went for it. I was playing “Trip Away” and “Mountain Song” and “Pigs in Zen,” “Whores,” lots of stuff . . . people were certainly dancing to it and the dance floor was packed. There was a crossover happening for sure. The same people who wanted Guns N’ Roses were now starting to listen to Jane’s too.

  March 5, 1987

  Jane’s wins in two categories, “Best Underground Band” and tied with Redd Kross for “Best Heavy Metal/Hard Rock Band,” at the first ever L.A. Weekly Music Awards show at the Variety Arts Center.

  ERIC AVERY: The L.A. Weekly gave us like the best heavy metal award. I was like, “We’re heavy metal? Dude, I just thought of it as expressionistic music . . . unlike anything else that was going on!’ What was thought of as metal at the time was all kind of feline . . . Ratt and Poison? Warrant? Candy Ass? No, thanks. . .

  THE SCREAM GOES FULL SHRIEK

  Circa April-October 1987

  Not since the early punk days in the late 70s at the Masque in Hollywood has L.A. had a music scene like this, with its own bands and culture. And Scream has been at the center of it.

  FROM THE PRESS RELEASE FOR SCREAM: THE COMPILATION,

  A TEN-BAND ANTHOLOGY OF SCREAM REGULARS, INCLUDING

  JANE’S ADDICTION, RELEASED BY GEFFEN RECORDS, OCTOBER 1987

  PERRY FARRELL (to Steve Hochman and Jeff Spurrier in the L.A. Times): It’s late at night . . . it’s good crowds . . . it’s young people . . . it’s sweaty . . . and it’s dark. It’s not the cleanest place, but it gives you a chance to rub up against peo
ple. People are like insects who need to rub up against each other to communicate. . . . 45

  DAYLE GLORIA: [Scream was] nine or ten miles away from the Strip in downtown L.A. where only the more adventurous rocker types would go. The Cathouse, where Taime Downe and Guns hung out, was more of a sleazoid tattoos, strippers, and rock ’n’ roll kind of thing. All the Cathouse guys looked like Bret Michaels from Poison and the chicks were slutty Tawny Kitaen types. At Scream, all the guys looked like Ian McCulloch [of Echo and the Bunnymen] and the girls were all Siouxsie clones.

  HEIDI RICHMAN: You didn’t get many of the poodle-haired Valley people at Scream that you did at Cathouse, but then on the other side of the coin, you got goths, punkers, you got people coming from a different side of it.

  Live at Scream, location number three. The basement at the Embassy Hotel, downtown Los Angeles. (David Hermon)

  DAYLE GLORIA: Guns were playing to the whole Whisky-Gazarri’s-Strip thing. We represented the anti-Strip at the Scream because of the darkness of a lot of the things we were doing.

  MIKE STEWART: My DJ sets included Bauhaus, the Banshees, Virgin Prunes, Cocteau Twins, Lords of the New Church, the Cure, and other early goth stuff; we also threw in old Zeppelin and some classic punk like the Buzzcocks. The Cult’s “She Sells Sanctuary” was a big song, at least one of the Sisters of Mercy songs was always big. The Monday club was the dance part of Scream. Whatever was new was on top of my format. The Cult was always at the top.

  ERICA PAIGE: The Cathouse played up the rock side of it. It wasn’t a punk-rock club. The Cathouse was a really nice merge of different scenes. The Scream was more a conglomeration of different kinds of people.

  PERRY FARRELL: Both scenes were great and wild in their own ways. . . .

  JOSEPH BROOKS: Scream had that sensibility of wanting to be more indie. No selling out—they had that punk-rock do-it-yourself indie thing going. Scream had its roots in goth and death rock. If I think of Scream, I think of Sisters of Mercy. That’s the soundtrack. Cathouse came out of a more rock thing, a New York Dolls-Hanoi Rocks kind of thing.

  MIKE STEWART: They were two different scenes completely, but it did meld together once in awhile. We did book some of the same glam bands. Some of them crossed over into our crowd. Faster Pussycat played at Scream. A lot of the Strip bands played, but they would warm up for a Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, or the Lords of the New Church, they’d open up for Jane’s Addiction.

  ERICA PAIGE: Everybody went to the same clubs. It didn’t matter if it was your scene or not, you went anyways, usually because Cathouse was the only thing going on Tuesdays . . . and Scream was it for Fridays . . . if you loved rock ’n’ roll, or even if you didn’t particularly, but just wanted to step out for the night. . . .

  PERRY FARRELL: The Cathouse was much more of a hetero male hag club for the exotic dancers who love them, with a glam slant on it, and . . .

  BRYAN RABIN: . . . lots of silicone booty.

  ERICA PAIGE: The Cathouse was mostly about metal guys and stripper girls. Lots of stretch pants, big belts, T-shirts.

  HEIDI RICHMAN: Guys were dressing like Hanoi Rocks with the gypsy hats and the scarves.

  JOSH RICHMAN: Cathouse bands like Guns N’ Roses, Faster Pussycat, Jet Boy . . . Nikki Sixx was calling ’em the “gypsy junkie” bands. . . .

  JOSEPH BROOKS: People who dressed to go out at Scream would certainly fit in at Cathouse. They were wearing somewhat similar clothing. Maybe the colors weren’t as black at Cathouse. At Scream black was it. At Cathouse you’d find girls in white cowboy boots. You’d never find that at Scream. At Scream they were wearing pointy black shoes, witchy. Girls [at both places] had big hair, but it wasn’t necessarily dyed black. At Cathouse you’d find girls that were bleach blond. You wouldn’t find too many bleach blondes at Scream.

  DAYLE GLORIA: The headliners went on really late. We didn’t have a curfew. As long as the bar was shut for alcohol by two. Nobody cared. Sometimes we closed out well after five A.M. One night Perry played with a bag of shit in front of the stage. He just put out a big plastic bag filled with poop—we didn’t know what kind of poop, human, dog, or other animal. We just thought that was so weird. I still don’t know what the deal was. Jane’s would do “Whole Lotta Love.” I used to beg them at the end to do it one more time until finally Perry refused.

  BRUCE PURDUE (DJ, club owner, Scream co-founder): We were sort of like three clubs rolled in one . . . a dance club, a video club, and a live music venue. . . .

  ERICA PAIGE: I met David one night at the Scream. I didn’t know who he was but he just kept coming up and saying hi. He seemed really nice, a really sweet guy. I didn’t think anything more of it. I went to leave and he made up some cute lie that he couldn’t find his keys and needed a ride home so I gave him a ride on the back of my motorcycle. But I didn’t go out with him right away.

  INGER LORRE: Dave and I had a very tempestuous, short-lived relationship. We fought all the time. We were both on drugs and hung out a lot. Somehow we ended up sleeping together. It was, a one-night thing and then we felt really uncomfortable and our friendship kind of ended after that. What really made me mad is that he borrowed my card to get drunk. I would just give it to him because at the time I had some money because I was modeling. He just took it and cleared out the whole fucking account! Never give a junkie your card.

  ERICA PAIGE: Dave and I were in very different worlds. I was going one way and he was definitely going another way, but he was pretty persistent, he called and called and called. Problem was I was just getting clean and he was going in the complete opposite direction. He was the exact opposite of what I was looking for, but he was really sweet. He would often come visit me at the Scream and sometimes sit at the door and work with me. He was also very funny.

  “HELLO, I’M A DRUG ADDICT.” THE—UH—PRURIENT DRUG SECTION

  PERRY FARRELL: I picked up a [drug] habit hanging out with the underground. . . .

  JANE BAINTER: Dave was just like, cookie cutter, “Hello, I’m a drug addict.” We all were really, you know, suckers for drugs. Just like made for drugs—we were all made to fight that battle.

  JOHNNY NAVARRO: Dave told me a lot of people at the Wilton House were doing dope. The first night that Dave did heroin himself, Jane’s played a show at Scream and they all went back to the house afterwards. He was with a girl, this foxy black chick. Next day, he was sick as a dog and he told me the chick had skin-popped it in his ass for him. I hated that he was going down that road. What the hell could I do about it? First of all, I’m a diehard alcoholic that did coke all the time. Who the fuck was I to talk? Somehow in my weird backward Calexico-San Diego brain, I thought that if I could go in there and relate to him, I could grab him from the depths of this darkness with a big, burly, brotherly arm and pull him out.

  PERRY FARRELL: Once I started hanging out with the kids in L.A., it was a whole new world. I was landlocked but still carried my surfboard with me everywhere. I became a fully addicted drug fiend. Surfing just kind of went out of my field of vision. When you’re a junkie, you’re cold constantly. Now the idea of going in water repelled me, whereas it used to be the first thing on my mind.

  WILLIE McNEIL: All of a sudden, probably like ’86-’87, coke just became very socially out of vogue. It really fell out because people either got strung out or grossed out. After ’87, if someone pulled out some coke at a party, everybody would kind of snub you . . . you were on your own. It was like, “What are you, an out-of-control coke pig, or what? Disgusting! Cocaine? Are you serious? Yee-uk, man!”

  JOEY ALTRUDA: All the cokeheads were gradually becoming alcoholics and heroin addicts, or all three. . . .

  PLEASANT GEHMAN: Heroin was really taking its hold during the early to middle 80s and continued into the 90s. This was all pre-Guns N’ Roses, pre-Hanoi Rocks. After the Joneses [from Long Beach and Orange County] all the guitar players were trying to act out like Johnny Thunders. 46

  JOEY ALTRUDA: Remember The Joneses? The Joneses wer
e the first of it. The Joneses, Mike Martt, Tex & the Horseheads, and The Little Kings (the Charlie Sexton-Nick Ferrari connection from Austin, Texas) . . . this whole group that were all like notorious heroin bands.

  PERRY FARRELL: There are certain sacrifices you make when you’re a heroin addict. Like having any kind of life.