Whores

by Brendan Mullen

  STEVEN BAKER: Seattle’s so-called grunge scene might not necessarily have been influenced musically by Jane’s but I think the band was definitely a big part of that scene’s inspiration.

  CHARLEY BROWN: If Jane’s hadn’t happened, Seattle wouldn’t have happened in the same way that it did. The scene was bubbling up and Soundgarden and Mudhoney were the first ones out there, but they were too paranoid of the L.A. music-business people, and they hesitated, and missed the window.

  CHRIS CORNELL: I had a very difficult time making the decision that maybe it would be OK to sign a major label record deal because it never seemed to work out. Our audience went to “mom and pop” indie record stores. They didn’t go to Tower or the other big chains, they didn’t buy records that were on major labels.

  JEFF AMENT: Soundgarden was a little closer with punk rock . . . they didn’t want to turn their backs on the early punk-rock scene in Seattle, but Stone and I always felt a little bit of a separation in terms of what was going on with that crowd and what we wanted to do. We were unapologetic about saying, “We want to sign to a major label. If we’re going to be in the business of selling records, we want the opportunity to sell lots of records. Sorry, but we just don’t want to beat our heads against the wall for the rest of our lives to sell a few hundred records.” Of course, once we did sign with a major, it became like, “Why the hell did we do that?”

  CHRIS CORNELL: Jane’s had a pretty big cultural impact on the Seattle scene by doing exactly what they wanted as artists; plus being irreverent about the industry as a whole . . . that personally influenced me because it helped solidify in my mind that I could do the same thing on an indie level.

  JEFF AMENT: We always associated Los Angeles with heavy metal and hair bands and I think in some ways L.A. was a big turnoff at that point in the mid-80s. Punk rock had largely died out down there so L.A. was the last place we wanted to be. After the Jane’s show at the Scream, Stone and I were kind of like, “Maybe L.A. wouldn’t be such a bad place to be, after all.” Jane’s set the example. You didn’t have to do it completely DIY. You could take that same ethos and push it on to the major labels. . . .

  CHRIS CORNELL: Musically Jane’s also had an impact on Soundgarden. . . .

  JEFF AMENT: I bet if you talked to Kim Thayil [from Soundgarden] he would say no, but I think there are elements of Soundgarden that are very similar to Jane’s.

  CHRIS CORNELL: Jane’s helped open doors slowly but surely, as much as the Chili Peppers, the Butthole Surfers, Husker Du, The Replacements, and many other bands that weren’t out of Seattle.

  JEFF AMENT: In Seattle we always looked at Minneapolis and Austin as the two music scenes. There was Husker Du and The Replacements and everything that was going on in Minneapolis, and then there was the Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid, and Really Red in Texas. X and Jane’s Addiction were the two L.A. bands we looked up to the most. To me the bands that stand out as breaking it open nationally were Husker, The Replacements, and Jane’s. . . .

  ERIC AVERY: A more universal analogy would be like if you pass a lighted match through gas it will go up in flames. I think the Seattle scene had all the ingredients and everything was already there in place to create that kind of scene. But some things that moved through had the kind of cumulative rub off effect that helped spark it . . . bands like us, L7, Butthole Surfers, the Pixies, Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Fugazi all had an impact . . . and before us it was Black Flag and the SST bands . . . Meat Puppets, Husker Du, Sonic Youth, maybe Dinosaur Jr. . . .

  CHRIS CORNELL: Jane’s also helped open doors for commercial airplay. Our first A&M record got some rock radio. Now there were stations playing Jane’s and Soundgarden; that was absolutely the first time they’d ever played anything that wasn’t really commercial or straight heavy metal.

  CHARLEY BROWN: The sheep in the music industry hated us at first, until they realized that this was happening, so once they didn’t get Jane’s, they started milking the Seattle area for the bands that opened for us, like Soundgarden. . . .

  STEVEN BAKER: Someone called me after the first Alice in Chains record asking can you get these guys on the road with Jane’s Addiction? They wanted to market AIC not as a regular, down-the-middle rock band but something with a different point of view. . . .

  TED GARDNER: If Nirvana was the bomb Jane’s destiny was to touch the blue paper.59

  CHARLEY BROWN: Nirvana ended up getting the credit, even though they never claimed to actually be from Seattle . . . and that’s not a diss on their music or Cobain’s talent. . . .

  CHRIS CORNELL: A lot of people think that rock ’n’ roll changed in the early 90s when Nirvana showed up and everyone had a big hit. But it didn’t really work that way.

  CHARLEY BROWN: Jane’s got mired down because we were the first ones cutting through.

  DAVE NAVARRO: I became a major fan of Nirvana. I didn’t have any resentment about them becoming much bigger than us. I thought that they were fantastic. But I think that in some ways we contributed to their success in terms of opening doors. Some of those Seattle guys today will probably agree.

  PERRY FARRELL: I never had a bad feeling about Nirvana because their music was compelling and strong. But I had a bad feeling about myself. In six months, the world had just spun itself a whole new yarn!

  TED GARDNER: There were lots of bands around prior to Nirvana; the Melvins for sure, and a lot of other bands like the Pixies that were strong in their particular town. Jane’s Addiction was a very strong L.A.-based band, as were Soundgarden and Mother Love Bone in Seattle, and Smashing Pumpkins in Chicago, Nine Inch Nails in Ohio, Fugazi in D.C., and so on. . . .60

  ERIC AVERY: Someone told me that you have to see this band, they’re like the new Jane’s, and it was Smashing Pumpkins.

  STEVEN BAKER: Perkins told me the first time he went to Chicago Jimmy Chamberlin from Smashing Pumpkins said that when the Pumpkins opened for Jane’s [during ’88] it was his first gig with the band, and that immediately afterwards, like literally overnight, Corgan revamped the Pumpkins’ whole onstage style, their entire approach to music changed.

  ERIC AVERY: I remember Don Muller sitting in the back of a car saying, “I don’t know if I want to do this anymore. I have all these bands that nobody cares about and I really like them and they’re great. But who wants to hear from them?” The bands he was naming were the bands that he eventually went to the top with, like Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, the list is crazy. It was the next wave. . . .

  HENRY ROLLINS (singer, bandleader, author, actor, publisher): Jane’s was the only band I saw in those times who had that I-will-follow-them-anywhere type of crowds. The band had struck a nerve with people and the response was intense. There were a lot of great bands around at that time, but Jane’s had this powerful tribal thing happening with their fans.

  FLEA: Without a doubt, to me, Jane’s Addiction are the most important rock band of the 80s . . . up until Nirvana came around.

  TOURING WITH LOVE & ROCKETS

  Circa October-December 1987

  STEVEN BAKER: They weren’t just sitting around waiting for the world to come to them. Before the album even came out they were on the road with Love & Rockets. . . .

  CHARLEY BROWN: It was costing $10,000 a week to put them on the road with just me and a roadie and a motor home. Warners paid for this before we’d even signed. Love & Rockets audiences hated us throughout the country.

  STEPHEN PERKINS: The English Goth movement was on top of us at the time.

  CHARLEY BROWN: We played San Francisco before we drove to New York to join Love & Rockets. San Francisco always hated L.A. and L.A. bands. We were opening for Until December, which was like this horrible New Wavey Human League kind of thing, arty farty, really cheesey 80s New Wave. Perry and Dave were being brats, like dissing them and making fun of them the whole time they were getting ready. Perry was mouthing off on this tirade against Until December saying how lame they were and how fuckin’ lame the club was and then all of a sudde
n the PA just goes off. I went fucking ballistic on the sound guy. Next thing I know three bouncers grab me and heave me out of the club. So I’m getting up and dusting myself off like an Old West saloon kind of thing, right . . . and then it was like BAM! SPLAT! The rest of the band comes flyin’ out the doors one at a time, thrown out. And then all our equipment comes flying out after them!

  Love & Rockets. Bauhaus minus Peter Murphy. Tour-mates with early Jane’s whose audience was largely indifferent to the openers, although a good time seemed to be had by all in the end. (Fin Costello)

  ERIC AVERY: I remember our manager, Charley Brown, going to collect for us one night in Arizona and coming back to us and us going, “How much did you get?” He just replied, “Uh, I got choked.” We were like, “What!?” “He fuckin’ choked me!” We could see these really red marks on his neck.

  CHARLEY BROWN: We were at this crummy toilet of a club in Phoenix—not the Mason Jar—but it was the same slimeball of an owner, trying to expand his empire by opening another filthy little public sewer with a stage and a bar. Nobody knew who we were. There were like ten or twenty people, and during those kind of shows Perry always mouthed off. So, now this guy wants to stiff us on our guarantee, the lowest form of bottom feeder life in club or concert promotion. That happened quite often at the beginning, and so tonight I’ve had it, tonight I’m gonna try out alternative collection techniques. I decide to raise my voice. I’m like hollerin’, shouting real loud at this tiny little thing, this creepy little troll, like under five feet, who now starts blowin’ this fuckin’ whistle, and now these two Neanderthals grab me and hold me, and he starts strangling me and then he calls the cops. And the cops are gonna arrest me for assault and I’m like, “See these hand marks around my neck?” They literally ran us out of town, and because he was in with the cops he didn’t have to pay us. Our all-powerful Triad agency was going to get us our money, but they never did.

  PERRY FARRELL: One tour we’re playing some dive club in Phoenix, trying to get paid while this guy is choking our manager and pulling a gun on him. Next, we’re selling out Madison Square Garden.

  CHARLEY BROWN: Going across the desert to New York, we were camping the whole way and throughout the band was fighting. Perry and Dave would exchange hate poems. Perry would leave writings on the table so that Dave would discover them. I can’t remember what they said. Perry’s into humiliation, always has been. He’s into S&M, not too much the physical pain, but he likes to psych people out with his superiority. Dave would go off somewhere and be crying and Perry would go sleep in the snow. We had a motor home and rather than sleep in the motor home with Dave, he’d go crash outside under a blanket or something.

  ERIC AVERY: Perry was often under the impression, and evidently he’s still this way, that there were conspiratorial designs against him from everybody. That we really put thought into how we could undermine him. Like me and Dave were moping around thinking, “How can we fuck up Perry’s day?”

  CHARLEY BROWN: Dave and Perry were both constantly showing off what great artists they were, insulting each other with poetry, showing how clever they could be with their insults.

  ERIC AVERY: Dave wrote in a journal or a diary something about he thought that he’d look cooler under a light show rather than jumping around looking like an idiot. That was innocently left out and Perry read it and interpreted it as talking about Perr y . . . like, “I would rather look like Dave Navarro, cool under a light show, than look like Perry, an idiot jumping around.” What he was really referring to was our band versus Love & Rockets. We would see Love & Rockets looking really cool and reserved and we’d get up there and jump around like idiots, by comparison. Perry may have truly believed that Dave left that out on purpose so that he would see it and get the dig.

  DANIEL ASH: Jane’s Addiction was very different from Love & Rockets....

  CHARLEY BROWN: Everybody was there to see Love & Rockets. The first show at Long Island University people were just screaming to get off the stage and throwing all sorts of crap at us. That was pretty much the whole tour. Jane’s was just a local L.A. phenomenon up to now. Suddenly we’re playing 5,000-10,000 seaters. The biggest crowd they’d played in front of was at the Scream. We lived like dogs with one beat-up motor home, one crew guy, and myself. Everybody’s been fighting the whole way across the country. We get there, expectations are high, and the audience hates us. Gaaah.

  ERIC AVERY: I just remember making a lot of extra change every night. We would get pelted by irate fans who wanted Love & Rockets to come on. They hated us, especially on the East Coast. . . .

  CHARLEY BROWN: We opened for them at the Beacon, one of the finest venues in New York, and everyone was standing out in the lobby and I had to go out and pretend I’m a fan and say, “That’s a great band in there, they’re fucking awesome. Get in there!”

  KEVIN HASKINS: I think it was the Earth, Sun, Moon album when we toured with Jane’s.

  DANIEL ASH: I remember hearing a cassette of their stuff and David saying more than any of us, this is the band, this is great.

  DAVID J: I told Daniel this tape just turned up from [our booking agent] Marc. He wants us to think about having this band on tour as support. So we put it in and loved it instantly. We thought, “This is the real thing.” We played it over and over again. The more we played it, the more we liked it.

  MARC GEIGER: There were dates with Gene Loves Jezebel, Love & Rockets, Peter Murphy, The Cult and so on. I’d say the goth thing was the musical bent of Eric and Perry. At the very beginning the goth scene was where they felt the most kinship, not only musically, but vibe-wise. I don’t think it was a strategy. The band had such strong character they made you look at who was taking to them. We just went with that. Our instincts were that this band could not be looked at as a regular hard-rock band—even though they played hard rock, so to speak—we kept them darker. We kept the bands they played with dark.

  DAVID J: We loved Perry’s voice. We thought it was lyrically interesting, very androgynous. We loved the space in the music and how you’d have the juxtaposition of these soft, psychedelic, pretty parts and it would just explode into hard, almost metal music with a punk edge to it. Lyrically it was interesting, too. The drums were amazing. The bass playing was incredible. It just held together. It was very, very colorful.

  DANIEL ASH: As soon as we saw them live, we were wondering why we were headlining. We thought they were fantastic. They really reminded me of the chemistry of Bauhaus. Not musically, just the personalities in the band and the way they interconnected.

  DAVID J: We became fast friends and bonded with them like no other band we had been on the road with. We used to hang out in each other’s dressing rooms jamming a lot. They used to do two different sets, regular electric and acoustic. They were doing the acoustic set in the dressing rooms. We just thought that was great. They really warmed our audience up. It was very complimentary. We had great times on the road, traveling, after the shows we would hang out with each other. . . .

  DANIEL ASH: My lips are sealed. . . .

  DAVID J: There were many obvious parallels between Perry and Peter [Bauhaus lead vocalist-co-songwriter Peter Murphy]. Peter was probably less conscious than Perry of the American Indian and the early Californian shamanism traditions, but Peter would naturally go there. Like Peter, Perry was very provocative. Inevitably, some violence would erupt. It was always impressive the way he would deal with it. He would never throw a punch or become physical. It would be something from the crowd and he’d snuff it out very quickly by saying a few words or give a particularly glaring look. I remember being aware of this friction, which was somehow very necessary to both groups.

  DANIEL ASH: I could see a little bit of that same electric friction in Jane’s Addiction that existed in Bauhaus.

  December 1987

  DEAN NALEWAY: At Cal State-Irvine, Perry didn’t want to open for Love & Rockets anymore, so we had to talk him into doing the show, and he said, “Okay, but I’m gonna whip
my dick out.” And we’re like, “Ohhhh, we never heard that.”