Whores

by Brendan Mullen

  JOHN FRUSCIANTE: There was this Halloween show at the Colonel’s, which was just after Ritual. Me and Anthony and Flea showed up wearing dildos. We were just hanging out at the party and Jane’s played and then they asked us if we wanted to play a song at the end. We played “Search and Destroy” by the Stooges. . . .

  INGER LORRE: The Colonel was just livin’ it large, just pissin’ that cash away like water. He had the best coke, the best drugs, the coolest-looking people at his parties. He’d say, “What do you want?” You’d tell him, “This much heroin, this much coke, and this many hits of Ecstasy.” And he would just get it. No problem. When I started dating Rodney Eastman I had no idea Josh [Richman] was one of his friends. Josh just freaked out and tried to get me blacklisted from my own freakin’ friend’s party. He called the Colonel threatening to blacklist his name among all the top cool people; he would never speak to him again if I came to the party. . . .

  PERRY FARRELL: She was really pissed because the Colonel specifically didn’t want her to come. She’d gone up there plenty. We’d all gone up there plenty. This guy was like fifty years old, hanging out with the likes of us. For some reason, she took it out on me and broke into my home. She smashed this guitar into smithereens that I had written many songs on and the cover for Ritual was beheaded, as was the cover for Nothing’s Shocking.

  JOHN FRUSCIANTE: Inger Lorre called me up once and said she wanted to do a project with me and Dave on guitars. She wanted me on acoustic and him on electric or the other way around, or something. She asked if we’d record a couple of songs and I liked the idea, and Dave and I talked about it on the phone. I was really looking forward to it and then during some late-night party session Perry and I were talking and he said, “Don’t do it.” I’m trying to remember the word he referred to her as. Something got destroyed when somebody broke into Perry’s house. They left a note behind that said something like, “We came for you.” He thought for sure she had done it.

  INGER LORRE: Somebody broke in and smashed Perry’s artwork. We’d had a falling out and he thought it was me. I didn’t know why he was so mad at me for the longest time until Dave finally told me, and it really, really hurt my feelings. First of all, he lived on the fifth floor. I was like, “Hey, P ... be real, mister, how do you think I got in there?” That was after the peeing-on-Tom Zutaut’s desk episode so maybe he thought I had supernatural powers. He said, “You climbed in the window. I know you got in here.”

  PERRY FARRELL: OK. It was circumstantial. No hard evidence. The culprit was never found. Lyrics and a poem were left. Whoever did it knew me very well. This same person broke the windows of my home on several occasions but the Number One Suspect was always like an innocent little angel when I’d see her. Wanting to be tight and partying with us.

  INGER LORRE: As an artist myself I would never, ever hurt somebody’s artwork. That’s the last thing I would do. I’m the type who’d smash your windshield or kick a door in. I had a bad temper, no doubt, but I swear on my father’s grave, who is my favorite person ever, it wasn’t fucking me who fucked up the art, OK?

  PERRY FARRELL: A brick would go through your window and you’d see the back of the little angel’s head, piling into a car and jettin’ off real fast. Once in a while I’ll still see her lurking and hovering around the country and it’s the scariest thing.

  “BEEN CAUGHT STEALING” BECOMES A RADIO AND MTV HIT

  Circa November 1990-July 1991

  PAUL V.: “Been Caught Stealing” did not get worked to rock radio at first because the guy in charge of the format thought, “Well, we can’t really get behind a song that might encourage shoplifting and the video encourages shoplifting.” I thought he was just kidding around. I’m standing there with my mouth on the floor, like, “This is a joke, right?” At this point, I just threw my hands up. This is what we’re dealing with. It’s going to take a miracle or a brick on this guy’s head. That was the beginning of my demise at Warners.

  DAVE JERDEN: Our A&R person Roberta Petersen said, “‘Been Caught Stealing’ . . . that’s going to be the single.” We were taken by surprise. It had never occurred to us [to think of it as a single]. I hate to classify it as a novelty song, but we just considered it a fun track. We were adding some vocals to it one day and Perry’s dog Annie was trying to get into the vocal booth with him, because one of her toys was in there. She happened to bark on cue and we kept it.107

  TOM ATENCIO: Eric was absolutely appalled that it was going to be a single.

  TED GARDNER: The commercial success [of Ritual] stemmed from “Been Caught Stealing,” the single. That was the only [Jane’s] single that made it to radio in any mainstream daytime airplay. It was one of those quirky little songs. No one really took any notice of it until Perry said, “Hey, let’s do a video for this song.” It was timing.108

  CASEY NICCOLI: I copped a lot negativity when I was doing the “Been Caught Stealing” video. Perry told me straight out that it sucked and would ruin his career. I didn’t want to go [to the MTV Video Music Awards, July 1991] any more than Perry did. He hated the idea of awards shows, but their asshole manager was supposedly going to accept the award [for Best Alternative Video] on their behalf. Why should someone else get an award for something I did?

  CHARLEY BROWN: Billy Idol was set to announce that Jane’s Addiction had won Best Alternative Video and so he tears away at the envelope and goes, “And the winner is . . . Jane’s Addiction . . . ‘Been Caught Wanking’,” and then he sticks the statuette thing down between his legs and was thrusting his hips out . . . and jerking off the statue.

  DEAN NALEWAY: Casey came on behind Dave, who stumbled onto the stage completely out of his tree wearing some crazy boa and feathers outfit and these huge crazy Sly Stone sunglasses.

  DAVE NAVARRO: Casey was in quite a state. She seemed to be speaking nonsense.

  CASEY NICCOLI: I was in a total blackout. Dave was pretty out of it himself.

  PERRY FARRELL: She went up there pretty loaded.

  DEAN NALEWAY: Casey was trying to make some kind of acceptance speech . . . but she was too wasted to be coherent . . . she was going on and on about what a genius Perry was . . . then Dave grabbed her and was trying to stick his tongue down her throat. . . .

  PAUL V.: I was like, “Oh my god, somebody get that mic out of her hand!” She went on this tirade, basically that Perry Farrell is a genius, a God who created the universe and we should all bow down to his feet.

  CASEY NICCOLI: Perry disappeared the day before the show with some chick he’d picked up at the 7-Eleven. He saw the show sitting in her bed. That’s why I made such a fool out of myself. I was so drunk and sad about Perry. I don’t remember Dave kissing me. I’m still really embarrassed about the things I said on camera, but, oh well, it’s only rock ’n’ roll!

  PAUL V.: Even though she directed the video and it was her privilege to say whatever she wanted to say, I was real upset because it made the band and Perry and everything they’d stood for look really stupid. A little embarrassing, but it was a rock ’n’ roll moment, I guess.

  PERRY FARRELL: I was nice and high. I just didn’t feel like getting out of the house; it wasn’t that important to me, the whole attitude of MTV and what it stood for. Casey wanted to go, so I said, “Have a good time.” I didn’t watch the show, but eventually I saw a clip.

  STEPHEN PERKINS: We should’ve been together in one place at one time, and gone up as a band. But there were communication failures, no focus, no sharp intention. It was scattered, and it was shown right there on national TV.

  ERIC AVERY: To us, MTV was never anything that could be taken seriously. I didn’t watch the MTV Awards. It was of absolutely no interest to me whatsoever. I heard about it afterwards.

  JOHN FRUSCIANTE: I was seeing Perry resisting success, not so much spitting in its face, just not jumping right into this huge success without looking, because if you go blindly jumping into the arms of success it will crush you. Resisting success I feel is an important thing for pe
ople to do, like when I see these bands today and they’re just chasing success and they’d just do anything for it, it’s really unexciting and transparent. When I was in my teens I was confused all the time. I also resisted success and I’m glad I did. In the short run it made my life hard and it made a lot of people around me really confused, but in the long run I feel good about it. The way he dealt with it, even if he has regrets about it now, it was really inspiring to me at the time.

  PERRY FARRELL: I don’t necessarily want to be popular. I did [want to be popular] when I wasn’t, but now that I’ve had a taste of it, I realize it’s not that exciting. Public opinion is usually the most ignorant opinion you can gather. It’s like the architecture of a 7-Eleven. When you have to duplicate it too many times, it starts to suck. When you mass-produce pancakes, sooner or later, twigs will start to show up in them. Mass communication tends to reduce things to their lowest level. You’re forced to boil things down so everyone understands. I know for a fact not everybody likes me, but, to me, that’s healthy.109

  PF’S “CHILDLIKE INNOCENCE”

  DAVE JERDEN: Perry was always talking directly to the minds of the children, the kids, teenagers, whatever. And he thinks that way. He’s very childlike. And that’s the side of Perry I love so much. He picks up on things, the little edges of the fractal, that most people wouldn’t even notice.110

  MIKE WATT: Perr once told me, “Having the child’s eye is not the same thing as being naïve or infantile.” He was talking about keeping a sense of wonder. He said, “You don’t get cynical because you think you’ve got it all figured out or you think like everything’s fucked up and lame . . . so you just take to scamming and burning whoever you can.” Perr’s got a real street sense. This guy isn’t a neophyte. On the other side he’s a dreamer. It’s a weird kind of marriage. He’s a very interesting cat.

  PAUL V.: When you’re in the room with him and you look at his eyes he looks like a little kid. He’s still wide-eyed and innocent about a lot of things.

  ERIC AVERY: There was something infectiously childlike about Perry which is totally linked to his power and his charm. Marshall McLuhan talked about the amateur eclipsing the innovator since the expert is often too bounded by science and other institutes of limitation, thus stunting unbounded creative possibility. Some might call it naïveté, but Perry seemed to have this natural fiery procreative force. He just didn’t think about the consequences.

  BOB FORREST: Perry had this idea to have a big rave on the West Bank, this huge love fest that was going to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict!

  ERIC AVERY: Once he thought it would be cool to fly a helicopter over impoverished areas and drop money on them. It’s a sweet, positive idea, but it doesn’t take into account that it could create riots or that people might get violent with each other. And I think that’s totally connected to his creativity. It’s the kind of childlike imp that he is.

  JON SIDEL: Perry’s genius is that he’s such a tremendous front man, an entertainer whose character walks the tight wire between absurd cheesiness and overgrown juvenile . . . who’s also capable of intellectual and musical brilliance. It’s very childlike and sometimes what he’s saying if you really look at it closely is very corny. At certain points you want to go, “Come on Perry, you’re being ridiculous.”

  MARC GEIGER: There was conflict in nearly everything Perry thought. The best artists are nearly always the most out-of-touch with business reality, because it is polluting. I think it’s very difficult for somebody as creatively pure as Perry. The reality of what one can and can’t do, one’s liabilities; the intrusion of consequence was always an impediment to Perry’s artistic muse. . . .

  MODI FRANK: People from management and the record company were always trying to put the brakes on him.

  CHRIS CUFFARO: Perry always does his thing. In a sense he’s like a spoiled brat. His ego is pretty big and he is what he is. It’s about treating people with respect. Some people, Perry or whoever, don’t do that. They just don’t.

  STEVEN BAKER: Perry always had fifty ideas. You’d listen to all of his incredible schemes and then pluck stuff out you felt you could actually help him with. Before the first album came out he wanted to do a Jane’s Addiction culture magazine about the band and their friends and artists. It was The World of Perry all the way. . . .

  MARC GEIGER: We’d have to discuss a lot of issues to figure out which were reality. Perry wanted a full-on marching band on every show. Now he was saying his perfect evening touched all the senses: ears, nose, throat. He became less interested in the music and more interested in the culture and the other senses—whether it was smell, taste, or touch, and other pleasing experiences that were tangential to music.

  JON SIDEL: Perry had this crazy idea where he wanted to feed 10,000 people a meal, like how the Krishnas do, with all this different food and stuff. I was like “Perry you’re out of your mind, 10,000 plates, how are you going to do this?”

  PERRY FARRELL: I’ve been told that I don’t always exactly see straight. . . .

  MARC GEIGER: Perry wanted to create aromatherapy for the masses. He wanted 30,000 people to have a variety of smells battering them as they entered, and then they’d go to different parts of the venue, and there would be all these different kinds of scents, a different one for each corner of the venue. We’d tell him, “Look, Perry, this is outside, they’re just going to dissipate!”

  PAUL V.: Most of the time Perry was saying something, I felt like I understood him 100 percent, but there were times he would say something and you would either like not pay attention because you knew it was like, What? Huh? If you stripped it away, beneath it there was always something cool and mystical or whatever. . . . I looked at Perry as sort of a pied piper. He was a guy that people wanted to hear what he had to say. He had some off-kilter views of the world and was going to say something that you certainly wouldn’t hear anyone else in a rock band say.

  FLEA: Perry has a childlike enthusiasm for what he’s doing. When something intrigues him he gets really excited and happy and he loves it.

  JANE BAINTER: The innocent, sort of child . . . is another side of him. These many different faces of Perry don’t really go together too well. It’s easier for him to switch from one into the next than combining them all, but he can play all the roles well at different times.

  PAUL V.: Perry would rather look at the good in people and not think about the evil. He would rather know that people are capable of really good energy and of doing good things.

  LOLLAPALOOZA FIRST NIGHT

  July 18, 1991

  PERRY FARRELL: The first day of Lollapalooza, in Phoenix, Arizona. It must have been 110 degrees out there.

  TOM ATENCIO: The tension was unbelievable because the band was ending, Ted and I weren’t getting along. Dave was so tender, fresh out of rehab, but we had no fucking concept of keeping people straight . . . he was flung headlong from rehab, straight into this grueling, vigorous tour.

  CHRIS CUFFARO: Everybody backstage was in a bad mood and pissed off. The heat was just nasty. It was just too damned hot.

  TOM ATENCIO: We were getting in fistfights amongst ourselves on how to treat the audience. Should there be misting tents? Should there not be misting tents? Because it’s 114 fucking degrees in the middle of the desert. Some people said that misting tents would make people go into shock. Others were saying, “Are you fucking nuts. . . . of course you’ve got to get water and shelter!”

  JOHNNY NAVARRO: Come Lollapalooza time, Dave’s with this girl Tania . . . She looked a lot like a young, thin Siouxsie Sioux. When he got together with her he was with another girl. He cheated with Tania and brought her over to my house and like I met her the first night he met her.

  DAVE NAVARRO: Perry had been working very hard at putting together this Lollapalooza tour, getting all the bands together, and on the very first night in Phoenix, Arizona, I was in no shape to perform.

  TOM ATENCIO: It was incredibly stressful because we didn’t know
how the revolving stage was going to work, we didn’t know about all the coordinating between the bands and the managers and the record labels, a fucking lot of people were involved.

  JOHNNY NAVARRO: The day of the show, Dave goes, “Do you have any shit?” I’m like, “Well, yeah—” I was trying to hoard for myself. I was like, “Yeah, aren’t you hooked up?” Now we need to go score downtown on the fucking street just so he can make it to the show. Otherwise there’s no fucking Jane’s Addiction at Lollapalooza.