Whores

by Brendan Mullen

  BRYAN RABIN: After a while, it was like, OK, OK . . . a joke is a joke, right? Finally, it all became so ridiculous I just lost it. I went off on Dave, “You came from such a vibrant, creative scene at the beginning . . . dude, I idolized you . . . why do you become such a sick, pathetic caricature? What the fuck is wrong with you?” I was like, “Dude, you’re in your thirties . . . and you’re trolloping around in women’s panties and Maribou at four o’clock in the morning, still taking crazy amounts of drugs, trying to jack off a fading rockstar in public?” I took a picture with Monet’s camera. Somebody stole the print she had made up. That photograph was floating around Hollywood.

  MARILYN MANSON: I [was] in a Los Angeles hotel room trying to keep Jane’s Addiction guitarist, Dave Navarro, from giving me a blow job as we sniffed drugs together. Dave ended up in the room of my bassist, Twiggy Ramirez, who had ordered two expensive prostitutes and was busy fucking them to the beat of ZZ Top’s Eliminator.138

  TWIGGY RAMIREZ: When Dave fell off the wagon and was partying again I was goin’ at it full throttle, too. I was living at the Argyle and he brought some girls over and we were listening to ZZ Top’s Eliminator really loud and having sex with these terrible girls. Maybe that’s where this story comes from.

  PERRY FARRELL: The ’97 tour was one of the greatest I’ve ever been a part of. I disappeared a lot because I would be getting high. It was my whole life. We had an amazing group of dancers, among them was my future wife, who I met for the first time. And the antics, the wild times we had onstage and off, you can’t buy times like that.

  FLEA: It started off being absolutely incredible . . . some of the best feelings and shows and energy that I’ve ever felt in my life . . . complete power. But it ended up being sporadic, then terrible. Because of drugs, it became a complete fucking mess. The focus got diluted. People still liked it, but I just knew what it could be because I knew what it was in the beginning of that tour and it was a mighty, mighty thing. It could be that my perspective isn’t good. I don’t know. Other people thought it was cosmic genius.

  PERRY FARRELL: Flea would say [years later] damn you guys, if you wouldn’t have been so wasted, you would have been so great, but I thought it was amazing.

  CHRIS CUFFARO: During the Relapse tour stop in Vegas, there was all sorts of drama going on. I remember going to Dave’s room and I think Slash was there. Dave was back to that horrible old negative drug energy, not a lot of smiles. I was, like, here we go again. I hated the feeling I got of seeing him like that. Dave on drugs and Dave off of drugs, it’s two different people, and when he’s off them he’s the nicest, sweetest guy with the biggest heart. I always tell people, “Don’t let the looks deceive you. Behind the tats, the crazy makeup, the outlandish costumes, and the good looks is this geeky little insecure guy!”

  PERRY FARRELL: Three Days. Watch the movie, it will tell you a lot.

  LEVITICUS 25:9-25:11 The Laws of Jubilee

  Circa 1997-99

  PERRY FARRELL: Aaron Chason and I have been trippy friends since ’91. I worked on Gift with him. Then he disappeared and resurfaced, having graduated from yeshiva, which is Talmudic studies. In 1999, he came to me proclaiming Jubilee, which is a fifty-year cycle where we are encouraged to free slaves and bring people together through massive parties and gatherings. Aaron figured I was the guy for the mission and so he set out to teach me about Jubilee. We went on to study Torah and Kabbalah. I’d also gotten heavily into electronic music and computer software and had written a solo album, and wanted to go out and proclaim freedom. I needed the best band I could think of to do a tour, and that was Jane’s Addiction. So we got back together [in 2001], and we ended up raising money and freeing about 8,000 people out of Sudan. When the hour of Jubilee struck in 2000 that’s what brought the band back together to record.

  STEPHEN PERKINS: We raised $120K on the Jubilee tour and took it into Sudan and freed slaves, actually bought slaves, $4K a slave. Used Jane’s money and did something, and I feel like we can do it again. Let’s do something for the environment.

  LEVITICUS 18:22

  PERRY FARRELL (in 2003): The Hasidic community does not give consent to homosexuality.

  PERRY FARRELL (to Yoko Ono in 1996): I would like to head toward Venus. I would like to be privileged to live there. Which doesn’t mean I’d be material. If you could resonate at the unconditional love vibration, you would be able to live amongst the Venusians. And the Venusians could have these beautiful orgies that include having sex with men and women and children and animals. Anything your heart desired. Of course, you can never abuse anything. But there would be these tremendous orgies.139

  PERRY FARRELL [to Mat Snow in Q magazine, 1991]: I like tripping up machismo. I like intermingling the macho and the feminine. I don’t know why. I like hitting certain sensations with people, and one of the heaviest sensations is forcing people to feel sexually about things they keep blocking out—even murder. I think that’s why people are pissed off at me. Maybe this comes from doing acid, but I believe everything is so relative, so cyclical, that I can argue any point on any side for hours and feel comfortable about it.140

  PERRY FARRELL [from the Ritual booklet, 1990]: I’d like to see men love and romance instead of macho, which is so fake and phony. Nobody should feel ashamed or dumb, but feel love and honesty, bisexuality, homosexuality, heterosexuality, anything.

  PERRY FARRELL [to Q magazine in 1991]: I don’t see anything good coming out of suppression.141

  RABBI YOSEF LANGER: If you’re only inclined to have relationships with men [homosexuality is an abomination, according to Leviticus 18:22] and nothing else works for you, then yes, you have to be celibate.

  PERRY FARRELL: He’s my rabbi, I love him. We met him on tour in ’97. Used to be Bill Graham’s rabbi. He’s a cat who drives a Harley David-son with a sidecar through San Francisco. [Somebody] you can sit down and talk with, he doesn’t judge you. I can guarantee you that if you went up and told him that you were gay, he’d sit down and have a drink with you.

  PAUL V.: That’s the problem with any religion. If you want to be spiritual or be attached to a religion and you’re not homophobic, it’s really hard to be the guy who goes to these institutions, “I want to change this retarded thinking, this bogus misinterpretation of virtue you’ve been spreading for thousands of years.” Apparently Perry doesn’t seem willing or capable anymore of upholding any of his stated beliefs from the 90s in his current approach to “enlightened spirituality.”

  PERRY FARRELL: Look, I can’t defend all the actions of this rabbi. This guy is a good guy, and he’s a San Francisco Rabbi Hasidic willing to sit and talk with anybody one to one, but at the same time . . . and, by the way, he’s the head of the Hasidic community, so that means he’s no rogue rabbi . . . he has responsibilities to the Hasidic community . . . and the Hasidic community does not give consent to homosexuality.

  PAUL V.: Try telling the leaders of these big religious sects, like Christianity, Judaism, and even Islam: “Hey, you’re all damned hypocrites, the whole bunch of you . . . no matter how cool and pure and virtuous you all think you are, you’re still nurturing and upholding prejudice as a standard, and prejudice breeds nothing but hatred . . . this in the name of your almighty God of all-knowing goodness and justice?”

  ENTER: DJ PERETZ, KING OF PURIMPALOOZA

  ANDREW WALLENSTEIN (journalist, contributor to The Forward): At the Sabbath meal, conversation turned to the impending holiday. I asked the young rabbi across the table how the Bay Area community planned to celebrate. He said, “You’ve heard of Lollapalooza? We’ve got Purimpalooza . . . a scaled-down version with a Jewish flavor.” He proudly ticked off the names of the scheduled acts, including Mozaik, DJ Mars and DJ Peretz.142

  DJ PERETZ: I love electronic music. I started DJ-ing six years ago at my studio in Venice Beach. I would throw parties and hang out with ravers and young people who were writing electronic music. Serious young digital producers. They just kind of talked me through th
e process and the lifestyle. It’s a whole other world that was at one time underground then surfaced in a big way and has recently sunk back down into the underground. But it’s not going to go away just as surely as alternative music never went away.

  ANDREW WALLENSTEIN: The rabbi described Perry Farrell’s transformation from rock ’n’ roll rebel to ba’al teshuva, a Jew who has returned to the faith. Perry [apparently] got caught up in the trendy kabbala movement sweeping Los Angeles and had changed his name to Peretz. This rabbi said he’d recently hung out with Perry at his home in Venice, where they wrapped tefillin and learned together.143

  PERRY FARRELL (to Dean Kuipers in ’98): You’re not talking to a guy who has always felt a connection with Israel. I didn’t like Jews. I didn’t like being Jewish. I was bummed. I didn’t practice Judaism, which I don’t think is the most important thing anyway. Music is the definitive form of religion. Music and mathematics everybody understands equally. The beauty of the Jews, I saw as I got older, is in the brilliance of their metaphysics. It’s a beautiful system. I think they’re incredible people. But I think everyone’s incredible. I would like to see everyone dancing.144

  ANDREW WALLENSTEIN: Purimpalooza was held at the Great American Music Hall in downtown San Francisco. Hundreds of Jews of all denominations were there, some in costume. Sweat and marijuana permeated the air. Mozaik was an eight-person band in loopy costumes who looked like a white version of George Clinton’s P-Funk All-Stars. Dancing veered between religious and secular; we were kicking our feet out in a circle one moment, undulating to trance music the next. It was difficult to distinguish whether the many long-bearded men in attendance were charedi or hippie, or both; one man had dyed parts of his facial hair purple for the holiday, but his gartel, the black band worn by some religious Jews, indicated he was clearly the former. Wavy Gravy, the iconic Grateful Dead associate, emceed in a star-spangled jester outfit, holding a plastic fish on the end of a leash; gamely acting the part of King Ahasuerus in a silly skit that told the story of Purim.145

  DJ PERETZ: When I started DJ’ing it was overwhelming and the fuckups were the most embarrassing moments of my life. It’s no easy thing. Aside from honing your technique, which can take a long time, you have your taste. You’re the selector and oh my gosh, a great selector can be not that great of a mixer, but his collection can be so amazing. I’m hoping that I can continue to develop my DJ-ing. It’s progressive, tech house, and I’ve been known to bust out drum ’n’ bass or some badass jungle.

  ANDREW WALLENSTEIN: Finally DJ Peretz took to the stage wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a Nehru jacket and proceeded to play perhaps the lousiest music of the evening, a watered-down trance music with little of the passionate intensity of his past rock recordings. The Jewish content of his new material consisted of his mewling Hebrew words over a trippy beat. I was only able to make out one word: “eeshah,” which means woman.146

  JOSH RICHMAN: Perry got heavily into his heritage as a Jew. We often speak or sing at the Seder we both go to every year at Guy Oseary’s house where Perry sings “Daiyenu.” Perry’s made all these pilgrimages to Israel and stuff. He’s definitely not the secular guy. There’s your Hasidic Orthodox Jews who are just as secular as anyone else, and there’s like three or four different versions of it. I think Perry follows a more open-minded thing but he also does some very hard-core Judaic things. He wraps tefillin, and he’s very heavily involved in that process in his life and his children have these really beautiful Hebrew names.

  PERRY FARRELL: Any Jew will say yes for Israel because it’s where we come from. It’s our families’ background and it’s our turf. A good rabbi would also say that it’s a democratic society and all are welcome. We would never think to take anybody off the land as long as people living on the land had respect for the land. If you want to be a Christian or a Palestinian or a Buddhist, you can live on the land as long as you’re not disrespecting the people. There’s borders that are in Torah and we can all read them together. They’re strict borders. The [Zionist] expansionism issue is very debatable. Read the Bible and it will tell you the borders of Israel. It’s very clear where the border is. Go back to the Torah, which is the oldest known deed of that land that there is. We’re not supposed to expand into other people’s turf. Jews don’t want to go up into Europe. Jews are not a better race of anybody. There’s a certain quotient of them that are rotten. Just like anybody. Nobody escapes it.

  STRAYS (2002-03)

  PERRY FARRELL: Hopefully I’ll get my money back this time. We worked collectively. We went out and did a bunch of shows to get the money ... and pooled it.

  STEPHEN PERKINS: It all started [around March or April 2002] with Bob Ezrin producing a Porno for Pyros track for the movie Dark Blues . . . an incredible song called “Streets on Fire” which was just epic. That segued into the Strays project.

  PERRY FARRELL: Working with Bob Ezrin on Strays meant a lot because I knew that Dave loved Pink Floyd’s The Wall, which Ezrin produced. Dave learned The Wall [as a kid]. He can play the whole album note for note. I knew he’d instantly have a lot of respect for him.

  Cover of Strays.

  MARTYN LE NOBLE: I was finally clean and joined Jane’s Addiction and I played Coachella with them, we did an arena tour around the U.S. I had an agreement till the end of the year—and then they decided to make a record. We went into the studio, I was not getting paid upfront. I was recording, I was doing the shows, I was writing. I cowrote a bunch of the songs. Finally, we came to an agreement on how much they owed me and what kind of percentage and all this business stuff, which is important when you have kids and when you have a history with these people with finances. I was supposed to get paid retroactively because I had already been recording for three months.

  PERRY FARRELL: We started recording on our own collective dime, and of course if you’re recording with your own money soon enough you’ll need more of it because you start to run dry. We booked other shows, other tours, played other festivals. We finally got to some places we had never gotten to, like Japan; we played the Big Day Out festival and went to Europe to play the big open-air festivals, like Reading. . . .

  BOB EZRIN (musician, record producer): My job on Strays was to bring a sort of commonality to the process and make everyone think it was a group effort again and not just a bunch of solo projects trying to be strung together.

  MARTYN LE NOBLE: I recorded pretty much the whole Strays record. And then Perry erased it. He suddenly fired me on the spot in Japan when we still had a whole flight back to the U.S. That’s the last time I talked to him.

  DAVE JERDEN: [new Jane’s Addiction member] Chris Chaney is an amazing bass player. Chris Chaney played with Alanis Morrisette and now Eric is playing with her. They kind of switched spots.147

  MARTYN LE NOBLE: Bob Ezrin didn’t really understand Jane’s Addiction musically. I remember arguing with him, “Like man, have you listened to Ritual?” He goes, “Frankly, I can’t get through it. I think it sounds horrible. I’m going to make this a real rock band instead of an art rock band.” Well, he succeeded. He took all the magic out of it. He made a rock record. The most magical moments on the Jane’s Addiction records are the quiet little adventures to the left, and, of course Eric’s magic bass. Eric Avery is the Man.

  DANIEL ASH: Frankly, the quieter, those more soulful ballads, the slower numbers with less hard rock bombast were always my favorite moments of Jane’s Addiction’s music. . . .

  REBECCA AVERY: When Strays came out I was sure now the world’s really going to know how much the band needed Eric’s creative input. Of course, I’m his sister, and, of course, I’m extremely biased, but it seemed that soul was sort of missing from that music, that undercurrent, that feeling, rhythm.

  PAUL V.: I thought Strays was a really good record. I really liked it and I feel if that record was made by a new band that had no history, it probably would have been much bigger, but it was held up to the scrutiny of Ritual and Nothing’s Shocking. There were so
me really good songs that could have been bigger hits, like “The Price I Pay,” “Superhero.” Compared to everything else out there I thought it was a contender. Thank God, it wasn’t another fucking rap/rock record like Limp Bizkit or Linkin Park. I was glad that it was a really sonic, wet, big rock record, which there’s not that many of these days.

  MARTYN LE NOBLE: We went to Japan and played the Fiji Festival and did interviews where Perry had me answer questions about the future of Jane’s Addiction. After the show Perry looked pissed off so I asked him, “Perry is there anything wrong? Is there anything I can do to help?” He said, “Yeah, as a matter of fact there is, it’s just not working out with you, you’re fired. Everything you play sounds like shit. There’s nothing but feedback coming from your side of the stage.” It was just ridiculous because I’m a bass player. There’s no such thing as feedback coming from a bass amp. He goes, “Nothing you come up with we like. You’re a horrible bass player!”