It turned out that a cockroach had somehow squeezed into my ear canal and gotten lodged there. It took the light to get it to depart my head. I was glad to be rid of the roach, but then I started worrying that the monster had laid eggs inside my head and my brain would become dinner for a family of insects. But after a while, that obsession left me, probably because I was too busy dealing with the leeches that had begun to burrow into my body. Because the jungle was so dense, we sought out the rivers, which were anywhere from knee- to waist-deep. While you were in the water, these leeches would swim up and attach themselves to your skin. They’d suck your blood and become enormous, and every day we’d have to burn them off with a lit Marlboro. Then we’d be left with gaping open wounds, which could get infected. If you didn’t pick up leeches in the river, they’d also be in the trees, waiting for you to walk under, so they were coming at us from all angles.
About five days into the trek, we had our first major crisis. Our guides realized that we were totally lost, and they began to have powwows to figure out what to do. No one had any idea which direction to go. Our food was running out, and I got the distinct impression that they were looking at us like “Let’s ditch them or kill them or just eat them.” But I think the grandpa nixed those stirrings, and we all set out to try to find our bearings.
Then the sickness began. I started having severe nausea and diarrhea and vomiting, though I had no choice but to march tens of miles every day, straight up mountains and cliffs, carrying this heavy backpack. I couldn’t sleep; all night long, I’d flame diarrhea and simultaneously vomit. I began to hallucinate from dehydration and lack of food and sleep, but I became fixated on survival and willed my body onward.
We started splitting up, sending out groups to climb to the tops of the mountains and figure out where the mighty Mahakam River began. Once we found that, we would be home free. One day I went off with a guide and climbed to the top of the nearby mountain. The only way back down was a sheer vertical drop, which was, thankfully, covered with vines. I followed him step by step down the cliff, holding on to the vines. We came to a spot where there were no footholds, so now we were dependent on vine power alone to get us down. He scaled this ten-foot traverse clinging to the vines, but when it was my turn, I questioned whether the vines would hold my weight. He assured me it was okay; I was still dubious. The minute I let go of the cliff and put my weight on the vines, the vine ripped loose from the cliff, and I went falling over backward. Now there was nothing to save me from plummeting to a certain death on the ragged rocks hundreds of feet below, except for the fact that on the way down, my foot had gotten tangled up in another series of vines. I was dangling upside down off of this cliff. My guide was safe above me, laughing hysterically. I had to claw myself to an upright position and untangle myself before I could reach a safe spot.
Days later, we came upon the Mahakam, this fat mountainous river with deep, blue, fast, treacherous water. We were still a few hundred miles from the ocean, but now it was a doable trip by boat, which we could hire at the first village, about twenty miles downriver. We were celebrating on that bank, kissing the ground, when we spied some locals in a boat. They had a whole deer, and our guides cajoled them into giving us a leg of the deer and a turtle. I had been a vegetarian for years, but I had no compunction about tearing into that poorly cooked venison. Before the natives departed, our guides ordered a boat to come get us the next day.
Then the dreaded rains came. We were in a canyon, and there was no shoreline, just sheer rocks, and the river rose and spilled over our campsite. We were forced up this steep slope that had some vegetation and a few trees, and we had to spend the night standing up against the mountain, resting our feet on some tree stumps below. The next day the boat showed up, we made a deal for passage to the ocean, and said good-bye to our guides, who turned around and scurried back over the mountains to their village. That night we stopped at a village and managed to rent a room, but my fever returned with a vengeance. Again I was up all night spewing out of both ends, feeling weaker than I ever had in my entire life. My condition wasn’t helped when we got the news that a few days earlier, a team of Australians doing the same trek had died in a flash flood.
The next day I was so sick and so desperate to get back to civilization that I went to the local communications base, got on the shortwave, and ordered a helicopter to come get us. Hank and I were choppered to Balik, where I found a doctor who prescribed some antibiotics, which seemed to take the edge off my illness without curing it. Then I hugged Hank good-bye. Our bond had been strengthened by our conquest over death by making it through that damn jungle.
On the way back to L.A., I stopped in New Zealand, but I still wasn’t feeling normal. A few days later, when I got on the flight to L.A., I sat down and nearly passed out. Buckets of sweat started pouring out of me, my fever escalated, and I started hallucinating again. When we landed, I could barely get off the plane. After spending a day on my couch, I checked in to the UCLA medical center, where they were baffled by my condition. They gave me some painkillers, which I was willing to take even though I was sober. I went back home, but now I was going into feverish, painkiller sweat baths. I checked in to Cedars-Sinai, where, after days and days of testing, they determined that I had a rare tropical disease called dengue fever. At least now I knew what I had, and the treatment course was the same potent antibiotics. I recovered, although we did have to cancel our New Year’s Eve show in San Francisco.
I was fine when we flew down to Brazil to perform some big shows in January. It was a four-night festival, and we were alternating nights with Nirvana, each band doing shows in Rio and São Paolo. We all flew down together in a big 747, and it was a real festive situation, but nothing could have prepared me for the reception we got in Brazil. Even though Nina Hagen had told me that after the rest of the world had forgotten her, she could go to Brazil and get a welcome like she was one of the Beatles, I still couldn’t believe the fervor of the Brazilian fans. We needed members of the armed services to help us leave the hotel. The fans had an exuberance that bordered on being dangerous.
The day before we were scheduled to play Rio, we got a police escort and were ferried deep into a favela—a slum neighborhood that even the police were afraid to enter—to see an authentic Mardi Gras Samba troupe practice. We were so knocked out by this South American Mother Earth soul music and pageantry that we invited the whole troupe to come onstage and jam with us the next night. And they did. At least twice as many members poured onstage as were at rehearsal, all decked out in their best costumes.
Chad didn’t know what to do, so he started to beat on his drums, and they started playing along, shaking their percussive sticks and dancing and singing. Flea found his groove and got in there, and Arik started playing something funky that worked. I had a hard time finding a place in that arrangement until two Samba girls came over and started dancing with me, and then we all danced and percussed and had a rad psychedelic jam.
Nirvana was headlining the next night, and we were all excited about their show. Meanwhile, Courtney Love was making an unbelievable spectacle of herself every chance she possibly could. I had never seen anyone so designed for attention and spotlight and drama. She was out of control. Whenever a photographer aimed his camera at a group of people, Courtney flew into the frame, grabbing everyone like she was their best friend.
We didn’t see much of Kurt, who was very reclusive. I spent some time with him backstage before his second show. He was high on pills, which somehow never affected his performance, and he was quiet and withdrawn. But he had such mad style, wearing the best combination of colors and sweaters and mismatched stuff.
Nirvana just killed both nights. They played a lot of new songs that would turn up on In Utero, and then they all switched instruments and went into some ’70s pop songs like “Seasons in the Sun.” During one of the two shows, Kurt took this insane guitar solo that lasted ten minutes. He took off his guitar and started playing it while it was on th
e ground, and then he bashed it into his amp. He wound up in the audience playing the destroyed guitar. When he went back onstage and the crowd started fighting over the guitar, Courtney came flying out of the wings, dove into the audience, and beat up a few Brazilian kids to take possession of the guitar.
She climbed back onstage and proudly held up the mangled guitar, strutting around and milking every minute. She finally went offstage, and somehow Louie, our crew member, wound up with the neck of that guitar, which he still has to this day.
We flew back home, happy to have shared those experiences with Nirvana. Everybody loved that band. Meanwhile, the Blood Sugar album was still rolling along. I still wasn’t used to any of the extra public awareness. I remember going to a party for Lisa Marie Presley in an airplane hangar in Santa Monica around this time. I went to the bathroom to take a piss, and this normal-looking businessman in a suit walked up to the urinal next to me, looked over, and recognized me.
“Oh my God, you’re that guy,” he said, and started howling a version of “Under the Bridge.”
Another time I was riding my mountain bike by my house, and a random car drove by, and I heard “Under the Bridge” blaring out the window. I realized that our music was now in the public domain and no longer some underground phenomenon. Which made me a bit more shy and reclusive. Ironically, Flea and I had spent most of our lives craving attention and trying to create a spectacle, doing outlandish things to be seen and heard and felt. One time back at Fairfax High, we found out that the corner of Westwood and Wilshire Boulevard was the busiest intersection in the world. So we drank a bit and split a quaalude and went down to that corner, shimmied up a pole, and climbed onto an enormous billboard that looked down on that busy intersection. We stripped naked and danced around, swinging our dicks for every passerby to see. It felt like the whole world was watching, and that felt good, a memorable moment when we could be exhibitionists and performers and daredevils and junior lawbreakers, all at the same time. Now we were on those billboards instead of dancing naked in front of them. So I didn’t feel the compulsion to fight for attention or brag about how amazing our music was anymore.
Now it was time to create more of it. Flea and I had both started to write, and we were looking forward to bonding with Arik and exploring his mind and musical talents. After we finished touring, Arik rented a nice apartment close to my house. But every time I tried to get together to work with him, he wasn’t available. I wound up going over to his house and dropping off some lyrics and a half-baked tape because he didn’t seem comfortable getting out the guitar at that moment, but again, there was no response. No callback, no “I’ve got some ideas.” It wasn’t long after that we decided he might not be the writing partner we were looking for.
That was when we got the most god-awful idea, which was to advertise and audition guitar players. We thought we could audition every guitar player in the world and find the most perfect, talented, soulful, and fun player around, but it doesn’t work that way. It’s like finding a wife, you have to hope she crosses your path. We put an ad in the L.A. Weekly and held auditions. It was a circus, and it went nowhere. Some people could play, but some kids came by hoping to meet the band. Around that time, I had seen a band called Mother Tongue at the Club Lingerie, and I liked their guitar player, a kid named Jesse Tobias. I told Flea about him, and we decided to bring him in. We jammed, and it was very raw and energetic. He definitely had the most exciting chemistry of anyone we had played with, but Flea was mildly concerned that he might not have the technical range required to play our music. In the end, we hired him, and he quit his band, and we began to play and write music.
After a couple of weeks, something wasn’t right. We jammed and jammed with Jesse, but no one was satisfied, particularly Flea. I was still holding out hope that it could work when Chad came to me and said, “I have a feeling that Dave Navarro is ready to play with us.” Dave had always been our first choice after John left. We had approached him early on, but he’d been too busy with his side project after Jane’s Addiction broke up. Lately, Chad had been hanging around with him, and he was sure Dave would love to come over. It was the ideal situation, because when Dave was in Jane’s Addiction, they had virtually invented a sound and shared a spirit of music that was unique and enormously emotional and was the voice of L.A. for a long time. It was passionate, original art coming from all the right places, with all the right insanity and love.
So we fired Jesse and hired Dave. Navarro had the best line. He told us, “I heard a rumor out on the street that the reason you fired Jesse was ’cause he was too cute and was stealing some of the female attention away from you. And then you hire me. What does that say for me?” He had the most sardonic sense of humor. When he first joined the band, he made up guitar picks that listed each guitarist we’d ever had in the band. After his name, there was a question mark.
With Dave in the band, it was inevitable that our sound would change. He had a different style of playing than anyone we’d had before, but he was very competent and quick to learn our songs. He didn’t carry with him the mysterious essence of funk, but we weren’t stressed about that; we were prepared to explore other territory. I couldn’t have predicted his incredible kindness. He was a very sensitive, tender, there-for-you person right off the bat, which was wonderful in combination with his sardonic wit.
Despite all this, we got off to a strange beginning, because not everyone adjusted right away to our dynamic. John had been a true anomaly when it came to that. He made it even easier than Hillel, in some ways, to create music, even though I’d known Hillel for years. I just figured that was how all guitar players were, that you showed them your lyrics and sang a little bit, and the next thing you knew, you had a song. That didn’t happen right off the bat with Dave. I remember going over to Dave’s house, and he and I wanted to learn a Beatles song together, and it was a much slower, more difficult process than in the past.
We all liked Dave, but unbeknownst to me, he was feeling like an outsider. I don’t think he knew how open we were to making him an equal partner. He had been through a lot of battles with Perry Farrell in Jane’s Addiction, and their writing styles were independent, so he wasn’t used to our collaborative style. It wasn’t until years later that he told me he was concerned he would get fired any minute.
At the end of October 1993, I decided to take a short trip to New York to both celebrate my birthday and accompany my good friend Guy Oseary of Maverick Records to all the festivities surrounding Fashion Week. Guy was hot on the trail of Kate Moss, and I had no aversion to hanging out with him and going to runway shows. We stayed at the Royalton and got in late from a Halloween party. A few hours into my sleep, the phone started ringing off the hook. I picked up the receiver, and it was my dad. He was in a frenzied state, babbling, “Did you hear what happened? River’s dead.” I was half awake at the time, so it took a few seconds for me to process the information. After I did, I called him right back, and he told me that River Phoenix had died the previous night outside a club in L.A. of a drug overdose. Once again, I felt an unbelievable sense of loss. I called up Flea, who had accompanied River in the ambulance from the Viper Room to the hospital, and we both sobbed for quite some time. River wasn’t my best friend, but he was a completely enchanted spirit of a human, living every day in a very free way.
It was my birthday, but I didn’t feel like celebrating. I spent some of the day with my friend Acacia, who had been the girlfriend of both Flea and Joaquin, River’s brother. I went to her apartment in Chinatown, and we lay in her bunk bed together, sobbing. I was feeling gutted and hollowed out. I made my way back to the Royalton, and Guy O forced me to let him take me out for a birthday dinner. As is Guy O’s wont, we went to the trendy, goofy restaurant of the moment. We ate and played some pool, and then Guy dragged me to a place called the Soul Kitchen. There was a great DJ that night, and at one point I got up and tried to dance my blues away.
When I got back to our table, there was a clu
ster of humans around Guy, including two hot, model-looking girls who were doing the typical things young model girls do, drinking alcohol and smoking Marlboros. I couldn’t take my eyes off one of them, this glowing pixie with a butch haircut, especially when she started making out with her girlfriend. I could tell that they weren’t girlfriend girlfriends, they were just kissing for entertainment purposes. We didn’t have much of an exchange that night, but she did tell me she would be in the Calvin Klein show the next day.
By now my crosshairs were fixed on this girl. I’d been touched by something about her, and it wasn’t simply a random biological reaction to a gorgeous girl I wanted to sleep with. There was a more metaphysical feeling about her and our possibilities. I told Guy O about my attraction, and he pooh-poohed it, telling me to keep my options open. Then we went to the Klein show the next day, and there was that hot blonde’s picture on the cover of the daily W newspaper for the fashion show. All at once Guy O took a lot more interest in her. We watched her walk, and I was smitten by Cupid’s arrow. I have an overwhelming tendency to get ahead of myself in these matters, so if I see a girl I like, even if I’ve never talked to her, I’ll sit there and look at her and go, “I could marry that girl. She looks like she’d be a good mom and a good sex partner.” I was convinced that the young Jaime Rishar would be thinking the same way, and she’d be my girl.
That night we all met at Indochine, a trendy downtown restaurant, but the interaction was nothing like I had imagined. She was sitting there with a table full of hens, quacking away, all models, all drinking way too much, smoking way too much, and taking what they do way too seriously. I showed up with Guy O, expecting her to make herself perfectly available to me, but she was being aloof, intentionally distant and intentionally shitfaced. I was patient and tolerant. Christy Turlington started talking to Jaime and filling her head with negative information about me: “Stay away from that guy, he’s a womanizer, he’s a slut, he’ll love you and leave you, blah blah blah.”
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