Sunday, October 26, 1997
Getting Back in the Habit
Can a reconfigured Jane's Addiction build on its legacy to L.A. rock in the '90s?
By RICHARD CROMELIN
ane's Addiction's new concert stage is a fanciful riot of tall
banners, parasols and giant flowers, tribal masks and bent-pole gazebos.
At the right is a garland-strewn deejay booth, at the left a curtained
shower. Platforms that will be stationed throughout theaters where the
band plays echo the tropical motif.
"Bali, Indonesia, deep South Pacific--that area, that's where it comes
from," says Perry Farrell, looking at the structure that swallows much of
the space inside the downtown Grand Olympic Auditorium, where the
reunited group is rehearsing for its first shows in six years.
"I like to observe pageantry from around the world," the singer
explains. "I always start off thinking of a wedding. When somebody gets
married, what does it look like? 'Cause the union, the union is probably
the most sacred day."
Union is definitely the theme of this day, and weddings a recurring
metaphor. It comes up again when guitarist Dave Navarro is asked why
Jane's Addiction disbanded in the first place.
"That's part of the old story," he says. "I have a hard time talking
about the old days. I'd rather focus on what's happening now.
"If a couple had a terrible relationship where they were back and
forth with each other, like on their wedding day, you wouldn't say,
'Well, why'd you break up before?' Know what I mean? They'd be like,
'Hey, it's our wedding day.' "
For a band that made only three albums (one a live recording, and none
of them huge sellers), never cracked the singles chart and packed it in
before the '90s got rolling, Jane's Addiction is stirring up quite a buzz
with this reunion--especially in its hometown of Los Angeles, where its
two Universal Amphitheatre concerts were quick sellouts.
But Jane's Addiction's impact was never measurable by the numbers. It
was a group that bonded with fans in a profound way, not only intriguing
them with powerful, exotic rock full of mystery and danger, but also
bracing them with Farrell's challenges to shed their inhibitions and
resist conformity and complacency.
Barreling up from the L.A. underground in the late '80s, Farrell,
Navarro, drummer Stephen Perkins and bassist Eric Avery documented the
desperation and exhilaration of life on the fringes.
In such songs as "Jane Says," an achingly poignant portrait of a
hooker friend (and the band's namesake) from their first studio album,
1988's "Nothing's Shocking," and "Been Caught Stealing," a celebration of
shoplifting from 1990's "Ritual de lo Habitual," the band staked its
claim as a voice of the outsider, and it clearly struck a chord--both
songs endure as classic staples of alt-rock stations such as KROQ.
Jane's was still on the rise when it finally succumbed to internal
dissension and broke up in 1991. Farrell and Perkins formed the group
Porno for Pyros, whose two albums have received lukewarm critical and
commercial reaction. Navarro, meantime, stepped into another L.A.
institution, joining the Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1994. His Peppers
bandmate Flea is also the bassist in the revamped Jane's
Addiction--Avery, who has a new group called Polar Bear, declined the
band's offer to participate.
The reunion was seeded when Navarro and Flea played first on a song
for Porno for Pyros' 1996 album "Good God's Urge," and then on "Hard
Charger," a Porno for Pyros song that appeared earlier this year on the
soundtrack for the Howard Stern movie "Private Parts."
"After 'Hard Charger' we knew we could play music together in the
studio," says Perkins, 30, standing with Navarro and Flea in a corridor
of the old boxing arena before rehearsal.
"After a six-year absence," Farrell says later, "not having worked
with Dave in particular, I was curious, because now we don't know each
other that well again. . . . I think that absence definitely makes the
heart grow fonder, and I think that freshness is absolute passion.
Between the two of those you can stay excited."
No one seems surprised that the reunion is a hot ticket.
"Going into this we all had a pretty good idea that the excitement for
Jane's Addiction reuniting would be pretty big," says Lisa Worden, music
director for KROQ, which sponsored the reconstituted band's debut with a
Roxy show last weekend for radio contest winners.
Why does the band maintain such a hold after all this time?
"They decided to break up when their career hadn't even peaked yet,"
says Worden. "They could have been the biggest band in the country and
all of a sudden they broke up. . . . So I think it's like nobody got
their real fill of them. . . . "
The band has made sure there won't be any post-honeymoon letdown,
imposing built-in limits on the reunion: Just a 19-date U.S. tour,
starting Thursday in New York. It was preceded by a publich "dress
rehearsal" last week at the Olympic, and includes shows Nov. 28 and Dec.
1 at the Universal Amphitheatre and Dec. 2 at the San Diego Sports Arena.
Rather than make a new album, they've recorded just two new songs, which
will appear on "Kettle Whistle," a collection of demos, live performances
and studio outtakes due from Warner Bros. Records on Nov. 4.
Why make it temporary?
Says Navarro, 30, "Earlier I made an analogy to a wedding, where I
said I wouldn't want to talk about breaking up on my wedding day. At the
same time, maybe we're getting married but we're not moving in together."
"It makes it easier," adds Flea, 35. "Because if anything kind of
scares you about it, you won't think, 'I'm stuck with this forever, we
got a world tour for eight months' or something absurd like that."
The musicians cite their obligations to their other bands, but the
operative idea here is fluidity.
"Who knows?" says Flea. "I don't think any of these guys have planners
where we've planned out our next five years."
"There's no dissension and cunningness here," Farrell says later.
"Everything's really nice and out in the open. . . . It could evolve into
a tremendous situation, if a band is something that we're all up for."
And don't talk to this band about the impossibility of recapturing old
magic.
"Being a fan of the band from an outsider's perspective," says Flea, a
longtime stalwart on the Los Angeles rock scene, "the music is still
completely invigorating and fresh and new-sounding.
"It's a band that fills an emotional void in rock music that is not
being filled by any other band. There's so many dualities in the music,
of masculine to the feminine, to the dark to the partying to the romantic
to the sleazy. All these feelings that are in the city and people's
hearts that most bands don't approach. . . . Something about Jane's, man,
it's just heavy."
The six years have worked some changes to the Jane's Addiction
dynamic. Notably, Navarro--the band's rock dude with his tattoos and
pierces and leather pants--has transformed himself from an aloof and
withdrawn enigma into an open, forceful presence. Perkins is the same
friendly, down-to-earth type, and Flea brings his distinctive energy and
clear vision to the mix.
And what about Farrell? The group's leader, 38, is one of rock's most
colorful and erratic figures, a dionysian jester who has been both
arrested on drug charges and credited with concocting the decade's most
successful annual touring enterprise, Lollapalooza.
Wearing a silver print shirt and swirl-patterned pants as he sits in
an upstairs dressing room that vibrates with the playing of his bandmates
in the auditorium below, he looks like an elongated Punch-and-Judy
puppet. With a jutting chin that gives his face a crescent shape, he
suggests a nursery-rhyme man in the moon.
At the band's informal but intense reentry at the Roxy, Farrell
downplayed his confrontational tendencies and floated in the din like a
benign, almost messianic figure. As the band found its groove on a series
of classics, the singer warmly clasped hands with fans, but there were
also flashes of the in-your-face stance that once made him both sparring
partner and voice of reassurance to an uncertain generation.
"We're their peers. . . . We're talented, but we're a little rough
around the edges," he says when asked about that bond. "Every once in a
while I'll hit a clinker, or I'll have some cool outfit on and my shoes
will be all [messed] up, or something doesn't fit. . . .
"We show up and people feel like they know me. . . . And when they
know me, they find out that they know themselves. I'm not so afraid to
say things. I know that they feel the same way, because I know we're all
built exactly the same. . . .
"I reflect something that's in them. Maybe they couldn't put it
poetically, but they sure did feel it. I know it. I know heaven and hell
intimately. I know how it feels to be everything. I swear to you.
Everything. There's nothing I have not felt. All the good and the bad.
That's why I say 'nothing's shocking.' "
And that's what Jane's Addiction fans are responding to?
"Probably. So they know they're not alone. . . . I enjoy Porno for
Pyros a lot, but I know what they're feeling when they want Jane's. When
I get into it and I'm in the center of this thing, I know what they're
after. I know why they like it, I get it. I feel it."
* * * * Jane's Addiction plays Nov. 28 and Dec. 1 at the Universal
Amphitheatre, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City, 8:15 p.m. Sold
out. (818) 622-4440. Also Dec. 2 at the San Diego Sports Arena, 3500
Sports Arena Blvd., San Diego, 8 p.m. $26.50. (619) 224-4176.
- - -
Richard Cromelin Writes About Pop Music for Calendar
Copyright Los Angeles Times
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