Whores Read online

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  “HAD A DAD” (1959-76)

  “UP THE BEACH” (1976-83)

  PF IS TAKEN BY THE HOLLYWOOD GOTH SCENE (1983-85)

  L.A. PUNK IDEOLOGY (VERY FAR FROM DEAD IN THE 80S)

  HOOKING UP WITH PSI COM

  BECOMING AN OVERNIGHT SCRATCH CELEB

  BRIT-GOTH TAKES OVER L.A.

  THE WILTON HOUSE

  JANE BAINTER, FIRST LADY OF THE WILTON HOUSE

  DESOLATION CENTER: Psi COM opens a Proto-Burning Man Desert Rave

  ENTER: CASEY NICCOLI

  ON DRUGS

  ENTER: ERIC ADAM AVERY

  PSI COM RECORDS AT RADIO TOKYO

  PSI COM DISCONNECTS

  PERRY’S MUSE SOURCES

  “THANK YOU, BOYS” (1985-86)

  WHO THE FUCK IS PERRY FARRELL ANYWAY?

  NAMING OF JA EARLY DAYS OF JA BALLAD OF PF AND CASEY

  ERIC TRICKS WITH BIANCA THE HOOKER . . .

  THE BLACK RADIO EXPERIENCE: Jane’s Addiction Begins to Gig as a Fourpiece

  ENTER: DAVID MICHAEL NAVARRO

  DAVE’S MUSICAL INFLUENCES

  MURDER OF CONNIE NAVARRO

  UNIVERSITY HIGH SCHOOL, WEST LOS ANGELES (PKA UNI)

  Dude, where’s my bong?

  PUTTIN 19; OUT IN SHROOMSVILLE

  ENTER: STEPHEN PERKINS

  WHO KNOWS A GOOD, RELIABLE DRUMMER?

  THE ERIC AVERY DEEP BASS GROOVE LINE

  BASIC MUSIC LESSONS/CONCEPTS

  PERRY’S LYRICS

  THE STYLE SECTION

  THE JANE’S ADDICTION SOUND “ART BAND” OR “REAL ROCK BAND”?

  GOTH-METAL TRANSMISSION: The TVC15 Connection

  “GONNA KICK TOMORROW” (1986)

  THE BE LIVE SHOW

  PAY TO PLAY

  POWERTOOLS, L.A.’S LAST MONOLITHIC MEGA CLUB

  BOOTED FROM CLUB LINGERIE

  THE SCREAM (1985-89)

  ON-STAGE BRAWLIN’ JANE’S ADDICTION IN NEW YORK SCREAM NIGHT AT THE LIMELIGHT

  GETING SIGNED TO RECORD LABELS WARNER BROS. ERA COMPARISONS TO ZEPPELIN

  BIDDING WAR BEGINS

  ENTER MARC GEIGER

  JANE’S RECORDS LIVE AT THE ROXY

  ALBUM COVER

  JANE’S ADDICTION AT U.S.C. JANE’S ADDICTION FLIPSIDE INTERVIEW FLIPSIDE FANZINE ...

  “JANE SAYS”

  GUNS N’ ROSES

  THE SCREAM GOES FULL SHRIEK

  “HELLO, I’M A DRUG ADDICT.” THE—UH—PRURIENT DRUG SECTION

  FROM AN INTERVIEW BY BRUCE DUFF IN MUSIC CONNECTION MAGAZINE

  NEW MUSIC SEMINAR (NMS)

  ERIC OD’S AT THE CHELSEA

  MR. MOJO RISIN’: Dark Vibe in the Tradition of The Doors and the Velvets

  MAKING THE MARK ON SEATTLE

  TOURING WITH LOVE & ROCKETS

  NOTHING’S SHOCKING ALBUM

  ERIC AND PERRY FALL OUT

  PF RUNS DOWN THE DIRTY VOODOO

  ARTWORK CONTROVERSIES

  SOUL KISS

  NOTHING’S SHOCKING: THE CRITICAL REACTION

  AXL ROSE WANTING DAVE BAD

  SEVEN NIGHTS IN APRIL

  THE BEST OF THE WEST

  “JUAN’S ADDICIONE” (1989-90) The Making of Ritual de lo Habitual

  “THREE DAYS”

  EARLY RITUAL SESSIONS

  BAD MANAGEMENT WOES

  ROLLING STONE “IN BRIEF”: EX-MANAGER SUES

  THE MAKING OF GIFT

  “CLASSIC GIRL” GOES TO MEXICO

  THE RITUAL TOUR

  “ALTERNATIVE NATION” READING, THE GATHERING OF THE TRIBES THE PROTO-LOLLAPALOOZAS

  INGER LORRE

  “BEEN CAUGHT STEALING” BECOMES A RADIO AND MTV HIT

  PF’S “CHILDLIKE INNOCENCE”

  LOLLAPALOOZA FIRST NIGHT

  STOP!

  EPILOGUE: THE JANE’S AFTERMATH LOLLA ’92 (THE SECOND YEAR)

  LOLLA ’95

  LOLLA ’96

  PF’S POST-LOLLA MAKEOVER

  DECONSTRUCTION

  DAVE JOINS THE RHCP’S AS THEIR FOURTH/FIFTH LEAD GUITARIST

  DAVE MARRIES RHIAN GITTINS ON AN IMPULSE

  TEETH

  PORNO FOR PYROS

  Circa Spring-Summer 1992

  Circa April 1992

  April 4, 1992

  Circa 1993

  GOOD GOD’S URGE

  WOODSTOCK ’94

  NOT GAY

  ENIT FESTIVAL (1996)

  “RELAPSE” (1997) THREE-MONTH TOUR

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

  LEVITICUS 18:22

  ENTER: DJ PERETZ, KING OF PURIMPALOOZA

  STRAYS (2002-03)

  CARMEN AND DAVE

  PERRY AND ETTY

  Acknowledgements

  NOTES

  INDEX

  Copyright Page

  Praise for WHORES

  “[Whores is] a really cool book. It’s especially fun for me, because it’s sort of like reading my diary from age 20.”

  —ERIC AVERY, FORMER BASSIST FOR JANE’S ADDICTION, IN BASS PLAYER MAGAZINE

  “Whores masterfully recaptures the manic energy and ruined glory of a brilliant, bombastic era fueled by sex, drugs, and groundbreaking rock ’n’ roll.”

  —BOSTON GLOBE

  “Mullen draws jaw-dropping tales from all their messy orbit while keeping their inspirational music front and center. Horrifying, but utterly compelling.”

  —Q MAGAZINE

  “Fans of Jane’s Addiction really owe it to themselves to take a look at author Brendan Mullen’s story of the band, Whores . . . Mullen was definitely around to see it all go down, and the quotes he gets from the band members and scenesters at the time are revealing, amusing and disquieting.”

  —METAL EDGE

  “A fascinating behind-the-scenes look (extra-packed with sex and drugs) at one of modern rock’s most influential and provocative bands.”

  —REVOLVER

  “The current maestro of rock-and-roll oral history is transplanted Scotsman Brendan Mullen. . . . Whores is entertaining, basely fascinating and—almost despite itself—informative. . . . Crack pipes, blow jobs, see-through unitards, it’s all here; the eldritch light of decadence plays gleefully across the pages of Whores.”

  —BOSTON PHOENIX

  “The genesis, life, and death of Jane’s Addiction and her members is chopped up and snorted by those who lived it in Brendan Mullen’s Whores. . . . Perry Farrell might be an artiste driven by impulse, but that’s not the half of it: inner turmoil, greed, envy, threesomes, drugs, rock & roll, and more drugs. . . . However insane and egomaniacal Farrell was, the man’s a genius via Lollapalooza, and his meshing of genres changed the face of rock & roll forever.”

  —AUSTIN CHRONICLE

  “For those convinced that the ’70s cornered the market on rock & roll excess . . . ladies and gentlemen, Jane’s Addiction . . . consider this the master script.”

  —CREATIVE LOAFING

  “A truly epic tale of drugs, sex and rock ’n’ roll.”

  —SYRACUSE NEW TIMES

  “How these four managed to create one of the greatest rock groups of the late ’80s and early ’90s is an incredible tale, and Brendan Mullen’s Whores presents it wonderfully . . . ”

  —GIANT

  “Entertaining as hell . . . a must-read for every Jane’s fan—oh, and for anyone who listened to music in the ’90s.”

  —SLUG

  “Bereft of superficial melodrama, and loaded with candor, Whores gives a first rate account of a band, a time, and a place that has become the stuff of myth and exaggeration.”<
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  —NEW BEATS

  “If you never got the chance to see the band during its heyday, this is the next best thing.”

  —THE READER

  “Highly entertaining . . . an unflinching portrait of the band that brought metallic punk rock to the mainstream.”

  —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  This book is dedicated to Perry Farrell, Eric Avery, Dave Navarro, and Stephen Perkins—with props to the late Chris Brinkman, Matt Chaikin, Ed from the Lovedogs, and everyone else who helped get the ball rolling.

  I have nothing to add or subtract from any conclusions the reader may draw on hard narcotic usage as a lifestyle. . . . This book is for rock ’n’ roll fans wherever ye may be.

  Brendan Mullen 2005

  INTRODUCTION

  I first recall seeing Perry Farrell while he was carting his Echoplex box into the Anti-Club on eastern Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles late one afternoon around 1984 or ’85, and watching him from the back of the empty room set up with one mic. He turned the delay and echo effects up to 11, outer-space deep dub stylee, somewhere between Prince Far-I and Robert Plant during the screamo orgasmic percussion breakdown of Led Zep’s “Whole Lotta Love.” I cannot for the life of me remember what I was doing in the Anti-Club at that time of the day. Maybe the bar was open. Probably. Whatever. The scene now dissolves in my mind. However, this guy was such a striking figure that I remembered him clearly when he next popped up in my life.

  At that time I was a booker-schmooker at the Club Lingerie in Hollywood and the Variety Arts Center in downtown L.A.—as well as a small-concerts promoter, a free-drinks art slut, and an all-around voyeur-louche-participant. Eventually, I met Perry when I booked both bands he fronted—first Psi Com and then Jane’s Addiction—into the Lingerie and the VAC. He was also a frequent guest at the home of a mutual friend, the late concert promoter Rick Van Santen, who invited business associates over to watch ball games and boxing matches. I found Perry to be an amusing and agreeable character, a strange metro cockatoo with a bizarre style and a superb eye for detail, notably for lighting and staging, as well as the flyers he designed himself, many of which are included in this book.

  I hadn’t thought much about Jane’s since they broke up in 1992, although I’d become a major Porno for Pyros fan after the Good God’s Urge album. But when Marc Spitz (my collaborator on We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk) called me in early 2003 after Jane’s reunited—with a new bass player—to do an oral history on the band for Spin where he’s a senior staffer and columnist, I couldn’t resist delving headlong into the surreal, hair-twirling, tragi-comedy of Jane’s Addiction.

  The article made the cover in August 2003, after extensive interviews with all the band members, their families, friends, lovers, business associates, musical peers, promoters, journalists, and so forth. I was told that, at sixteen pages, it was the longest feature in the history of the magazine. It was the first and probably the last time I’ll ever be told by editors not to worry about going over the word count—just keep it coming. I think it wound up about 10,000 words over the original assignment.

  And that, I thought, was the end of Jane’s for me. I was trying hard to land a book deal (for a novel—I was ready for a change after Lexicon Devil, an oral history of the Germs published in 2002) when I unexpectedly got an offer, not for the newest book proposal I was attempting to hawk, but to expand the article. The idea of documenting Jane’s as well as the great “post-punk” arts and music renaissance of late ’80s/early ’90s L.A. proved too seductive to pass up.

  However, as these things sometimes happen, the band, led by Perry, decided not to do any more interviews, a fortuitous decision as it turned out that ultimately gave the story a greater scope and depth. It forced me to dig deeper and to talk to more people than I might otherwise have done had the band dished the full story themselves. Because let’s face it, we’re all the heroes of our own narratives; it’s the people around us who offer perspective. Or many different perspectives, those shifting nuances that create a more complex portrait.

  I’d like to thank the following people, without whom this book would never have been completed: Marc Spitz, Jud Laghi of ICM Talent (for the vision and the kick-ass proposal), Kateri Butler (for keeping me alive and focussed), and Ben and Bella Vendetta (my secret assets for transcriptions). I owe eternal gratitude to my editors at Da Capo Press, Ben Schafer (for clarity and guidance), Erin Sprague (for putting up with me and the quirky monster an oral history can be), and Norman MacAfee (for making me comply with all those pesky copyediting rules). I’d also like to toast Trish Wilkinson for the design. And shout-outs to Eduardo Salamon, Tulsa Kinney, Mitch Handsone, Shelley Leopold, and Ryan Ward for their assistance in getting the photos scanned.

  Finally, thanks to the photographers/artists whose compelling images make this book a striking visual record: Lynda Burdick, Karyn Cantor, Edward Colver, Fin Costello, Chris Cuffaro, John Eder, Heide Foley, David Hermon, Jerry Jung, Bruce Kalberg, Ian Tilton, and Valerie (whose last name we don’t know—wherever you are, we tried to locate you).

  Above all, to the musicians for creating the sounds and the legacy—especially Perry Farrell for giving so much of himself to his art, thanks for the inspiration; may you continue to make great music.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Agent Ava: founder of Demolisten, a key college radio show at KXLU.

  “Tupelo Joe” Altruda: musician, co-founder of Tupelo Chainsex, among the first local L.A. musicians Perry Farrell hung out with.

  Jeff Ament: bassist for Pearl Jam, Mother Love Bone, Green River. Seattle rock icon.

  Daniel Ash: musician-songwriter, member of Bauhaus, Love & Rockets, Tones on Tail; gigged locally, recorded and toured—both as a band and as individual session musicians—with Jane’s and Porno for Pyros.

  Ian Astbury: singer, the Cult, the Doors 21, founder-conceptualist of Gathering of the Tribes, the precursor to Lollapalooza.

  Tom Atencio: manager New Order. Former manager of Jane’s Addiction.

  Eric Avery: bassist, songwriter, co-founder of Jane’s Addiction. Wrote/ co-wrote the most memorable songs.

  Rebecca Avery: sister of Eric, girlfriend of Stephen, who hooks Navarro and Perkins up with Farrell and Avery to form Jane’s Addiction.

  Jane Bainter: former housemate of PF. She is the lyrical muse of the band’s name and its most riveting song, “Jane Says.”

  Steven Baker: former Warner Bros. Records executive.

  Xiola Blue: deceased, a member of the Love Troika, which included PF and Casey Niccoli depicted on Ritual de lo Habitual album cover artwork.

  Carla Bozulich: musician, songwriter. Introduced PF to Eric Avery.

  Jennifer Brannon: girlfriend of Xiola Blue.

  Joseph Brooks: DJ/promoter of the Veil, the Fetish Club, TVC15, Cherry. Original co-owner Vinyl Fetish. Cathouse DJ.

  Charley Brown: Jane’s first manager. Co-founder Triple X Records, founder Triple X Management. Realtor. Agent.