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They\u2019d freaked out the squares with 1988\u2019s Nothing\u2019s Shocking, but Perry Farrell\u2019s alt-rock diabolists went mainstream in 1990 with their epic, carnal second album and its nagging hit Been Caught Stealing. But divided into wrecked and sober factions, at their moment of triumph they went out on the Lollapalooza touring festival \u2013 and helped the alternative nation rise as they imploded.<\/p>\n
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Interviews: Stevie Chick
<\/b>Images: Paul Natkin\/Getty<\/b><\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-648199452.jpg” title_text=”Portrait Of Jane’s Addiction” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”image-gallery-caption” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|300|||||||” text_font_size=”16px” text_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”-10px||||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
Might as well face it: Jane’s Addiction (l-r), Eric Avery, Perry Farrell, Dave Navarro and Stephen Perkins at the Palladium in Los Angeles, California, December 20, 1990.<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n
Perry Farrell (singer):<\/strong> \u201cIn 1976 I moved from Florida to Hemet, in the high Californian desert. I was 17, a runaway, a surfer. I had no intention of getting involved in music, I just fell into it. I lived in a house full of musicians \u2013 punk rock, underground LA kids. They were dangerous, provocative. I was so drawn to their lifestyle. In the early \u201980s, I relocated to Silver Lake in Los Angeles, this underground art community. We were out every night, dealing with rock\u2019n\u2019roll, drugs\u2026 the wild way we dressed, how we wore our hearts on our sleeves, it wasn\u2019t a joke or an act. My band, Jane\u2019s Addiction, became the music of that time.\u201d<\/p>\n Stephen Perkins (drummer):<\/strong> \u201cWe were a hybrid. We all had different record collections, wore different clothes. But we\u2019d practise, hour after hour after hour, blending our influences. We were not built for the regular\u2026 I don\u2019t think any of us could have done anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n Dave Jerden (producer):<\/strong> \u201cThey were creating a buzz in Hollywood, and those buzz bands are usually just record company bullshit. But they played real late one night at this old hotel in LA, and I got there at 3am, and there was a line of kids around the block. The greatest concert I ever saw was Jimi Hendrix at the Hollywood Bowl in 1968. That was mind-blowing. Jane\u2019s Addiction that night\u2026 they were as good as that.\u201d<\/p>\n Dave Navarro (guitarist):<\/strong> \u201cWe had transvestite dancers and a motorcycle display. It was more of an art installation rather than a rock concert.\u201d<\/p>\n PF:<\/strong> \u201cI had a long-term plan. I always saw groups get raves for their first record, but get slammed by critics for their next one. So I held back our greatest songs when we recorded [1988 debut studio album Nothing\u2019s Shocking] \u2013 stuff like Three Days and Then She Did\u2026. I knew we would prove ourselves with Nothing\u2019s Shocking, and when we put out Ritual De Lo Habitual, with all our best songs, we\u2019d prove it again. Any sports team can win the championship once \u2013 a truly great team repeats.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-648199366.jpg” title_text=”Perry Farrell Of Jane’s Addiction” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n SP:<\/strong> \u201cWe started Ritual, but after three weeks, we took a month off. Me and Dave Jerden had been at the studio every day, and no one else was turning up.\u201d<\/p>\n DN:<\/strong> \u201cWe were in such poor condition [through drug use] that we had to stop and take a break. I couldn\u2019t even tell you who was in bad shape, but I\u2019m certain I was one of the culprits. My memory of making Ritual\u2026 lasts about five minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n SP:<\/strong> \u201cWhen we started up again, we were tight, urgent, ready-to-burst. We\u2019d stay up all night, playing. Most of it was done live, and fast. We felt like we could do anything. Been Caught Stealing \u2013 the song that got us on MTV, our big crossover hit \u2013 is a fuckin\u2019 swinging jazz tune, with a sense of humour.\u201d<\/p>\n PF:<\/strong> \u201cWhat I really loved were the more introspective, deeper tracks on side two, where I got to feel sad. The album is dedicated to Xiola Blue. I met her when she was 15, handing out flyers in front of the Roxy. She was this strange girl with blue dreadlocks, who\u2019d drive up in her parents\u2019 Cadillac from Orange County. I fell in love with her; we would do drugs together and go to clubs and listen to music at my house. We were together a year, and after she died [of a heroin overdose in New York, in June 1987], it got back to her family that I was singing about her, and they told me she was my cousin. I swear to you, I never knew we were related.\u201d<\/p>\n SP:<\/strong> \u201c[Side two album track] Three Days is a total orgasm. It goes from soft, to hard, to cumming (laughs).\u201d<\/p>\n PF:<\/strong> \u201cThree Days was inspired by Fela Kuti, how he told a story, and went through transitions. This story begins with a m\u00e9nage \u00e0 trois\u2026 Casey [Niccoli, Farrell\u2019s long-term girlfriend], Xiola and I had been having sex and taking drugs, in our own universe of time and space, for three days. From there, I sing about man preying upon man, how technology is changing us, our weak, corrupt leaders\u2026 As a writer, I reflect on everything in my world. The trick is to have an exciting world.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pullquote-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” header_3_text_align=”center” header_3_text_color=”#111111″ header_3_font_size=”38px” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n DJ:<\/strong> \u201cThe guys at Warner Bros came down to hear how the album was going the night they recorded Three Days. What you hear on the album was what the label had front-row seats for that night \u2013 they recorded it in one take. It was amazing. And then they picked up their instruments and went home.\u201d<\/p>\n SP:<\/strong> \u201cRitual\u2026 was the highlight of the band, the peak of our friendship.\u201d<\/p>\n DJ:<\/strong> \u201cThere was a lot of tension. Every Jane\u2019s Addiction song had been written around an Eric Avery bass groove, but by Ritual, Eric was on his way out.\u201d<\/p>\n PF:<\/strong> \u201cThere were cracks in the armour \u2013 disenchantment, unhappiness. I was not a sober man, and I didn\u2019t want to be a sober man. I have to be honest, I don\u2019t think being mind-altered from time to time is as bad as other people do. But other members of the band, their AA sponsors were telling them that I was the devil.\u201d<\/p>\n Eric Avery (bassist):<\/strong> \u201cI was clean, so I was kind of like, \u2018What am I doing here?\u2019 At the time we were doing Ritual, I was taking astronomy courses at Santa Monica College.\u201d<\/p>\n SP:<\/strong> \u201cWe went on this massive world tour for a year to promote the album. And maybe we were all living in separate worlds at that moment, but we were so hungry to cross as many borders as we could, to experience new cities. There\u2019s video of us playing Milan halfway through that tour, and we don\u2019t look like we\u2019re having much fun, but we sounded great. And afterwards, we went on to do the first Lollapalooza.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-480313767.jpg” title_text=”Dave Navarro Performs Onstage” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n PF:<\/strong> \u201cI knew I was going to leave Jane\u2019s, so Lollapalooza was like my last supper. I wanted a touring festival, inspired by the European festivals, this grand undertaking, with Jane\u2019s headlining every night. I saw my mission as to mix together lifestyles, sounds and visions. I loved seeing different tribes together, all listening to the same group and dancing.\u201d<\/p>\n Corey Glover (Living Colour singer):<\/strong> \u201cLollapalooza was just ridiculous \u2013 26 shows in 40 days, all across America. Legends like Siouxsie & The Banshees, the madness of the Butthole Surfers, and Jane\u2019s Addiction were incredible, every night. A complete circus. And whatever was going on backstage was happening on-stage as well, the craziness was everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n SP:<\/strong> \u201cThe bill also included Henry Rollins, Ice-T, Living Colour, Nine Inch Nails and Fishbone\u2026 I would show up at noon and hang out all day with the cats, and I didn\u2019t play until 9pm. It was like being at camp, a family. It was great \u2013 the underground was going overground. LA already knew about it, but we took it to places like Kansas.\u201d<\/p>\n Vernon Reid (Living Colour guitarist):<\/strong> \u201cBefore Lollapalooza, you\u2019d see earrings, the occasional nose-ring; you did not have tongue-piercing! After that I started seeing bank tellers with pierced tongues. But stuff like The Jim Rose Circus [a travelling sideshow of pierced freaks and men who drank their own bile], that never went mainstream.\u201d<\/p>\n EA:<\/strong> \u201cI was so fed up I decided to split. I told Dave first, because he was my best friend. And he went, \u2018Oh, OK, cool. Me too.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n SP:<\/strong> \u201cWe were going to split after Lollapalooza\u2019s final date in Seattle, but we\u2019d promised our manager Ted Gardiner we\u2019d play some shows in Australia, where he was from. And then we hit Hawaii on the way home, and that was the final show. I\u2019d just finished a record with [funk-metal supergroup] Infectious Grooves, and Rob Trujillo and Mike Muir showed up in Hawaii and said, \u2018You\u2019re breaking up tonight, but we\u2019re opening for Ozzy for two months.\u2019 I was in a new band that day, and I didn\u2019t feel the sting as hard as maybe I could have.\u201d<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2025\/08\/Ritual-De-Lo-Habitual.jpg” title_text=”Ritual De Lo Habitual” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content” sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n PF:<\/strong> \u201cThat day in Hawaii, I surfed, I got wasted, I balled, I performed like a madman. I gave everything, I left it all out on that stage. The next day I couldn\u2019t get myself together to get on an airplane. When I finally got back to LA, I had no idea what I was going to do next. I\u2019d built a really great group, and now I\u2019d busted it up. And I felt relieved, I\u2019m sad to say. We were under pressure, we weren\u2019t getting along\u2026 I didn\u2019t want to deal with that.\u201d<\/p>\n SP:<\/strong> \u201cThe end was brutal\u2026 we were like, \u2018Fuck it, let\u2019s break up.\u2019 We\u2019d just headlined Lollapalooza, Ritual was fuckin\u2019 massive, we\u2019re not having a good time with each other \u2013 what\u2019s the solution? But when we broke up, we felt like heroes. I mean, I wanted to make 10 records with those guys, I was loving it. But I didn\u2019t want to force it. Some flowers last for two or three days, and they\u2019re gone. (Laughs) We were a delicate flower.\u201d<\/p>\n PF:<\/strong> \u201cWhen I listen to Ritual now, I feel like I did what I should have done as an artist \u2013 I dug down deep into my soul, and I made sure that my life was an exciting, compelling story to tell. And I found a team of musicians to perform it, to play it, to write it with me. It\u2019s one of the great achievements of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n SP:<\/strong> \u201cLollapalooza set the stage for the next cultural wave. But while Jane\u2019s Addiction pushed that boat off the dock, we didn\u2019t get on it. But we are still friends, and we can still play like motherfuckers. There\u2019s still hope.\u201d<\/p>\n Eric Avery quotes from Whores: An Oral History Of Perry Farrell & Jane\u2019s Addiction (Brendan Mullen, Da Capo, 2005). Dave Navarro quotes from Whores and Billboard.<\/em><\/p>\n This article originally appeared in Issue 309 of MOJO<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}” theme_builder_area=”post_content”][\/et_pb_divider][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jane\u2019s Addiction O.D. with Ritual De Lo HabitualThey\u2019d freaked out the squares with 1988\u2019s Nothing\u2019s Shocking, but Perry Farrell\u2019s alt-rock diabolists went mainstream in 1990 with their epic, carnal second album and its nagging hit Been Caught Stealing. But divided into wrecked and sober factions, at their moment of triumph they went out on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2743,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mojo-presents"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"akindell","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2740"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2740\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2750,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2740\/revisions\/2750"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u201cI was not a sober man, and I didn\u2019t want to be a sober man.\u201d<\/h2>\n
Perry Farrell<\/h3>\n