Things escalated quickly on stage during Jane’s addiction when a rock star fight broke out at their Boston show.
on youtube images from the band’s Friday the 13th concert, vocalist Perry Farrell He can be seen pushing and throwing a punch at the guitarist. David Navarro before the venue’s lights dimmed and the show ended abruptly.
“Fuck you!” Farrell can be heard shouting at Navarro after leading the crowd in a chant during a performance of his 1988 song ‘Ocean Size’. Navarro picked up his guitar to defend himself before crew members came on stage to get Farrell off of him.
Perry’s wife, Etty Lau Farrell, shared a “first-hand account” of what happened instagramexplaining that the band started the song “before Perry was ready and made the count.”
“There was clearly a lot of tension and animosity between the members…the magic that made the band so dynamic,” he wrote. “Well, the dynamite was lit. Perry stood in front of Dave and body-checked him.”
Etty Lau added: “Perry’s frustration had been growing, night after night, he felt that the stage volume had been extremely loud and that the band was drowning out his voice. Perry had been suffering from tinnitus and a sore throat every night. But when the audience in the front row started complaining that Perry was cursing at him because the band was planning too loud and they couldn’t hear him, Perry lost control.”
Although she credited Navarro for trying to “de-escalate the situation” by keeping Perry at a distance, she said bassist Eric Avery walked up behind her husband in the dark, “put Perry in a headlock and punched him three times.” in the stomach” before a crew member pulled him out. “Then Eric nonchalantly walked to the front of the stage to apologize to the audience because the show ended early,” she wrote.
“Dave still looked handsome and cool in the middle of a fight. Perry was like a crazed beast for the next half hour; He finally didn’t calm down, but he broke down and cried and cried,” Etty Lau added. “Eric, well, either he didn’t understand what de-escalation meant or he took advantage of the situation and dealt some cheap blows to Perry.”
The performance came during Jane’s Addiction’s 23-city co-headlining tour with Love and Rockets.