Perry Farrell’s wife Etty has given a first-person account of what went down between the singer and Jane’s Addiction bandmate Dave Navarro onstage in Boston.
The band were performing their song Ocean Size at the Leader Bank Pavilion in Boston, Massachusetts, last night (Friday, September 13) when Farrell turned towards Navarro, barged him with his shoulder and said “fuck you”.
When the shocked guitarist put his hand on the singer’s chest to make some distance, Farrell took a swing at him before being restrained by bassist Eric Avery and members of the road crew. The show was abandoned at that stage and as yet there is no update on whether the tour will continue.
Etty Farrell has given her account of the bust-up in an Instagram post.
She says: “Clearly there had been a lot of tension and animosity between the members.. the magic that made the band so dynamic. Well, the dynamite was lit. Perry got up in Dave’s face and body checked him.”
Giving her take on why it happened, Etty continues: “Perry’s frustration had been mounting, night after night, he felt that the stage volume had been extremely loud and his voice was being drowned out by the band.
“Perry had been suffering from tinnitus and a sore throat every night. But when the audience in the first row started complaining up to Perry cussing at him that the band was playing too loud and that they couldn’t hear him, Perry lost it.”
She says the band started the song before Farrell was ready, increasing his frustration.
Addressing who “won the fight”, Etty suggests bassist Avery went too far. She adds: “Dave walked away to take his guitar off. Eric walked up to Perry, upstage, in the dark, put Perry in a headlock and punched him in the stomach three times. Then Eric nonchalant walked off to the front of the stage to apologize to audience for the show ended early.”
As for what this means for the rest of the tour and the band’s immediate future, Etty seems unsure. She says Farrell was “a crazed beast” and that he later broke down in tears.
“Dave still looked handsome and cool in the middle of a fight,” she says. “Perry was a crazed beast for the next half an hour – he finally did not calm down, but did breakdown and cried and cried.
“Eric, well he either didn’t understand what de-escalation meant or took advantage of the situation and got in a few cheap shots on Perry.”
Jane’s Addiction are scheduled to perform next at the Hartford HealthCare Amphitheater in Bridgeport, Connecticut, tomorrow (Sunday, September 15) and the tour is scheduled to run through October.
