The hotly anticipated Jane’s Addiction tour that reunited the band’s classic line-up last year may have been cut short - and a promised new album may now never surface - but fans are getting an even more heated legal battle instead. Which everyone will surely agree is far more entertaining.
That legal battle involves not one but two lawsuits, one filed by frontman Perry Farrell, and the other by his former bandmates.
Both are centred on the dramatic on-stage bust-up that occurred during a show in Boston last September - referred to in one of the legal filings as the band’s “terminal inflection point”. Which, had it not been wasted in a lawsuit, would have been a fine name for that now-abandoned album. Hey ho.
Back when it took place, most people saw the on-stage bust-up as being instigated by Farrell when he lashed out at guitarist Dave Navarro. Or in the words of the lawsuit filed by Navarro and fellow band-members Eric Avery and Stephen Perkins, when Farrell “ruthlessly assaulted” his bandmate.
And, “as if the pain and humiliation of the onstage attack were not enough”, continues the legal filing, Farrell continued his “unhinged barrage of punches backstage”.
Although, if you’d rather view this whole thing through Farrell’s eyes, what actually happened in Boston last September is that a years-long bullying campaign within the band against its frontman “escalated to physical violence by Navarro and Avery against Farrell onstage”, followed by the outright “assault” by Navarro of both Farrell and his wife Etty Lau backstage.
Where does the truth lie? Who can say. Certainly not us.
It’s worth noting that three days after the “terminal inflection point” that was the Boston bust-up, Perry made a public apology to his bandmates through the time-honoured medium of a text post on his Instagram stories, saying that he took “full accountability” for his “inexcusable behaviour”.
But then that social media post was deleted and with it - it seems - both the apology and that perspective on what happened.
“The narrative quickly changed to one of blame-shifting”, the other band-members say of subsequent statements put out by Farrell and his wife. That kind of blame-shifting is “unfortunately par for the course for Perry and Etty”, they’re keen to add, the couple having “a long history of blaming others for their own misconduct”.
In case you wonder how Farrell deals with the fact video footage of the Boston bust-up clearly shows him lashing out first, his lawsuit insists that it’s “clear” from that footage that the on-stage altercation “was hardly one-sided” and “what followed was an inappropriate violent escalation by Navarro and Avery that was disproportionate to Farrell’s minor body check of Navarro”.
Although both lawsuits respectively accuse the other side of assault and battery, what really matters is the commercial ramifications of the bust-up on Jane’s Addiction as a band and a business.
The reunion tour was cancelled, resulting in fifteen scheduled shows being axed, and the band have been unable to complete the new album that they were contractually obliged to deliver to Warner Music’s ADA label services division, which had already paid them a nice advance.
With the reunion tour cut short, band members lost out on the fees they were due for the axed performances, plus they are on the hook for unpaid commissions to management of about $240,000, and there is another $160,000 due to crew members, vendors and to pay off credit card bills. Plus the band won’t reap the rewards of the new album and will probably have to pay ADA its advance back.
This, of course, is all the fault of Farrell. Or Navarro, Avery and Perkins. Or all of them. Pick a side!
Farrell was “willing and able” to continue the tour after the bust-up, he notes in his lawsuit - for the good of the fans obviously - but his bandmates instead “elected to cancel the tour without informing and/or even hearing from” the frontman.
Ask the bandmates and they insist that in fact they had no choice but to call off the tour and new album plans, because it was clear the band could “no longer function as a result of Farrell’s conduct, including his sudden, violent outbursts”.
It’s not clear what kind of damages Farrell is looking for from his litigation, but his bandmates reckon that the harms they have suffered warrant damages in excess of $10 million. It seems likely the whole thing will end up getting settled, but let’s hope not.
A full trial would likely be a full scale altrock soap opera, with Farrell claiming that his bandmates ramped up the volume of their instruments to drown him out on stage, while the other band members say the frontman nearly derailed the tour even before the Boston bust-up by insisting that videos of scantily clad women, including his wife Esty, be shown during each gig.
Bring it on I say - Boston may have been the “terminal inflection point” in the band’s musical output, but there’s still plenty of potential here for some fine entertainment. And maybe, once the dust settles, an actual rock opera recounting the whole sorry saga. Which could be called ‘Terminal Inflection Point’.