So, you idly ask yourself this fine Saturday morning, how's that reunion tour of Jane's Addiction going these days? Not great, is the answer revealed by a heavily circulated video of their show in Boston on Friday night, which shows lead singer Perry Farrell being forcibly restrained by crew members (and bassist Eric Avery) after he took a swing at recently returned guitarist Dave Navarro in the middle of "Ocean Size." As multiple people dragged Farrell away from Navarro, the lights were dimmed, the members of the band not currently being actively restrained by other human beings issued an apology, and the show was abruptly ended.
This current tour, which kicked off back in May, is the first time the four original members of Jane's Addiction have played together since 2010. (Avery left the band from 2010 to 2022, around which time Navarro stepped away from touring.) It's also already had its share of problems, with Farrell telling an audience in New York earlier this week that he was struggling with his voice. But the whole "took a swing at his guitar player onstage" thing definitely qualifies as an escalation; besides opening the band up to a lot of jokes about Oasis on the internet this morning, it also puts a big question mark on the viability of the rest of the tour.
Fascinatingly, we supposedly have a "first-hand account" of what went down at the Boston show: Farrell's wife, Etty Lau Farrell, posted a long breakdown of the fight on her Instagram late on Friday night, in which she says that Farrell was getting increasingly upset that "his voice was being drowned out by the band." She asserts that "Perry had been suffering from tinnitus and a sore throat every night," and that when "The band started the song 'Ocean' before Perry was ready and did the count off. The stage volume was so loud at that point, that Perry couldn’t hear pass the boom and the vibration of the instruments and by the end of the song, he wasn’t singing, he was screaming just be to be heard."
Shortly after their lead signer was literally dragged from the stage, Navarro, Avery, and drummer Stephen Perkins reportedly reunited in front of the crowd, hugged each other, and thanked the audience for their time.
