Interview: Jane's Addiction

Ever since Jane’s Addiction emerged in 1985 as a quartet of Perry Farrell, Dave Navarro, Eric Avery and Stephen Perkins, its existence has been a fragile allegiance, so much so that the core four only produced a pair of studio albums—the 1988 debut “Nothing’s Shocking” and the 1990 sophomore bow “Ritual de lo Habitual.”

And while those landmark recordings and the Lollapalooza Festival that Farrell launched in 1991 (which was originally supposed to be Jane’s Addiction’s farewell tour) played a major role in breaking alternative rock into the mainstream in the early ‘90s, clashing egos, drugs and side projects sidelined the L.A. outfit.

Fast forward to today and Farrell, Navarro, Avery and Perkins have reunited and are co-headlining a tour with Love & Rockets. They’ve also released “Imminent Redemption,” this unit’s first single in 34 years. And while Jane’s Addiction released two more studio outings -- 2003’s “Strays” and 2011’s “The Great Escape Artist” -- it was minus the contributions of Avery, whose bass-playing slot was filled by Alanis Morissette sideman Chris Chaney.

Despite this being Avery’s third tour of duty with the band he co-founded with Farrell, this go-round feels different than the first two stints.

“It’s just been sort of exceeding all my expectations in terms of what we’ve been able to do, production, music and everything,” Avery explained in a mid-August interview. “It’s been feeling really music-focused, exciting and easy to enjoy the experience of playing on stage and all that so its essence can really shine.”

Avery also pointed out the crucial role bandmate Navarro has played in creatively resurrecting Jane’s Addiction, despite having a difficult recovery with long Covid.

“I would say one really key difference is the role that Dave Navarro is playing,” Avery enthusiastically said. “He has made it so much more musical. His focus is unlike any time, even 1.0. He’s no longer a precocious young man who can play guitar really easily and then he’s off chasing chicks, shooting heroin and watching movies. He was sort of interested in other things -- we all were back then. Instead, over the last six months we’ve been writing some new material together and he just is plugged in in a way I’ve never experienced.”

As for the new song “Imminent Redemption,” it’s everything longtime Jane’s Addiction fans have come to expect -- Farrell’s stream-of-consciousness singing paired with Navarro’s soaring riffing over the bedrock bottom provided by Avery and drummer Perkins. What started out as Avery recording some bass runs ended up with him writing the song using audio of Perkins playing at a drum clinic and eventually bringing Farrell and Navarro into the creative process.

“Drums are set up, Perry’s got a mic open in the room next to me and then I’m sort of in the living room area -- it’s a house converted into a studio and it’s very informal,” Avery recalled. “We had to slightly slow the rhythm down because Stephen had been demoing drums at such speed that it was so much faster. Everyone heard it and when Stephen started playing, I just felt a surge of excitement because it was all so effortless. Perry started riffing off of it and I’m hearing him in the other room as well as it coming from the speakers in the room. It felt so organic. Everyone was in their lane beating down the highway. Then we got Dave in on it and then it was like that was the version -- that’s Jane’s Addiction and we had a finished product. At that point I just thought this was the proof of concept. We can do this.”

Given the re-discovered chemistry Avery felt on the recording of “Imminent Redemption” and a brief stint playing some European dates that had Tom Morello declaring Jane’s Addiction sounded “undiminished,” the 59-year-old bassist is eager to give stateside fans a taste of what the Rage Against the Machine guitarist heard.

“Our fans can expect to see the most musically focused Jane’s Addiction that I’ve ever been in by a wide margin,” Avery said. “The music is really alive for us. We’re trying different things, getting eye contact -- we don’t want to improvise in a jazz or jam-band kind of way. We recently played in Germany and there was a quality of danger there again and it doesn’t always happen for older iterations of bands in that sense. There is a sort of sense of really being alive on stage that’s tangible for both us and the audience. It’s really been kind of a celebration of that kind of danger, edge or energy.”

During Avery’s time away from Jane’s Addiction, he busied himself with a number of musical opportunities. From 2005 to 2022, he played bass as a sideman for Garbage, touring with them as well as appearing on two studio albums, 2012’s “Not Your Kind of People” and 2021’s “No Gods No Masters.” Avery played a similar role with Peter Murphy, Polar Bear and Morissette. There were a handful of solo albums, some film composition work and even an audition for Metallica following the departure of Jason Newsted in the early aughts. But despite all the other musical work he was doing, Avery never felt the same sense of ownership he had in Jane’s Addiction.

“I would describe playing with other people as really apples and oranges,” he said. “It’s me feeling more of a carpenter or tradesman rather than a creative person. I am there to serve a sort of structural purpose. I had been a hired gun. I’d done some film work and things like that where I had been a servant to another master. And that’s fine and I’ve had an interesting life and have no regrets. But, when I then came back to Jane’s Addiction with all of that experience, to come back, I really had to relearn that this was my band and if I wanted to change that part, I can change it and it’s Jane’s Addiction because I’m in the band.”

And while the mercurial nature that’s infused Jane’s Addiction has made for a very tenuous existence that extends to the present and the future, Avery sees that raw authenticity as contributing to his group’s on-again, off-again longevity.

“What made us sort of unusual the first time around is that for all our warts and all, there is sort of an intrinsic earnestness in what we did, especially the first time around,” he said. “There was really zero sort of sophisticated posturing of any kind. When we come together as Jane’s Addiction, we are still idiosyncratic. There really is something about where everyone is coming from that is really a mixture of, at least in some iterations, a mixture of naivete and earnestness that still sort of exists.

“I think you hear it in the new song and the process in which it came together was true,” Avery said. “It was just us going in and getting it done in what we thought was the best way possible on that afternoon. There is definitely new music recorded and more new music that’s recorded and finished that’s coming as well. And I would say if there is a Jane’s Addiction in 2025, new music will exist as well.”