Jane’s Addiction ends Boston show with fight between Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro

A reunion concert by Jane’s Addiction in Boston did not go quite according to plan: The show was ended prematurely after frontman Perry Farrell missed a body check and apparently hit guitarist Dave Navarro.

The show was thunderously loud, and what you saw onstage was only part of the story. What is obvious, however, is that as Navarro was playing a solo on “Ocean Size,” Farrell came over from the front of the stage at the Leader Bank Pavilion in Boston’s Seaport and body-slammed him.

Navarro raised his arm to keep Farrell at a distance while crew members and founding bassist Eric Avery moved toward him to restrain him.

“There was obviously a lot of tension and animosity between the members,” Farrell’s wife Etty Farrell posted on Instagram after the show. “The magic that made the band so dynamic. Well, the dynamite was ignited. Perry tackled Dave and body-slammed him to the ground.”

Etty Farrell said she wrote her post to give a “first-hand account of what happened” and to avoid speculation.

She wrote that Perry Farrell’s “frustration grew from night to night” because the volume on stage was far too high and he felt that “his voice was being drowned out by the band.”

“Perry suffered from tinnitus and a sore throat every night,” she wrote. “But when the audience in the front row started complaining to Perry and yelling at him that the band was playing too loudly and they couldn’t hear him, Perry freaked out.”

She said he “couldn’t hear anything beyond the roar and vibration of the instruments, and by the end of the song he was no longer singing but screaming just to be heard.”

However, some readers were unhappy with Etty Farrell’s story when she brought in bassist Avery. She said that while everyone else was trying to de-escalate the situation, Avery ran up in the dark, “put Perry in a headlock and punched him three times in the stomach.” She said it was a “cheap blow.”

Some commentators accused Etty Farrell of blaming her husband, who needs mental health help, and criticized her for blaming the situation on the sound engineer or Avery.

One commenter said her story was “insane gaslighting. Perry chose violence.”

This is an evolving story.

Originally published: September 14, 2024 at 10:47 am