New Album Not an Easy Task / Oman Tribune

[cursed male]

Not an Easy Task
13 October 2011

Releasing albums didn’t come that easily for the band Jane’s Addiction, writes Gary Graff

Albums don’t come easily for Jane’s Addiction. The core members of the modern-rock group have been together since 1985, but due to several splits and hiatuses the quartet has released only four albums of original material in all that time. The latest, The Great Escape Artist, comes eight years after its predecessor, Strays.

So “prolific” is not a word commonly associated with the band, but singer Perry Farrell, guitarist Dave Navarro and drummer Stephen Perkins, who have been with the group throughout its 26 years, claim that a slow creative process can still be fulfilling.

“If you were a Jane’s Addiction fan,” the 44-year-old Navarro says, “it may look like the fourth album, but to each and every one of us, as individual artists, it’s however many albums in our careers that we’re on. We’ve all made a number of records outside of Jane’s Addiction. I’ve done solo records, I’ve done Panic Channel, the Chili Peppers. Perry’s done a number of records, so has Stephen.

“It’s not like any of us have been dormant in between Jane’s Addiction records, you know?”

Farrell, who also co-founded Lollapalooza, first as a traveling festival and now as a destination event in Chicago and South America, agrees.

“For me the key is to be diversified,” the 52-year-old singer says. “I have other projects and other musical adventures. I have Lollapalooza, and I put a lot of effort and love into Lollapalooza and it’s a beautiful beast. And I do my DJing and I love playing electro and other things.

“And I like to have Jane’s always there,” he adds. “I know the other two guys are always there, and I’m always there for Jane’s.”

For his part, Perkins contends that periodic absences only make the band members’ hearts grow fonder, towards each other and especially towards the music.

“Jane’s Addiction has been a band since we were 17,” the 44-year-old drummer says. “It’s been healthy for us to break up and come back together as many times as we have. It makes it exciting again. That’s not to say that Metallica or anybody else who’s constantly making records for 20 years is wrong – we’ve just never had that experience. So for us it’s very exciting when we do go make another record together again.”

The band had its birth in Los Angeles, as New York native Farrell and bassist Eric Avery came out of another band, Psi Com, and looked for other musicians in the city’s underground, alternative-rock scene. Perkins was dating Avery’s younger sister at the time, and the drummer in turn recommended his childhood friend, Navarro.

With an approach to making music later described by The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll as “an ambitious musical juxtaposition of sublime beauty and utter decadence,” Jane’s Addiction became a club sensation, and was signed by Warner Bros. Records.

The group’s first two albums, the platinum Nothing’s Shocking (1988) and the double-platinum Ritual de Habitual (1990), were embraced by the growing alternative-rock scene, which made hits out of songs such as Jane Says (1988), Stop! (1990), Been Caught Stealing (1990) and Classic Girl (1991). A cover of the Grateful Dead’s Ripple, recorded for the tribute album Deadicated (1991), was also widely embraced.

That was also the year that Jane’s Addiction broke up for the first time, however, splitting up after a Honolulu concert that Farrell performed in the nude. Drug abuse was a part of the schism, Navarro says, as were “personality conflicts.”

“I think everybody might have their own separate answer,” the guitarist says. “At the time all four of us weren’t looking the same direction. We were pretty young and green in this business, period. And in life.”

Jane’s Addiction reunited briefly in 1997, with the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea stepping in for Avery. The group welcomed the millennium by reuniting in 2001 for a three-year stretch that yielded the band’s third album, Strays (2003), then lay dormant until 2008, when it toured – with Avery back on board – and put together a box set called “A Cabinet of Curiosities.”

That same year the band also entered the studio with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, with whom Jane’s Addiction toured in 2009, but failed to come up with anything that could be released.

“We did a week with Trent ... but we didn’t really have enough time or head space.” Perkins recalls. “We were preparing for the tour, and someone said ‘Let’s try to record with Trent.’ Who would say no? That was just timed wrong. We didn’t have enough time to find the noise. We had good songs ... but we all thought it wasn’t ready, so why release it?”

Instead the band brought in another producer, Rich Costey, and gradually worked its way towards The Great Escape Artist. The path stayed bumpy, however: Avery opted out again, for reasons that his bandmates prefer not to discuss.

“I don’t like to speak publicly about other people,” Navarro says. “That’s a question for Eric. There’s been so much talk and speculation about that particular subject that I’d just as soon go forward, just to be fair.”

Enter Duff McKagan, bassist from Guns ‘N Roses and Velvet Revolver, who made what ultimately proved to be a temporary stop with Jane’s Addiction.

“I think some things got blown out of proportion,” says McKagan, who co-wrote the tracks Broken People, Ultimate Reasons and Words Right Out of My Mouth, in a separate interview. “My intentions were never to be in the band. I just went in and helped them write some songs. It was a really great experience playing and writing with those guys. I’ve known them since the ‘80s, and they’re really gifted musicians and good guys and good company. And that was it.”

McKagan moved on to his own band, Loaded, leaving Jane’s Addiction with another membership crisis.

“Some good stuff came out of the three or four months we were working with him,” Perkins says. ‘’(But) we had to rethink. Me and Dave were talking with Perry and saying, ‘We’ve been doing this for so long, we can’t be derailed by a bass player. We have to be creative. How do we do this?’’’

At Costey’s suggestion, they turned to Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio, who had some time while his group was making its latest album. The chemistry clicked immediately.

http://www.omantribune.com/index.php?pa ... 20Features

[Jasper]

So...did this guy have a heart attack halfway through writing this article, and the paper just decided to run it as is?

[creep]

i always get my album reviews from the country of oman.

[trevor ayer]

someone needs to tell dave that if this record is a JANES record than so are the porno for pyros records because even tho dave did not play on most of the pyros records, stephen did not play on most of the new janes record .. so if this new record can be called janes than so can pyros and therefore they are on their 6th record because strays was definately a panic channel record kettle was not a real record, even tho it has some great stuff on it. xxx, ns, rhdl, pfp, good gods, tgea = 6

[a headless shell]

i always get my album reviews from the country of oman.

I prefer Yemen.