Life in reunited Jane's Addiction not all smiles & giggles

By Alan Sculley

Correspondent

Jane's Addiction's reunion tour got off to a rough start for frontman Perry Farrell when he tore a calf muscle during the first song of the group's set May 10 at Atlanta's Lakewood Amphitheatre.

But considering he had waited 18 years to tour with the original lineup of his band, Farrell wasn't about to let a little pain get in the way of the group's return.

He didn't miss a show, and in a phone interview said he is coping just fine - with some help from the miracles of modern pharmaceuticals.

"I guess with today's modern medicine they have a different attitude toward things. They actually told me to kind of work through it so the muscles don't knot up. They told me moving around isn't such a bad thing - and they gave me some great meds."

Jane's Addiction's current tour is not the first time fans have seen a version of the influential band come back to life. It just hasn't been the original band.

Even as Farrell continued to find ways to express his creativity between reunions -through the bands Porno for Pyros and Satellite Party, and his Lollapalooza festival - he always held out hope that the original band would one day get together again.

Finally an occasion presented itself when word came that Jane's Addiction would be honored with the "Godlike Genius Award" at the first-ever United States NME Awards in April 2008. The wheels started turning about the possibility of reuniting for that show, and this time bassist Eric Avery agreed to join Farrell, guitarist Dave Navarro and drummer Stephen Perkins.

Next, the band played an after-hours party at the South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas, in March. Then came word of the tour this spring with Nine Inch Nails, which won't be part of the Portsmouth gig.

But life in the resurrected Jane's Addiction has not been all smiles and giggles.

Recently the group entered the studio to record a pair of new songs, with Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor and producer Alan Moulder producing. Farrell said the sessions were marred by the re-emergence of long-standing tensions, and the band was unable to finish the two new songs, "Embrace the Darkness" and "I'll Protect You."

"It was tough, having not recorded for 18 years together," Farrell said. "We came back in, and there's a reason why we parted ways 18 years ago."

Farrell said he knows at least part of the problem, and he also knows exactly why he walked away from the band in 1991, after two albums, "Nothing's Shocking" and "Ritual de lo Habitual," had made Jane's Addiction a leading force in alternative music circles.

"I think a lot of it has to do with, let's face it, we're all people that love attention, and some of us maybe would love to get more attention," Farrell said.

"You know, I was the guy who originally in 1991 left the group," he said. "Let me tell you my reasons. I felt that the group wasn't united. We were not friends. We didn't care about each other. We were working against each other, behind each other's backs.... To make music, as far as I'm concerned, you have to be united, and you have to be, it's like a marriage. You have to be in love with each other. (In order) for the other person to make music with you, you have to trust them and everything else, and I felt there was no trust. So that was the original reason the band broke up in 1991."

While he wants to see the Jane's Addiction reunion last beyond this tour and record new music together, Farrell is making no promises. He knows the band could come apart at any point.

"There is hope for even Jane's Addiction because we are having a good time out here. I think success breeds peace. So right now there's peace within the band, and I hope that we continue on in this manner, because I think... Jane's Addiction is a valuable tool for people in this world to kind of get out of their minds and forget their troubles and go back to this place where there was this beautiful mischief in their lives."

Alan Sculley, alanlastword@earthlink.net