Jane's Addiction is back and they got Flea with 'em. Guitarist Dave Navarro and the righteous bass man rap about the good old days and their bad old ways.
Dave Navarro and Flea are sitting together on the famous "sideways" rocking chair from the cover of Jane's Addiction's 1988 album, Nothing's Shocking. They're huddled together like two schoolboys on a bus, giggling, exchanging whispered jokes, setting up a force field of friendship to insulate them from the prying eye of the photographer's lens, the glaring floodlights and the coldly appraising gazes of assorted makeup artists, dressers, handlers and assistants. Navarro hates photo shoots. But Flea seems to welcome an opportunity to dress up like his newest heroes, Sixties black power militants the Black Panthers. He's even brought along a Panther uniform (black leather jacket, black turtleneck, black beret, wraparound shades) for Dave.
When the world first saw the "sideways" rocking chair, it was, of course, holding a sculpture of Siamese twins, naked, female, created by Jane's Addiction leader Perry Farrell who set the figures' heads on fire for the controversial Nothing's Shocking cover photo. Prepare to be shocked once more, because Farrell has now reconvened Jane's Addiction. The return of the band that instigated the alternative rock Nineties will be marked by a CD containing one brand new song and a slew of previously unreleased material, demos and live recordings from the first incarnation of Jane's Addiction.
Along with all this aural history, there'll be a brand new studio track, "Kettle Whistle," recorded by the revamped, 1997 Jane's lineup: Perry Farrell, Dave Navarro, drummer Stephen Perkins and . . . Flea! When original Jane's bassist Eric Avery declined to participate (preferring to focus on his current band, Polar Bear), Flea was named his successor. The Red Hot Chili Peppers' resident bass animal was a natural choice. He and Navarro have built up a solid partnership over the four years they've been playing together in the Red Hot Chili Peppers. To spend time with them is to be in the presence of two human beings who clearly enjoy each other's company-something which can't be said of too many people who play in a band together.
But before we begin, Flea has something he wants to get off his copiously tattooed chest.
FLEA: I just want to say "fuck you" in advance to all the people who are going to write bad letters after we're on the cover and they read this article. Every time I do one of these things, there's all these letters saying, "He doesn't know anything about music and he's so technically incompetent, and I don't want to hear about intuition, feeling and spirituality. 'Cause it's all bullshit. Learn how to play." I get these letters every time. So I just want to say in advance: Fuck you already. I'm on the cover and you're not. Fuck you.
GUITAR WORLD: Now that we have that out of the way, do you two recall when you first met?
DAVE NAVARRO: My first memory was when Flea came to play trumpet on our record. ["Idiots Rule," on Jane's Addiction's Nothing's Shocking] I remember Perry telling you what to play [sings riff]. That's what was great about Perry. We had this song, "Idiot's Rule," that Flea and Angelo Moore and Chris Dowd from [pioneering L.A. ska/rock/funk band] Fishbone came down to play on. And they had this horn section part worked out that took a Jane's Addiction song and, somehow, within one pass of tape, turned it into a Fishbone song.
GW: So you guys have been playing together for four years now, and in that time, you've forged a sound together.
NAVARRO: I think it's constantly forging. The way we play together now, for me, is much more fluid and natural than the way we played together on One Hot Minute.
FLEA: We play together a lot better now, for sure. And when we make the next Chili Peppers record, which we will do soon, it will be a lot better than the last one.
NAVARRO: I knew that when we made the last one.
FLEA: Me too. When we first got together and went in the studio, I knew that there was no way we were gonna be as good as we would be after we'd made the record and toured and then made another record. It was the same thing with John Frusciante. When the Chili Peppers made Mother's Milk , I knew it wasn't going to be as good as after we toured and we made BloodSugarSexMagic. And I look for the next Chili Pepper record to be the greatest Chili Pepper record.
NAVARRO: Before we even get to this question, I want to clarify that the Chili Peppers are not breaking up. Flea and I are more than happy to do both projects, time permitting. The way I like to look at it is, I'm in the Chili Peppers and I'm doing this thing with Jane's Addiction.
GW: Stephen Perkins and Chad Smith are very different drummers. Has that affected the rhythmic thing you have going on guitar and bass?
FLEA: Well, it's just a different groove. I'm so lucky to be able to play with the guys I consider to be probably the two best rock drummers in the world. There probably are other guys who are really great, but I can't think of them. Stephen Perkins is more ornate and "precious" than Chad- more involved in beautiful little things. Chad hits a lot harder. Chad is stronger. His meter is steadier. They're both phenomenal, but so different. Stephen has a tendency to speed up and slow down in really great ways-like you want it to happen and it really makes you breathe with the music and is really beautiful. I guess the difference is that Stephen's a pot head and Chad's a beer-drinking steak eater.
FLEA: Stephen's playing is more like curlicues and ornate, pretty little things. Chad is more John Bonham-style smashing. Chad uses a more simple setup. Stephen has all these little drums, bells and chimes and zingers and ziggers and African testicle-skin pebbly things. I have to think a little more with Steve.
GW: That gets into the perception of the Chili Peppers as a macho group, whereas Jane's Addiction are seen as being androgynous and arty.
FLEA: Jane's Addiction have definitely embraced femininity more than the Chili Peppers have. But as far as the Chili Peppers being perceived as the macho-posturing frat boys, I think that's a really gross misunderstanding. I've said this before, and I'll say it again: The Chili Peppers are just as much lovers of art and feminine art and all types of different things. How it's perceived is how it's perceived. But just knowing the guys, I don't see any more macho-ness in the Chili Peppers than in Jane's Addiction. But the music of Jane's Addiction definitely has more of a feminine element. That's great for me. I love that. I can be a fag. [General hilarity]
NAVARRO: You were so stone-faced when you said that.
FLEA: I was trying to figure out if I should fess up that I blew a guy once.
GW: Maybe we should stick to music. Has the transition from the Chili Peppers to Jane's Addiction altered your approach to playing-tonally, gearwise, rhythmically or touchwise?
NAVARRO: Well, the transition is still happening. As far as gear, you know I don't like talking about that. I'll just say that I'm probably staying with the same amps I have been using [Marshall JCM900s] , but experimenting with different effects and guitars. I'm more likely going to go back to playing what I played in the original days, which is PRS guitars. I still want to keep my setup very minimal, as always.
FLEA: And I'll be playing my Modulus bass-the Flea Model Modulus Four String! For me, playing with Jane's Addiction is a lot different because Eric played everything with a pick, whereas I've always played with my fingers. Eric did a lot of strumming on the bass. So it's much more a physical adjustment for me than it is an emotional adjustment. It's a lot less left hand and a lot more right hand. A lot less [mimes busy fretwork] than the Chili Peppers, and a lot more right-hand plucking at a lot of velocity. It's just a muscle thing. I'm just getting that together. Eric strummed a lot of chords on the bass, but what I'm doing is using all of my fingers. I'll pull the chords with my fingers. So it's a different sound. Obviously, I'm a big fan of Eric Avery's. He played some amazing, beautiful bass lines for that band. Really memorable and hypnotic. I just want humbly to do them justice. He just played such great, smart bass lines. They obviously took a lot of thought.
NAVARRO: But the funny thing is, he didn't think much about it. He really didn't. His influences were just so different from yours, you know. Eric would lock into something and then just stay there. And me and Steve and Perry would do a zillion things around it. Most of those songs were written for the bass lines.
FLEA: It's weird because Jane's Addiction, on first listening, seems like such a guitar band. A real vocals and guitar, top-heavy band. But when I think of Jane's Addiction, I think of it as a total bass-driven band. Like a reggae band or a funk band.
NAVARRO: But Eric hates reggae with a passion. See, a lot of people compare the band to Zeppelin and the Doors. But if you listen to what Eric's doing, it's very English kind of stark, intellectual stuff. The thing about Jane's Addiction is that it was four different guys who really, honestly had no business being together. Eric hated Led Zeppelin; I loved Led Zeppelin. So I'd bring in a Led Zeppelin vibe in my playing and he would bring a Joy Division vibe in his playing. Which was much better than if we were both coming from the same place. Then we just would have been a bad version of Led Zeppelin, or of Joy Division.
GW: What was Perry into? What did he bring to the mix?
NAVARRO: As far as I can tell, Perry is the kind of guy who moves through things really quickly. He gets really into something and then kind of moves beyond it. And because of that, he's always into something new. And he brings in elements of all those things, whether it be ethnic music or whatever. When Jane's Addiction started, Perry was really into reggae, which Eric and I both hated. But the elements of reggae that Perry brought into Jane's Addiction were ideas of dub and so forth. And he was really into non-traditional rock instrumentation. He also brought his creative force to our playing, in terms of honing it into something a little bit more accessible in terms of other people being able to understand it. The best example I could give you is maybe I'd be playing a guitar part that was from Pluto and Perry would say, "That sounds great, but make it from Neptune."
GW: I read a quote from him about "getting Navarro out of the blues box." I think those were his exact words.
NAVARRO: Someone asked me the other day who my biggest musical influence was. I think they were expecting me to say Jimmy Page or Hendrix. And probably, normally, I would have. I usually do. But now I would say that my biggest musical influence is Perry. He was someone with the skills, talent, creativity and artistic vision to help me trim the fat off my playing. What was funny about that blues thing was, when I first joined the band, the guys in Fishbone were throwing all these tapes to Perry. "Check this out; check that out." And he would take all those tapes and go, "Dave, check this out; check that out." And they were all blues guitar, like B.B. King. Things I couldn't imagine even listening to back then. And Perry would say, "Listen to how simply he's playing that riff." So I took those tapes home and started playing; and I said, "Yeah, I kinda got this blues thing down." And then Perry told me to forget everything he'd told me! It would always be like that. On one hand, it made things very confusing for me, as a player. But the bright side was that it pushed me, at least at that age-I was 18, 19 years old-to do the same thing he was doing, which was getting into specific types of music, learning about them, mastering them to a certain degree and then scrapping them.
FLEA: It's so important to do that.
NAVARRO: You have it in your head. And you have the physical skills to do it. But you don't rely on it.
FLEA: So many musicians get bogged down in one thing. They get their one style and say, "This is cool, this is what I like." At one point in their life, they really relate to something. And I'm not saying that relationship isn't totally meaningful, but they never move beyond it. It's important to always grow and change and be open to new things when you're a musician. It's crucial. You know, it's funny, Dave's saying Perry was his biggest musical influence. I was just thinking the other day what a huge influence Anthony Kiedis has been on me. When we were in high school, I remember going out to the movies or something and me having this outfit- these brown corduroy pants and brown top- that I thought was really suave and cool. And I said to Anthony, "Hey, like my new shirt?" And he said, "That's okay. But anybody could wear that. The thing is to wear something that no one else would wear and be totally different." I started wearing all these oddball clothes. And that totally affected the way I looked at music. I felt, "I just wanna play music like no one else would play it." Anthony's feeling like that-just to do your thing and not be like anyone else, and delve into your concept of art and your own individual emotions-was a really big influence on me. And affected my music profoundly.
NAVARRO: What's interesting about that is that you said you would think about not playing like anybody else. That it was a conscious thing. But what's happened over the years is that it's not a thought process anymore. It's become intuitive.
FLEA: I'm not consciously saying, "I want to play something weird." I'm just playing the rhythms of my own body. Every single person has their own individual thing. And so few people dare to embrace their individuality.
NAVARRO: When I first joined the Chili Peppers, I felt like it was a whole other world I had to listen to. I don't just want to call it funk, because the Chili Peppers are so much more than a funk band. But it was definitely heavily funk- influenced, which was an influence I never had. So that was something I had to look into. And because of my investigation of the funk and my years of playing with the Chili Peppers, I'm a more evolved, well-rounded guitar player than I was before I joined the Chili Peppers.
FLEA: When you first joined the band, I felt that you looked at funk as just light, uplifting music. But it isn't, really. Funk can be the darkest music of all.
NAVARRO: I was equating it with, like . . .
FLEA: K.C. and the Sunshine Band, Kool and the Gang . . . "party, shake your booty," all that. But funk is the deepest, darkest music. It's just that a lot of the commercial shit that was on the radio wasn't.
NAVARRO: That's all that had reached me. I was into guitar bands. Even when there were elements of funk in Jane's-which there were, to a degree, in some songs-since I didn't have the idea in my head that these were funky elements, it didn't' bother me. So part of it was my own fucked-up thinking.
GW: Is this relapse of Jane's Addiction mainly directed at old fans? Or young kids who weren't even around the first time?
NAVARRO: It's directed at anybody who wants to listen to us. I think the music is still completely relevant.
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