A Jane’s Addiction band engineer has revealed that the fight that broke out onstage between Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro at a Boston concert earlier this month continued after the show was over.
In a new episode of the podcast Rare shape radioDan Cleary, the group’s guitar and bass technician for 17 years, claims Farrell took another violent swing from the stage at Navarro.
And unlike the punch the singer threw in front of the crowd, this one landed and hit the guitarist right in the face.
Cleary, who was seen during the onstage meltdown trying to restrain Farrell, said the “band is over.”
Dan Cleary, an engineer for Jane’s Addiction, revealed that the fight that broke out on stage between Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro during a concert in Boston earlier this month continued after the show was over
After the show, Cleary said Farrell threw a punch at Navarro, hitting him in the face
He was joined for the podcast by Todd Newman, Navarro’s best friend of 30 years.
Throughout the episode, host Cleary played audio clips from the disastrous performance in Boston.
In it, Farrell seemed to sing out of sync with the rest of the band. Then the audio feed seemed to capture the fracas on and off stage.
At one point, Farrell is heard grumbling to his wife, Etty Lau Farrell, that the other musicians were “trying to ruin my performance.”
Then Navarro, who attacked Farrell on stage, appeared to confront the singer and say, “What the fuck was that, you motherf*****?”
After this, the sound of a fight is heard, which Cleary explained as “Perry hitting Dave.”
‘That [punch] it actually connected,” the tape engineer said. “You can hear it, the right hand against the left side of Dave’s face.”
Cleary and Newman traced Farrell’s violent behavior to the tour’s opening show in Las Vegas, where the singer ‘left the band’ before later being persuaded to perform at the last minute.
Etty Lau Farrell has said that her husband eventually became violent because he “reached his breaking point.”
However, Cleary and Newman both agreed that the singer was already at his breaking point by the time of the first concert.
But the podcast host turned out to have the same opinion as Etty when it came to her husband’s alcohol consumption. Neither believes drunkenness is a problem for the singer, who usually drinks from a bottle of wine on stage.
Cleary identified earlier signs of the simmering conflict. In the past, tours under the band’s name sometimes included Etty and other dancers supporting the group.
Dave and Perry were seen performing at Lollapalooza, Chicago in 2016
The guitar and bass technician said Jane’s Addiction was ‘over’
But for this tour, the other members of Jane’s Addiction expressed a wish for the band to perform themselves – a wish to which the singer agreed.
According to Cleary, Farrell showed up in Las Vegas a few hours before the show with some footage he had recorded of his wife and “some other women dancing in the desert.”
The singer wanted to have the video played during the show, and when the rest of the band resisted, he stopped, Cleary claimed.
Newman, who was at the show, said Etty Lau Farrell then “went into this public space and shouted that Perry is going home and the tour is over.”
At the Boston show, during the group’s song Ocean Size, “everything fell apart,” the band’s engineer explained
Although the Las Vegas show ultimately went ahead and Farrell remained in the band, Cleary said that “Perry kind of withdrew from his bandmates from that point on.”
At the Boston show, during the group’s song Ocean Size, “everything fell apart,” the band’s engineer explained.
Cleary then played an audio clip of Farrell allegedly muttering “f*** this motherf******” before body-slamming the guitarist.
But the podcast host made it clear that the fight wasn’t ended on stage. “I want people to understand that it didn’t stop there,” he said.
“Most of the time he’s a good guy. And there are times where it is, but we’ve never seen this crazy version before,” Cleary said of Farrell
“Eventually Dave comes over to ask what the hell happened, and Perry punches him again,” Cleary said.
But the band engineer sympathized with Farrell, saying: ‘I feel for him because there’s something going on mentally. He looked crazy.’
“I enjoy Perry,” Cleary continued. ‘I’ve had great conversations with him. He recently sent me a beautiful text, actually an ‘I’ll miss you’ type text.
“Most of the time he’s a good guy. And then there are times where it is, but we’ve never seen this crazy version before. That’s what makes it so scary.’