Jane's Addiction: Strays

By REBECCA BARRY

It's one of rock'n'roll's bizarre coincidences. Jane's Addiction's new bass player, Chris Chaney, used to play in Alanis Morrisette's band and now their original bass player, Eric Avery quite by chance has taken his place. For drummer Stephen Perkins, it's further evidence his favourite music works in mysterious ways. He finds it "quite a trip" to be back with his old bandmates, singer Perry Farrell and guitarist Dave Navarro, 13 years after they split.

"The funny thing is, I was depressed then but if we would have stayed together we wouldn't be here today, doing it," he says. "Things worked out."

The band reformed last year after a 13-year hiatus and brief flings in the late 90s to relaunch Lollapalooza, the music festival they pioneered in the early nineties. Strays is the result, a surging collection of 11 songs reminiscent of classic Jane's but synched to create a tighter, more focused sound, partly thanks to producer Bob Ezrin, the man behind Pink Floyd's The Wall.

Perkins agrees they've learned to cut the fat, that their new tracks are just as epic but get to the point faster than the psychedelic, reverb-heavy Mountain Song and Pigs In Zen.

"We got to the point in the studio where we said, 'Okay, we know how to be loud and rambunctious but now, how do you focus that?'

"Jane's Addiction is like a Ferrari," he explains. "It's fast and it's clean but it's also sexy and has curves."

Needless to say, it has also had its fair share of prangs.

In 1991 they called it a day, having survived almost seven hedonistic years, carving out an alternative to the big-hair metal bands of the pre-grunge era.

They were misfits - Farrell, possibly one of the first white men to wear dreadlocks, had became a unique wailing rock icon; Navarro, often performing in theatrical glam-goth eye makeup, was renowned for his virtuosic jam sessions. Likewise, Perkins and bass player Eric Avery (whose most famous lines spawned Mountain Song and Three Days) forged a formidable rhythm section that gave momentum to Farrell's loose singing style.

The band were infamous for their lifestyle, naming themselves after Farrell's heroin-addicted housemate.

After releasing a self-titled live album in 1988, they went on to record the watershed Nothing's Shocking, a debut studio album adorned by Farrell's artist girlfriend, plaster-cast as naked Siamese twins. Two years later, a year before they would break up, they released the funkier Ritual de lo Habitual, the cover this time depicting a naked Farrell, his girlfriend and a late female friend in bed together.

"Back then there was a great explosion of chaos and emotion and art and music but we didn't really have a guide," says Perkins. "We just kind of went for it.

"Those were great times - the freedom of everything around us, everything was really up for grabs. But at the same time it was a little too chaotic to really pull back anything important from it because it just went too nuts.

"I mean, it was wonderful to wake up somewhere and you're not sure where you were last night. I wouldn't change a thing, I guess. It was hard to see my friends get [expletive] on drugs but you can't change that. It was all part of the experience and the making of the music. I can't believe we did survive it."

Perkins and Farrell went on to form Porno For Pyros, and Navarro and bass player Eric Avery formed Deconstruction - Navarro later spent four years with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But friendships had become strained. The drugs - and to an extent, the business - had worn them down.

Those days are gone, Perkins insists. Now they are more committed, more focused and "better than ever". They played an electrifying set at this year's Big Day Out, Farrell tumbling around the stage in a purple catsuit, eyes wide and as manic as ever.

"I really appreciate that we can still be friends now. Whatever steam was blown up back then, had to happen to make the friendships continue.

"There were a lot of numbing experiences and sometimes you numb your spirit. Maybe it's surfaced and you can blow the dust off it and you can really see it.

"Strays is put together better because we're not out of our minds. It's a better landscape for us to work with each other now.

"We're a bunch of guys that have strayed away and now we're back home to Jane's Addiction. Back in the 80s and the 90s all you had was the band, everywhere you looked. Now we're at the point where we can go home and not have to be Jane's Addiction all the time - you can go home to your house. And when you have a great home life, you look after the world and the environment."

New songs such as Hypersonic and To Match the Sun reflect the band's spiritual connection to the earth, a theme touched on in their first album's track Ocean Size and Farrell's experimental solo album from two years ago. Recently they travelled to Sudan in Africa where they used their money to buy slaves and set them free. The band will put money aside from the next Lollapalooza to give back to the earth.

"I was thinking, 'Wow, we can actually do this as Jane's Addiction, a band that started off as just a little punk rock experience, completely covered in debauchery'.

"I feel like, deep in the lyrics and deep in the meaning, the thought behind the songs is a positive underlying statement. Things can get better."

But the intro to Strays proves they don't want to forget the past. "Here we go!" Farrell screams as he once did on Ritual de lo Habitual all those years ago.

* Strays is out now.