Tower Records, 1988 — The Spark
Attending the Jane’s Addiction Reunion Tour 2024, made me think back to the beginning of my story with the band. There were bands you stumbled into because a friend handed you a mixtape, or because MTV played the video every hour, or because everyone in your dorm swore you had to hear them. And then there were the rare ones you discovered before anyone around you was really talking about them. The ones that felt like a private signal meant only for you.
For me, that band was Jane’s Addiction.
KROQ had just started playing “Jane Says,” but that was about it. They weren’t a campus obsession yet. So when I wandered into Tower Records in Westwood Village one afternoon—the kind of place where giant hand‑painted album covers stared down at you from the walls—I wasn’t expecting anything. I remember the Nothing’s Shocking mural hanging above the aisles, those conjoined nude figures looking both forbidden and magnetic. I slipped on the oversized, slightly damp listening‑station headphones and pressed play.
A Private Signal in a Crowded Store
Within seconds, I felt that jolt of recognition. Not “this is good,” but this is mine. I didn’t just listen to the first track—I started skipping around, sampling pieces of each song, and every one somehow sounded better than the last. By the time I’d made it halfway through the CD, I knew I wasn’t leaving without it. I walked straight to the register and carried it back to the dorms like contraband.
From there, I became the evangelist. I got my high school friends into them. I hung the Nothing’s Shocking poster on my dorm wall like a declaration of identity. When Ritual de lo Habitual came out a few years later, that poster went up too. Jane’s Addiction wasn’t just a band I listened to. They were the first band I discovered on my own as a college student, and they helped propel me into adulthood.
And then I saw them live.
The Palladium, 1990 — Primus, Pixies, and Perry — Oh My
By the time I saw Jane’s Addiction live for the first time in December 1990, I’d already worn out my Nothing’s Shocking CD and was well on my way to wearing out Ritual de lo Habitual too. So, when they announced a show at the Hollywood Palladium—not far from my college apartment—it felt like the universe was rewarding me for my early devotion.
A Surprise Pixies Bonus
Primus was the announced opening act. Primus was just beginning to confuse and delight people in equal measure with Les Claypool’s funky bass playing and odd vocalizations. Pixies had been added as a surprise opener, fresh off headlining the Universal Amphitheatre just a week earlier—the venue that would become a recurring landmark in my own family’s concert history.
They played a tight 40‑minute set, the kind of bonus only Los Angeles could casually deliver on a Tuesday night. Pixies were already legends in the making. This would be the second of three times I saw them open for someone, having seen them open for The Cure the year prior. I’d see them open about 18 months later for U2.
Perry is a Righteous Dude
The Hollywood Palladium had that perfect late‑80s/early‑90s energy: part historic ballroom, part sweatbox, part spiritual gathering for kids who didn’t fit neatly into any category. Scanning the crowd, I don’t think I’d ever encountered such a high concentration of facial and body piercings before. Everyone looked like they’d been assembled from different subcultures—skaters, goths, punks, metalheads, art‑school kids, and a few people who looked like they’d wandered in by accident and decided to stay. That’s likely what I looked like.
The scene reminded me of that moment in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when Rooney’s secretary rattles off all the cliques—the geeks, sportos, motorheads, wastoids—who all adore Ferris. Every divergent tribe somehow united. This crowd was the same: every flavor of misfit and square you could imagine, all packed into the Palladium. All there because we dug this music from this band.
But Jane’s Addiction was the main event, and when they came onstage, the place felt like it shifted a few degrees off its axis. The room tightened, the air changed, the mosh pit grew and suddenly all that beautiful chaos snapped into focus as the opening notes of “Up the Beach” started to be played by the band.
When the Boot Took Flight and Perry Lost His Cool
The show was chaotic in the way only that era could produce. We had to pull my drunk friend from the mosh pit to keep him safe, despite his protestations that he was the juggernaut and could not be defeated. Perry Farrell stalked the stage like a wiry prophet—half shaman, half street poet, and entirely unpredictable. The LA Times review two days later even joked that his bandmates “should have slapped a gag order on him,” because he kept stopping between songs to opine about everything from art to politics to the vibe in the room.
And during one his screeds is exactly when it happened.
Someone launched what looked like a black boot. It hit Perry in the head right in the middle of a rambling monologue about the Gulf War. He was telling us that young people shouldn’t go fight in the war because “they have missiles that can do the job, so have a good time and stay at home,” which was… a choice. The timing of that flying shoe made it feel like someone in the crowd had heard enough. In hindsight, it was perfect foreshadowing. The first time I saw Perry lose his cool, decades before his 2024 blowup that carried the same chaotic energy.
The band that night was raw, volatile, and brilliant. They sounded like they were teetering on the edge of collapse (which they likely were), which only made the performance more electric. You could feel the tension, the danger, the sense that this band was burning bright and fast, and no one knew how long it would last.
Surprisingly, Perry didn’t take kindly to the boot to the head and cursed out the crowd and walked off stage a few songs short of the complete set. An abbreviated show would be something I’d experience again almost a year later with Morrissey.
The Night I Met Perry Farrell
Sometime after the Palladium show, I actually ran into Perry at the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica. He was just… there. No stage, no lights, no monologues, no chaos swirling around him. Just sitting at the frozen‑yogurt place with friends like any other guy killing time on a weekend evening.
I asked for an autograph, and he signed the back of a Gold’s Gym business card in purple pen—the only thing my friend had on her. It was such a small, disarming moment: the same man who could whip a crowd into frenzy quietly scribbling his name on a scrap of cardboard for a kid who adored his band.
Such an awesome moment.
Jane’s Addiction at Lollapalooza 1991 — Summertime Rolls
By the summer of 1991, Jane’s Addiction had reached escape velocity. “Been Caught Stealing” was in heavy rotation on MTV, and the clubs—places like the Hollywood Palladium—were behind them. They were now headlining bigger venues like the Universal Amphitheatre. Riding a wave of visibility that felt both earned yet unstable.
The tension and chaos that had always surrounded the band were now amplified by the fact that all four members were either heavily using drugs or trying to get clean. The band was dissolving in real time, and they agreed that the tour to support Ritual de lo Habitual would be their last. Perry Farrell—part visionary, part ringmaster—decided their farewell needed to be something no one had seen before. He built a traveling circus of music, art, and counterculture. He called it Lollapalooza, and walking into it felt like crossing a threshold into a new decade. Fittingly, Perry and Dave Navarro got into a fistfight at the very first show of the tour.
A Lineup Pulled From My CD Rack
The lineup felt like someone had raided my CD collection: Siouxsie and the Banshees, Living Colour, and Nine Inch Nails. Also appearing were Ice‑T and Body Count, Rollins Band, and Butthole Surfers. Seeing Siouxsie again was surreal. I’d watched her open for Bowie on the Glass Spider tour a few years earlier. Nine Inch Nails explosive set would end up being a full‑circle moment. I wouldn’t see them again until March 2026. The memory of this day in 1991 came rushing back the moment Trent appeared onstage at the American Airlines Center.
When the Sun Went Down, Everything Changed
It had been a hot July Southern California day, the kind that bakes the pavement and makes the air shimmer. But by the time Jane’s Addiction took the stage at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, that familiar coastal breeze had rolled in from the Pacific—the one that always seemed to arrive in the evenings in Orange County, softening everything. The sun had already slipped behind the hills, leaving the sky a deep California indigo that made the whole amphitheater feel more cinematic, more charged, more final.
They tore through songs like “Stop!,” “Ocean Size,” and “Ain’t No Right,” each one hitting with the kind of urgency that comes from a band playing as if they know the end is near.
Hypnotizing the Crowd
When they played “Three Days,” the entire amphitheater shifted into something like a trance. That song doesn’t just build—it pulls. It stretches time, hypnotizes the crowd, and turns thousands of people into one breathing organism. For a moment, it felt like the whole place was floating, held together the spiraling guitar notes.
And then it was over. The last great communion before everything changed: before Jane’s Addiction, the bridge between 80s post‑punk and 90s grunge, shattered; before Seattle took over the decade; before Lollapalooza reinvented the American music festival; and before my own life quietly shifted toward the future waiting for me.
The Quiet Beginning of Everything
I went to Lollapalooza with a group of friends, including one of my closest friends, Steve. His girlfriend Gina was with us, as was her younger sister Erika—both of whom I knew well. At some point during our tailgate, Erika’s friend stopped by with her then‑boyfriend. She was introduced to all of us—just a quick hello, a brief moment in the middle of a loud, sun‑baked summer afternoon—and then they were gone. At the time, it was nothing more than a passing introduction at a tailgate. Later, it would become the quiet beginning of everything.
I wouldn’t see the friend again until about a year later, when Erika brought her to a party and we talked a bit while a movie played on the TV. Then in 1993, we all went out to dinner—Gina, Erika, that girl, Chari, a friend of Gina and Erika’s from out of town, and me. While the others reminisced about things we weren’t part of, Chari and I talked. And talked. And hit it off. We would go on a date the next week and get married two years later to the day of that first date. Erika would stand beside us as Maid of Honor at our wedding in 1995.
The Jane’s Addiction Reunion Tour 2024 – Thank You Boys
When Jane’s Addiction announced a 2024 reunion tour—the first time all four original members had played together since 2010—and released their first new recorded music since 1990, it felt like a signal flare from another lifetime. I had to go see them again. And when the tour dates dropped, there was never any question who I’d be standing next to this time.
My wife and I went together—thirty‑three years after that first Lollapalooza, three decades after that brief tailgate introduction that didn’t feel like anything at the time but would eventually become everything.
I’m Never Ever Going to See Another Outdoor Show in August in North Texas
They show for Dallas was booked for August. North Texas in August is, well hot, close to being in hell hot. I saw the date and location and thought to myself oh, no, not an open-air concert. As I looked into it more, I saw the Toyota Music Factory would not have lawn seating. Hallelujah! This meant it would be fully enclosed….and AIR CONDITIONED!
Because by this point in my life, I had sworn—loudly, repeatedly, and with the conviction of a man who has suffered—that I would never attend another outdoor concert in a Texas summer. Not even if they somehow reincarnated John Lennon and George Harrison for a one‑night‑only Beatles reunion. The last few times I’d been to Dos Equis Pavilion in August were so miserable they felt like punishment for sins I hadn’t committed.
So walking into an air‑conditioned venue instead of an open‑air furnace felt like a small miracle. Compared to the early 90’s, the crowd was older now, softer around the edges, fewer facial piercings and visible tattoos, more water bottles than flasks. But the energy was still there—that restless hum that always surrounded Jane’s Addiction, the sense that anything could happen, good or bad.
My First Love and Rockets Show Since 1989
First there was an opening set by a DJ?, as the original opening act came down ill. Frankly, the house music would have been just as good. But next was a tight set from Love and Rockets, who it had been even longer than Jane’s Addiction, that I’d seen live (1989 opening for The Cure). They were excellent and this led to a rediscovery of the band for me and really digging into their discography and offshoot and predecessor bands. I’ll write more on them at some point.
Jane’s Addiction Better Than Ever
Next up, Jane’s Addiction… and honestly, they sounded really good. Shockingly good, better than I even remembered. Whether it was the state-of-the-art sound system, cleaner living by the band, or simply the absence of heroin, the mix was tight, the vocals were clear, and the band felt locked in. For a moment, it felt like time had folded in on itself—like the 1991 version of the band had stepped through a portal and landed in Texas.
Redemption Seemed Imminent, Until It Wasn’t
Then they played “Imminent Redemption.”
A new Jane’s Addiction song. And it wasn’t just good—it was alive. The first new music by the original four members since 1990. The last time they recorded new music together it drove them apart. Could this time be different?
The moment the opening notes hit, the room shifted. You could feel people around us straighten up, lean in, register what was happening. It wasn’t nostalgia anymore. No longer just a reunion show coasting on old glory. It was the band creating again—reaching forward instead of backward.
And the song itself… it had that unmistakable Jane’s DNA: Navarro’s spiraling guitar lines, Perkins’ heartbeat‑steady drums, Avery’s gravitational bass, and Perry weaving through it all with that strange, fragile, ecstatic energy only he has. “Imminent Redemption” felt both new and familiar, like a message from a version of the band that had somehow survived the last thirty years intact.
It was proof the spark was still there. There would be another single, “True Love,” released in September, and there was already talk—even confirmation from Dave Navarro—that they were likely to record their first full album since Ritual de lo Habitual in 1990. It was incredible news.
Stop! The End of the 2024 Reunion – The End of the New Album – The End of the Band
Three weeks later, Perry had his blowup—the now‑infamous onstage meltdown that echoed the Palladium shoe incident from 1990 and even the fistfight with Navarro on the first night of Lollapalooza. The same volatility. The same tension. Also, the same sense that he was wrestling with something bigger than the moment.
But, thankfully that wasn’t our night.
Our night was the calm before the storm—a brief, beautiful window where the band held together long enough to put on a fantastic show and get those memories flowing; for me to feel the weight of time, the distances traveled, the strange symmetry of seeing them again with the woman whose path with me began, unknowingly, at that first Lollapalooza.
Standing in the Shower Thinking – My 36 Year Jane’s Addiction Journey
Looking back across all these years—from the Palladium to Lollapalooza to the 2024 reunion—I can finally see the through‑line. Jane’s Addiction wasn’t just a band I followed; they were a marker at every major turn.
Walking back to the car after the 2024 show with my wife of nearly 30 years, I kept flashing to that first moment in Tower Records—the giant album cover mural, headphones too big, volume too loud, thinking I’d just found a cool new band. I didn’t know they’d end up shaping entire chapters of my life, or that the girl introduced to me in passing at a tailgate would be the one I’d still be going to shows with in 2024. Funny how the things you barely notice at the time end up becoming the story.
Of Course – Great Music Stays With You and Brings Back Memories
Some bands don’t just soundtrack your life—they end up shaping its architecture. They echo across the years, resurfacing at the exact moments when something in you is shifting, as if they’ve been keeping time with your story all along. Jane’s Addiction became that for me. They were the spark in a record store, the chaos in a ballroom, the bridge to a new decade, the backdrop to a chance introduction that eventually became a marriage, and the unexpected return three decades later that made the whole arc visible. The enjoyment and anticipation for new music that got snuffed out due to the tension and chaos I noted thirty plus years earlier at my first Jane’s Addiction concert.
Sadly, it looks like this reunion will be the last, I can’t see them coming back together and time is fleeting. Not every band becomes a compass, but Jane’s Addiction did for me. And maybe that’s the strange magic of music: certain songs bring flashbacks, little snippets of memories with long lost friends or how you can remember where you were and what was happening that ends up associated with a song or band. Jane’s Addiction will always play that role for me which is amazing being that their discography was limited to just a few studio albums and a few singles. Even if they don’t ever record together again, I’m grateful for the few albums that they did.
