Jane’s Addiction Members Sue Perry Farrell for ‘Brutal’ Onstage Assault: ‘Unprovoked Anger’
Dave Navarro, Eric Avery and Stephen Perkins claim the band suffered "a swift and painful death" following the incident and lost millions of dollars.
Three members of Jane’s Addiction have sued their frontman Perry Farrell over his viral onstage attack of guitarist Dave Navarro last year, claiming the incident was a “terminal inflection point” that lost the band millions of dollars from canceled tour dates and a derailed record deal.
The lawsuit, submitted in Los Angeles court on Wednesday (July 16) and obtained by Billboard, was brought by Navarro alongside Jane’s Addiction bassist Eric Avery and drummer Stephen Perkins. The trio reunited with Perry last year for their first tour all together since 2010, but things went haywire in September when Farrell punched Navarro onstage mid-set at Boston’s Leader Bank Pavilion.
A now-viral fan video of the altercation shows Farrell shouting profanities and lunging at Navarro while he was mid-guitar solo in the song “Ocean Size.” Wednesday’s lawsuit calls Farrell’s alleged series of punches, which supposedly continued backstage after the band prematurely ended their set, “brutal and unprovoked.”
“Navarro was shocked by what he would later describe as the demonic look in Perry’s eyes,” writes attorney Christopher Frost in leveling seven claims, including assault, battery and breach of contract.
The band members allege that while Farrell initially apologized for the incident and took accountability, “the narrative quickly changed” as the singer and his wife, Etty Lau Farrell, blamed the other band members and onstage acoustics for his outburst.
Jane’s Addiction was allegedly forced to cancel the rest of its 33-date North American reunion tour after this incident, losing out on significant profits from a now-scuttled deal with Live Nation. They’ve also been unable to complete a planned album, forcing them to repay an advance to Warner Music Group’s ADA.
“The band will never have their revival tour, to celebrate a new album and 40+ years of deep, complex, chart-topping recordings,” the lawsuit reads. “Instead, history will remember the band as suffering a swift and painful death at the hands of Farrell’s unprovoked anger and complete lack of self-control.”
The band members are seeking at least $10 million in damages from Farrell for this lost revenue, as well as for emotional and physical pain. They also claim Navarro lost $50,000 when he postponed his wedding in Scotland to go on the ultimately canceled tour, and that because he began working again, the guitarist was forced to give up $25,000 in monthly disability payments he had been getting due to long COVID-19.
In addition to laying out the alleged onstage attack in detail, Wednesday’s lawsuit also takes a series of other shots at Farrell. Navarro, Avery and Perkins say Farrell was exhibiting bad behavior from the start of the reunion tour, and he frequently “forgot lyrics, lost his place in songs he had sung since the 1980s, and mumbled rants as he drank from a wine bottle onstage.”
The band members also say Farrell has a history of “taking credit for others’ ideas and accomplishments. They claim the singer has spread a false narrative that he came up with the idea for Lollapalooza, when the festival was actually the brainchild of Perkins and touring executive Marc Geiger.
“To anyone who truly knows Perry, his conduct on the tour was emblematic of Perry’s continued self-aggrandizement,” the lawsuit says.
Frost, the attorney representing Navarro, Avery and Perkins, says in a statement on Wednesday that his clients “had high hopes that they could capture the pure spirit of the band’s early days and build on it” when they first reunited with Farrell.
“Dave, Eric and Stephen never wanted it to come to this,” adds Frost. “But they have been wronged, want the accurate story told, and they deserve a resolution.”
Meanwhile, Farrell’s attorney Miles Cooley says in his own statement shared with Billboard on Wednesday that the band members only filed this lawsuit “after they caught wind of legal action coming from our side.”
“This is yet another clear example of the group uniting to isolate and bully frontman Perry Farrell,” says Cooley. “It’s a transparent attempt to control the narrative and present themselves as the so-called ‘good guys’ — a move that’s both typical and predictable. Just like when they released a defamatory and entirely unfounded statement about Perry’s mental health and unilaterally canceled the remaining tour dates without his input, they’re once again scrambling to get ahead of the truth in a desperate effort to save face.”
Farrell’s reps declined to provide additional information about the opposing legal action mentioned in their statement.
This story was updated on July 16 at 4:34 p.m. ET to include a statement from Farrell’s reps. It was updated again at 5:24 p.m. ET with a statement from Frost.
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