Dave Navarro, Eric Avery, and Stephen Perkins have filed a lawsuit against their Jane's Addiction bandmate Perry Farrell, Rolling Stone reports. Last September, the classic lineup's reunion tour was cut short after Farrell, the frontman, started an onstage fight with Navarro, the guitarist, in the middle of their Boston show. Jane's have yet to formally announce their breakup, but a guitar tech from that ill-fated show said they were "over," which Navarro seemed to confirm interview earlier this year. This new lawsuit corroborates those sentiments.
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, accuses Farrell of assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, and breach of contract. Navarro, Avery, and Perkins are seeking $10 million in damages as a result of the band's dissolution; Jane's Addiction quietly shared a new single following Farrell's meltdown, and they had plans for a new album that has presumably been scrapped. The lawsuit also asks Farrell to cover all outstanding bills stemming from the tour’s cancellation. Each member of the band was supposed to make $210,000 for the North American tour, and they owe $240,000 in unpaid commissions to their manager, business manager, and legal team.
The 36-page complaint reads in part: "The Band can no longer function as a result of the Defendant’s conduct, including his sudden, violent outbursts and demonstrated inability to serve as the Band’s frontman and vocalist. The physical, emotional, and financial harms Defendant has wrought have deeply impacted the Plaintiffs, their families, and their loved ones, and it is time for Defendant to face the consequences of his actions and be held accountable."
What's more, the suit also reveals that in 2022, Navarro began receiving $25,000 a month from a disability insurance policy after a nasty case of long COVID forced him to skip out on a bunch of tour dates. When he agreed to tour with Jane's Addiction again in 2024, that meant he had to sacrifice those disability checks.
The suit continues: “Had Navarro not terminated the disability payments, and given his condition, Navarro likely would have received the $25,000 payments for several years. For months, Navarro worked hard to prepare himself physically and mentally for touring, including by seeing doctors, nutritionists, and therapists... Perry’s repeated and unprovoked attack on Navarro was especially painful, because Perry knew that Navarro was still weak and suffering from the effects of long COVID-19."
A representative for Farrell has shared this statement from his legal team with Stereogum:
This is yet another clear example of the group uniting to isolate and bully frontman Perry Farrell. The timing of this baseless lawsuit is no coincidence -- it was filed only after they caught wind of legal action coming from our side. 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.
UPDATE: Farrell has responded with his own lawsuit. In a 30-page legal complaint he accuses Navarro of assaulting him and his wife backstage and says he had no say in the tour cancellation. “Navarro, Avery and Perkins apparently decided that Jane’s Addiction’s decades of success should be jettisoned in pursuit of a years-long bullying campaign against Farrell involving harassing him onstage during performances, including, among other tactics, trying to undermine him by playing their instruments at a high volume so that he could not hear himself sing without blasting his own in-ear monitors at an unsafe level,” it reads.
