Dave Navarro: That Time He Thrown Guitars to the Crowd

Dave Navarro he recalled in an interview that time he lost his mind during a concert of the Jane’s Addiction and threw all the guitars he owned into the crowd.

It was an angry reaction against the frontman Perry Farrellwhich took place on August 25th during the first Lollapalooza festival in 1991 (the festival conceived and organized by Farrell himself). This gesture, to the delight of the public, led Navarro to immediately regret it, but it had an unexpected positive effect on his career.

“Drugs and alcohol were a big part of our band back then,” he told Guitar World. “Sometimes we were on the same page and having a lot of fun, and other times we went in different directions.”

“That particular night I went in a different direction. After three songs we got into a physical altercation and I was like, ‘I’m done playing this fucking show.’ I grabbed all my Ibanez guitars and threw them into the audience. I looked at Perry and said, ‘What are you going to do now?’ Like, ‘Ha ha ha, I got you! Now I don’t have any more guitars to play!'” He continued: “Five minutes later, I was like, ‘Oh shit, what am I going to do now?’ I was so focused on getting revenge that I didn’t realize I had just cut my feet off.”

Fortunately, help was at hand. “The guitarist of the Rollins BandChris Haskett, was playing with Corey Smith at the next show and he said, ‘Why don’t you borrow one of my guitars and see if you like it?’ So for the second show at Lollapalooza I was playing a PRS and I was like, ‘I really like this.'”

Navarro has remained with PRS ever since. “They delivered two or three guitars to me in one night,” he said. “I used them for the rest of Lollapalooza and the rest of my career.” (The next post-launch date was the traveling festival’s August 28 show in Wisconsin.)

This is the (short) setlist for that evening’s performance at Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre in Greenwood Village, Colorado.

Mountain Song
Jane Says
Stop!
Been Caught Stealing

Navarro added that the reunited Jane’s Addiction — who just released “Imminent Redemption,” their first song with the original lineup since 1991 — are having more fun on stage than ever before, expanding and experimenting with the songs as they go. “It makes it fun to play those songs again,” he said. “You’re on the edge of a cliff and you don’t know if you’re going to fall off. That hasn’t happened yet. And even if you did, it would be a great moment!”

The reunited band performed this summer as headliners in the first of six nights of “La Prima Estate Festival” in Lido di Camaiore (Lucca).