Jane’s Addiction: technician Dan Cleary: “Dissolved already in August”

Dan Cleary, Jane’s Addiction’s guitar and bass engineer for 17 years, recently offered a new point of view on what happened before and after the concert that last September 13th saw Perry Farrell lose his mind and attack Dave Navarro .

In a recent episode of the “Rare Form Radio” podcast, Cleary spoke in depth to Todd Newman, who is very close to Navarro, about what he saw happen firsthand before and after the Boston show, which then led the band to cancel his subsequent shows of the classic lineup’s reunion tour and decide to take an indefinite break.

After the interventions of Farrell’s bandmates, who also apologized, assuming “full responsibility for how I chose to handle the situation” and the messages of his wife Etty Lau, who also recently explained that the singer is taking time to “reflect and heal”, Dan Cleary has now told Newman that Perry Farrell had “left the band” before Jane’s Addiction’s 2024 North American tour even kicked off in Las Vegas on August 9th. “Management earned their pay that day,” Cleary then said, noting that Perry was then persuaded to stay with the group.

According to Jane’s Addiction’s engineer, the singer wanted to include video projections of his wife and other dancers in the background during the band’s performance. According to Cleary, however, Farrell was annoyed when his bandmates rejected the idea and Newman claimed that Etty Lau was present at the soundcheck in Las Vegas and shouted that the singer was going home, putting an end to the tour. The band continued to play, however, with some shows described by Dan Cleary as “the worst of the tour”.

Cleary then went on to dispute what Etty Lau claimed in the message shared on social media after the Boston concert, in which she reported audio problems, and underlined that Farrell was “high” that evening. “This man was clearly screwed,” the engineer declared: “And we knew it as soon as we saw him that day before the show in Boston.”

Regarding what happened before the live show on September 13, the engineer added that Farrell was in a state of “paranoia” after seeing the others in the band arguing with each other. “He thought they were talking about him, and they were, but not in the way he thought. They were trying to figure out how to fix the situation,” Cleary said: “So he came over and started yelling at them in do the lyrics to the songs, which was kind of weird.”

Dan Cleary later reported that, in addition to the onstage confrontation, Farrell hit Navarro again backstage after the show: “Eventually Dave approached him to ask what the hell happened, and Perry hit him again,” the manager claimed: “I’m sorry for Farrell, he was going through a bad moment. But he seemed crazy.”

“Nobody’s trying to demonize Farrell,” Cleary added: “I know this band is over, but I really hope he can figure things out.”