Perry Farrell’s wife broke her silence after her husband attacked his lead guitarist at a show in Boston, claiming the frontman was upset by being ‘drowned out’ by his bandmates playing too loudly.
Farrell’s wife, Etty Lau, took to Instagram to share her husband’s side of the story after he was slammed for body-checking and punching guitarist Dave Navarro on stage on Friday night.
‘Rather than speculating, I thought to post a first person account of what happened on stage,’ she wrote.
Lau said Farrell has been struggling with ‘tinnitus and a sore throat every night’ that has affected his voice, and he ‘felt that the stage volume had been extremely loud and his voice was being drowned out by the band’.
Lau said that there had been ‘tension and animosity between the bandmembers’, but felt that this was not always a bad thing as it was also ‘the magic that made the band so dynamic.’
Frontman Perry Farrell began swearing on the mic before marching over to guitarist Dave Navarro and punching him roughly nine songs into Jane’s Addiction set in Boston
Farrell’s wife, Etty Lau, (pictured together) claimed her husband ‘lost it’ because he was being ‘drowned out’ by his bandmates playing too loudly
But on Friday night, Lau said her husband reached breaking point after he was heckled by fans who couldn’t hear him.
‘When the audience in the first row, [they] started complaining up to Perry cussing at him that the band was planning too loud and that they couldn’t hear him, Perry lost it,’ said Lau – a former original member of the Pussycat Dolls when it was a dance troupe.
‘He wasn’t singing, he was screaming just be to be heard.’
Attendees say Farrell appeared to be heavily intoxicated at the Friday night show, with others claiming it was far from an unusual sight for the frontman who is known to down bottles of wine on stage.
Fans said tensions began rising during the band’s rendition of ‘Mountain Song’, and by the time they got to ‘Ocean Size’ three song’s later, Farrell was seething.
‘The band started the song Ocean before Perry was ready and did the count off,’ Lau said.
‘The stage volume was so loud at that point, that Perry couldn’t hear pass the boom and the vibration of the instruments and by the end of the song, he wasn’t singing, he was screaming just be to be heard.’
Farrell’s wife Etty Lau took to Instagram in the aftermath of the fight to offer her and her husband’s perspective on the incident
Perry Farrell, right, marched over to guitarist Dave Navarro, left, and began punching him at the show, which his wife claimed was due to ‘tensions’ among the bandmates
Members of the crew had to come by to separate the pair and haul Farrell offstage
Lau signed off her Instagram post with a jab at ‘who won the fight’, claiming that bassist Eric Avery came out victorious as he aggressively confronted Farrell.
‘While Dave (Navarro) was keeping Perry at arm’s length to de-escalate the situation, Dan (Cleary, a band technician) rushed over to de-escalate as well by holding Perry back,’ Lau wrote.
‘Dave walked away to take his guitar off. Eric walked up to Perry, upstage, in the dark, behind Dan, put Perry in a headlock and punched him in the stomach three times.’
Lau said Avery had to be ‘pulled away’, before the bassist ‘nonchalantly walked off to the front of the stage to apologize to audience for the show ended early’.
She said while Navarro ‘still looked handsome and cool in the middle of a fight’, her husband ‘was a crazed beast’ in the aftermath of the altercation.
‘He finally did not calm down, but did breakdown and cried and cried,’ she said, concluding that Avery ‘didn’t understand what de-escalation meant or took advantage of the situation and got in a few cheap shots on Perry’.
Disappointed fans said Farrell was swigging from a bottle of wine before the outburst, which is said to be a common sight at his performances (pictured at a show in California in February 2024)
Eyewitnesses said Farrell began ‘shouting’ at Navarro during ‘Mountain Song’, which escalated until their bust up during ‘Ocean Size.’
Attendees said Farrell ‘had a huge bottle of wine with him all evening, Navarro and Avery kept chatting with each other the whole show and seemed angrier than normal.’
The show in Boston came a week after the band played two sets in New York City, as part of a reunion tour after the group got back together for the first time in 14 years earlier this year.
On the first night of the New York City shows, Farrell told a crowd at the Pier 17 space that he was not in great shape for the performances, with attendees saying there appeared to be bad blood between the bandmates.
Farrell told the crowd: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I have to be honest with you. Something’s wrong with my voice. I just can’t get the notes out all of a sudden.’
Bassist Eric Avery took to Instagram after the show to speak to fans, saying he was ‘looking forward to getting another crack at this spectacular rooftop venue tonight. I’m optimistic we will be better.’
Farrell pictured during a 2010 performance in Sydney, Australia
In a review from CL Tampa the week before Friday’s outburst, a critic wrote that Farrell ‘struggled’ and ‘spiraled’ when the band began playing ‘Mountain Song’ after ‘chugging from a full bottle of wine’.
He ‘launched into many nonsensical rants’ about cow pastures, mushrooms and politics, the review said, and only stopped when Navarro ‘deliberately cranked out a loud, piercing chord on his guitar, as almost to silence Farrell and get the show back on track.’
The review, written by critic Gave Echazabal, noted that Farrell’s swigging from a bottle of wine came as he struggled to keep up with his heavy-metal bandmates.
‘Farrell’s delivery was either late, or disjointed, and it was hard to pair his lackluster performance with the absolute, defined power the band was churning out behind him,’ Echazabal wrote.
He added that the after watching Farrell become fixated on the bottle of wine, ‘one almost got the feeling that this wasn’t the first bottle he’d uncorked for the night’.