Jane’s Addiction at Trinity College, Dublin on Friday 28th June 2024
To paraphrase the old country and western song, “how can we miss Jane’s Addiction if they won’t go away”? Since imploding in 1991 and ensuring the myth around them continued to grow, it feels that they’ve always been there or thereabouts – certainly since they first reformed in 2001. There’s been two further albums – Strays in 2003 (not bad, ‘Just Because’ was great) and 2011’s The Great Escape Artist – and a fair amount of touring with musicians such as Flea, Chris Chaney and Duff McKagan standing in for co-founding member Eric Avery – who was off playing with Garbage and having nothing to do with it. Normally who plays bass in a band is hardly the most important matter but Avery’s return to the live set up after fourteen years feels significant and here we go….again.
There’s certainly an audience for it and the compact outdoor set up of Trinity is the ideal location. What is notable is the lack of a younger element. While some bands transcend the years, Jane’s never had that one or two huge songs for subsequent generations to discover. Play ‘Been Caught Stealing’ (which was certainly good enough to fit the brief) at your local indie night and the chances are you’d be met with blank faces, waiting for ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ or ‘Killing In The Name Of’ instead’. All of which means there’s a sedate but warm atmosphere to the place as the band join us for their first Irish show since 2009’s Oxegen festival.
They’re clearly a band of two distinct halves, the Avery / Stephen Perkins rhythm section dressed in simple black while the rock star pairing of Dave Navarro and Perry Farrell favour a more peacocky and hat based approach. Musically too Navarro is heavy on the ‘hey, look at me’ stuff but the importance of Avery’s return is more telling, so many of their songs anchored by his inventive bass lines – inspired more by the likes of Peter Hook and Simon Gallup than the funk metal scene they were lumped in with.
In truth, for all their counter culture associations, Jane’s Addiction were a fairly standard rock band (once memorably described by Sugar’s David Barbe as “Van Halen with different makeup artists”) and the night’s opening third is a little hard work. Respite comes as Avery slides ‘Summertime Rolls’ into view, followed by a lovely take on ‘Jane Says’. Part of the problem might be Farrell himself, who seems oddly distant at times and vocally thin amongst the surrounding noise.
The band huff and puff a bit more before ‘Three Days’ arrives. Overblown, self-indulgent nonsense yes but glorious overblown, self-indulgent nonsense and proof that, when they got it right, Jane’s Addiction could be all you hoped they might be. ‘Mountain Song’ is next, followed by the double Ritual de lo Habitual whammy most are probably here for. ‘Stop!’ and ‘Been Caught Stealing’ are undeniably thrilling, even if Farrell is struggling to keep up at times.
For twenty minutes or so, they genuinely sound like a band who could have changed the world and for a while everyone’s memory of their past is matched by the present. Then they hurriedly encore with curio ‘Chip Away’ and the spell is broken. Jane’s Addiction in 2024 is a fair approximation of their heyday. It does nothing to sully that reputation, nor does it enhance it to any degree – all it does is mirror the triumphs and the pitfalls. The question is not how good they were tonight but how good they were in the first place.
