After video of Perry Farrell attacking Dave Navarro during a Jane’s Addiction show went viral, Farrell’s wife, Etty Lau, took to Instagram to provide “a first person account of what happened.”
Lau wrote, “Perry’s frustration had been mounting, night after night, he felt that the stage volume had been extremely loud and his voice was being drowned out by the band.”
She continued, “Perry had been suffering from tinnitus and a sore throat every night. But when the audience in the first row, 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.”
Lau added, “The band started the song ‘Ocean’ before Perry was ready and did the count off.. 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.”
Following the incident, which brought the show to a premature end, Lau said, “Perry was a crazed beast for the next half an hour – he finally did not calm down, but did breakdown and cried and cried.”
She also said of bassist Eric Avery, who can be seen hitting Farrell, “Eric, well he either didn’t understand what deescalation meant or took advantage of the situation and got in a few cheap shots on Perry.”