Original Jane’s Addiction bassist is back in the fold and ready to rock

There's a considerable amount of excitement in the air this week as Jane’s Addiction returns to Phoenix with Love & Rockets in tow. Not only is the classic lineup of Jane’s Addiction back together, but they have new music as well. Could this mean a return to form of one of the most polarizing bands in rock 'n' roll history?

When Eric Avery rejoined Jane’s Addiction in 2022, many of us rejoiced. With no offense to Chris Chaney, who was the primary bassist during Avery’s long absence from the band he formed with singer Perry Farrell in 1985, Jane’s Addiction was never really the same without the commanding presence of Avery’s powerful bass lines. Chaney played them well, but he just wasn't Avery.

On the band’s latest single, “Imminent Redemption,” there's a return to form that's pleasantly reminiscent of the band’s early work of the late 1980s and early 1990s on records like "Nothing's Shocking" (1988) and "Ritual de lo Habitual" (1990). Guitarist Dave Navarro and drummer Stephen Perkins are there as well, providing their immense talent, but the song starts off with a great bass line that for many longtime fans is exhilarating. To Avery, there is a newness, again, to the band.

“Having spent a lot of my musical life over the last decades playing as just a hired gun in other people’s bands (Avery toured with Alanis Morrisette for a few years and played bass as a touring and contributing member of Garbage for over a decade), that’s a different musical experience. Coming back to Jane’s (Addiction) ... that’s where my soul is, my musical soul, and heart, and really where my human story is,” Avery says before continuing:

“When I came back, I wrote ‘Imminent Return’ to be ready to go into the studio for the first time. It was just Perry (Farrell) and Stephen (Perkins) and I because Dave was still feeling sick (Navarro has been dealing with complications from long COVID). As soon as I started playing it, Stephen started playing along, and Perry was in the next room and I could hear him singing it. It just felt like that energy … of a band coming together and finding each other’s energy. I was like, ‘Wow, we can actually do this.”

During our conversation, Avery and I discussed how the bass player is often the most stable person in a band, and when he alluded to the idea that the reunited members of Jane’s Addiction “could actually do this,” it speaks to the power of embracing one’s role in life. Avery reflected on the dynamics that brought he, Farrell and Navarro together initially.

As the members of the band have gotten older, they've found new ways to connect, Avery says.

“I think we were all in separate but tangentially related orbit back in the day. Dave’s orbit would have been that he was the most gifted musically of all of us by a wide margin. Perry and I were into more tribal and repetitive stuff, much more basic, and he could come in and do his amazing guitar work then go back to the hotel and watch a movie or go chase girls. This characterized his sort of ‘half-in/half-out’ musical relationship with the band, but now he's so plugged in. He’s interested in the tone and what we are doing musically … now we text back and forth at night talking about YouTube videos or pedals we want to check out,” Avery says.

Avery mentions that this type of talk never happened in the early days of the band. For fans, enthusiasm like this might just be enough to make them a little giddy. It’s also fantastic to hear Avery talking about his love and appreciation for the band.

“We’ve all been doing this for long enough that thankfully, we've come to the realization this is a pretty miraculous thing we get to do at this stage of our lives. The fact that people still care about what we did and what we’re doing still, it’s better than it’s ever been on a personal level in many, many, many ways,” he says .

This current tour with Love & Rockets, which finds the two legendary alternative bands playing together at Arizona Financial Theatre on Thursday, may also seem to be something of a full-circle moment for Avery and his bandmates. In early 1989, just after Jane’s Addiction played two sold-out shows at a small club called The Underground on 35th Avenue and Camelback Road in Phoenix, the band headed east and took a slot opening for Love & Rockets on the east coast for the latter’s Earth-Sun-Moon tour.

Our conversation turned to bands that had been influential on Avery and his bandmates during their formative years in the 80s.

“The only bands that we ever said, ‘Let’s do stuff like them,’ and this is just Perry and I, were Velvet Underground and Joy Division. Both of those were because we loved those bands more than anything. We said, ‘Let’s do their approach without sounding like them. Let’s not sound like Joy Division but approach things the way they would have or (try to) have the spirit of them,” Avery says.

It's safe to say now, over 35 years since the first, self-titled Jane’s Addiction record came out in 1987, that Avery’s band does not sound much (or anything) like Joy Division or Velvet Underground. Sure, they did cover the Velvets' “Rock and Roll” on the aforementioned "Jane’s Addiction" record, but even then, Jane’s Addiction made the song their own.

I did mention to Avery that when I first heard them back in 1988, I thought they sounded like their fellow Los Angeles neighbors, The Three O’Clock but only if the Paisley Underground greats had gotten way into heroin.

“That’s funny because I was a fan of The Salvation Army who were The Three O’Clock before they were the Three O’Clock,” Avery says.

Arizona has been kind to Jane’s Addiction over the years, but it didn’t necessarily start out that way. Avery did remember hanging out with Tucson’s Caterwaul on one of those early road trips to the desert.

“We were big fans of Cocteau Twins and there was definitely some overlap there with Caterwaul. We played a show with them and they were basically our crowd for that one and we were theirs. There was nobody there. In fact, our manager got choked by the club promoter when he went to ask for some money. We were trying to make our way across the country but wound up at Caterwaul’s house,” Avery says.

Jane's Addiction and Love & Rockets. 7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 15. Arizona Federal Theatre, 400 W. Washington St. Tickets start at $53.