KISS frontman Paul Stanley recently shared his thoughts on the heated onstage bust-up between Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell and guitarist Dave Navarro, which took place during a performance in Boston last month. The altercation led to the band canceling their remaining tour dates and announcing a hiatus, citing Farrell’s mental health struggles as the cause.
Stanley, speaking on Steve-O’s Wild Ride podcast, weighed in on the incident, offering strong opinions about band dynamics on stage. He emphasized, “You don’t hit. And you don’t bring your problems onstage.” He went on to acknowledge the difficulty of leaving egos behind but underscored the importance of professionalism: “You leave your anger and your resentment at the bottom of the stairs.”
According to Stanley, the audience doesn’t deserve to witness internal conflicts during a live performance. “The audience paid. And that goes back to the same philosophy of [KISS] being the band we never saw,” he remarked.
He expressed his belief that each performance is special to fans, stating, “It doesn’t matter about last night or the night after – that’s their night.” Stanley called out the lack of interaction between Farrell and Navarro as “kid shit” and “disrespectful to the people who paid.”
Following the incident, Jane’s Addiction guitar tech Dan Cleary shared the isolated audio of Farrell’s mic from the performance, which captured the fight with Navarro onstage. Cleary, who has worked with the band for 17 years, also revealed that Farrell punched Navarro backstage after the initial altercation.
Perry Farrell’s wife, Etty Lau, addressed the situation, attributing her husband’s behavior to ongoing struggles with tinnitus and a sore throat exacerbated by extremely loud stage volume. She shared that Farrell would be seeking treatment from both an otolaryngologist and a neurologist to heal and reflect on the recent events. Etty also dismissed “false narratives” circulating about the incident.
The band’s bassist Martyn LeNoble of Porno For Pyros later stirred further controversy by labeling Farrell as “the worst frontman I’ve ever worked with” in a scathing series of social media posts. Despite the chaos, Jane’s Addiction had recently completed a successful UK and European tour earlier this year, receiving rave reviews for their performance at London’s Roundhouse, where their fan-favorite songs were given fresh life.
