← DISGRACELAND
DISGRACELAND
Jane’s Addiction (Pt. 1): Taking Risks, Enduring Pain, and a Killer on the Loose
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This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Jane's Addiction are insane. Their guitarist, Dave Navarro, was only 15 years old when his mother was brutally murdered in her apartment. The killer escaped, and for nearly eight years he eluded capture. Dave Navarro couldn't shake the pain of his mother's death or the fear of knowing the man responsible was still at large. He became addicted to heroin, and he nearly died when he OD'd in a London flat. His addiction helped drive a rift in his band, just as they were reaching a critical and commercial height. And his band, Jane's Addiction, made great music. Music that had a major hand in defining the new alternative to rock and roll. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron called Twin peaks prom night mk2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to a clip from Baby Come To Me by Patty Austin and James Ingram. And why would I play you that specific slice of General Hospital cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on March 3, 1983. And that was the day that Connie Navarro and her friend Sue Jory were shot down in cold blood. A tragedy that haunted Connie's son as he was on his way to becoming one of the world's biggest rock Stars on this episode. A brutal murder, a killer on the loose, Heroin, rock and roll alternatives, and Jane's Addiction. I'm Jake Brennan. This is Disgraceland. It had been years since Dave Navarro trusted anyone, and he wasn't about to start now. Not here, not inside a Denny's bathroom. The kind of place you go to cop a fix to tie off and shoot up alone. But Dave wasn't alone. He was staring down a couple of rednecks. And he wasn't thinking about trust. He was thinking about pain. He knew the pain was coming. It was his reward for being different. Dressed in cutoffs and fishnets, last night's mascara a little blotchy around the eyes. A real feast for these goons. Their muscles like topographic maps by the looks of them. Just like Dave. They had a thing with needles. But unlike Dave, they shot juice, not junk. It was futile to try and push past them. He was outnumbered. And he knew exactly what he was doing by egging them on, daring them to do the thing they so desperately wanted to do. To kick his scrawny ass. What's the matter? You guys aren't into fishnets? That was all it took. The fist came at him fast and there was a loud crack as knuckles collapsed his nose. Next came the blood. And then the pain. Violence wasn't just pain. Violence was sex, too. And like sex, violence followed Dave Navarro and his band, Jane's Addiction, wherever they went. Right now in the fall of 1988, they were way beyond Los Angeles, where they enjoyed their status as one of the city's up and coming bands. Only unlike the punks and the hardcore kids and the surfers, Jane's Addiction didn't come up from one particular scene, but rather from the basement of all scenes. Freaks who were fed equal parts Zeppelin and butthole, surfers in the dark, who held no allegiance to one style, but rather wore all styles on their sleeve. And when it came to their actual sleeves, to what they actually wore, they dressed like they sounded. A wild mess of dreads, girls and skirts. And just like Dave Navarro, Jane's Addiction's guitarist, the band's singer, Perry Farrow, dressed however he wanted, too. He dressed to shock, Even though in 1988, nothing was shocking anymore. Or so Jane's Addiction claimed in the title of their second album. But clearly there was plenty shocking, starting with the album's cover art. Two female conjoined twins sitting in a rocking chair, heads on fire, totally naked. It was shocking enough to get the record banned from six major music retailers in the U.S. the music contained Therein was shocking in its own way, so outside the mainstream that a new genre needed to be coined simply to explain it. Or so the story goes. But I digress. At the moment, Jane's Addiction were winding their way through the country, doing their best to shock on each stop of their tour, daring anyone and everyone to look and listen, all the while fighting their own existential crisis, the kind that only an underground group of freaks with a collective goal never to sell out can have. Because nothing shocking was not some little independent record that could. The album was released by Warner Bros. Which, as any major dude will tell you, is a major label. And as any DIY punk will tell you, is a strange place for a band whose lead singer was known for ending shows with his fist in the air and the battle cry, whatever happens, don't sell out. You had to admit, though, when it came to the majors, Warner's was pretty cool. In the last year alone, they let both Prince and Husker do release double albums with complete creative control and without selling out. At first, Jane's Addiction kept the corporate contract a secret. Their street cred depended on it. But word has a way of getting out, and talk is cheap. So it wasn't enough for the band to simply say they weren't sellouts. They had to prove it. Dave played his guitar with a vibrator, Perry pulled his pants down on stage. And they didn't conform. They confronted, and that got them noticed. It also got them painful. Pain in a Denny's bathroom in Delaware and pain on the streets of Florida in Fort Lauderdale. The Cuban gang making their way up the block took in the sight that was Perry Farrell standing there with his friends, practically begging for attention. Gnarly dreads with shit hanging in them. Green lipstick, green gloves, delicate silk scarf around his neck. Low hanging fruit. Hey, look, the gang's leader said. It's Boy George. Perry had his comeback, ready to go. Suck my dick. And the gang members pounced. They rolled, Perry and his friends, fists pummeled, faces, boots to the chest. A kid in Perry's entourage was knocked to the ground, his head slamming into the curb, blood splattering, skull fractured, unconscious, nearly dead. It was fucked up. But in his own weird way, Perry thrived on this. Not the attention or the conflict, but the pain. The kind of pain Perry was familiar with ran deeper than a beatdown by a street gang. He knew pure pain. The kind that settles in early and burrows in deep loss, heartbreak. His own mother dead by her own hand when Perry was just three. That's irreversible pain. Dave Navarro, his bandmate and his friend, could relate. And if he could relate, he could trust. Not completely, but Dave trusted Perry more than most, precisely because of his experience with pain. Dave knew this from his own experience, because he also lost his mother. He was just 15 when she was brutally murdered in her apartment, and now it was six years later. Dave was 21. His band had a record deal and were touring. He was living a charmed life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but he couldn't enjoy it. The pain wouldn't let him. And neither would the knowledge that the killer, the man who put two bullets into his mother and left her for dead, was still on the lo.
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1983 the Westwood neighborhood in Los Angeles. Late. The man easily found his way inside the apartment. He'd been here before, numerous times, and he knew how to get in, even if the front door door was locked and even if he wasn't welcome. The sliding glass door on the second floor balcony was a cinch. He knew how to climb to it, how to manipulate it from the outside, hide in the shadows and gently wrestle it open, slip into the bedroom. The bedroom he sometimes shared with her. But that was over now. Him and her them. She ended it. Not because of his certain set of skills, the kinds of skills that helped him gain access to a locked apartment. She had no idea what he did in his own time, the places he broke into, the things he took. That wasn't the problem. The problem was him. Or at least that's what she thought. That he acted one way but in reality was another. That he was jealous, possessive. Dangerous. She told him she didn't want to see him anymore and he simply couldn't accept it. He was hardwired not to. He called her repeatedly. Sometimes he didn't say anything, just listened to her voice and got off on her frustration, her fear. And then he hung up. He followed her to restaurants. He watched from afar as she ate with other men. And fucking pissed him off, to be honest. And he sat there across the room, sitting, staring at her, just like on the phone. He didn't talk here either. Instead, he made a gun with his hand. His pointer finger the barrel, and his thumb, the hammer. He closed one eye and aimed the appendage directly at her. And then he brought his thumb down. Slow click in his mind. He could hear the hammer strike the pin and then the ignition, burning hot his hand. Now tonight, inside her apartment, alone, he was no longer pretending he was holding the real deal. A Colt.38. One of the many guns he owned, all of them illegal. Might have actually been the same one he once hid right here in her bedroom, down on the floor underneath the mattress frame. Tonight he was the one doing the hiding. He was waiting and thinking. Thinking about how she rejected him. About how she ran around town with other people who weren't him. Other men. He seethed and kept waiting. But not for long. There. The sound of a key in the lock at the apartment's front door. The clack of the latch and the squeak of the door hinge. Voices. She had company. Another woman with her. He didn't let it sway him. If anything, he was now holding the Colt even tighter. His heart beat steady and his blood ran cold. Footsteps. A light switch. His eyes met theirs. He raised the revolver and they screamed. The sound of the gunshot drowned them out. First, he shot her. The bullet pierced the left side of her chest. It went through her left lung and then out her back. He pulled the trigger again. This time it hit her right side through the aorta, the spine lodging in her ribs at the back of her chest. Next, he turned the gun on her friend. Close range. She had her hand up. Didn't matter. The bullet went through the base of her thumb into her jaw, severed her carotid artery and exited the back of her neck. Three shots. Three flashes from the muzzle. Then it was over. He stuffed the body of his ex in the linen closet with a pillow over her face. He left the friend face down on the carpet. And then he slipped out into the darkness. When the bodies of Connie Navarro and her friend Sue Jory were discovered in Connie's apartment, Connie's ex boyfriend, the killer, a man everyone knew as Dean, was long gone. Cops found three handguns and a shotgun at Dean's apartment, along with four sets of handcuffs. Like most things about Dean, his name was a lie. In reality, Dean was a man named John Riccardi. As Dean, John Riccardi was able to get close to and manipulate not only Connie, but her son, 15 year old Dave Navarro, who was in fact supposed to be at his mother's place on the night of her murder. But Connie and her ex husband, Dave's father, who shared custody, changed plans last minute. So Dave was at his dad's instead of. Dave knew something was wrong. Long before LAPD rolled up to his dad's house early the next morning, Dave's dad had left Dave at home to go check on Connie. She'd missed an appointment the previous day and wasn't answering her phone. It was unlike her. Plus everyone knew about the trouble she was currently having getting Dean to leave her alone. When Dave's dad returned home, it was in the back of a police cruiser. Dave watched the car come to a stop outside the front door. His stomach churned. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be true. But it was happening and it was true. His stomach was in knots, tighter and tighter. And then the knots split apart and the pain oozed out. The world suddenly looked different. It was distorted and dirty, as if he was looking through a window that was smeared with grit and grime. And there was no way to get it clean again. To make everything like it once was. He knew this in that twisted gut of his. Just like he knew his mother was gone before he got word. When she died, she took a part of him with her. Music helped to fill some empty spaces. Music was its own salve. The louder and faster it was, the better. Rock and roll was good. Speed metal was better. Dave plugged in with fellow teenager Stephen Perkins on drums made noise. Noise as distorted and dirty as life now felt. Ear piercing, brain rattling noise. You could get lost in it. But it didn't make the pain go away. Not like weed in a six pack anyway. And not like a syringe full of dope. Heroin came later and when it did, it was like a whole new world waiting to swallow him whole. But first it was fast cars and open containers. Nothing was shocking and nothing was scary. According to Stephen Perkins, however, what was scary was driving around partying with Dave Navarro. There were no limits, no rules. The cop who pulled over the two kids tearing ass through the streets of LA understood this. Not at first. First he saw the half empty beer cans, the drug paraphernalia. First his instinct was to treat this by the book. Then Dave gave a stone sober look into the cop's Ray Bans with his own two fucked up eyes. I'm Dave Navarro, he said. My mother, Connie was just murdered. And the cop paused. That's right. God, what a fucking brutal scene that was. The poor kid and the cop turned a blind eye and waved them on. It was all about the thrill of the risk. Getting wasted, getting a pass, going faster and faster down a hole into darkness. Because there was no safety elsewhere. The only safety was risk. Jane's Addiction, the band Dave soon formed with Stephen Perry, Farrell and bassist Eric Avery, made this plane thinking you could actually make something of yourself as a band in la. Risk thinking you could rise above hair metal's Aqua Risk. Thinking you could mean something to the punks and to the hardcore kids and maybe even to the surfers and those weird art fucks too. Risk. LA's music scene didn't look the other way like its cops did. X, the Blasters, the Go Go's. Every band trying to be different in LA worked their asses off and took huge risks. It was no different for Gene's Addiction. And anyone who ever said that no pain, no gain is a fallacy hasn't actually had to put in the reps. It's all risk. It's all pain. To quote Jane's Addiction's LA contemporaries, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, you gotta be ready to taste the pain. Jane's Addiction was ready, but they weren't most bands. Most bands in LA in the late 80s would have been psyched to score a major label record deal. But for Jane's Addiction it was bittersweet because they knew they were compromising something. Their artistic integrity perhaps, or maybe their own souls. Going from being one of the most confrontational and non conforming bands on the LA strip to just another notch on Warner Brothers belt almost felt like the beginning of the end. It was a false sense of safety. Dave Navarro looked to the dark for safety and that led him to dope, the ultimate painkiller. Tie off and shoot up. It was like bringing a blanket down over the face of pain, smothering it as it screamed at you, fighting to exert its dominance. But pain was no match for this. Heroin said pain. Everything else just faded away. The white noise hum of an Ibanez feeding back through a martial amp was now fading in as was another scream, this one from the mouth of Terry Farrell. High pitched and raspy. 1990 Jane's Addiction were recording three days for their sophomore studio album, Ritual de l'. Habitual. The song clocked in at over 10 minutes, inspired by a 72 hour orgy of sex and drugs that Perry shared with two women. An epic ode of life and death Indulgence and risk. All climaxing with Dave's layered guitars, metal sludge, industrial grime, shrieking leads aimed at Jimi Hendrix's ghost somewhere above the clouds. And when the music ended and when the high wore off, it was time to start again. Another song, another tourniquet. Not just to kill the pain of Connie's death, which seven years later still cut deep, but also to kill the terror that came with the knowledge that her murderer, John Riccardi, AKA Dean, still remains, remained at large. Dave had no idea where John Riccardi was. But John Riccardi knew where Dave was. And he also knew that Dave Navarro was one of the only people alive who could testify to the kind of sick animal that John Riccardi truly was. We'll be right back after this word. 15 year old Dave Navarro was alone inside his mother's Westwood apartment when he heard a rattling sound come from the bedroom. It wasn't his mother. Connie was out on her morning jog. Dave went to investigate. He was discreet. He found the noise coming from the sliding glass door off the bedroom that went out to a balcony. Dave could see someone outside trying to remove the door from the sliding track and gain access. It wasn't a stranger. It was Dean, Connie's boyfriend. Technically, Connie's ex boyfriend. The guy she was having trouble breaking it off with. The guy wouldn't take no for an answer. And now he was here, breaking and entering. Dave once trusted Dean, but now Dave was freaking out. He was terrified. He ran to the bedroom and hid in the shower behind the curtain. He listened as Dean successfully wrestled the sliding door loose. And now he was inside. And the sound of the sliding door closing immediately cut the noise from the outside world. Silence. Only footsteps. And they crept through the bedroom and then into the bathroom. Dave didn't make a sound. Did Dean know he was in here? Was Dean staring at the shower curtain, about to reach his hand out and pull it back? And then what? What would Dean do to him? Dave waited, paralyzed with fear. But nothing happened. Dean just left the bathroom and walked downstairs. Dave knew he didn't have much time. He also wanted Dean gone, especially before his mom got home. And maybe the way to play this wasn't to hide and hope for the best. Maybe the thing to do was to confront Dean, but do it by playing dumb. Maybe that would scare him off. And that was the logic that made sense to a teenage Dave Navarro in his frightened state. He exited the shower in the bathroom and called out down the stairs to the first floor. Mom? Dean? Is anyone here? Dean came back upstairs. Dave pretended he was relieved to see him. He told Dean that he thought he heard someone trying to break into the apartment through the sliding glass door. Dean walked him over to the door and examined. It looked good. No sign of a break in, he assured Dave. Once again, Dave pretended that Dean was giving him peace of mind and not scaring the shit out of him. Which Dean then proceeded to do even further when he reached underneath the bed and revealed a handgun. Dave didn't know what kind of gun. He didn't know anything about guns. It didn't even fucking matter. All that mattered was that the psychopath was alone with him in his mother's bedroom with a weapon in this plan, if you could call it that. This playing it dumb shit. The whole thing was going sideways. Dean said he was upset that Connie didn't want to see him anymore and maybe he'd kill himself. But he needed to talk to her first. Dave panicked. He was out of ideas. He needed to leave. Go now. Run. Dave tore ass from the bedroom and Dean hollered after him. Hey. Dave was fast, but Dean was faster. He caught up to Dave quickly and grabbed him by the arm. He stuck the barrel of the gun in Dave's face. And then he pulled a pair of handcuffs from his pants and ordered Dave to go back into the bathroom. This time not his mom's bathroom, but the one off his bedroom. Dave did as he was told. Dean told him to get on his knees and wrap his hands around the back of the toilet. Face down, head in the open toilet bowl. Dave was crying. You can't do this. He begged Dean. I can't move. I can't breathe. Please don't do this to me. Dean didn't listen. He just snapped the cuffs around Dave's wrists and left him chained to the porcelain for 30 minutes. Dave was trapped. Trapped. Thinking that Dean was going to kill his mother when she got home and then come back and shoot him in the back of the head. But when his mom did get back, Dave didn't hear a gunshot. He just heard the two of them arguing. The voice of his mother loud and clear. Where's my son? Dean yelled out to Dave. Let her know you're okay. Dave, petrified, trapped, yelled back that yes, he was alright. He feared that any other response was going to get them both killed. That he heard more screaming, crying, the sounds of a hand striking a face. And then, like before, footsteps. And they got closer. Dean was back, alone. He was suddenly apologetic. He apologized profusely. He promised that he would never do anything like this again. And then he told Dave one last thing. Please don't tell anyone that I did this to you. Seven years later, Dave Navarro wondered what would have happened if he didn't keep that promise he made to Dean, AKA John Riccardi. What if he had told someone? And would his mother still be alive? He felt incredible guilt over what he hadn't done. He felt pain over the immense loss. And he felt shame when it came to his own addiction. Heroin kept him in the dark. Heroin kept him sequestered to the back of Jane's Addiction's tour bus, where he added more track marks and bloody scabs to his bruised arms. He was sinking lower. He was changing. But so was everyone. Perry Farrell, about 10 years older than Dave, had never seen money in his life. And now he had it. Jane's Addiction second studio album, Ritual de Lo Habitual, released in August of 1990, was a modest hit on the charts. The modern rock chart, as it was then known, a chart that had just been created two years earlier to cater to rock and roll that was decidedly left at the dial. The record's second single, the infectious Ben Caught Stealing, spent four weeks as the number one modern rock song in America. All that success and that money, modest as it was, went to Perry's head. He figured that since he was the only member of the group who wrote lyrics, that he was not only entitled to 50% of future royalties, but he should also earn one quarter of the remaining 50%. Perry's insistence said he was 62.5% of Gene's addiction courted controversy within the band's ranks, just like Ritual de Lo Habitual's artwork courted controversy with music retailers. Similar to nothing shocking. The COVID of Ritual de l' Habitual contained nudity, this time in the form of a sculpture created by Perry that depicted him with two other women naked in bed. And again, music stores refused to carry it. Only this time, Warner Bros. Issued a clean cover in order to get the record on store shelves. White background, black text, the band's name, the album name, the parental advisory sticker, and then the text of the First Amendment, which read, quote, congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievance, unquote. The controversy, the confrontation, the risk. You can't underestimate how much that naturally contributed to the record success. It helped give Jane's Addiction. Their moment. But it was a fleeting moment. Perry's move to assert creative and financial dominance was blessed by Warners and cursed by his bandmates. Dave took to wearing a shirt on stage that read simply 12%, because in Perry's eyes, that's all he was worth. Resentment crept in. Frustration. And then that familiar feeling. The same one that Dave and Perry and Eric and Steven all had when Jane's first signed to a major. That this was the beginning of the end. And it was roughly a year later. Jane's addiction would be over. At least for a while. But not before something else ended first. Dave Navarro was dead. So said the message left for Dave's father on his answering machine. It happened at a squatter's flat in London. Dave was drunk by the time he found himself inside, surrounded by other junkies. They shot dope. Dave was so fucked up on booze that he couldn't even feel the high. So he shot more. And no sooner had he pulled the spike from his vein and released the tourniquet from his arm that he went under. Deep. To a place so dark, so safe, or so he thought. The junk sent him beyond darkness, beyond safety, to somewhere else, A place he had never been. A place where the darkness actually gave way to light emerging from a long tunnel. A bright white light. Blinding, overwhelming, eternal. The squatters shook Dave's lifeless body. Nothing. They ran a cold bath and filled the tub with ice cubes. They used all their feeble junky strength to lift Dave into the tub. His skin went blue. He was on his way out and they were sure of it. They panicked. They lifted him again, this time managing to drag his limp body outside, where they tossed him onto the curb and called an ambulance. You can't trust anyone. Even those who leave well intentioned messages on answering machines. Much to his father's relief, Dave Navarro was in fact not dead. Well, maybe he had been for a few harrowing moments before paramedics arrived and revived him. Jane's addiction, however, was very much on their way out. Even with Ritual de Lo Habitual climbing the charts, the writing was on the wall. Perry's power grabs. Dave's all consuming habit. Dave's overdose in a London flat in 1990 was not the reason that Jane's Addiction pulled out of their appearance at England's Reading Festival that year. That decision was blamed on Perry Farrell losing his voice. But Redding got them thinking. Why were there no similar music festivals in America? And why wouldn't they create one to fill that void? Not just a one. Off a traveling festival, 26 show shows in 21 cities. And not just music, but art, circus, sideshows, Shaolin monks, non profits of the counterculture. All freaks just like them. And not just Jane's Addiction, but Susie and the Banshees, Nine Inch Nails, Ice T and Body Count, Living Color, Rollins Band and the Butthole Surfers. The inaugural edition of Lollapalooza in The summer of 1991 is a snapshot of the so called alternative moment in American music and culture at that time, mere months before Nirvana blew up and took the underground mainstream. But at its heart, Lollapalooza was a farewell tour for Gene's addiction and as it turns out, a well timed opportunity of catharsis for their guitarist. As the band was making preparations for the festival in early 1991, cops tracked down John Riccardi, aka Dean, in Texas. They found him living in an apartment in Houston, just two months shy of the eighth year anniversary of Connie Navarro's murder. Wanted not just in connection with the death of Connie and her friend Sue Jory, but in connection with more than 100 burglaries in Chicago, Miami, New York and LA. Plastic surgery had changed his face. Falsified passports had changed his identity. But it was him. It was Dean. Apprehended at long last, in part thanks to America's Most Wanted, a TV show that debuted on Fox just a few years prior and whose aim was to bring real life criminals to justice. That episode, incidentally, was found on a videotape inside Riccardi's VCR at the time of his arrest. You can't make this shit up. John Riccardi's bust was a long time coming. But it wasn't a magic bullet for Dave Navarro's pain. Unlike Jane's Addiction, Payne didn't just pack it in and call it a day. Pain was eternal. As eternal as that long tunnel of blinding white light at the end of the darkness. But Dave wasn't following the light. Not yet. There was plenty of darkness left to navigate. Like when Dave became the star witness in John Riccardi's trial. Forced to live through the memories of being chained to the toilet as a teenager, Dave's testimony helped put Riccardi, AKA Dean, away. Guilty. Two counts of murder one, sentenced to die. That sentence was later overturned on account of an error made by the judge. But even though California would no longer execute him, John Riccardi was going to spend the rest of his days locked up. And Dave Navarro got busy setting himself free. Free from being controlled by pain, getting clean didn't happen. As soon as his mother's killer was sent away, it took time. Time to claw out of the darkness. Time to kick junk, kick shame, kick guilt, and kick away from a life of disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland Land. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page@gracelandpod.com if you're listening, as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to Disgracelandpod.com membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad free. Plus you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit DisgraceLandPod podcast slash membership for details, rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook @DisgraceLandPod and on YouTube at YouTube. Com @DisgraceLandPod. Rocka Rolla He's a bad, bad man.