Perry Farrell's wife Etty gives her account of his onstage bust-up with Jane's Addiction bandmate Dave Navarro

Perry Farrell and Etty Lau Farrell attend "LOLLA: THE STORY OF LOLLAPALOOZA" Premiere during the 2024 Sundance Film Festival at Eccles Center Theatre on January 18, 2024 in Park City, Utah.

(Image credit: Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images)

Perry Farrell's wife Etty has given a first-person account of what went down between the singer and Jane's Addiction bandmate Dave Navarro onstage in Boston.

The band were performing their song Ocean Size at the Leader Bank Pavilion in Boston, Massachusetts, last night (Friday, September 13) when Farrell turned towards Navarro, barged him with his shoulder and said "fuck you".

When the shocked guitarist put his hand on the singer's chest to make some distance, Farrell took a swing at him before being restrained by bassist Eric Avery and members of the road crew. The show was abandoned at that stage and as yet there is no update on whether the tour will continue.

Etty Farrell has given her account of the bust-up in an Instagram post.

She says: "Clearly there had been a lot of tension and animosity between the members.. the magic that made the band so dynamic. Well, the dynamite was lit. Perry got up in Dave’s face and body checked him."

Giving her take on why it happened, Etty continues: "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.

"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 playing too loud and that they couldn’t hear him, Perry lost it."

She says the band started the song before Farrell was ready, increasing his frustration.

Addressing who "won the fight", Etty suggests bassist Avery went too far. She adds: "Dave walked away to take his guitar off. Eric walked up to Perry, upstage, in the dark, put Perry in a headlock and punched him in the stomach three times. Then Eric nonchalant walked off to the front of the stage to apologize to audience for the show ended early."

As for what this means for the rest of the tour and the band's immediate future, Etty seems unsure. She says Farrell was "a crazed beast" and that he later broke down in tears.

"Dave still looked handsome and cool in the middle of a fight," she says. "Perry was a crazed beast for the next half an hour – he finally did not calm down, but did breakdown and cried and cried.

"Eric, well he either didn’t understand what de-escalation meant or took advantage of the situation and got in a few cheap shots on Perry."

Jane's Addiction are scheduled to perform next at the Hartford HealthCare Amphitheater in Bridgeport, Connecticut, tomorrow (Sunday, September 15) and the tour is scheduled to run through October.

A post shared by Etty Lau Farrell (@ettylaufarrell)
A photo posted by on

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.