Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, who moved to L.A. from Michigan the same month Nothing’s Shocking came out and joined RHCP a few months later — and later played with Navarro in the Peppers lineup from 1994 to 1998 — recalls being blown away when he first shared a bill with Jane’s Addiction in a new Yahoo article, and being frightened by Perry Farrell.
“[Perry] looked like an alien that was super high, kind of scary, but at the same time just kind of floating. And I was like, ‘This is something else. I’ve never seen anybody like this before in my life!’ And they go on to play — and they were scary to me! They scared me,” says Smith.
“They were so powerful, and they looked weird. Everything about it was just so unique. … The whole thing was just so incredible, and I was like, ‘Now I really get it. … This is what it’s about. This is dangerous, powerful, mystical.’ They looked like junkies, and they had a drummer back there who looked like [the Muppets’] Animal; Perkins was shaking his big hair, playing these tribal Bonham beats. I will never forget it.”
