Dave, Eric, and Michael
discuss Deconstruction
Dave Navarro: Jane's Addiction ended and we just got
together and started playing music. Eric and I had wanted to do something
on our own, somewhat removed from the whole Hollywood-L.A. band thing, and
just do something for ourselves.
Eric Avery: I liken having been in Jane's Addiction
to having a relationship with someone that's all wrong. Part of what makes
the sex so great is what makes it doomed to an early end. This analogy really
does apply, because when you break up with somebody, when you've been in
relationship like the one I had with Jane's Addiction, you swear off all
relationships at first. You know you'll die a lonely dowager, but that's
OK. And then out of the blue, you get your penis rekindled.
During the eight years I was in the band, I went through the whole process.
In the beginning, we were all naive, things were going well, it was really
fun. Then the band started to take off, and everything went through the
roof. Unfortunately, things became business-like, uncomfortable, and we
began to split apart. It's weird to be at the end of a cycle like that,
having run the gamut of the usual 'rock story' from beginning to end. Get
signed, get strung out, break up.
Michael Murphy: I played with Eric about three years
ago in another band called Daisy Chamber. That's when I met him. The Ritual
de lo Habitual record had just been recorded and he had a little time off
before they started touring. He was a temporary member of Daisy Chamber.
After Jane's broke up, I ran into him at Canter's Deli. He told me he and
Dave had been having trouble finding a drummer, so he said, 'Come on down.'
I did, and things gelled immediately.
Eric: Shortly after the last Jane's Addiction concert
in Hawaii, I rented a house in Big Sur. I ostensibly went up there to just
detoxify from the whole Jane's Addiction experience. While I was in Big
Sur, I spent a certain amount of time every day writing. It was really a
discipline because if I didn't do it one day, I really felt like I was sloughing
off. The nice surprise was that as I started to think about what I wanted
to do, I got excited again.
Dave: Everything was fair game as far as we were concerned.
That was the whole point -- to take elements of different types of sound
and music, and put them all together, even if they didn't necessarily fit
in. Eric had gone up to Big Sur by himself and had written a few things.
At the time, I was getting my life together and writing a few things on
my own. He came back, we had time, and we just basically started working
on my 8-track in my apartment.
Eric: I felt the prognosis on my musical career was
looking bleak because I had spent so much time with it being a business.
I had made a joy a duty, a great phrase that I got from a friend's mother.
I felt finished about making rock music. I was also simultaneously disillusioned
about the whole alternative music scene, and I still feel that way. In the
process of starting to think about it and talk about it, I started to get
excited. I wasn't interested in making rock music per se any more. But then
I began to think that it might be interesting to tinker around with song
writing structure, not doing verses and choruses and things like that. That's
when my interest was piqued about making guitar music, the idea of using
loops and putting together parts like David Salle paintings, putting parts
that don't work next to each other and seeing if a new relationship happens
between them. This process lead up to 'L.A. Song.' The first and second
parts of 'L.A. Song' have no real connection, but the fact we put them together
does make sense because we allow them to exist side by side.
Dave: Deconstruction is what it is. It was just a project
Eric and I felt like we needed to do. I'm glad we did it. It helped me grow
as a musician. I'm proud of a lot of the work on the album. It was a great
learning process.
Eric: The word deconstruction applied
to where I was at the time and also was prophetic about where I was going
to be a year and a half later. It represented the demise of Jane's Addiction,
the final break between David [Navarro] and I, and really signifies that
I really am no longer in Jane's Addiction. That part of my life is really
in the past.
The name Deconstruction fit instinctively without my knowing
why. It seemed to dictate exactly what the experience was going to be about
- not only in the relationship that I had with David, but how I made my
music. <pre>It fits with deconstructive philosophy</pre> but
the choice was totally unconscious, not contrived or manipulated. We began
to write songs, not paying attention to what was being put out as far as
the alternate of sound.
Eric:You can't say that there isn't intent in this
record. It's obvious that something is being said, whether you like what's
being said or you don't. And I was so intent on every song. Once you get
it all done, put it away, and then look at the life that you've lived for
the time that you've been working on it, you see how inexplicably tied together
your personal process is and how it came out on the record in ways you didn't
realize. This actually tied into an identity thing. It really was like there
were two processes going on during this time and that's part of the reason
why it had to take as long as it did. It's interesting because what I had
been apathetic about and ready to dismiss, I wound up a year and a half
later fighting desperately to keep. This wasn't an easy process.
Michael: I was able to bring a lot of samples and electronic
stuff to it. The music developed into something different from anything
else around, in that it's a combination of elements. We tried to keep things
mixed up, so it wasn't just a take-off of Jane's.
Eric: When we recorded 'Big Sur', we actually had to
go to record stores, buy records and scratch them up to get a good scratch
sound, so that we could put in a Hawaiian sound. It's a small part in between
the first two verses before the song starts to get slow. In between the
two parts, it just sort of drops out. But it's interesting. I was just thinking
about my travels up and down the coast during the making of this record
and how much of a sense of place there is. I mean before we changed the
name, there were three places named L.A., Big Sur, and San Francisco. But
I was just thinking about how so often that's how David, Micheal and I communicated
to each other during the creative process. We would say 'it's like Big Sur,'
and that's how we named it 'Big Sur.' Because actually so much of what I'm
talking about was in the desert and not actually from Big Sur. But I kept
saying the first two verses should be like being in the city and then the
middle part should be like your driving up the coast and then the end should
be that you arrive in Big Sur.
Michael: We spent a long time with three or four parts
on 'L.A. Song' that seemed to have nothing to do with each other. It was
like a jig-saw puzzle, and finally one day we put it together correctly.
Dave: L.A. Song captures what L.A. is about for us.
It's a day in the life of L.A. Listening to it takes you through morning,
noon, rush hour, evening.
Eric: It's funny, because I was talking to someone
about listening to music in cars and she pointed out that that isn't just
indicative of L.A., that you spend a lot of time listening to music in cars.
I have to remember that because here we don't walk or do anything except
drive places. I do probably ninety percent of my music listening in the
car. I rarely come home and put on music.
Dave: The creative process involved trying different
things on 8-tracks and cramming them together. There was no method, there
was no formula. Every song was its own thing. We just threw everything in
a pot and discovered what tasted good. We wanted songs that weren't necessarily
verse-chorus-verse-chorus-guitar solo-outro. We didn't want standard rock
songs, we wanted to be more experimental. I think we did that.
Eric: After feeling so jaded about music for so long,
I picked up an instrument that I really have not played at all. And it's
such a big piece of the record. It really fit with that whole 'starting
over' feeling. And I feel more that way about this record than I did about
the first Jane's Addiction record. I said to somebody once, if I'm scared,
then I'm doing something right. If I'm really trying to open the flood gates
and see what happens, then I can't know whether or not it's really great.
And so therefore, if I have that knowledge or even think I have that knowledge,
then there's a calculation process that's going on that prevents trying
to honestly open the mouth and see what happens. 'Get At 'Em' was the first
song that I wrote, so it represented a lot of pent-up stuff. It seemed to
build and build, and feel like 'too many heart beats a minute.' That was
such a catharsis. At the time I had just come off being a commodity because
we got so big in Jane's Addiction.
Eric: At times, I've thought things like, "does
Brian Ferry sing that way because that's the best he can do?" I always
assume that these things are stylistic decisions people make. But in my
case, most people wondered "Why did Eric sing so low in a lot of the
songs?" The answer is that's where I'm the most comfortable singing.
In actuality, that's just the best that I can do.
Dave: This isn't a record for everybody. Some people
will like it, some won't like it at all. We weren't aiming for mass appeal.
We were aiming to get a lot of things within ourselves out in the open,
which we accomplished. After Jane's Addiction, it was time to do something
completely different, and we were a little selfish about it. We did more
musically from a real cerebral point of view.
Eric: And so the answer is try to pay close attention
to where you're at as an individual rather than as a creative artist, because
if you're not careful, you'll change. What I want to do now is very different
from what Deconstruction was. I mean, there will be elements
that are similar, but it's kind of the opposite attack that I'll be coming
from, of wanting things to stay the same and be repetitive. Deconstruction
is about distinctive individual voices and sounds. What we've done is to
say, "This is what alternative music is." Alternative music has
become the same thing as pop music. It was popular music. And then the word
just became pop and now pop means something else. It's no longer the original
meaning of the term, and the same thing is true for alternative music. We're
still close enough to it that we don't read it as easily, but alternative
music, by definition, can't be what you hear on the radio all the time.
Because then, that's not an alternative.
Dave: It was never etched in stone that Deconstruction
was a band we were going to do for a long time. It was just something Eric
and I felt we needed to do. I don't look at this as a band falling apart.
I look at it like Eric and I just wanted to do different things. We did
the record. We had a great time doing it, had a hard time doing it at times.
But I wanted to tour and play live, while Eric wasn't as interested in that.
That was determined long before the Red Hot Chili Peppers
started happening for me. We just came to an amicable decision. If we ever
want to do something again, the door is always open.
Contact them at american@american.recordings.com