DAVE NAVARRO
The legendary Jane’s Addiction guitarist has just about seen, done and, apparently, played it all
WORDS: STEPHEN HILL • PICTURES: TODD NEWMAN
DAVE NAVARRO HAS, over the course of his 30-plus year career, developed into a genuine icon of alternative rock. Best known as the guitarist with the hugely influential Jane’s Addiction, he has gone on to collaborate with a staggering cast of musicians from Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson and Guns N’ Roses to Puff Daddy, Janet Jackson, Alanis Morissette and Christina Aguilera, all while transitioning from a mainstream TV star as a host and judge on Ink Master to a working street artist under the moniker lifeafterdeath. It’s been a hell of a life for the Californian native.
FRIENDSHIPS CAN LAST FOREVER
“My first gig was at [LA’s] MacArthur Park, when I was in high school. There were about 15 people there. It was amazing, the highlight of my life. [Future Jane’s drummer] Stephen Perkins was playing the drums, and here we are over 30 years later, and Stephen and I spoke this morning. Amazing!”
CHILDREN NEED OUR LOVE AND SUPPORT
“My most recent art print started when I heard about the US government’s treatment of children in the border crisis. I made a prison and took an actual toilet from the immigrant detainee holding areas and put a picture of a little girl in it. I called it ‘Government Care?’, because have the government ever cared about children? They don’t make money, they can’t vote, they’re an afterthought who have consistently been treated as a nuisance rather than with empathy, even dating back to the lack of care in the atomic age when children were told to sit under this desk, put this mask on and everything would be fine. We have no idea of the posttraumatic stress these kids were put under. I found a new purpose in that image, and the proceeds went to the charity helping those young people.”