Founding member Eric Avery has quit Jane's Addiction, saying the "experiment is at an end". The rockers will reportedly soldier on, writing a new album with former Guns N' Roses bassist Duff McKagan.
"That's it," Avery wrote on Twitter yesterday, announcing his departure "with equal parts regret and relief". It's a move that the band anticipated: Avery has been absent from several group photos, and previously revealed that he was not writing new material with them.
Jane's Addiction have recently completed an Australian tour, playing their last concert in Perth on Sunday. Avery had been using Twitter to count down the dates, and it's clear now that he wasn't just keen to get home: he was eager to check out of the band he helped form 25 years ago. Frontman Perry Farrell's response was more opaque. "Slipping out of that shell of a past," he wrote. "Wow we're on to something faster now. And so worth the wait."
Avery has been an intermittent but vital player in Jane's Addiction, co-founding the group in Los Angeles and working on their first two albums. He was the first to leave the band, in 1991, and declined to participate in their first reunion, 1999-2004. But it's Avery's return that electrified Jane's Addiction's most recent re-formation, launched at the 2008 NME awards USA.
Early last year, Jane's Addiction started work on a new album – their first with Avery in almost 20 years. "Things got kind of ugly," Farrell told Billboard. "The headbutting really came out when we tried to write." Now, with Avery gone, the group have again started writing new material, reportedly with McKagan, who will likely join the band.
Meanwhile, Avery is expected to pursue his solo career. His last album, Help Wanted, was released in 2008.
