Former Jane’s Addiction Collaborator Casey Niccoli Writes About Being Erased From The Band’s History
Right now, for the first time in many years, all four members of the classic Jane’s Addiction lineup are back together. They played their first fully reunited show in London a couple of months ago. Next week, they’re planning to release the new single “Imminent Redemption,” which they debuted at that London show. I believe it’ll be their first classic-lineup recording since their original 1990 breakup. (Bassist Eric Avery didn’t take part in the band’s two reunion albums, 2003’s Strays and 2011’s The Great Escape Artist.) But while the actual original lineup maybe functioning as a unit again, every participant in Jane’s Addiction’s original creative burst isn’t on board. Casey Niccoli would like a word.
When Jane’s Addiction first got together in mid-’80s Los Angeles, bandleader Perry Farrell was in a relationship with Casey Niccoli, an artist who became an extremely important part of the band’s history. Niccoli helped come up with the band’s name, and she says that she also named their albums Nothing’s Shocking and Ritual De Lo Habitual. When Jane’s started playing live, Farrell borrowed Niccoli’s clothes, which led to her essentially becoming his stylist.
Later on, Niccoli directed a bunch of Jane’s Addiction videos, including the one for “Been Caught Stealing,” their MTV breakthrough. She also wrote and directed The Gift, the fucked-up short film that came out as a VHS video after the band’s breakup. Today, Niccoli would be considered the band’s creative director. No such title really existed back then.
The cover of 1990’s Ritual De Lo Habitual, the last Jane’s Addiction album before the band’s initial breakup, was a sculpture of Perry Farrell, Casey Niccoli, and their late teenage friend Xiola Blue naked together in bed. It was meant to commemorate a lost weekend that they’d all had together, doing drugs and having sex, as depicted on the song “Three Days.” A couple of months ago, Eric Avery posted a photo of that sculpture, which had been rediscovered in storage somewhere, with all four Jane’s Addiction members standing around it. Casey Niccoli wasn’t in the picture, except in sculpture form, and she wasn’t tagged in the post.
Yesterday, Niccoli published a Huffington Post piece about what it’s like to see yourself being erased from history:
When the sculpture resurfaced, no one even thought to notify me, let alone include me. Despite an influx of comments on the Instagram post asking the band to credit me, I received no response from anyone involved. Sadly, this is a recurring theme in collaborations between men and women in romantic partnerships.
Niccoli writes about how she taught Perry Farrell to play guitar, supported him financially before the band took off, co-created the band’s album covers, and directed their videos: “Through these various mediums, I helped shape the band’s visual and artistic identity, leading to widespread recognition and commercial success… I guarantee that if I had been thinking about credit, profit, capitalism, compensation, deadlines, or what the executives were going to think, the art would have been very, very different.”
When Niccoli and Farrell broke up in 1993, she says that she had a terrible drug habit and that she signed away the rights to everything she’d done for the band for pennies on the dollar:
Desperate and homeless, I settled for a small sum of money out of court to compensate me for work I was never paid for — money that barely lasted a year. In return, I signed away all rights to profit from the art or any future profits related to the band. At that time, the band had broken up, and I was told they would never reunite. But that’s not what happened. As the band’s success grew, I shrank into the depths of addiction.
Niccoli moved on with her life while watching her influence on the band shrink from history:
As years passed, I couldn’t ignore the unsettling changes. Perry and I haven’t spoken since probably 1999. Without any direct communication, I noticed that Perry slowly stopped mentioning my name in interviews about the band’s history and the artwork. What he once referred to as “we” became “I.” I was completely wiped from the history of the band on Wikipedia. The most troubling part was the slow erosion of my artistic footprint, coupled with my complete lack of access to the very art I created.
Niccoli recently returned to making art, and she writes about that in the piece, too. You can read her full piece here.
