Dave Navarro is back with Jane's Addiction after having to sit out a tour with long COVID. Now, the guitarist has shed light on his time away from the road, revealing that he was unable to pick up his guitar for a year after the death of Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins.
Navarro and Hawkins were friends and bandmates, and had recently completed an album with their supergroup NHC (alongside former Jane's Addiction member Chris Chaney).
"I'd just completed making a record with Taylor Hawkins and Chris Chaney. We mixed and mastered it, and then we lost Taylor. That was in the middle of COVID, and it was actually very painful for me to pick up the guitar after that," Navarro told Guitar World. "I didn't pick up the guitar for about a year. He was such an inspiring artist — not only was he a phenomenal drummer, he was an amazing songwriter and lyricist… just one of those humans that everybody loved."
By the time he was ready to play his instrument again, he was dealing with long COVID, and being housebound meant that he had time to study new ways of playing guitar.
"After losing Taylor I didn't play for a long time," he said. "Then, about a year into it, I picked up the guitar, started playing some cover songs, and just kind of got used to the instrument in my hand again. Since I had the illness, I was housebound for a long time, and that's when I really started getting into some out-there guitar players I normally didn't study." This included studying famed session guitarist Jay Graydon, trying to recreate Eddie Van Halen's tones, and using the same pedals as Jimi Hendrix.
He also worked on relearning his own songs from the '80s and '90s. Eventually, he said, "I was well enough to go in a studio and sit in a chair. I'd sit for 10 hours, so that was easy, and we wrote some new music."
Some of that new music can be heard in the form of "Imminent Redemption," the first new song from JA's classic lineup in 34 years. Check that out below, and read Exclaim!'s list of the band's 10 best songs here.