With his tattoos, sculpted beard, and immaculate fashion sense, Dave Navarro is one of the
most recognizable guitar players out there.
But like many musicians, his life has not been easy.
Here are some of the darkest events that shaped Dave Navarro.
Navarro has had his share of well-publicized tragedies, but possibly the most terrible
one came when the aspiring guitar god was only 15 years old.
As NME reported, Navarro's mother, Constance Colleen Hopkins, was murdered in March 1983
when her ex-boyfriend John Riccardi shot her and another woman in West Los Angeles.
Ultimate Classic Rock reports the murderer spent almost a decade on the loose and was
only captured because of a viewer tip after the case was featured on America's Most Wanted
in 1991.
Riccardi was initially sentenced to death in 1994, but in 2012 the verdict was set aside
because of issues with the jury selection process.
This didn't mean Riccardi walked free, though, as he was promptly re-sentenced to a life
without the possibility of parole.
The experience was particularly awful for Navarro because he was supposed to be there
on the night of the murders.
"It was actually a miracle that I wasn't home 'cause I think that obviously if I was home
that night he would've gotten me too."
He attributes this turn of events to divine intervention.
Less divine, however, is the fact that he still has to fight with the media over the
portrayal of the incident.
In 2018, Navarro was less than thrilled to discover that Geraldo Rivera's Murder in the
Family ran a factually erroneous episode about the case.
"As a teenager Dave loses the family member he cherishes most, taken from him by a violent
jealous man driven to kill."
In a since-deleted Instagram post, Navarro accused Geraldo of getting the story wrong,
adding,
“I did NOT find a body and I did NOT turn to drugs after this event.
I was well on my way to using drugs even before this took place.”
Navarro entered the limelight as the guitarist of Jane's Addiction, and to say his entrance
was explosive is a criminal understatement.
Guitar World calls Jane's Addiction a "stink bomb" that kicked the haughty hair metal bands
that ruled the late 1980s airwaves off their pedestals and served as a precursor for grunge
with its anti-corporate attitude and raw sound.
However, the fact that they burned bright meant they also burned out quickly, releasing
just two studio albums before self-destructing.
In 1991, the band evaporated in a cloud of personal chemistry issues brought on by their
hectic touring schedule, which caused increasing strains and fights both on and offstage.
The leading personalities of the group, Navarro and singer Perry Farrell, still can't agree
on what ultimately caused the collapse.
Farrell feels the breakup was, quote, "based on emotional reasons" as everyone kept knocking
down his ideas and he felt his creativity was facing a wall.
"We got into a big sockout, literally body slam."
Navarro, on the other hand, makes it clear he thinks the band was ended by Farrell's
intense personality, combined with the band's copious drug use and the fact that they never
even tried to talk about their differences.
"He convinces you that it's got to be a certain way, and then you know what happens?
He's right.
Every f---ing time.
And you're like, 'g-------t Farrell."
Of course, their 1991 breakup was far from the final one - there have been multiple reunions
over the years, but considering the band has broken up more than once, it's possible their
communication skills still leave something to be desired.
Living a lifestyle of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll is not necessarily conducive for
long-term marital happiness, and Navarro is no exception.
According to Inquisitr, the rocker has been married three times so far, and all of them
have ended in disaster.
According to MTV News, his first marriage lasted 2 years and his second was annulled
after only a month.
Navarro's most high-profile marriage was his third one, with actress Carmen Electra.
In 2004, the two documented their road to the altar in an MTV show called Til Death
Do Us Part: Carmen & Dave, which unsurprisingly gave the impression that the two were genuinely
happy together.
It wasn't meant to last, though, and in 2006 their marriage fell prey to the oldest of
celebrity couple hindrances - conflicting schedules.
An anonymous source close to the former couple said at the time,
"The reality of it is that they're better off as best friends."
Navarro has multiple major bands in his resume, but there have been whispers that an even
bigger group once courted him for the guitarist spot.
In a 2010 interview for the Talking Metal podcast, Navarro confirmed rumors that he
once almost joined Guns N' Roses.
This came close to happening when Izzy Stradlin left the band in 1991, and Axl Rose even called
Navarro to offer him a place in the band - but it never came to be.
Navarro says there were multiple reasons why he was ultimately never welcomed to the jungle
but that his significant heroin addiction at the time was the main culprit.
According to Guns N' Roses Central, the sad story of a man who was living the rock star
lifestyle too hard to join arguably the greatest rock band of the time almost had a heartwarming
epilogue when Navarro joined forces with Guns N' Roses in the late 1990s to play on a song
of theirs.
Unfortunately, the song in question was "Oh My God," which the fan site shrugs off as
"forgettable."
For years, Navarro nursed such an impressively awful drug habit that Jane's Addiction might
as well have been called Dave's Addiction.
According to Detox to Rehab, the guitar player's drugs of choice were heroin and cocaine, and
his drug addiction wasn't exactly cured by the lingering trauma, fear, and loss the murder
of his mother caused.
Navarro's 2015 documentary Mourning Son pulled no punches about his addiction, and even featured
graphic footage of his drug use from his younger days.
Fortunately, by the time the documentary came out he was living a much healthier lifestyle.
He stopped using both cocaine and heroin in the late 1990s, stopped intravenous use altogether
sometime around 2000, and says he's been completely clean and sober since 2012.
Navarro may be most famous for Jane's Addiction, but as Guitar World points out, it's hardly
the most famous band he has played with.
From 1993 to 1998, Navarro was the guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers and was part
of the recording lineup when they released 1995's One Hot Minute.
However, it was a difficult time for everyone involved.
Not only did the band's faithful fans have difficulty accepting Navarro as a full-fledged
Chili Pepper, the band members seemingly couldn't get out of bed in the morning without hurting
themselves in one way or another.
MTV News writes that Navarro's tenure in the band was marked by a series of disasters ranging
from motorcycle accidents to drug relapses, and his exit was a weird mess of conflicting
statements.
Everyone involved praised each other and their time together, but Navarro himself said he
quit the band, while singer Anthony Kiedis called the lineup shuffle a, quote, "completely
mutual parting based on creative differences," and Guitar World says the guitarist was fired.
The "creative differences" part is pretty much the only thing everyone's narratives
seem to agree on.
Kicking a heroin habit can be difficult, especially when your job requires you to revisit a past
situation that had you at your worst.
According to Alternative Nation, this was the unfortunate scenario Navarro faced in
1997 when the recently reunited Jane's Addiction started rehearsing.
To make things worse, vocalist Perry Farrell had not yet discovered the joys of sobriety,
so when Navarro stepped in the room, a relapse he later described as "epic" was all but imminent.
Feeling that the music would be infinitely better on heroin, Navarro decided his bottle
of mineral water was unable to satisfy his cravings.
He and Farrell soon got so high that it evoked an "Oh no, here we go again" reaction from
drummer Stephen Perkins.
Navarro describes the tour that followed as one of the most over-the-top, drug-fueled
things he has ever done, and says he was easily the worst junkie of the band, using so openly
and blatantly that he later called it dangerous and disgusting - beven if he did have a pretty
good time.
However, one guy who enjoyed himself significantly less was Red Hot Chili Pepper Flea, who took
care of bass duties for the tour and as a former drug addict was not a fan of Navarro's
antics.
In 2015, Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver singer Scott Weiland, died in his sleep at
age 48.
It might initially seem odd that Navarro was the guy who led the outpouring of tributes
for the frontman, but as Alternative Nation notes, the two were good friends.
Weiland, according to Rolling Stone, suffered from his own share of inner demons and substance
abuse problems, and he died of an accidental overdose on a tour stop in Minnesota.
Weiland made a big difference in Navarro's life and mental health outlook by hooking
the guitarist up with his current therapist.
Navarro still keeps Weiland close at heart - in a 2018 Instagram post, he shared a photo
of an unfinished letter Weiland had once started writing to him.
It reads:
"Dave - My only real concern for you and I is that…"
Sadly, the letter will never be finished.
The fame game is a difficult one, and sometimes there are casualties.
According to NME, one that hit Navarro particularly hard was the death of Soundgarden and Audioslave
frontman Chris Cornell, who took his own life in 2017 after struggling with depression for
years.
Cornell and Navarro knew each other, and when they toured together in 2003 they fell into
a habit of meeting people in rehab, hanging out with them and helping them toward sobriety.
While interviewing Cornell's Audioslave bandmate Tom Morello in 2018, Navarro opened up about
the profound pain he suffered when he heard the news of the singer's death, saying,
"To still have that hole in yourself, and still feel that depression and loneliness
and isolation, especially on tour, I identified so deeply with that, and I felt so much loss
and pain about that.
That's the one that hit me the hardest."
He claimed he put on Soundgarden and began weeping inconsolably because he was so familiar
with the kind of depression Cornell had been fighting with.
Navarro isn't one to shy away from talking about his mental health struggles, particularly
because doing so can help others in the same situation.
According to Billboard, the musician has been as close to the darkest parts of the human
mind as a person can possibly be.
In 2018, the suicides of Anthony Bourdain and designer Kate Spade prompted Navarro to
write an Instagram post about his own disturbingly close call with ending his life.
At one point, things were so bad for the guitar player that he actually wrote a suicide note,
stockpiled pills, and even planned out how to distribute his belongings to his surviving
family.
However, as a last-ditch effort he decided to reach out to his loved ones, which was
enough to stay his hand and make him decide to seek professional help.
Fortunately, therapists, psychiatrists, medication, and hospitalization eventually pulled him
back from that dark place.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).