How’s this for a Hollywood movie? A 7 year-old Mexican American street kid at a skateboard park in LA hears Jimi Hendrix for the first time and begins a musical journey trying to emulate him. Fade to the all-too-real scene of an ex-boyfriend murdering the 15 year old guitar player’s mom and her friend on a night when the kid luckily decided to stay with dad. Hazy dream-like sequence of guitar god for Jane’s Addiction, struggling with real addiction, screwing up a dream job with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and blowing off Guns N’ Roses. Fast forward to reunions with Jane’s Addiction, reunions with drug addiction, getting more or less clean again, emerging from the drug fog to record a solo album as psycho-cathartic-therapy, becoming a reality TV personality, director of a porn film and, finally, producer of a documentary about his mother’s murder. Full circle -- film within a film -- can't miss, take the points!

Jane’s Addiction (1986)

Let's flesh out that treatment. David Michael Navarro was born in Santa Monica, CA. His guitar style is a blend of heavy metal speed, psychedelic solos, and modern rock balladeering – the perfect combination for a 3-piece power band like Led Zeppelin, The Who, or Jane’s Addiction, for that matter. Dave’s guitar idols are Hendrix, Gilmour and Page. His favorite albums are Lou Reed’s Berlin, and The Who Live at Leeds. Dave counts playing with Lou Reed and Michael Jackson as the highlights of his career thus far.

Dave was playing thrash metal in high school with schoolmate and drummer Stephen Perkins. When Dave was 19, Perkins recommended him to Perry Farrell, who was putting together Jane’s Addiction. JA has basically been Dave’s family, albeit a dysfunctional one at times, ever since. Dave was with JA until its first breakup in 1991, rejoined their reunions in 1997, 2002, 2008, 2011, and will be with them on this summer’s tour, including a stop in Cleveland at Jacobs Pavilion on July 23.

Jane’s Addiction (2016)

Between his stints with JA, Dave formed Deconstruction, was the lead guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers from 1993 to 1998, and might have been in Guns N’ Roses had he shown up for even one audition. He played with Michael Jackson on “Black or White”, Alanis Morissette on “You Oughta Know”, on the NIN/JA collaboration record and tour, with Billy’s Corgan’s Spirits in the Sky, with Heart on VH1’s “Decades Rock Live!”, with Janet Jackson, Marilyn Manson, Guns N’ Roses, Camp Freddy and many others.

Red Hot Chili Peppers

In 2001, Dave produced a solo album, Trust No One. It was his first serious effort at songwriting and singing, at both of which he proved skilled. The album allowed him to exorcise many of the demons related to his mother’s murder, and his inter-related escape to drugs. One little known aspect of that traumatic event was Dave’s intense sense of guilt that he might have been able to prevent the killings. One week earlier, his mom's ex-boyfriend had broken into Dave’s home, held him at gunpoint and chained him to a toilet, before robbing him and making him promise not to tell anyone it had happened. He didn’t, and a week later his mother was killed. Naturally, he blamed himself for keeping quiet. Dave feared for his own safety for the next 10 years, while the killer was on the run. The guy was finally caught on America’s Most Wanted. 

Mr. & Mrs. Average Couple: Carmen Electra and Dave Navarro

Television and film projects have been a nearly constant part of Dave’s career. He’s been on reality TV shows centered on rock and roll, tattoos, celebrity poker tournaments, and his 3rd marriage, to Carmen Electra. He’s been in dramas like Sons of Anarchy, Talking Dead, and Law and Order: SVU. Dave directed an adult film and has also produced a documentary about domestic violence and his mother’s murder, Mourning Son.

Having watched him lived through the first 49 years of the life briefly described, Dave’s fans wish him many more years just as productive and successful, and a whole lot more peaceful and contented.

Happy Birthday Dave Navarro!