Isn’t it awesome?” Perry Farrell is showing me his new necklace. His fingers,
thin as dandelion stalks, pitter-patter over the lumpy jade centrepiece
(fashioned to resemble some manner of globular fish) and its accompanying
leather string, which is festooned with rainbow beads, dangly feathery bits
and other whatnots of a presumably “symbolic” nature. It is not awesome. It
is hideous. Still, Farrell appears delighted with his purchase, which he
picked up last week from a “beautiful” market in Hong Kong. Beaming proudly,
he fastens it around his neck. “Wow,” he says, peering down, chin
concertinaed, as the accursed thing clunks against his stiff grey waistcoat.
“It’s just so . . . awesome.”
Farrell is, he says, a “happy guy”. At 48, the founding member of Jane’s
Addiction and possessor of one of the least boring voices in rock history
has reached a stage in his life at which everything – from fish pendants and
his new music project (Perry Farrell’s Satellite Party) to his environmental
campaigning (he visited Downing Street earlier this year as part of a
climate change symposium, and decided that Tony Blair was “a good man”) and
the current state of his churning noggin (“I’m never not thinking about
stuff”) – is either “awesome” or “beautiful”. His enthusiasm is as boundless
as his monologues are enormous – Farrell, bless his mad socks, doesn’t
really do conversations.
Here he is, for example, on the wholly imaginary concept behind Satellite
Party: “It surrounds this group of people called the Solutionists, who are
adepts at the art of public display and demonstration.
The chief Solutionist gets injured during one street demo and is taken to
hospital, where he falls in love with a nurse. One night, they hear this
beautiful music on the radio. It turns out to be an invitation from the
heavens – a party thrown by a heavenly host called Jim. At this party,
people are inhaling this beautiful scent that is, really, the essence of
sex. It’s pure body orgasm.
“Anyway, Jim invites the chief Solutionist and the nurse to hang out with him
and he shows them the world from the vantage point of this satellite. He
tells them that they must legitimise themselves because they can then
recreate the world, which is dying. And so, in the morning, when their souls
return to their bodies, they do.”
Pretentious? Naturellement. Cobblers? Perhaps. But there’s an
endearing honesty in his lack of self-consciousness – and a childlike
sweetness to his fey, whacked-out LA drawl – that makes it difficult not to
warm to such proclamations. Besides, this is Farrell, the throbbing
alterno-brain behind the travelling music carnival Lollapalooza, rescuer of
Sudanese slaves (in 2001, he flew to Sudan with Christian Solidarity
International to negotiate the release of more than 2,300 people), and
occasional wearer of transparent, glittery body-stockings. Frankly, if
anyone should be allowed to deliver impenetrable ten-minute discourses on
pretend environmental space discos, it’s Farrell.
Today, he is here (a posh hotel room in London) to talk about his new album (
Ultra Payloaded, the first fruit to plop from the Satellite Party
tree), a project that throbs with big guitars, horizon-fattening ideas and
the sort of shirt-open-to-the-waist confidence that is the exclusive
preserve of the rich American rock star. Three years in the making, it’s a
bold and fittingly far-out affair that meshes world rhythms, algebraic
noodling, orchestras, techno bloops and glitzy guest turns (everyone from
Peter Hook and Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas to Jim Morrison, whose
previously unreleased proto-eco poem Woman in the Window is layered
over a lovely tinkling piano refrain). Farrell is quite proud. “Every track
is beautiful,” he says. “It’s my favourite album.”
Born Peretz Bernstein in New York (the Farrell bit came because, when added to
Perry and said quickly, it sounded like “peripheral” and thus was, he says,
“fitting”), he relocated to LA as a teenager, embarking on a rigidly
undisciplined diet of surfing, drugs and tinkering with art-punk. Then came
Jane’s Addiction, the band who, thanks to their eclecticism and
progressive-punk (prunk?) ethos, begat alternative rock. And yet, three
months after they won MTV’s first Best Alternative Video Award (for Been
Caught Stealing), Jane’s Addiction had disintegrated – an
“inevitability”
Farrell attributes to both his wariness of encroaching mainstream success and
the rather less noble fact that he and his bandmates couldn’t stand the
sight of one another. There followed two albums with a new band – the not
very good Porno for Pyros – as well as more drugs and depression.
“That was a very dark period of my life. I got to the point where I honestly
felt like I really had no business living any more because I really had some
very dark thoughts and I was very alone. I decided, well, I can either kill
myself or put some big goals out there for myself and see what I can
accomplish. So even the dark moments, I used them as inspiration.”
Does he regret his relationship with heroin? “I like to get high, don’t get me
wrong. I like it A LOT. Heh-heh! But I got high too much. And I feel that I
lost step for years. You know what? I was a junkie for 15 years. I took it
every day. I wish that I had just paced it better. I kind of kick myself as
that was the only thing that has ever kind of held me back.”
He regards his long-standing interest in the environment as a salvation of
sorts.
“Y’know, the next ten years will see the greatest change that mankind has ever
seen with regards how we gain our energy,” he says, Bono-ishly. “I don’t
think the CIA, the oil barons or the Republicans can stop us, because the
word is out now. Major business investors are looking to invest in a
cleaner, greener world. I am a catalyst. I want to bring people together.
The change is personal, not political. It’s not difficult. It’s beautiful.”
The future, Farrell says, is “all bright”. A Satellite Party tour is imminent,
as are further DJing stints, “spontaneous parties” and “several more years”
of Lollapalooza. But whither Jane’s Addiction? There have been three
reunions, the most recent of which spawned the excellent Strays in
2003. Could there be another in the offing?
Hardly, giggles a characteristically unfazed Farrell. “If the Rock’n’Roll Hall
of Fame were to induct us there would be a slim chance we might get back
together. But honestly, we left with such bad blood it’s very hard to
speculate. It would be like getting back together with your family that you
never see, even though one of them is a molester. Heh-heh!
“But, y’know, I feel I don’t need anyone else,” he says, absentmindedly
twiddling his pendant. “I have so much belief in myself. Sometimes, I almost
question if my belief in myself is way bigger than everybody else’s. But,
y’know what? I just think, relax, maybe everyone will catch up eventually.
That would be awesome.”
Ultra Payloaded is out on Sony
