INTERVIEW: Perry Farrell gears up for Lollapalooza, Jane’s Addiction tour

Perry Farrell, the dynamic frontman of the alternative rock band Jane’s Addiction, is keeping himself busy this summer. In addition to coordinating another sold-out Lollapalooza festival in Chicago’s Grant Park on Aug. 3-5, the singer will head out on the road with the band for the last leg of the Jane’s Addiction Theatre of the Escapists tour.

Expect the band to make stops in Cleveland, Ohio (Aug. 6); Syracuse, N.Y. (Aug. 8); New Brunswick, N.J. (Aug. 12) and Baltimore, Md. (Aug. 14), in addition to future dates in Brooklyn, N.Y.; Ledyard, Conn.; Lewiston, N.Y.; Pittsburgh, Pa.; Indianapolis, Ind. and around the rest of the country.

As the gig at the State Theatre in New Brunswick illustrates, the band nowadays is more interested in playing historic theaters rather than large, cookie-cutter venues. The closeness to their fans promises intimacy when Farrell sings the band’s classic songs and new tunes.

Recently, Hollywood Soapbox talked with Farrell about his busy schedule and the future of the band. Questions and answers have been slightly edited.

Are you excited for Lollapalooza?

Yeah, very excited. It’s going to be a wild ride.

Jane’s Addiction will play the after-party?

We’re doing the official slamming after-party. You know Chicago is such an incredible city, and Lollapalooza essentially builds itself up on Grant Park. The wonderful thing about Lollapalooza is … to go out after Lollapalooza, which ends at 11 o’clock, into the city and fill up all the clubs and bars with music. In this case, Jane’s Addiction is going to be performing at the Aragon Ballroom until 4 in the morning. We’re not going to perform the whole time. We have with us Franz Ferdinand and Skream & Benga.

Can you believe this many years later that Lollapalooza is still going strong?

We were a brand-new idea, a brand-new notion, a brand-new style, a brand-new way. And now it just seems like the entire music industry has all come our way. It’s pretty amazing. Really where it’s at today in music is the festival. It’s the best place for a band to play or an artist to play and get exposure to make the people happy, to be seen. It is a rite of passage for every young man and woman today. You must go to a festival. At least the festival that would be nearest to you, especially in the summertime. It just seems like we began something that I wouldn’t have expected would have been such an important role in today’s music scene.

In 2011, how did the new album The Great Escape Artist originate?

NME had given us an award, and they were going to have me come up and accept the award for Jane’s Addiction. And they wanted me to perform. I didn’t feel good about performing by myself and accepting an award for … a group of guys that all should have been there. So I reached out to everyone, although we hadn’t spoken in years. We got together for that one show, and it felt so good that we all decided let’s keep this going.

But, of course, as a musician and as an artist, you always are looking to make new music. It’s in your DNA. That’s what you do. So after that tour was exhausted, we had a meeting and decided let’s get together … well, most of us did. One of us didn’t want to do it. The rest of us were very keen to make new music.

Listen, it’s a scary proposition. You’re going to now write some new songs and you have to wonder whether you still have it. A lot can go wrong. It could be that you’ve lost that magic touch. It could be for a lot of reasons. Maybe you’ve grown up and your life is very different. I don’t know. Some people were scared to do it, but I didn’t have any fears.

To me, writing songs and making music is like playing sports. I’m sure all athletes can attest to the fact that they never lose the competitive edge. They always feel that they would like to go out there and challenge somebody and win. And that’s kind of how it is for me with music. As a matter of fact, I think that we have it better than athletes, us musicians. Because we can go out there and challenge and try to win up to the day we die as musicians. So let’s do it.

The new lyrics are great for longtime fans who can see a different perspective as you grow older. Like “Ultimate Reason,” which talks about love from your recent life.

It is interesting, and as I say it’s challenging. You wonder if people really care about my viewpoint at this point. You know what I mean? But if you look at great groups like the Beatles, they came out and initially they were singing, “I Want to Your Hold Hand.” And it was very innocent, very sweet. We weren’t quite that innocent or sweet by any means. But then they moved on to The White Album, or they were writing about things like Helter Skelter. They became much more mature and were singing about things that were heavier. Everybody went with it because of who they were and what they had been through.

So we were quite interested. And I felt Jane’s Addiction had the same credentials. … What our opinions are, what we have to say, how’s everything in our life, what we’ve been through, are all still very fascinating and worth making a song out of.

The band gets to play in some old theaters in the United States on this tour. Is that special?

We began to kind of create a style. I’m talking about a physical style, a look shall we say, to the sound. The sound, it was dark and it was nocturnal. So we began to assemble a look to all that. And at that time I was interested and I had been following a couple episodes of Boardwalk Empire, and then I visited a place called Sleep No More, which is a play that comes out of New York, where they took over an entire hotel and basically installed beautiful old … rooms with 1920s furniture and medical equipment. And although it was dark and it was eerie, there was a romance to it and a sense of craftsmanship. And I felt that it was really akin to the sound of the record of The Great Escape Artists and the sentiment of The Great Escape Artists.

Could you see the band continuing for many years?

We hadn’t recorded another record for eight years, and it was really because we had broken up. But now that we are together again, and we have gotten out and performed off a record that we really all love … We loved recording it. We loved listening back. We thought the results were fantastic. To go out and perform in these theaters was like a beautiful bow wrapped around a beautiful package. It really all came together really quite nicely.

None of us want to quit now. … You have to look at life differently than we did let’s say in the mid-80s, when people would record a record once every three years. And that was kind of the way it was done. You would take a break for three years. You can’t do that. Some of these guys would record records and then they wouldn’t even tour. You can’t do that today. Today the name of the game is staying current, staying busy. So our plan now is when we get off the road, after this last leg, is to go immediately into writing another record.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

• Jane’s Addiction plays the official after-party of Lollapalooza on Aug. 4. Following the party, the band will head out on the final leg of the Theatre of the Escapists tour, with a stop at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, N.J. on Aug. 12.

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