Happy Birthday, Perry Farrell!
"Pigs In Zen" (live, 1990)
The alt music world owes a great debt to Farrell. Kurt Cobain receives the "credit" (so to speak) for getting the alternative scene off the ground in 1991, but Jane's Addiction, with Farrell at the helm, was just as influential, if not moreso than Cobain and Nirvana. Jane's Addiction were busy playing shows and ripping up the scene in the late 80's and helped pave the way and influence tons of great bands (and let's be honest, tons of shitty bands too) in the years to come.
Besides leading Jane's Addiction, Farrell was/is also the brains behind the annual must-attend-alt-concert-event: Lollapalooza. Back in 1991 no one knew Lollapalooza was going to turn into an institution--all we knew was that there was this super cool festival headlined by Jane's Addiction that also featured a ton of other great bands: Siouxsie & The Banshees, Nine Inch Nails, Living Colour, Ice T, Rollins Band, and Fishbone. In the '90's Lollapalooza was a not-to-be-missed music and a social event.
In the years to follow, the lineup featured a who's who of the alt rock scene, until the festival seemingly jumped the shark in the late '90's. To be honest, the festival's demise was probably due in part to all the craptastic bands that were popular around that time. Farrell, always the visionary, cancelled the festival for a few years, and when the revamped festival re-emerged, it once again boasted an edgy lineup featuring a return to the Lollapalooza we all knew and loved--the only difference was that Lollapalooza was turned into an annual non-touring festival taking place each August in Chicago's Grant Park. FYI, this year's Lolla lineup is going to be announced on April 11th, and tons of sites are coming up with their own guesses as to who may be playing.
Farrell also dabbled in film--he released his semi-autobiographical, drug/musical film escapade, The Gift, in 1993. The film was shot in late 1989 and 1990, but was finally released on VHS in 1993 and on DVD in 2010. You can watch a raw/unedited interview MTV's Kurt Loder did with a then drugged out Farrell (he's now clean, by the way) as well as links to watch the film below.
Interview part 1
Interview part 2
Interview part 3
Interview part 4
Interview part 5
Interview part 6
The Gift (part 1)