Perry Farrell The Saga of a Hy

On the cover of music magazines around the world, and on the lips of music writers and alternative fans since the mid '80s is the name and image of Perry Farrell. Not only did he mastermind the annual summer festival Lollapalooza, he shattered the thin boundary between performance and document and remains a mystery to all but a few. Photos.

For Perry Farrell fans who have read all the articles about him, there isn't any new ground covered in Thompson's account. There are no true confessions here: no pulling back the curtain to find out who the real wizard is. Thompson (Red Hot Chili Peppers) chronicles Farrell's life from his boyhood in Flushing, Queens, to his adolescence in Miami and onward to Los Angeles. This is where he forms his first band, Psi Com, before finding his first fame, with Jane's Addiction. It's obvious that Thompson considers Farrell a man of genius, but the evidence offered only points to a genius for self-promotion. We never get inside Farrell's head, or even close. Thompson has pieced together things that may or may not be true, because Farrell is the first to admit he's lied in interviews. Thompson can't really do any more than scratch the surface of so secretive and ambiguous a person. Even after finishing Thompson's biography, Perry Farrell remains a mystery: which, if the book is any indication, is the way Farrell wants it. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Rock'n'roll biographies are generally lightweight fare, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. This one, however, commits the cardinal sin of taking far too seriously an artist who, taken on the evidence the book itself provides, is only a marginally talented musician with an outsized ego. Farrell came to prominence in the late 1980s as the leader of the successful, if derivative, Jane's Addiction and as the organizing force behind Lollapalooza, an itinerant and highly successful alternative-rock package show. As a publicist and an impresario, then, Farrell is clearly gifted. As a thinker and social commentator, however, he is sadly lacking?a fact that author Thompson (Depeche Mode, St. Martin's, 1994) appears to miss completely. Nowhere does the author make a serious attempt to evaluate or analyze Farrell's music, and rarely does he offer any challenge to Farrell's assertions or offer any contrasting perspective. Thompson's writing is not only painfully uncritical; it is also shot through with hysterically funny malapropisms and tortured syntax. Not recommeded. (Photos not seen.)?Rick Anderson, Contoocook, N.H.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Perry Farrell (equals peripheral, he loves to say), creator of the traveling rock show Lollapalooza and creative force behind Psi Com, Jane's Addiction, and Porno for Pyros, is the embodiment of the image-is-everything stance. Thompson's bio of the former Simon Bernstein showcases a self-created imagemonger with an appetite for media manipulation seldom matched even in the hype-crazed world of pop music. Farrell's obsession with image surfaces strongly when Thompson reports him "learning" to slam dance and making cool clothes and a sharp haircut the desiderata for membership in Psi Com. But a certain vacuousness also shows in such cultural faux pas as blaming Simon and Garfunkel for enshrining the road as the best way to view America (Jack Kerouac, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, where are you? And is this ignorance Farrell's or Thompson's?) and prematurely granting American icon status to the Ramones. Still, as an exploration of the progress of "goth" rock and other underreported pop music strains, this book is the goods. Mike Tribby