'A Beautiful Party' (2005 interview)

[sonny]

In a recent conversation with NEWSWEEK's Brian Braiker, Farrell explained why Satellite Party will be less a band than "a beautiful party," which is also a fitting description of what he envisions for the revamped Lollapalooza—and, for that matter, of his debauched years with Jane's Addiction, which have just been chronicled in an unauthorized oral history.

NEWSWEEK: You’ve described Satellite Party as more than a band, as not a band, as a musical. What is it exactly?
Perry Farrell: I started to just write music, and what happened was the music developed into a story. I love theatrics; I love playing live. I was kind of angling this piece, collaborating with people who were outside the music world and more in the theater world, so I started to develop the project as a theater piece. It’s turned into a play and eventually I’d like to bring it to film.

Is there a plot to it?
There’s a plot and everything. It’s like we are privileged to go on a private space shuttle for a weekend. What would we be wearing and what music would we be listening to? We could dock on a satellite. That’s the whole premise of the story.

This sounds like that great old Marvin Gaye song “Funky Space Reincarnation.”
It absolutely has to do with a spin on reincarnation. What basically happens is a fellow is in the hospital listening to the radio because he was beaten up in a riot and there’s this beautiful night nurse. She’s sitting by his bedside, and they’re both listening to the radio. They fall asleep, and through the radio there’s a vast visitation of energy. It’s like the universe’s form of a text message, a callout, a party invitation. So they’re carried up to the satellite party through the vast visitation of energy while sleeping. So they’re kind of reborn up in the heavens.

You’re teaming up with all kinds of people for this, like the Black Eyed Peas and Nuno Bettencourt of all people.
Yeah, I have Fergie [of the Black Eyed Peas] singing a few numbers. I met Nuno Bettencourt at [guitarist] Tom Morello’s home at a party and Tom said to me, “If you ever want to hear a guy who is one of the great living players.…” And I didn’t know because he was kind of out of my radar. But my wife grabbed my arm and goes “Wow, that’s Nuno Bettencourt,” and she just melted. Obviously, to the women he’s a real babe. He can play like Eddie Van Halen if he needed to, as far as the hard rock stuff. But what I dug when I spoke with him is he is taking flamenco lessons; he is very dedicated to his craft. He can play funk. Aside from that, my wife’s right: he’s a babe.

Are you making your debut at the new Lollapalooza? Are you going to put out an album or is it just a live experience?
I’m building this to be a play first because the music industry is really not in a mood to take chances. They are so dead set on formula. They’re very afraid. Let’s face it, it’s the worst time in the music industry in the history of mankind. Everyone’s losing money and the only people that are making money are going for the formulaic obvious pop stuff. We’ve done a few parties. I figure since I’m out there at Lollapalooza anyway, it can be stripped back and still really appreciated because the music’s wonderful.

Lollapalooza went belly up last year. It’s back this year. What’s different about it?
It’s hugely different this year. The business structure has been gutted. We were in our day America’s premier traveling festival. But the idea and the concept of the traveling festival has really, really changed over the course of the last decade. When we started we were a festival that would come into a city—we used to have promoters around the country, and these promoters would come back to us with the location they had scoped out, and we would build the festival from the ground up. It was a very organic and home-grown experience for cities. But over the years places like amphitheaters were built, and the amphitheaters are somewhat of a stale environment and really the promoters were basically bought. It became a conglomerate.

What effect did things like Coachella and South by Southwest and Bonnaroo—these big festivals that stay in one place and happen once a year—have in undoing Lolla's old format?
We are independent promoters; we are self-promoted. We go in with a business model to work this year in Chicago with the Parkways Foundation—they enhance and beautify the parks in Chicago—so we’re bringing money to the city, working with them on a charitable level and they are working with us to find the land and secure the streets and the byways. So, yes, it has become like Bonnaroo and Coachella. It has become a destination festival.

Earlier this year an oral biography of Jane’s Addiction called “Whores” was published. You’ve distanced yourself from that book. How come?
Originally Brendan [Mullen, the book's author] was hired by Spin magazine to do a cover story. I thought something was wrong because he called me back three times. I thought this guy is really taking so much time for an article; what is the problem? He kept on calling. I finally said “Look, I’ve spoken to you enough.” What I did not know—and he didn’t tell me—was that he was writing a book. And you can probably guess, I wasn’t getting a penny for it.

Have you read it?
No, I’m not going to read it. I know that a good deal of it was from this woman that I had been with probably 15 years ago. I’m sure a lot of it’s true. Everyone loves to rewrite the past, especially if they’re starring in it. I don’t know what’s been said, and I’m not bothered either way. I have got a lot of living to do still. When the time comes I’m going to sit down and I’m going to tell my story. I don’t need him to write it. He’s like a Paris Hilton—need I say more? It doesn’t murder me that he’s written it. It’s annoyance; it’s like having a fly around a nice picnic.

Did you know there’s a sports reporter at Knight Ridder named Perry Farrell?
You know how I know that? I get those Yahoo! [news] alerts, and [one day] I go, “Oh my god, Shaquille O’Neal and me in the same story? I can’t wait to read it! What’s it about? Shaq mentioned me as his favorite? Is he going to Lollapalooza?” Then of course it goes “and Perry Farrell writes.” And I go, “Oh.”

[subculture]

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