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Whores:
An Oral Biography of Perry Farrell and Jane's Addiction
by Brendan Mullen
Da Capo, $26.00 256 pp.
Review by Kennedy Weible
More dirt and info than a Behind the
Music episode, and without the ill-omen voice-over, prophesizing
"trouble ahead" before every commercial break.
It should be noted that Brendan Mullen
didn't actually write this book. Nor did he actually conduct
all the interviews. The members of Jane's Addiction had stopped
doing interviews by the time he compiled this "oral biography,"
so he mined old interviews which he references thoroughly. Whores
is basiclly sound bites from the band members, and the various
characters who inhabited their world as they progressed. Mullen
begins the story of Jane's Addiction with Perry Farrell (lead
singer) and some people who knew him as a kid, getting the basics
out of the way and talking about Perry moving from NY to Florida,
then to California. Members of other bands, girlfriends, managers,
club owners, fanzine writers, guitar players, and so forth give
their two cents worth whenever the path of the band intersected,
or ran over, their own. It works nicely. As a reader you sometimes
get three or four versions of the same story, effectively limiting
how much bullshit you have to take in. It's very democratic.
Everyone's personal memories keep everyone else's in check, and
add levity and perspective. It also makes it the type of book
you can open randomly and start reading, picking up whatever
piece of the greater story you happen to land upon.
Perry Farrell's dad--described as an afro-sporting,
speedo and gold chain wearing, New York Jew transplanted to Florida--has
the best line in the book though, telling his son, "You
gotta be a singer like Manilow, Perry. Manilow don't answer to
nobody!" It gives you a nice mental image of what could
have been. Other pieces of trivia include mention of bass player
Eric Avery's father being Carl Smith in The Graduate (you
know, the other guy that Elaine was going to marry).
Whores
covers everything: Dave Navarro's mother's murder (by an ex-boyfriend
who also murdered his aunt at the same time, then caught twelve
years later and sentenced to death; he awaits execution in San
Quentin at the time of this writing); controversy over album
covers (Wal-Mart wasn't impressed with the naked Siamese twins);
Psi Com (Farrell's first band); and the occasional rehab stint.
The mythic muse who gave the band is moniker, Jane Bainter herself,
chimes in as well. Turns out she wasn't totally psyched about
Farrell using her heroin problem as a band name.
Everyone gives a fair amount of attention
to the LA music scene at the time, so the narrative of Jane's
Addiction runs alongside a companion history of the punk-goth-alternative-whatever
scene, which, at the time, was destined to become a mainstream--and
eventually watered-down-phenomenon.
Bereft of superficial melodrama, and loaded
with candor, Whores gives a first rate account of a band,
a time, and a place that has become the stuff of myth and exaggeration.
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