Giving in to his addiction

Perry Farrell tells LINDA HERRICK a reformed Jane's Addiction are working on a new album and looking forward to playing the Big Day Out.

Ooh, he's a smoothie, is Perry Farrell. The helium-voiced singer with Jane's Addiction, one of the all-time great American alt-rock bands, is cooing down the phone from Los Angeles with that distinctive honey-tongued drawl, "I remember talking to some lovely lady in New Zealand ... "

Bet he says that to all the girls. He and I talked last year about his first solo album, Song Yet to be Sung; and, of course, he doesn't remember. But it's sweet to pretend.

Farrell is back on the line to talk up the reformation of Jane's Addiction after the past decade's on-off (mainly off) routine. This is thrilling news for hardcore followers and potentially a new generation of fans gasping for fresh ideas in a sterile musical landscape.

Whether Jane's can still cut it after all these years will be laid out for judgment when they headline the Big Day Out in Auckland on January 17.

In their day - 1987-1991 - Jane's Addiction cut a swathe through the horrible spectacle of self-important, big-hair bands like Guns'N'Roses and Motley Crue. There was no one else like them as they orbited through wild epic songs like Three Days, Mountain Song and Ocean Size with grand abandonment. On seminal albums Nothing's Shocking and the gorgeous Ritual De Lo Habitual, which still stand up today, the charismatic Farrell was as at ease singing about three-way sex as he was about the joys of shoplifting, or the metaphysics of nature.

He was also the founder of Lollapalooza, the touring American summer alternative rock festival for which we can thank conceptual offshoots like the Big Day Out.

But the band spun out of control and split under the cliched weight of fights, acrimony and alarming levels of drug use: the entire band once nodded off during a Rolling Stone interview, and the magazine picked Farrell as a likely candidate for an early demise.

Farrell defied the predictions and kept going. With Jane's drummer Stephen Perkins and bassist Martyn LeNoble, he formed Porno For Pyros, a relatively pale substitute for its ancestor, while guitarist Dave Navarro floated around solo projects and an unsatisfying stint with the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Farrell also became actively involved in global anti-slavery work and finally cleaned up his act when his son Yobel was born in 1998.

So, finally, the hiatus is over and Farrell raves, "We're all friends and we love each other and we are psyched to go down to New Zealand."

Jane's this time around bring Farrell, Perkins and Navarro together, although LeNoble seems to have dropped by the wayside.

The idea of a reunion first started when Jane's were invited to, er, regroup for the Coachella arts and music festival in California last year. "We weren't interested at first but it was a very good festival," says Farrell. "Putting the band together is a lot of work, so I said if we do that we have to do more than just one show, so we planned a small tour and that went very well.

"And then I started to feel so interested in continuing to work with everyone - I felt we should make some great records again. I feel we still have some potential to fulfil."

Which means the band has been in the studio working on new album Hypersonic with - and this is huge news - legendary producer Bob Ezrin, noted for his collaborations with Alice Cooper, Lou Reed, Kiss, the Jayhawks, Aerosmith and Pink Floyd (The Wall). That sounds dangerous.

Farrell cackles. "This guy is a legend and it's been such an exciting time for us to be in the studio working on music and, man, I'm talking like, we are going for broke!" he shouts.

"We're going for the most ripping riffs, it's really exciting and we are taking it so serious. If you can imagine Jane's coming up with a record 10 years later with the producer of Pink Floyd - it's a big sound, it's lush, it's beautiful, it's haunted and it goes to places it's a delight to go to, places where you haven't been before and feel good about being there. Oh wow ... "

Yes, all right, Perry, calm down. Some commentators have been unkind about the Jane's reunion, calling it accountant-led and undignified - as if the music industry was led by pure imperatives. But Farrell, 43, does not care. He's on a mission, to provide an antidote to the disease of contemporary pop, as he launches into another shouting crescendo of diatribe.

"I was in Mexico City yesterday and I was watching MTV and thinking that some of these people suck the life out of life itself, they suck the life out of music. They use music as their vehicle and it sucks the life out of anyone listening and it's not saying anything at all. I wish they would just not use music, they should stop, it's like they hold music hostage."

An Observer journalist once wrote that Farrell was "the only real punk to emerge from his era" in the sense he was a true outsider, an original.

"Oh wow, it's true," he exclaims. "I did spin out of the punk era, I was a youngster when punk hit. I was very young and impressionable and so when I formed Jane's absolutely that ethic stuck with me.

But, you know, it's almost impossible to be a punk in that sense any more. I mean, look what they call punk - it's really Disney-punk as far as I'm concerned. You don't see real punks any more, they're much too slick and organised and things are going too well for them. When I got into music, the weirdos were the only people into music, you know what I mean?"

Farrell hasn't abandoned solo work; the very suggestion sparks another burst of chortling.

"I have many pieces, almost 50, so as soon as we finish working on the Jane's album, my partner Brendan Hawkins and I are going to start doing a new solo album. It's wonderful because now we can actually use the Jane's guys too to do the electronic pieces. We all have our own music schedules and it's cooking and Bob wants to work with us eternally, believe it or not."

MTV.com reports that Jane's Addiction circa 2002 is a mighty experience, in fact better than the last time around, with "no rambling monologues from Farrell, with the band instead focusing on an immaculate performance ... sounding and acting up to date".

Farrell loves it. "I have to say I feel very lucky that a fella who has my talent could get to this position. When I'm on stage it's like this: all the love the people are putting up on me, I can reflect it right back at them and then they really get to feel something."

He yelps with horror at the notion that Jane's might get only a short set of "reflecting" at the climax of the Big Day Out, 45 minutes maximum.

"What?! Is that all? Ha ha, you know we are the last on that stage so we can go much longer."

Astonishingly, my mouth opens and says, "Bet you say that to all the girls."

He laughs, thank heavens.