Biography of Perry Farrell

The onetime frontman for the influential art-metal band Jane's Addiction as well as the co-founder of the Lollapalooza festival, singer/provocateur Perry Farrell was born Perry Bernstein in Queens, NY on March 29, 1959; after the suicide of his mother, the family relocated to Long Island before finally settling in Miami. He briefly attended college in Oceanside, CA but quit school after suffering a nervous breakdown, finding work as an exotic dancer and adopting the name Perry Farrell as a play on the word "peripheral." In 1981, he formed the goth-rock band Psi Com, dissolving the group soon after the release of its 1985 debut EP; by the autumn, he'd formed Jane's Addiction with bassist Eric Avery. One of the key alternative bands of the pre-grunge era, Jane's Addiction earned a massive cult following with their decadent, hallucinatory hard rock sound, with Farrell -- commonly decked out in heavy stage makeup, S&M bondage gear and dreadlocks -- emerging as a cult icon. Jane's 1990 album Ritual de lo Habitual was their commercial breakthrough, launching the hit "Been Caught Stealing"; the following year, the group headlined the inaugural Lollapalooza festival -- in the years to follow, the Farrell-masterminded travelling rock'n'roll circus was to become an annual rite of passage as well as the focal point of alternative rock's mainstream breakthrough. Ironically, at the peak of Jane's Addiction's success, Farrell dissolved the band to form a new group, Porno for Pyros; neither of their two albums earned the adulation afforded to Jane's, however, and after several years out of the limelight Farrell issued his solo debut, a compilation of Jane's Addiction and Porno for Pyros tracks named Rev, in 1999. ~ Jason Ankeny