Music Books

Whores: An Oral Biography of Perry Farrell and Jane's Addiction

by Brendan Mullen

Da Capo Press, 324 pp., $26

You know you want the gory details. You want to know who "Jane" really was (not a prostitute). You want to know how much heroin Dave Navarro was shooting during the first Lollapalooza in '91 ($700 a day's worth). The genesis, life, and death of Jane's Addiction and her members is chopped up and snorted by those who lived it in Brendan Mullen's Whores. Bypassing his own opinions and memories, ex-booker Mullen interviewed a huge cast of characters – from club promoters and managers to L.A. scene eccentrics – while also excerpting a number of previously published interviews with the various band members to mold this quick, if sometimes choppy, read. Perry Farrell might be an artiste driven by impulse, but that's not the half of it: inner turmoil, greed, envy, threesomes, drugs, rock & roll, and more drugs. It's a story as old as popular music, but the L.A. fourpiece that cracked the door "alternative" bands like Nirvana would later splinter puts a pregrunge-era historical spin on things. Despite the differences in stories – the past is totally different through different eyes – everyone agrees on one thing: However insane and egomaniacal Farrell was, the man's a genius via Lollapalooza, and his meshing of genres changed the face of rock & roll forever.