The Record That Inspired Lollapalooza
Perry Farrell on Sly Stone, learning the Hully Gully, and the sloppy fun of "Concert for Bangladesh"
In this edition of “WHAT’S IN YOUR TAPE DECK,” I talked to Perry Farrell, the frontman for Jane's Addiction, the LA-based band that broke alt-rock to the masses with hits like “Been Caught Stealing” (1990) and "Jane Says” (1987). He also created Lollapalooza in 1991, originally as a traveling music festival and today as an annual three-day summer event in Chicago. If you haven't already, check out “Lolla: The Story of Lollapalooza,” a 3-part docuseries on Paramount Plus.
Eric Spitznagel: So where do we begin?
Perry Farrell: At the beginning, man. I was born in 1959. My mom already had two children—one was my brother, who was twelve years older than I was, and my sister, who was eight years older.
ES: It doesn’t sound like you were planned.
PF: They didn’t want any more children. I guess you could call me one of those happy accidents. Nonetheless, there I was.
ES: With two older siblings, were you following their lead when it came to music?
PF: Oh, yeah. I was just tagging along and listening to whatever my big brother and sister listened to. Everyone in my family sang around me. They were singing or blasting the radio, and this was the early sixties and we were New York kids, so as you can imagine it was a lot of [sings] “77-WABC!” It was all Cousin Brucie!
ES: Was he a deejay?
PF: Yeah. The best deejay, the only deejay. Our house was all rock ’n’ roll, all the time. My brother just loved music and he had this big collection of 45s. We would sit out on our front porch in Queens and break out the record stacks and just play one 45 after the other. Music meant everything to us. I was way ahead of the curve in my age group in terms of my knowledge of music, rock music. I was way ahead of anybody in my class.
ES: Did you have a favorite?
PF: My favorite song growing up was by a woman by the name of Millie Small. She was the first reggae artist to ever have a hit in America, and it was called “My Boy Lollipop.”
ES: It’s funny, the title sounds more like something Shirley Temple would sing than reggae.
PF: The fellow who brought reggae to America, Chris Blackwell, used to drive around with that single, “My Boy Lollipop,” in the trunk of his car. I met him many, many years later and told him that was my favorite song.
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