Whores
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"At each other's throats before they'd written a single song, Jane's Addiction's history was a drug-sick, sex-fuelled soap opera fleshed out by artist, gangsters, hucksters and prostitutes. Mullen draws jaw-dropping tales from all in their messy orbit while keeping their inspirational music front and centre. Horrifying, but utterly compelling". Q Magazine - 4 star review "Whores is different. Yes, there's overdoses, orgies, Hell's Angels, transsexual sex, heroin and on-stage punchups here, but all the chaos and bacchanalia is balanced with a little reflection. NME"
Product Description
The first biography of Jane's Addiction who became Godfathers of the Alternative Nation, originated the Lollapalooza festival, and captured the spirit of America at its most decadent. Jane's Addiction 1988 breakthrough album, "Nothing's Shocking", had a seismic impact on the music scene of the late '80s. With a bracing combination of metal, punk, and psychedelica, coupled with lead singer Perry Farrell's banshee-in-a-wind tunnel vocals, the arrival of Jane's Addiction put what would soon be co-opted as 'alternative' on the map. Rising from the depths of Venice Beach's junkie-surfer demonade, Jane's Addiction freely mixed the decadent with the innocent, and paved the way for the mainstream success of bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nirvana. After "Nothing's Shocking", Jane's Addiction released another classic album, "Ritual de Lo Habitual" (featuring the hit "Been Caught Stealing"), founded the Lollapalooza festival, an openly celebrated a bacchanalian lifestyle that blurred all lines of gender and sexuality. Drawn from original interviews with the band (including Farrell and guitarist Dave Navarro), their friends and musical colleagues, "Whores" will take readers through the early days of the band to their drug-addled breakup and eventual triumphant reunion with the 2003 release of their album "Strays".
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First Sentence
PERRY FARRELL (ne BERNSTEIN, co-founder, leader of Jane's Addiction, Porno for Pyros, Lollapalloza): I was a Queens kid. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
PERRY FARRELL (ne BERNSTEIN, co-founder, leader of Jane's Addiction, Porno for Pyros, Lollapalloza): I was a Queens kid. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I've been a fan of Perry Farrell for three or four years now and have always felt he was a somewhat underappreciated personality on the rock pantheon. Jane's Addiction also never really got the props they deserved from mainstream audiences, there's being more of a cult following. It's too bad, there is a lot to learn about dynamics, showmanship and simple mysticism from Perry and co. True, Navarro is at times an insufferable buffoon but his guitar is a good deal more eloquent than his mouth. Same to a degree for Perry, whose shamanistic shtick goes a long way to proving that charisma and invention will always be welcome in an industry that approves of the James Blunts of this world. Whores is a colourful and entertaining read, if one can get past the boorish LA scenesters and egos that fly around on clouds. What these guys did had real value. I recommend for fans of the alt rock genre in general. Pick up some tips!
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
Impulse buy purely because i like Jane's and thought their story was bound to be interesting.
Haven't read any other 'Oral Biography' before and didn't think it was going to hold my attention in the beginning.
Thoroughly enjoyed the book in the end and glad it was written as it was and better to get Perry's thoughts in his own words.
Haven't read any other 'Oral Biography' before and didn't think it was going to hold my attention in the beginning.
Thoroughly enjoyed the book in the end and glad it was written as it was and better to get Perry's thoughts in his own words.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
12 reviews
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Jane's Addiction....bread and spread in LA....
18 May 2005
Format:Hardcover
First of all, I really looked forward to this book. I read it in 3-4 hours in two sittings and it was very entertaining. Brendan Mullen wrote an extended article in SPIN Magazine on Jane's Addiction back when their Strays album came out a couple years ago. He states, at the beginning of this book, that band members more or less stopped giving interviews shortly after the albums release so he couldn't get additional information for the book. This forced him to search high and low for other key characters who surrounded Jane's Addiction, along with the band and management, in telling their complete story. It worked. This is a great book and gives an excellent perspective as to what Jane's achieved and what they were up against (primarily themselves). Anyone familiar with Jane's will notice a few familiar quotes and paragraphs from past interviews dating back more than 15 years. Mullen pulls from all sources and paints a good picture of band's impact on the LA music scene at that time and the argument that they created the alternative scene that Cobain and others were able to blow the doors open on a few years later. The development of Lollapalooza is very interesting as well. This book would receive a five star rating had the band done interviews more recently specifically for the book. Unfortunately, they didn't and you have to stick to their old interviews which in many ways is good for catching the moment but not as good for catching the band's perspective on their impact over time. Had they done interviews it may have turned out more like the Crue's DIRT. But Jane's was a much darker band, and you definitely get the feeling here. Actually it sounds like Porno For Pyros was more drug-addled than Jane's, if that's possible. This is a biography and almost gets 4.5 stars. The 5 Star books will be the complete autobiographies by Avery, Perkins, Navarro and Farrell. They'll come in time. Long live Jane's Addiction, one of the last truly great rock 'n roll bands......
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Great bio of a classic band
24 Feb 2006
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
As someone who refused to even listen to the latest Jane's album (i'll only acknoledge the first 3!), didn't know what to expect from this book, a cheap attempt to wring some cash from an ever-diminishing fan-base? But Jane's is one of those bands... true innovators, and this book is a terrifically detailed account of their story. I was really impressed by the vast amount of interviewees the author was able to bring together in a very coherent manner, including Casey Niccoli and Eric Avery. A must for true fans.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
a fun read on a great band
12 July 2005
Format:Hardcover
I loved the oral biography style that Brendan Mullen used in "We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of LA Punk" (which in turn was inspired by the classic in this mini-genre, "Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk"), so I wasn't disappointed with this book. There's no denying that Janes Addiction were as debauched and hard-living a band as they were an amazing and innovative one. "Whores" seems to focus more on the debauchery, although I think the Janes tale doesn't offer anything as memorable as, say, Led Zeppelin's shark incident or Nikki Sixx's many ODs. Still, the reader gets a good sense of Janes Addiction' musical impact and legacy from the band's friends and admirers, many of whom are incorporated here -- some unsurprisingly (Flea, for example) and some whose connections to the band I never knew about (avant-country diva Carla Bozulich was an early girlfriend of Eric Avery's?!). Perhaps most tantalizing is the sketch Mullen draws of the larger mid- to late-1980s scene in Los Angeles that Janes Addiction came from: early LA goth, hair metal, Fishbone, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Thelonious Monster, the Nymphs, local rivals Guns N Roses, etc. I only wish this scene had its own document -- a sequel to "We Got the Neutron Bomb," perhaps?
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