Perry Farrell isn’t naturally inclined to look backwards, but he’s making an exception today. A lavish, multi-disc new box set, The Glitz; The Glamour, charts the Jane’s Addiction frontman’s resolutely maverick career away from the alt.rock godfathers, from early-80s goth band Psi-Com to last year’s solo album-come-aural three-ring circus Kind Heaven. “I had music spread out everywhere,” he says of his decision to finally bring everything together. “It’s been a wild ride, man.” Today, speaking via Zoom from his home in LA, the 61-year-old sounds a little hoarse - the result of a recent operation on his vertebrae, it turns out.
How did your operation go?
It was successful. I have crushed discs in my neck, mostly from partying and leaning back my head to rip out notes, and surfing and dancing around… There’s a long list. They had to remove my voice box and put it on a table. That was daunting. They literally exposed my skeleton, took the discs out and put in artificial discs. So now I am a quarter inch taller and twice as attractive to my wife.