Everybody Count Your Money!: Porno For Pyros at 30 

What do you do when you basically create the “Alternative Nation” and launch a touring festival that set the template for the next 30-odd years of the concert experience? If you are Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell, you get real dark.  

With the final sounds of “Chip Away” fading into the Hawaiian ether on that balmy September 26th night in 1991, the band that many had come to associate with the rise of alternative rock ceased to be. Fans mourned and wondered what would come next. The band’s demise wasn’t exactly a surprise–they had planned that year’s inaugural Lollapalooza festival as a summer-long Irish wake of sorts and both guitarist Dave Navarro and bassist Eric Avery were very open about the need to escape the drug-fueled bacchanalia that surrounded the group. When the junkies in your band think it’s time to escape, you know shit has gone south.   

Farrell wasted no time in putting together his next creative endeavor. By early 1992, rumors abound that he and Jane’s drummer Stephen Perkins had brought in a new guitarist and bassist to start messing around with some songs that were written and abandoned after Ritual De Lo Habitual (what was, somewhat charmingly in hindsight, JA’s supposed swan song). Guitarist Peter DiStefano was a virtual unknown – a surfdog from Santa Monica who had been kicking around in local bands but had caught Perry’s eye while on a surfing trip in Mexico. Farrell, Perkins and Distefano jammed and realized that they had chemistry. That Distefano wasn’t afraid to “party” wasn’t a bad deal either.

All they needed was someone to hold down the low end – enter Dutch-born bassist Martyn LeNoble, who was playing with Thelonious Monster (a band that knew something about dysfunction and addiction!) With the pieces in place, the foursome began writing and recording in earnest and gigged throughout late ’92 and early ’93, selling out several-thousand seat venues around SoCal without audiences having heard a note of their music. Such was the “power of Perry.”

On Tuesday, April 27th, 1993, the self-titled debut by Porno For Pyros hit the streets and rabid fans were excited and perplexed in equal measure. Anyone expecting Jane’s Addiction 2: Electric Drugaloo was bound to be disappointed. While Jane’s could never be characterized as a “sunny” band, Porno’s lyrics and sonics were like a crawl through the seamiest underbelly of Los Angeles circa ’92. Gone were the metal-indebted power chords and heroic guitar solos of Navarro, replaced by Distefano’s more esoteric, textural playing and almost-abusive use of the wah pedal. And unlike Avery’s physical whomp, Le Noble’s bass playing was more subtle and supple, often taking a backseat to Perkins’ percussive display. This is an album based around the drums – they are mixed almost comically high, oftentimes overshadowing the guitar and bass and fighting for space with Farrell’s feral wail. And for better (and often worse) Perry decided to pick up the harmonica. Where Jane’s Addiction was a band of four friends with strong personalities pulling and picking at each other until all that was left was animosity, it was clear that Farrell was running the show.  This would be a demonstrably different beast, not as flashy or indebted to rock-godisms. 

The songs are almost universally darker than those of their predecessor – if “Mountain Song” and “Three Days…” were the euphoric orgasm of peaking on primo blotter, then these tunes are the dark descent into the aftermath of doing too much of the “Bad Shit”. And this makes some sense knowing that several of the songs (and the band’s moniker) were born out of Farrell’s fascination with the riots that rocked Los Angeles for five days after the acquittal of the officers who brutally beat Rodney King. The stink of burning storefronts is imbued in the melodies and playing; the anger of justice denied practically shredding Farrell’s vocals. Ironically, the most Jane’s-like song is born from the ashes of this experience – “Black Girlfriend” could be a sonic cousin to “Classic Girl” with the titular gal replaced with a badass lady who took her anger and frustration out in the only way she knew how – on the city she loves. 

The album, fueled by fans fervency for anything Farrell, debuted at 13 on the Billboard Top 200 albums charts but only spent three weeks there before disappearing. The second (and only) single to chart, “Pets” (a paean to extraterrestrials domestically enslaving humanity and perhaps the most Perry Farrell concept for a song) peaked at 53 on the Hot 100 but became a staple on MTV and helped to propel the album to gold status. Oddly, the band played sporadic dates on the second stage for Lollapalooza’s third go-around, foregoing the limelight. It would be three years before their sophomore platter, the softer and more tropical Good God’s Urge, would emerge and little more than a year after that the band would fall apart due to drug use, the firing of Le Noble, and a nasty cancer diagnosis for Distefano.  

But, like all ideas in Perry Farrell’s head, there appears to be a happy ending. The band reunited for a socially-distanced performance at Farrell’s villa in 2020 and all four original members would serve as the replacement for Jane’s Addiction on several festival dates after Dave Navarro was waylaid with long-COVID.

Recent reports suggest that in addition to a new album from a re-energized Jane’s Addiction, we just might get new music from Porno this year as well. And that ain’t bad shit at all…