Did the world really need a 300+ page book on Perry Farrell? Even my Magic 8-Ball is telling me “all signs point to no.” Don’t get me wrong: Jane’s Addiction is okay. I don’t have any of their albums, but when they release a greatest-hits disc, I’ll buy it. Used, at least. (I mean, c’mon: The only songs you need of theirs are “Jane Says,” “Been Caught Stealing” and mayyyyybe “Stop,” and that’s being generous.)
And while I will give Brenden Mullen’s WHORES: AN ORAL BIOGRAPHY OF PERRY FARRELL AND JANE’S ADDICTION points for being assembled entirely from quotes by the people in the band, friends of the band and hangers-on from the band, in the end, who really cares? I don’t care about the history of Farrell’s first band Psi-Com. I don’t give a damn about the heroin-queen they were named after. I really could have done without knowing anything about Porno for Pyros.
And it’s not that it’s a badly written book – like I said, it’s not really “written” as much as it is transcribed – it’s just that it’s nothing you haven’t seen before on a rather marginal episode of VH1′S BEHIND THE MUSIC. No one says anything revelatory, no one does anything that changes the world. True to their album, nothing’s shocking indeed. But everything’s boring.
In the end, WHORES is for hardcore Jane’s Addiction fans only, and even then, you’re probably either too strung out or dead to read it. –Louis Fowler
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