Perry Farrell Is Saying Goodbye To Porno For Pyros

Fresh off playing table-table tennis on a damp Saturday in Lollapalooza’s backstage area this past July, Perry Farrell is in the mood to gloat. Not about his hard-fought victory over me, but because he can’t wait to share details of the rest of his 2023. “Porno for Pyros is releasing a new EP,” he beams, sitting at an adjacent table drinking a water. 

Plans have changed a bit since that afternoon. The band’s tour, which will be its last, was pushed to 2024, and the still yet-to-be-titled EP was bumped as well. Nonetheless, Farrell’s excitement about the reunited band hasn’t wavered, even as it prepares to call it quits. Again.

“I couldn’t be happier,” he says. “We’re going into the underground again and we’re going to be performing with DIY artists around the country and we’re going create a scene from blood, sweat, and tears.”

Formed in 1992 following Jane’s Addiction’s dissolution, Porno for Pyros consists of Farrell, guitarist Peter DiStefano, bassist Martyn LeNoble, and drummer Stephen Perkins. Their self-titled debut album was released a year later and peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, spawning a minor hit with “Pets.” By the time they finished tracking their follow-up, 1996’s Good God’s Urge, LeNoble had left and was replaced by Mike Watt. Following that album and another new single released on the soundtrack to the Howard Stern biopic Private Parts, Porno for Pyros split when Jane’s Addiction reformed in 1997 and DiStefano was diagnosed with testicular cancer.

Since their unexpected reunion with the Watt-era lineup in 2020 for a Lollapalooza livestream, Farrell and his Pornos bandmates have slowly been getting back into a rhythm of working together. In 2022, the band’s original lineup reunited for its first shows in 25 years. Riding high from the rapturous reception from those first three gigs at the Welcome to Rockville festival and small venues in Los Angeles and Chicago, the band had high hopes for its main stage set at Lollapalooza this summer. 

“The night before we did that show, we thought, this is gonna be amazing,” Farrell recalls. “We’re gonna go out there, and it should be even bigger and greater. We should have our asses kissed all over every last square inch of our butt. Right? Nope, not the case. It was terrible. It was about 105 degrees up there, and young people were not aware of who we were.”

It didn’t deter Farrell, but his bandmates felt compelled to play harder to lure festival attendees to the stage. “I was laughing as I watched a guy playing hacky sack off in a corner (of the field),” Farrell continues. “Some of the guys were emotional about the audience size because we didn’t get the turnout. It’s a very good thing for a musician to get humbled every once in a while. It keeps you honest, and it keeps you focused on why you’re truly doing it.”

As for the planned tour, it was postponed in September to allow Porno for Pyros to complete new songs Farrell says would have been on the band’s third album had it gotten that far back in the day. He admits he wasn’t healthy at the time and, combined with DiStefano’s cancer battle, the timing didn’t work for Porno for Pyros to stay together at that point.

In February, the group started recording at Johnny Depp’s studio in Hollywood and evolved the material’s more cumbersome arrangements into something crisper and more melodic, but with the same bite as earlier Pornos songs. “Agua,” the first track released from the collection, would have been at home on Good God’s Urge, as it is powered by Farrell’s emotive, environment-honoring lyrics and DiStefano’s soaring guitar. “I love that one because one of the things the world needs to work on is the distribution of clean water,” he says. Well, exactly.