From Jane's Addiction to oil addiction: alt-rock activist Perry Farrell on being green

FRONTMAN'S BURDEN Lollapalooza founder Perry Farrell has opened his arms (and glove) to the world

In the early 1990s, Perry Farrell spent $1 million of his own money to help preserve Costa Rican rain forests. Then, in 2001, he flew to war-torn Sudan and paid to free more than 2,300 slaves. Now the former Jane's Addiction and Porno for Pyros frontman wants to save the world—with a concept album. Ultra Payloaded, the first release from his new group, Satellite Party, is about a fictitious faction of dreamy do-gooders called the "Solutionists" whose mantra is "Just try and stop us; we're going to love!" In real life, Farrell and his band of neo-hippies—including contributing artists Flea and Fergie—have promised to offset the carbon used on tour with an ambitious, eco-friendly plan to plant trees, recycle, and rely on bio-fuel. Farrell, now a 48-year-old married father of two, likes to call it "partying for progress." Move over, Bono.

As he readies to spread the good word, Farrell spoke to Radar about social consciousness, his mission to infiltrate the Great White Way, and his wife's fondness for groupie cleavage.

RADAR: You're in the middle of rehearsals with your new group, Satellite Party. How are things shaping up?
PERRY FARRELL: I think it's going to be the best project I've ever done. I'm inspired first by the music and what a grand, awesome sound we've created. It is very fresh and maintains the grandeur of rock music, but it is also infused with subsonic frequencies that most people associate with hip-hop and house. I'm also excited about the alliances I've made and the great strides taken to create this "Solutionists" movement—where allies and philanthropists and environmentalists and fellow artisans are getting together to create change and social awareness and do it with music being the catalyst.

What changes are you trying to make, exactly?
I think that we live in a day when new communities have to be assembled and planned. I'm hoping that these new communities on social and tangible levels are heavily infused with art and green and oxygen. They should be refitted with better ways to not just conserve energy but to use energy. Things like replacing the old oil company and electric company with renewable fuel companies, power stations, and doing it with style, with better planning.

When did you go so green?
It's kind of an interesting story, but I met an American Indian at one of my shows back in 1992. He was a young kid who had come to one of my concerts and he was really trying to impress upon me that he grew up in Toronto and he said his family lived on the Great Lakes and he said that two of his family members had died recently of cancer. The rest of his family was sick and he was sick. He said he really wanted my help to do something about it. I went on and started to do research about pollution and dioxins. I became further engaged and involved and I started to put together demonstrations and protests that year—maybe 1993.

We put together a music demonstration in front of the White House, and I went on to do things like purchase land in Costa Rican rainforests to preserve land for posterity. I guess I contributed a million dollars to Costa Rican rainforests that remain there. And you know, I started to work with groups like the NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council] and stop global warming. And we're at the point now that the word is out, the message is out and people are ready are raring to go, so it's a good time to be alive. I think it will be the greatest transformation in human history that we'll see in the next ten years.

EMISSION CONTROL Farrell talks to actor Josh Hartnett via satellite at a press conference for Global Cool, a non profit engaged in reducing CO2 emissions and raising awareness about climate change

What do you say to the scientists who seed doubts about climate change?
I think that the world is as plain as day, as plain as a hurricane, the devastation of a tsunami, it is plain for everyone to see that we have an extreme temperature and we have to do something about it. If anybody wants to call him or herself a scientist and deny that there's global warming, then I think they lose their license as a scientist.

Lollapalooza is going green this summer. How are you planning to do that?
It is a band-aid answer but the first thing you do is carbon offset, which involves calculating how much carbon you're emitting and then investing in green energy or replanting trees to offset what you're expelling. That's the first thing you do but we're going to go a lot further. We're going to be composting our garbage, using recycled plates and forks and cups. And then we're going to be using bio-diesel generators. And we're going to be donating over a million dollars to the city of Chicago to put oxygen back into the air by working with the Parks & Recreation to plant rooftop gardens. If you have rooftop gardens, it keeps the summers cooler and winters warmer.

Will you be up there planting?
I don't know if I'll be there or if I'll be invited or if I'll have time or be on the road. I would love to do it. What I would love to see is Mayor Daley's beehive. He's got a honey-making factory up on the rooftop of the City Hall, and he gets honey from it. I'd like to be part of that thing, like a beekeeper.

TOO SEXY At left, Farrell on stage with wife Etty at the 2007 Coachella Music Festical. At right, Farrell performing at the KROQ Weenie Roast in 2001

Your wife, Etty, sings back-up vocals in the band, how is it to work with her on a professional basis?
For me, to be a musician means more than anything. To be a troubadour, a traveling minstrel. There's no greater experience with music than the live experience, so to have a person who I love and adore and we work out our stage and our song together and work out our marketing strategies together, to me, we're like the modern Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

What happens when girls throw their panties at you on stage?
They don't throw panties anymore, what they do is heave their cleavage. I get that all the time but we giggle about it because we're sexy beings. We probably both get a little jolt out of seeing good cleavage. The last press conference we did there were three or four female reporters who were doing the interviews and all of them had these beautiful swelling, heaving breasts. But we look at each other and always giggle about it because you're right, gals do like to put themselves out if they're interested. I think they do it too because they have a nice set of breasts and they wanted to show them off anyway so it's just a good occasion.

When you were first starting out you said that you wanted to be like David Byrne of the Talking Heads. Have you accomplished that?
I said that? Well, I still have ambitions with Satellite Party. We're only getting started now. The first phase is purely the music. We do a great stage presentation in terms of our personal performance but I would love to see this grow into a feature film and have a theatrical presence whether it be on Broadway or in Las Vegas.

Broadway?
Yeah, I would love to have big props and incredible lights and dramatic scene changes. I have 120 storyboards for Satellite Party that I put together using Photoshop and images that I've been saving and collecting. I would absolutely love to make this a theatrical performance. But Etty said to me, "You know what? If you came rolling out in a hospital bed in a hospital gown singing, people would throw tomatoes at you, so just count yourself a front man for now and don't even think about it because it would look so corny."

BOSOM BUDDIES Farrell and Dave Navarro together again in 2003

She might have a point there. Why would you be in a hospital gown?
It's the scene where the cops batter the chief Solutionist and so he gets sent to the hospital where he meets his love interest, the night nurse. That's why I laugh because for that scene, when he's taken to the hospital, they would roll him out in a bed and he'd be in one of those hospital gowns with an IV in his arm—hopefully it would be something good like some morphine—and then he would start to talk to his friends and they break out in song. So Etty started laughing so hard, she goes, "there's no way I'm going to allow you to come out on stage with your ass hanging out, I don't think so." I think it could be good though.

Jane's Addiction was originally backed by a prostitute named Bianca, are you still in touch with her?
I haven't seen Bianca for a long time. She was just on the edge of insane. I loved her to death, but you never knew where she was going. A great gal and those were fantastic times, but we've gone on and she's never tried to contact me. I mean, you do have the Internet; people could get in touch with you if they're around and in shape. It just seems like Bianca, well, she'll know where to find me online, maybe she should reach out. It'd be fun.

Maybe MySpace can help. Can you give us one good drug-fueled story from your heyday for the road?
I don't know ... perhaps standing on a rooftop in a towel and with a bat. That kind of sums it up, doesn't it?

Hmm ... not really. Where and why were you doing that?
[Scoffs.] My house. I was trying to ward off evil spirits. Maybe I did!

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