“What the world needs now is music and light,” Perry Farrell tells host Steve Baltin on this week’s People Have The Power podcast. Over the course of this life-altering and intense year Farrell released a new box set and celebrated the legacy of Lollapalooza with a virtual four-day festival.
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” We are creatively keeping the music alive, torch of music, we’re turning it into a campfire, thinking about the past and reminiscing,” Farrell says. Over the course of the 40-minute conversation, the two go through Farrell’s diverse and strong playlist of protest songs that cover an 80-year span, from Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” written in 1940, to Public Enemy’s “State Of The Union,” released this year.
In talking about his own “Pirate, Punk, Politician,” from last year’s Kind Heaven Orchestra album, Farrell says, ” I wrote that song about the Anti-Christ. It was what’s in my head and it just poured out. I worked with Bloody Beetroots and Tommy Lee on that track. Is that cool? But what I’m saying when I say I wrote it about the Anti-Christ was I was writing about the Anti-Christ. Now I don’t know who it is. But if you were to write about the Anti-Christ it would sound like that.”
Farrell shares his personal stories and reminiscing of some of the artists on his playlist, like Public Enemy’s Chuck D. “We were both born in Queens. So his perspective of life is a little like mine in the way that we grew up in a melting pot,” he says. “We were not a lot of time for hatred because you’re being woven into this fabric that is a those sweaters Biggie used to wear, Coogi Sweaters. It was masterful weaving and that’s what living in Queens is like and was like. It’s like a Coogi sweater where the fabric is just being woven and it’s gnarly, but it’s beautiful. And it really contributed to the way Chuck and I grew up and our morality and how we see life.”
Another song on Farrell’s playlist is Rage Against The Machine’s “Bulls On Parade.” While discussing the song Farrell shares the first time he saw Rage Against The Machine live
” I first heard [Rage Against The Machine] at the Club Lingerie. They were opening for Ice-T, how cool is that? Ice-T and I are friends. I was invited to go and see him there and didn’t know who Rage Against The Machine were. They were just right there before Ice,” he recalls.
Check out the episode for Farrell’s full playlist, which also includes tracks from Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye and Johnny Cash, and much more.
