Please Stop Threatening to Make Musicals, Perry Farrell (and Everyone Else from the 90s)

Ever since stupid Billy Joe Armstrong and his bandmates created a Green Day musical and a bunch of full-grown pop-punk adults bought all the tickets making it a “success,” it’s become totally appropriate for other bands to threaten the world with the idea of a musical.

A few months back, there was rumor that Courtney Love was working on a Nirvana musical (that was proven to not be true, thank God) and now, Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction has jumped on the musical train.

In a recent interview with Prefix, Farrell said, “My next project is that I’m working on a play, it’s a musical. But it’s going to be immersive theatre. It’s not going to be a theatre, I’m going to create an environment and the music will be within that environment, and Jane’s Addiction will be within that environment.”

Whatever that means.

"There are going to be different environments for people to play music. Musicals make more sense because they're telling stories and they have costumes and something to look at. But it's going to turn into something else. It already is turning into something else. The agony and the frustration is that it's not developed yet."

Again, a little confused. When was stagewear and costumes not a party of rock 'n’ roll? Rockstars develop a persona and dress-up that persona very differently for the stage. This happens in all genres. Why do we need the safety umbrella of a “musical” to play with characters on stage? All rock stars are characters, but okay, okay, Perry.

Then, unrelated, he said:

“For whatever reason, the music industry hasn't been able to keep the great new music organized and healthy. There is no scene to speak of. It could be a lot of things: it could be that people don't really care to go out and listen to music. They want to go out with their friends, they want to play video games or go drink at a bar. They don't necessarily want to stop and see someone developing and playing an instrument.”

Can I ask the rockstars of previous generations (who now operate in the context of million dollar record deals, fancy riders, big studios and leather pants) to stop talking about how there is no scene in today’s music culture and how things are not happening like they used to? You are old as fuck and you do not go out into the subcultures and budding, new scenes, so you have no idea how bad kids want guitar. Shit is alive, you are not. Shut up. Stick to what you know and no, that does not mean you should make a musical.

Mish has lots of things to say about things on her Twitter - @myszkaway