Porno for Pyros Heads to Denver on Reunion Tour

Porno for Pyros lands in Denver to play the Fillmore Auditorium on Thursday, February 22, for its reunion as well as farewell tour, and drummer Stephen Perkins — who also plays with Porno for Pyros singer Perry Farrell in the legendary Los Angeles rock group Jane’s Addiction — is fondly reminiscing on the quirky, psychedelic-rock band’s early-’90s formation.

“Think what the environment was in the music scene in ’93,” Perkins says from behind a drum kit at an L.A. rehearsal space. “Jane’s Addiction obviously broke up in ’91, and I had a year with Infectious Grooves before we started Porno. I met a whole group of musicians more on the metal side, and that fine-tuned some of my drum skills away from where Jane’s Addiction was, which was very groovy and tribal at the essence.”

To form Porno for Pyro's Latin-tinged alt-rock, Perkins and Farrell decided not to have a shredding guitar player as they had in Jane’s Addiction’s Dave Navarro, who struck lightning over locked-in bass and drums with beautiful, skyscraping notes. “I thought, ‘Let’s take up a lot of the spots with vocal and drum rhythm, and we can make polyrhythmic patterns with the vocal or even two or three drum patterns interplaying with the vocal, because Perry’s very jazz-oriented with his phrasing...it’s almost bongo-like," explains Perkins.

For the self-titled 1993 Porno for Pyros debut, Farrell and Perkins and guitarist Peter DiStefano sat on a couch with acoustic guitars and bongos and dug into what Perkins calls “folk imagery, lyrically and guitar-wise,” creating a “campfire style” in contrast to the raging arena rock of Jane’s Addiction.

“That was, to me, a punk-rock moment,” Perkins recalls. “It didn’t have punk-rock speed or pacing, but it was punk rock because it was going against the grain of everything else that was happening. We had something to say, and we really wanted to take our time. A lot of that record was the pacing of the song and where the lyrics can tell the story. It was a different approach than where Jane’s was coming from. We really tried to step aside. We just kept trying new ideas and tried not to replicate what Jane’s was great at, and see if we could do something different. It was a real fresh band — very raw.”

The group's first single, “Cursed Female,” with its haunting harmonica and back-alley innuendo, was certainly raw and dark, and the accompanying video was like something out of Jim Carroll’s Basketball Diaries. The second, “Pets,” was a left-field hit on MTV and helped earn Porno for Pyros a memorable set at Woodstock ’94. The band's lineup shifted during the making of 1996’s Good God’s Urge, which featured the romping “Tahitian Moon,” and the appearance of then-Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Navarro and his bandmate Flea on the album pushed Porno for Pyros’ second album to reflect Jane’s Addiction.

DiStefano, Perkins and the iconic L.A. bassist Mike Watt (who played in Porno for Pyros from 1995 until the group stopped performing in 1998, and is now back) went on to form a jazz-punk band called Banyan. Except for a set at Farrell's fiftieth birthday party in 2009, Porno for Pyros didn’t play together from 1998 until July 2020, during an online, lockdown-era broadcast of Lollapalooza.

Porno for Pyros released its first new music in 26 years, the gently grooving “Agua,” last year, and is reportedly releasing a four-song EP soon. Asked why the band is describing this month-long coast-to-coast American tour as both a reunion and a farewell, Perkins points to the band’s 2022 summer shows, which were spurred by the need for someone to replace Jane’s Addiction at a gig in Florida after Navarro caught COVID-19.

“Our manager said, ‘Porno for Pyros — what about you guys?’” Perkins recalls. “It was an organic rebirth, which was great. ... Porno can always exist, because it’s a campfire band at heart. We can get together. It doesn’t make sense to even put the word ‘farewell’ on it. I don’t like that word. If there’s a purpose for us, there will be more.”

Porno for Pyros, 7 p.m. Thursday, February 22, Fillmore Auditorium, 1510 Clarkson Street. Tickets are $25.