Perry Farrell, the frontman of LA alt-rock band Jane’s Addiction and one of the co-founders of the Lollapalooza festival, performed “Pirate Punk Politician,” on The Tonight Show Monday night. The track is from his latest solo album Kind Heaven. The song is a slinky hard rock anthem with unsurprisingly political undertones (“Split your country down the middle/Break her open, kill the kiddos”), and Farrell performed it with the appropriate amount of gravitas.
Fallon also sat Farrell down for an interview, and the two talked about Farrell’s antiquing hobby and his experiences with organizing Lollapalooza. Pointing out Fallon’s in-house band The Roots, Farrell recalled one year in which Budweiser opted for a sponsorship deal at the festival, and Farrell had to scramble to come up with a better way of advertising beyond putting up giant signs for the beer.
“I thought, what about when The Roots are playing, we get a giant keg of beer, and then we just grab some people, a small handful of people and say, ‘You guys can go and watch The Roots right onstage with a keg of beer, but you gotta finish it before their set is done,’” recalls Farrell. “And we did it! I don’t know if I ever told you guys that, but we had some people partying.”