A Habitual Addiction to Album Cover Controversy

Perry Farrell apparently can’t make an album cover without stirring a fuss--even if it’s unintentional.

In fact, the latest potential controversy from the former Jane’s Addiction leader is, he swears, accidental.

The element that troubled his record company: possible anti-Semitism, potentially a much more explosive subject than the concerns over nudity and sexual content that swirled around Farrell’s covers for two Jane’s Addiction albums.

Farrell, who was raised as a Jew, last week submitted artwork to Warner Bros. Records for the debut album from his new group, Porno for Pyros. The cover: a six-pointed star with a swastika in the middle. That raised eyebrows at the company, which is still stinging from the Ice-T “Cop Killer” furor of last year.

Ted Mico, Farrell’s publicist, says that the whole thing was innocent. The original art, he says, was based on an Indian yantra , an ancient form incorporating geometric patterns and designs. Swastikas appeared in various cultures’ art for centuries before the Nazis adopted them as a symbol.

“It wasn’t meant to be a Star of David with a swastika, but it could have been perceived that way,” Mico says. “Various people Perry knows saw it and said ‘Oh!’ and he changed his mind.”

Plans are now for the image of a little devil to replace the swastika in the artwork.

Jane’s Addiction’s 1988 Warner Bros. debut, “Nothing’s Shocking,” featured a Farrell sculpture of two naked women joined at the hips and shoulders, while 1990’s “Ritual de lo Habitual” featured another Farrell sculpture portraying the singer in a menage a trois with two women. When some record stores refused to carry the latter, Farrell offered an alternative version of a plain white cover with the First Amendment printed on it.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, applauds Farrell’s decision to alter the new artwork. “It would have made the cover an issue, not the music,” he says. “He’s right to do this, if for no other reason than to spare Holocaust survivors some pain. And in the music industry you don’t want young neo-Nazis picking up the album and looking at that symbol as a symbol of empowerment.”