Saga of a Hypester

Saga of a Hypester is an unauthorized biography of Perry Farrell by David Thompson.  It was published on September 15, 1995 by St. Martin’s Griffin.  It is out of print, and has been for several years.

While this book has some good information about Perry Farrell and Jane’s Addiction, it is hard to look past some of the glaring inaccuracies the book passes off as facts.  For a number of years, this book was the primary source of misinformation about both Perry and Jane’s.  For example, this book purports that Perry’s birth name is “Simon Bernstein”.   While we now know this to be completely false, that wasn’t the case in 1995, and enough people bought into Dave Thompson’s poor research that Perry said the following in an interview with Option Magazine (March/April -1996, p. 75):

There’s a book going around some guy wrote about my family and myself. He’s absolutely off. I wish this guy would just shut up. He’s called me Simon Bernstein. My last name was Bernstein, but I’m not Simon! I don’t know where he gets it from. How could he write a book and not even know my name? I guess he just grabbed a bunch of articles to make a quick buck. Now I walk through crowds of kids and people say, ‘Simon, Simon! Can I have your autograph?’

It isn’t a complete waste of a book, but any information gained from this book without additional sources should be taken with a grain of salt, especially when the book itself states:

It should be noted that for dramatic purposes I have occasionally taken the liberty of constructing scenes and dialogue based on previously published statement by or about Perry Farrell.

Release Date: 09/15/1995
Released By: St. Martin’s Griffin
ID Number(s): 0312135858
Medium: Paperback Book
Length: 244 Pages

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