Party of Fun – The Red Hot Chili Pampers
Last modified: 2:17:25 CET on 24 Jan, 2012 |
Many thanks to Wei-Wei Lee, for translation.
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Mother’s Milk needed!
That week in July, New York is mostly occupied with the New Music Seminar. Artists who have already “arrived” don’t need to have anything to do with it and are simply doing their daily work: recording fame sustaining successors, performing, making video clips, promoting. However, The Red Hot Chili Peppers are semi arrived and are doing it differently. The weekend after the Seminar is reserved for recording video clips for two songs of the new record Mother’s Milk, which particularly sounds different from the previous one and can hardly be called fame sustaining.
Singer Anthony Kiedis and bassist Flea Balzary are in New York and thus can make their appearance on the Seminar in a panel about music and video (Flea to director Alex Kashishian: ‘Hey, what do you think of those early Traci Lords videos? Strong lighting, huh?’), jam with George Clinton during the opening party in The Palladium, organize a Midgetgolf & Beer party and do some interviews for promotion.
A year ago, everything was looking gloomy for The Red Hot Chili Peppers; guitarist Hillel Slovak died on 27 June, not long after a successful European tour, during which they also came to the Pinkpop festival. When Anthony and Flea decide to continue with a new guitarist, drummer Jack Irons quits the band permanently. Now and then there is some news about a new guitarist (former Funkadelic member Blackbird McKnight is one of them), but the definitive Red Hot Chili Peppers, Mark II is announced only after the recordings for a new record have come to a good end.
Whether guitarist John Frusciante and drummer Chad Smith are valuable gains for the Pepper sound, will probably remain a point of discussion for a while. They are from a more straight rock direction and lack the loose, fluent playing of Slovak and Irons. In particular John Frusciante’s metal-like, tight guitar riffs make Mother’s Milk a considerable heavier record than its predecessors. Michael Beinhorn produced for the second time and took care of a very ‘live’ group sound, even more than on The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, in which the fringe has been reduced by background ladies and some musicians.
Uplift was the first record the Peppers themselves were satisfied with. The Red Hot Chili Peppers (’83, production Andy Gill) and Freaky Styley (’85, with George Clinton) have left some less good memories, simply because there was no group sound. Now the crossover of funk, rap, metal, hardcore and (decreasing since ’89) psychedelica that can take great forms on stage, can not be recognized easily. However, the new line-up creates a more easily recognizable sound, something especially EMI is very happy with, that appears in the American bio: ‘These are the mature songs we knew had to come; we finally get to know these musical, freewheeling anarchists.’
‘Yeah,’ says Flea to this: ‘It probably has something to do with the guitar sound. Rock & roll, you know, the kids can headbang more, you know…’
Blob
EMI’s office is located on the eighteenth floor and it is hard not to look outside constantly. Flea is choosing and listening to Marvin Gaye-songs behind a high-up’s desk. His bleached hair is held together neatly in many plucks by red hair elastics. The distinctive head is also decorated with a goatee, painted red. Anthony enters in a particularly extravagant red spectacle frame, and a tightly cut gray summer costume, of which the trouser-legs are short. Breakfast has been ordered; outside it is raining.
Raining a lot in Hollywood lately?
Anthony: ‘No, not at all… I don’t mind to be sitting here in the rain. I love Hollywood, but…’
Flea: ‘It’s become shit.’
Anthony: ‘Er, the smog and pollution are getting worse and worse. We’ve got one of the most severe cases of air pollution in the world.’
Flea: ‘It’s really bad. Just before we went to New York it was so dirty, you couldn’t even see a few hundred meters off the road…’
Anthony: ‘If the smog pulls up, like during the winter months, it’s one of the most beautiful places to live. Green hills, palm trees, the beautiful ocean, blue sky… But then summer comes and everything changes into a thick, beige-gray layer of foam. You can’t see the hills…’
Flea: ‘…although they’re just a few hundred meters away. You only see a gray blob. Vague shadows.’
Are the Red Hot Chili Peppers infrangibly connected with Hollywood?
Anthony: ‘Er, I think Hollywood has had a very relevant influence on our existence. It’s pretty hard to bring tangible proof, but that is where we grew up, that is where we did what we should do, that is where we saw everything happen. But we’ve been talking about moving a lot lately…’
Eindhoven
Are the Red Hot Chili Peppers infrangibly connected with Hollywood?
Anthony: ‘Look, the style was born and raised in America, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do whatever you want with it in other countries.’
Flea: ‘There are so many groups already in America, I can’t say whether Fishbone, we and others are the top of an iceberg.’
Anthony: ‘Yeah, if there already is a Hollywood or American scene of comparable groups, then it’s widely spread and difficult to be seen as a coherent whole. Elements of our music suddenly turn up, so… And in foreign countries… A band like the Urban Dance Squad has gathered very American elements like rap, funk and American rock & roll with an own taste to it, because their life experience comes from an other country. The environment and social electricity in America has a lot to do with why we sound like we do. The Squad sounds very good, but to me absolutely Dutch. Whether I can define that? Hmm, it’s not the vocals, for that matter they could’ve been from the Bronx. I don’t know, it’s a feeling.’
Flea: ‘The singer of our opening act in Eindhoven was really funny (Go-Gorillas, MvS), backstage he was speaking Dutch, like: Jeutebreutebietenjietebietbiet, or something, and on stage it was: Yo! How’s everybody doin’, yo, havin’ a good time? And then again: broetnbietnsploetn.’
Are cities like Utrecht and Eindhoven inspiring?
Anthony: ‘On tour? When I was on tour, for me those cities represented very peaceful communities, with a very relaxed feeling. I can even say they’re some of my favorite cities. Lowly small places, where you can go out normally without a lot of pressure. Worries disappear quickly, if you hang around there for a while. After New York, Los Angeles, London and Paris, those cities were almost some kind of resort. A tranquillizer…I am trying to think about whether a specific tour experience ended up in a song… Anyway, I just want to say that where you live isn’t the only relevant influence on your music. Look at Urban Dane Squad, look at George Clinton, who lives in a tiny farmer town, Brooklyn, Michigan. He does create the most rocking urban funk sounds that mankind could ever hear, so… Okay, of course he spends a lot of time in Detroit, that’s pretty near. Still: it’s just what you concentrate on.’
