A Total Excess Overdose
Last modified: 23:11:49 CET on 08 Nov, 2010 |
RAW magazine (UK)
Many thanks to Lauren, for typing it out
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Red Hot Chili Peppers: Flesh, bones and Tabasco sauce!
Some Like It Hot
Against all odds and woeful weather conditions, Phil Alexander (blurb) and the ever-whingeing Pete ‘the credit card kid’ Cronin (blurrs) hit the road with The Red Hot Chili Peppers, in search of “Peppermania”, “freaky-tude” and “higher awareness”, only to find guitarist John Frusciante listening to Welsh warbler Tom Jones (!), sticksman Chad Smith grappling in vain with Glaswegian accents and founder-members Anthony Kiedis (aka Antwan the Swan, frontman) and bass chap Flea getting down to earthy spirituality with nary a sock in sight!
“The Red Hot Chili Peppers? Yeah, they’re fuckin’ great, man!” Steven Tyler, Aerosmith
Dateline: A wind-blown Saturday
The Place: Somewhere over England
Turbulence: NOT a scribe’s best friend. Fitting however that The Credit Card Kid and I should be thrown into the world of the Red Hot Chili Peppers by an unceremonious bucket-like haul up to the rain-soaked climes of Glasgow, courtesy of a scuttlin’ shuttle that feels like it’s Hellbound to say the least. It’s a cathartic experience. A kinda scene-setting for the frenzy to come. Y’see, the Chilis have lived in a frenetic vacuum for the last two years, ever since their last UK visit. In a face-to-face encounter they’re a daunting prospect, thriving on a surfeit on energy and enthusiasm tempered only by a relatively newfound desire to assume a far more professional stance.
Sceneshift: Glasgow, Queen Mary Union
Assuming the position is something the Chili chaps have become particularly good at. As The Credit Card Kid gets set to shoot the foursome with showtime rapidly approaching, it’s obvious that the quartet have gone pro! Pronto! They lark around and display the customary sense of Chili-like, codpiece-toting fun. Gone, however, are the fabled socks-on-cocks that saw them rise to notoriety.
Beneath the grins, grimaces and japery concerning what they euphemistically term Cronin’s ‘sausage roll’, there’s a strong desire to get the job done and obtain the photogenic results that matter. Could it be a case of good-time boys growing into the success of their latest album, ‘Mother’s Milk’, currently hovering around the gold mark (ie 500,000 copies) Stateside?
“Well, yeah, but it’s always been our intention to attain longevity and having fun was always part of that because the more fun you have the longer you continue doing it,” divulges Anthony in a swift pre-show chat. “Music is the greatest thing in my life, this band is the greatest thing in my life and there’s nothing I’d rather be doing. If anything has changed, our level of diligence has definitely risen because we don’t have that many distractions. What we’re looking at is succeeding on a personal level. We need to create and we’re only concerned with being true to ourselves rather than due any commercial considerations,” concludes The Swan.
Knock Me Down
The ‘Distractions’ which previously dogged the band were in fact to prove fatal, culminating in the death of guitarist Hillel Slovak in June ’88, the unwitting victim of heroin addiction. The tragic loss of a talented guitarist, Slovak’s death also came close to leaving the Chilis for dead and saw the band plunged into a fit of acute depression.
“It was the most atrocious thing I’ve ever encountered. It wasn’t so much a band-related tragedy as a personally-related tragedy. I was very close to Hillel and I loved him very much,” states Anthony, having come to terms with the prying attitude of outsiders concerning such a personal event. “He was one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever shared my life with and then,” (snaps his fingers), “in one instance he was gone. No-one expected it and a totally mind-boggling sadness just overcame everybody. For about a month or so no-one even considered the band. What we went through was a very private, twisted grief session. Jack Irons, our drummer, quit the band, ‘cos that was the only way he could deal with it and Flea and I were faced with the decision as to whether to carry on with it at all.
“Being the only two consistent members, we have a really strong friendship and we both felt that music was the most powerful thing in our life and that the Red Hot Chili Peppers was the ideal vehicle for what we still wanted to do. Hillel’s death made our focus a lot more acute. It really gave us a slap in the face reminding us that while we’re alive we’re gonna make good with life.
“We decided that it was time to stop fuckin’ around. I also realised that personally I had the choice of staying miserable or stopping drugs and alcohol which had become a negative force in my life. I’ve been clean now for about 19 months. It’s just meant a vast improvement in the quality of my life and it’s allowed me to do what I want to do artistically.”
Johnny, Kick a Hole In The Sky
‘Mother’s Milk’ itself bears out some of the band’s anger and urgency. With initial possible members DH Peligro (ex-Dead Kennedys, drums) and Blackbird McKnight (ex-Parliament/Funkadelic, guitar) falling by the wayside (“That chemistry just didn’t work out.” – Anthony), the dynamic duo stumbled across the then-18 year old John Frusciante and Michigan-born Chad Smith and set about rehearsing for the album almost immediately. Frusciante was the first to join up.
“He was just perfect. Flea ran into him at a jam in Hollywood and I saw him at an audition later on. He’s fresh, funky and full of life,” comments Anthony, a compliment returned by the guitarist.
“They were my favourite band in the whole world!” gushes John. “The beautiful thing about them was that they were so diverse. And now that we’ve actually go used to playing together we can stretch out and do whatever we want to do,” states John with a grin and a pull on a Marlboro.
“It was weird when I first joined the band because we recorded the album after I’d been in the band for just a few months and Chad had actually been in for just two weeks. I was still a little bit confused about my position and we were just like four individuals. Music is all about welding people into a unit and with all the touring we’ve been doing we’re now like an eight-armed cosmic octopus! A kinda four-headed monster of freaky-tude!” exaggerates the 20-year-old.
Frusciante’s overt confidence coupled with his tender years is understandable. A rabid Punk Rock fan at an early age (“I was into LA Punk Rock like Black Flag, Circle Jerks, etc.” –JF) who convinced his father to buy him a guitar after he’d learnt how to play the whole of the Sex Pistols’ ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’ album on his grandfather’s old acoustic before discovering Jimi Hendrix, Frusciante plank-stalks armed with an incredible energy, charisma and a set of fretboard antics that swing with Funk, Punk, Metal and most importantly Soul. A born natural.
“Yeah, he’s just an extension of what we were doing before he joined,” states Flea. “He just embraced the whole Chili philosophy and attitude. He knew all our songs. Basically, he’s just a weird kid who sat in his room for 15 hours a day, chain smoking cigarettes and learning musical theory. All that comes out on stage.”
