Where The Funk Have You Been?
Last modified: 11:47:39 CET on 24 Sep, 2008 |
May 2006, Blunt (Australia)
Many thanks to Máté, for typing it out
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Nine albums into a career that has spanned over 20 years and the Red Hot Chili Peppers get their funk back. Blunt editor Matt Reekie travels to L.A. for a sneak peak at the new double album Stadium Arcadium.
Anthony Kiedis has been sitting in the same room of the Chateau Marmont for days now. The Red Hot Chili Peppers singer knows the layout of the notorious West Hollywood hideaway well. It was here at the Chateau that Kiedis recorded some of the vocal parts for the previous couple of Chilis albums, and - like many a celebrity before him - he's enjoyed the odd bender in these lush Old Hollywood surrounds.
Ten or so years ago, the idea of Kiedis locked in a room at the Chateau Marmont for several days would've conjured up multiple images of self-destructive overindulgence. But right now the long-time clean and sober frontman is here for the relatively harmless purpose of having questions fired at him by an assortment of the world's rock media who have congregated in Los Angeles for a sneak preview of the brand new Red Hot Chili Peppers album Stadium Arcadium.
In the past few days Kiedis has been asked all sorts of stuff, everything from questions about his battles with drug and alcohol addiction to his reasons for growing his hair long again. But the stupidest question of them all? "This journalist, Spanish I think, wanted to know if the fellas in my band were vegetables, what vegetable would they be," he says, curling his mouth up at the side in a familiar smirk as he settles back into a large antique chair.
For a 43-year old who has spent the best part of his life battling with substance abuse, Kiedis looks surprisingly unscathed. Up close it’s obvious he has a certain manicured LA style - his hair nicely dyed and washed, his face freshly out of a mudpack - but there's no denying how youthful and healthy he seems. Today he’s not in the mood to be the flamboyant flash-talking Anthony that often dominates the spotlight onstage and in the press, instead playing at the humbler, deeper-thinking, more reflexive Anthony - ironically the more confident of the pair.
"I'm not necessarily trying to exorcise all of my demons because those things are opportunities," he says, fixing me with a stare that is engaging without being overbearing. In between the previous Chili Peppers album, 2002s By The Way and Stadium Arcadium, Kiedis issued his bestselling autobiography, Scar Tissue, which revealed details of his nomadic upbringing, the formation and existence of the band, and his experiences locked in the vicious cycle of addiction and rehab that inspired hit songs such as "Under the Bridge" and “Otherside". "When the difficult times come round, it's an opportunity” Kiedis continues. “And I thank god for the pain and the challenges and the difficulties because it's an opportunity to change, and those things usually inspire powerful emotions and desire to create art and music."
Another Red Hot Chili Pepper who knows all about pain, change and opportunity is guitarist John Frusciante, though yet to commit his memories, to paper, as Kiedis has done, Frusciante can just as vividly describe his trip to hell and back. Having joined the Peppers in 1938 at just 19-years of age after the death of original guitarist Hillel Slovak, Frusciante helped take them to a whole new stratosphere both creatively and commercially with 1991’s classic Blood Sugar Sex Magik album. But just several months after its release, he imploded due to a mixture of drug use, mental anguish, and an intense resentment of the band's success, quitting while on tour in Japan in May '92.
Without John, the Chilis floundered creatively. Without the Chilis, John sank into a decrepit world of almost suicidal drug addiction. In 1994 he claimed that voices in his head had told him to take drugs for 6 years. Around that time, actor Johnny Depp and Butthole Surfers singer Gibson Haynes directed a disturbing short documentary on Frusciante’s destructive post - Peppers lifestyle entitled Stuff. An article written by journalist Robert Wilonsky from the mid-‘90s paints a picture of utter squalor and impending death:
“There were whisperings about how he was holed up in his Hollywood Hills home, a place few dared to tread because of the stench. It was the smelt of death, or more likely just the smell of feces and urine collected over weeks and months. John's house became notorious for its horrific mess and graffiti-covered walls. There were stories of a former superstar rock star guitarist who now sees little of the outside world, who stays in his house to read and write and paint and play guitar (and shoot up). But they're not just rumors. John Frusciante is living the cliché - the rock star holed up at the Chateau Marmont, where bigger names than he have checked in to check out."
