The Entertainers
Last modified: 1:58:44 CET on 16 Jan, 2010 |
May 2006, Dazed and Confused (UK)
thanks to Caroline for typing it out
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The Red Hot Chili Peppers are California. Not since the Beach Boys has a band embodied the Golden State so completely and played at being ambassadors of the California myth with such energy and vividness. But while the Beach Boys conveyed a kind of blissed out, blonde-haired blue-sky optimism, the Chilis explore a far more complew California, an outlaw outback where a frontier mentality still holds true. The California of the Chili Peppers is continually evolving, an untamed land that contains all manner of opposites - honesty and insincerity, compassion and ruthlessness.
"California is so many things - it's tragic and it's pathetic, beautiful and wild and alive, and it's an indelible part of who we are and what we do," explains the Chili Peppers' iconic bassist Mike Balzary (aka Flea). "John was born in California. Anthony and I moved here when we were 11. Chad didn't arrive until 1989 but, by now, he's California through and through. Our biggest influence has probably been growing up in Hollywood," he continues. "And seeing it for all its glory, and for the complete backstabbing, power-hungry world it can be. We understand its dysfunction and we see the place for the bullshit that it is. But along with all that, you have beauty and art and music and craziness and freedom."
"It's a mythical place," elaborates the equally ironic frontman and singer Anthony Kiedis. "And so, of course, it lends itself to myths."
The Red Hot Chili Peppers' sound evolved from the primordial post-punk wasteland of LA's music scene in the early 80s, when the golden sheen of Hollywood had been worn thin by the economic depression of the late 70s. Beneath the tinselly glint was grit, grime and cracked pavements, smog and smack, and the edgy sun-blown harshness of hardcore outfits like X and The Germs.
Flea and Anthony Kiedis were at LA's fairfax High together. The school is located at the centre of the storm, on the corner of Melrose and Fairfax, and in 1979 it was within spitting distance of a slew of punk clubs and the slick streets of Sunset Strip. These two friends had first -hand experience of a now legendary epoch in the city's music history. Along with a few of the other original band members, including Jack Irons and the late Hillel Slovak, Flea and Kiedis were fuelled by their immediate surroundings. For them, the frenzied, vital world of early hardcore and new wave mixed easily with the drama and music club geekiness of their high school pals.
"We were living in this time of creative explosiveness,' remembers Kiedis, "with bands like The Germs, Black Flag and The Dickies. I got into very aggressive, esoteric and chaotic sounding music, which made sense to me and what I was feeling at the time. And yet we were also listening to Coltrane and other great jazz music, so we were getting the best of both worlds."
" I liked Dizzy Gillepsie," recalls Flea. "I was an arty little kid. But then The Germs changed everything for me in terms of how I saw rock music. I liked post-punk funk stuff, Parliament, all that. But it was The Germs who taught me that the emotional content of one out-of-tune chord could be as great as a John Coltrane solo. To me, that was the birth of the Chili Peppers, that was the moment that liberated me."
After a self-titled debut from Flea and Kiedis, the band in its original incarnation, with Irons and Slovak on board, would release three innovative albums, the George Clinton produced Freaky Styley in 1985, 1987's The Uplift Mofo Party Plan and 1988's five track release "The Abbey Road EP". That same year, their commercially uneven but musically intriguing start was cut abruptly and tragically short by Slovak's death from a heroin overdose.
