School Of Hard Rocks
Last modified: 1:59:40 CET on 16 Jan, 2010 |
MUSIK
The Chili Peppers have called on 14 players in all, Kiedis and Flea being the only constants. The current line-up dates from 1998, when Frusciante, who played on Mother's Milk and Blood Sugar Sex Magik, rejoined. Drummer Chad Smith has been there since 1989. The band's early influences included George Clinton, Jimi Hendrix and Gang Of Four.
Flea " I would see rock bands with their long hair and stuff and I could see that these guys were pussies. This was really about going crazy, and is I was in a rock band I was going to go bananas. And suddenly I wasn't a shy kid any more. I was a maniac. I was still shy when I came off stage. But then I discovered alcohol."
AK "We wanted to do something based on funk. We had a dream of creating this amazing funk band that was all about dancing and energy and sex. We set out to be perprtrators of hard-core bone-crunching mayhem. We wanted to be sex things form heaven, but we wore clashing clothes and were basically outcasts. We used to have a huge geek following."
Flea "We started out as a joke. THen one night I felt this volcanic thing that, like, erupted. It was wild. I felt we were onto something."
AK "We got Andy Gill [of Gang Of Four] to produce our first album but he had moved on by then and his thing was having a hit at all costs. One day I got a glimpse of Gill's notebook, and next to the song 'Police Helicopter' he'd written: 'Shit'. So one night in the studio Flea said, 'Let's put this on hold, I'm going to take a big shiny shit.' Andy said, 'Oh yeah, bring that back for me, won't you'. I followed Flea out of the room. So Flea defecated and we put it in an empty pizza box and went running back down the hallway and delivered the shit pizza to Andy."
Capturing the excitement of their live shows on disc took five albums to get right. As they entered the Nineties, the Chili Peppers were more famous for putting socks on their cocks than records on the radio. That changed when they hired Rick Rubin as producer for 1991's Blood Sugar Sex Magik. He installed them in a secluded hacienda in Laurel Canyon and told them to write some songs.
AK "By now Rick rubin had transformed himself from a brasj, caffeine-satured New Yorker into a spiritually minded Californian. With him we became the most prolific we'd ever been. We'd jam all day, and then Rick would come by and lie on the couch for hours at atime, taking notes. He didn't miss a beat."
Flea "With Rick it was the things he told us not to do. He taught us to focus on the song."
AK "John and Flea were getting really close at this point, based on their mutual appreciation of pot. I was clean and John was probably resenting the fact that I always wanted everything to be clean around me. There was a sense of 'here comes the narc' when I'd intrude on one of their pot-smoking scenarios. I rode home from rehearsal one day and the loneliness that I was feeling trigerred memories of my time with Ione, this beautiful angel of a girl, when instead of embracing her I was downtown with fucking gangsters shooting speedballs under a bridge.
"I felt I had thrown away so much in my life but I also felt an unspoken bond between me and my city. I started freestyling some poetry in my car and putting the words to a melody. Even though it wasn't our usual style, Rick Rubin liked it and John came up with the perfect, most inventive chord progression for the melody."
The resulting song, "Under The Bridge", was to become a worldwide hit, but guitarist John Frusciante was far from satisfied. He left the band shortly afterwards.
JF "We were just finishing Blood Sugar... and I turned a corner one day and a voice just popped into my head saying, 'You just gotta quit the band, John, there are all kinds of other musical projects we've got lined up for you."
AK "We had spent the entire Eighties trying to sell a record and as soon as John joined, we did. So his experience was totally different to ours. John and I used to be incredibly fast friends and we had a lovers' fall out. He was on the verge of a very dark, druggy period and there's nothing anybody can do to stop that. If that's what your soul is requesting, it's going to happen."
Flea "During the Dave Navarro years [1993-1998] it was really hard to get everyone together. He had been a junkie and towards the end he started using again and his heart wasn't really in it. When things got real bad with Anthony I can't say I didn't consider joining Jane's Addiction [Navarro's other band] but it wasn't my music, and those guys were all on drugs."
AK "In 1998 Flea came to me and said, 'I don't think I can do this any more. But the only thing that could keep me in the band is if John came back.' As far as I knew John wanted me dead so I thought, 'That's not going to happen,' And a week later he was back. The transition from impossible to absolutely happening was so seamless it was a miracle. When we made Californication [1999] it was great because there was zero expectation on us, we had been dormant for so long. We have a lot of experience of things almost falling apart. We've survived death, insanity, marriage, every hurdle you can imagine, and it never put us to bed for good."
Flea "We also have this old showbiz ethic; every show has gotta be the best. Before every show we get into a circle, hold hands and someone makes a speech. Most bands are too cool for that. It's all done on computer. Those Hyde Park shows were great. 250,000 people coming to see us play was such a bizarre concept. The same four little guys, thumping away on our stuff."
AK "We don't tour the way we used to when it was nonstop madness for months on end. Flea wanted to stop touring five years ago because we did it without breaks. So we decided to take a huge drop in income and tour for three weeks then come home for two weeks and rest. It's a short-term hit, financially, but it means the band is still together. It's better for everybody.
"The stars aligned for us on this new record. There was a definite and perceptible love in the room driving us forward . I feel a lot of my destructive dark impulses are in the past now, but as humans we're constantly being introduced to new darkness, as a tool for learning things. If I had dispelled all the darkness forever, I would be kind of bored and useless."
Red Hot Chili Peppers' new album, Stadium Arcadium (Warner), is out on 8 May.
