Milking Their Music For All It’s Worth

“I really like our song ‘Magic Johnson,” says Flea, the bleached blond mainstay of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He is sitting in an office at EMI Records, ruminating about the songs off his band’s fourth and latest release, Mother’s Milk. “I think that’s mostly because it’s so great to have a song about Magic Johnson and everything he stands for. He’s such an influence to me. He’s just so cool — when he’s backed up against a wall, he can pull off a crazy move and be on top of things again. That’s what it’s all about — to be able to pull off that kind of thing.”

Flea, dressed in jeans, an artistic array of tattoos, and a Laker’s baseball cap, could as easily be discussing the Red Hot Chili Peppers as Johnson. After a year that might have caused the members of a lesser band to search for gainful employment at Taco Bell, the Chili Peppers have managed to regroup, and come back stronger than ever.

It was only a little over a year ago that an integral Pepper, guitarist Hillel Slovak, died of a drug overdose at the age of 25. Though Slovak had been in and out of the band, his position in the Peppers was far more than that of a mere axe player. His death shook the head Chilis — Flea and partner Anthony Kiedis — to the core. (Mother’s Milk is dedicated to Slovak; his artwork decorates the inner sleeve.)

“[His death is] the most awful thing that has ever happened to me,” says Flea, his pain mixed with anger. “I was extremely close to him. He’s the one who taught me how to play the bass. He asked me to start playing the bass. I had been through a million different things with him. The saddest thing is that I just miss him. I miss him very much and wish… When he died my wife hadn’t had our daughter yet. I really wish he could have seen her. I wish that he could see all the things that I’m doing. I hope that he would be proud of me for what I am doing.”

“When Hillel died,” adds Anthony cautiously, “the biggest loss was the loss of a friend, rather than the loss of a guitar player. Even though I consider Hillel one of the greatest guitar players ever. He was a unique and original stylist. But his death was more like losing a part of my heart. I’ll always miss him more as a friend than a guitar player. There’s only one friend, but there are lots of different guitar players.”

Indeed. After mourning Hillel, Anthony and Flea decided they needed to start looking at a bunch of new players and get on with it. But it wasn’t all that easy. The Chili Peppers, after all, aren’t exactly a Top 40 anybody-can-play-the-chords band. Attitude is crucial.

Says Anthony, “When Hillel died, Flea and I had every intention of continuing the Red Hot Chili Peppers. That symbolized our lives, and we thought it would be best to continue living, and not dwell on death. We set out to find new guys. That wasn’t easy, because the Red Hot Chili Peppers are really based on good friendship and a deep understanding of each other. What we originally set out to do was to be complete and utter perpetrators of hardcore, bone-crunching mayhem sex thugs from heaven. To try and describe that to another musician and have it mean something is nearly impossible unless you’ve grown up with that person.”

In the Chili Pepper’s new guitarist, John Frusciante, Flea and Kiedis have come pretty close. A born-and-bred Californian, he was also a longtime Chill Pepper fan.

“John Frusciante grew up listening to us. We had tried a few different musicians before we got John” recalls Flea. “And they were truly great musicians. They were all amazing players, but it didn’t work out with them. They could play, but a band is also like a marriage, and the marriage part didn’t work out It’s like some girl could be beautiful, and a great fuck and you like her, but you just can’t live with her. It was a little like that. Then we got John. He’s eight years younger than we are, but he’s incredibly mature musically. At an incredibly early age he was listening to the music that we were into. He knows a hell of a lot more about music than I do, as far as that goes. He just has a very open mind, and a wide range of tastes, and is extremely talented. He’s put in a hell of a lot of time with his guitar.”

Also new to the band is drummer Chad Smith. Though the Peppers have had somewhat of a rotating door of percussionists during their five-year history, it seems as if Smith may keep the drum stool for a while.
“We auditioned something like 30 drummers for the job,” Flea groans at the memory. “Then we found Chad Smith. He’s such an intense drummer. But when we found him, he didn’t look like he could be in the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He has this, this hair, and he wears bandanas and cut-off Metallica T-shirts. He looks like he could be in some heavy metal band playing at the Troubadour. But he’s a great drummer and has a great gut instinct. He hits the drums so hard!”

With half the band new, the Chili Peppers could easily sound completely different, had Flea and Anthony chosen to go in that direction. But once they decided upon remaining the Red Hot Chili Peppers, it became their job to keep the sound as close to the original spirit as possible, despite the new influences the new band members brought in. Obviously it helped that Frusciante (co-writer of “Mother’s Milk”) practically learned how to play guitar by listening to the Chili Peppers, and he does sound more than a tad like Slovak. Instead of being a problem, that helps bridge the gap between the old and new players. The record and stage show present a cohesive band edging into a new era.

“It is different when you have different musicians playing,” muses Flea. “What we’re trying to do now is maintain the rhythmic intensity and alt the different things that we’ve developed through the years. We’re trying to take that and plug it into better song vehicles.”

Intensity is probably the best one-word definition of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Live, the band comes as close to all-out anarchy as is possible within the confines of legality. The Pepper’s show is half music, half performance art, and their audience is loyal, nuts, and crosses all age barriers. At a recent private party for the Chili Peppers, at least three women attempted to gain entry by claiming to be Flea’s mom. Any of the three could have been; none were.

It is a strange position. The Red Hot Chili Peppers have a loyal hardcore audience of somewhat crazed fans— an audience unlike almost any other rock band’s. Why?

“It’s hard to say,” shrugs Anthony. “I think it’s because we are perpetrators of a Hollywood lifestyle — our own personal lifestyle is in this town. But I think that our fans realize that the Red Hot Chili Peppers are offering a completely unique standpoint, ideologically speaking. And musically. We create something that really isn’t available anywhere else. The people who find that, and relate to that, can attach themselves to that, and perhaps have been looking a long time to find something that’s different from what’s available. When they finally find it, they want to keep it.”

In the past, though, the very excitement that the band members generate live worked against them on vinyl. Somehow, the records have never quite managed to capture the excitement of a live Chili Pepper show. And without the visual aids, the band sounded stilted. While Mother’s Milk comes the closest to that feel, it’s also not quite there. The Peppers know it.

“There’s no way records can be the same as playing live,” acknowledges Flea, “Going into the studio is such a different thing. You can be in a studio and do a back flip, and all that is going to happen is that it will sound like you missed a few notes on your instrument. If you do the same thing live, It will stir the crowd into an orgasmic frenzy.”

Mother’s Milk does manage to capture the band’s live essence, if not the chaos. The songs are more varied than in the past, representing a wider range of styles, subjects, and pace. The tune getting the most initial attention is “Knock Me Down.” Though it has been billed (by EMI) as anti-drug, Flea begs to differ.

“That song means a lot to me,” he says. “I think the lyrics are beautiful. They’re about Hillel, obviously. But it is not just about him. It’s about friendship and that no one is beyond needing it. Nothing is more important than friendship and love. That song means a lot to me.”

So apparently does “Higher Ground,” an amazing cover of the Stevie Wonder tune, picked by Flea, who loves Wonder and the tune. “Not only is the music good,” he States, “but the lyrics are great. Especially as far as the situation that the band has been in, as far as state of mind, for the past few months. That song is really about raising and uplifting yourself spiritually. I’m not talking about religion or anything like that. The song is about rising above that and getting your own head into a space where you can do something about it. About being in a state of mind where you can be positive enough to accomplish something positive.

“But another reason for doing that song, outside of the increased spirituality of it, is that it’s an homage to Stevie Wonder for being one of the great musical heroes of the universe. Ever. And when you do a cover, and we’ve done some over the years, when you play it over and over and over again, you start to learn what and how a mind as heavy as Stevie Wonder’s was thinking. You try and understand what would drive someone to write such a great song as that. You begin to understand the structure, and how it’s put together as well. It’s about learning.”

It’s also about something that the Chili Peppers don’t really want to discuss: commerciality. Or the lack thereof. Because the Chilis have such a diverse sound, incorporating everything from reggae to funk to metal, they are hard to categorize. They don’t fit any nice slot — a problem in American radio. Top 40 radio hasn’t wanted to know about the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

“It’s very frustrating,” admits Flea. “Sometimes it’s like, ‘Wow, is there no place for us?’ There should be a place for us, we sell out 2000-seaters all over the country. But that’s mostly based on college radio play and word of mouth. I think that there are songs on this album — “Knock Me Down” and “Higher Ground”—that could be put on the radio. If they’re not put on the radio, I could either get violent—except,” he laughs sadly, “I wouldn’t know who to get violent with — or just keep going. If they get played, great, if not I’m still proud of what we did.”

Commercial success aside, Anthony and Flea are perfectly comfortable discussing serious issues that range from the environment to nuclear holocaust, and a number of their songs have touched those issues.

“We have sung about environmental things, serious subjects,” says Flea. “We’ve done benefits for the Sea Shepherd. I mean, we’re about having a great time, but you can’t have a great time if you can’t breathe because the air is so polluted.”

That said, the Chili Peppers are still and will remain a party band. The attitude they present the world is, at best, sophomoric, with an emphasis on locker room humor. This is, after all, the group who shot the cover of the Abbey Road EP wearing nothing but strategically positioned gym socks. The back cover of Mother’s Milk poses them in their cleanest of Jockeys.

“We can be very serious,” insists Flea, “but the Red Hot Chili Peppers are about explosive spontaneity and being as intense as possible about whatever it is you’re doing at the time. When we go to play a gig, that’s all we think about: doing the best fucking show that we can do, and playing as hard as we can until we drop dead afterwards.”

— Sharon Leveten