Abstract Sounds

An endless interview schedule to promote, “Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik”, their latest album and first for Warner Brothers, has left John Frusciante RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS guitarist, looking decidedly burned. I arrive at the Royal Garden Hotel in London just in time to see him disappearing into a lift en route to his room. John, explains the record company PR, has had enough, and the frazzled fretster is packing his bags and heading home on the next available Concorde flight.

Anthony Kiedis, the band’s live wire singer, meanwhile, has weathered all the media attention rather better. In a plush suite some four floors up and over looking a sun drenched Kensington Gardens, he appears very cool, very calm and pretty darned collected. Surprising, because this is his last interview of the day, and although I expect him to be all talked out he’s every inch the professional.

“We had no idea about the music business when we formed,” begins the singer, pouring himself a glass of mineral water, before going on the explain their departure from from EMI records. “All we knew was that we wanted to make a record, and so when our manager got us this deal with EMI it was great. But, EMI was actually a terrible place for us to be, it was just the wrong label. As the years progressed we’ve just kept creating what we consider to be amazingly ground breaking and inspirational anti-mainstream music, for people who needed an alternative to mediocrity, and EMI just didn’t understand what we were all about.”

“They always treated us as these pet punk rockers,” adds the frontman with an air of mild mannered contempt. “And kept us aboard to make themselves look good, but never did anything to support us or gave us the freedom to just get on and make the music, which is what a band is supposed to do.”

So 89’s highly successful “Mother’s Milk” opus turned out to be the bands last for EMI. With said album having been such a hit with fans and press alike, the Los Angeles based four-piece, completed by bassist Flea and drummer Chad Smith, found themselves being chased by all manner of major concerns, with Warner Brothers reportedly paying rather a lot of money to get the boys on their roster. Kiedis sounds pleased with their new home, as he goes on; “There’d been all this time since “Mother’s Milk”, and we had the feeling in our guts that we were about to create the best thing we’ve ever done. So it was going to be much too important to give it back to a label that didn’t understand us. We quit EMI, wrote the record and then found a new label. When all was said and done, Warner’s seemed like the warmest and friendliest place to be. It’s based in the same city we live in ourselves, just the whole thing felt right.”

So whilst the time spent between the album has involved its fair share of internal politics, Kiedis looks back fondly over all the touring they did to promote “Mother’s Milk”. “My fondest recollection of all that touring is just us becoming a band,” he says. “When we went in to record “Mother’s Milk” we were a band, but we hadn’t really lived together, and it was the next two years of touring which really brought us together. We gained so much respect, understanding and love for each other that it brought us to the point where we could make this record. The whole point of being in a band is to develop this sense of musical telepathy, where you can communicate by listening to the other person playing, which ultimately helps the music.”

And considering the tragic consequences that brought this line-up together (guitarist Frusciante replaced original six-stringer Hillel Slovak after his untimely death in early ’89), the singer now feels that they’ve got the chemistry just about right. “It’s definitely roaring right now,” he adds contentedly.

The band have rarely sounded better, and, as the singer goes on to explain, the album’s title is perfect for giving you an idea of what to expect. “As much as anything it’s four words that look and sound cool together,” he says. “It just has this kind of vibe to it. But I hate trying to explain my lyrics or titles, although subconsciously the RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS are attempting to try and spew back into a world that is devoid of any, an element of magic, this record is a magical experience to us, and hopefully when other people listen to it they’ll hear that too.”

Somewhat surprisingly, “Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik”, has been produced by Rick Rubin, and I put the question to the singer, that it’s rather a departure for both parties, isn’t it? “Before it all happened I did have a lot of doubts and preconceptions,” admits Kiedis. “Not knowing Rick Rubin, and only having looked into the stuff he’s worked on like SLAYER and DANZIG I originally kept thinking that he wasn’t the right guy at all. He seemed much more into all that demonic aspect of music, whereas the RED HOT CHILLI PEPPERS are such perpetrators of the positive energy, and I was worried he may not get the colourful picture of what we’re all about.”

Thankfully, however, the singer’s fear were unnecessary. “He proved me wrong,” continues the frontman, “He turned out to be such a warm, intelligent and sensitive person who is now a great friend of mine. Working with him was very comfortable, because he was so unconcerned with stamping his egotistical afflictions on the RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS, he had a great deal of respect and understanding for what we were doing. He just tried to bring out the best in us and more than add anything to what we were doing, he subtracted, which was what we needed, because simplicity can have so much more power.”

“He made us feel very relaxed,” adds the singer. “We actually recorded the album in a house, which was his idea, and we all lived there together for seven weeks while we recorded the record. That was the greatest idea.”

People always say that Rubin is unorthodox to work with and the singers comments confirm the point, but had they felt the need to break away from a lot of the procedures they’d followed in the past? “We don’t really spend much time analysing what we’re going to do,” claims the frontman. “We work by an extremely spontaneous process. We’d worked with Michael Beinhorn twice in the past and that had seemed to have run its course and it was just time to work with something new. As it turned out it proved to be a growing experience, for both us and Rick Rubin.”

Some of the material, meanwhile, takes on a slightly subtler feel than much of the bands previous work and I wonder if this is a sign that the CHILI’s are perhaps mellowing as they mature? “I don’t think there’s anything mellow about the slower or more sensitive songs on this album,” is his blunt reply. “Just a word like ballad seems to pigeon-hole a song into some kind of genre, that’s why we more commonly refer to them as salads, because ballad doesn’t really give a very accurate explanation of a tune. We’re not afraid to play anything either, and we certainly don’t place any restrictions on what we’re going to do. If we’re feeling a particular way then we’ll write a song about it and is that song is slow and sensitive and being referred to as a ballad then we don’t really give a fuck. I think that there’s more pure soulful energy on this record than was on “Mother’s Milk”, that album may have been louder and more brash, but the spiritual connection on this one is a lot more powerful.”

So how do they feel when they hear people describing it as their most mature offering to date? “I don’t care,” says the singer. “If people want to verbalize about what we’re doing it’s up to them. I still feel like a teenager who’s in the process of growing as a musician, and I think that we’re just in the neo-phite years of our development, and it’s going to get better and better. This is just another stage really.”

The band have also done another cover on this album, ROBERT JOHNSON’s “They’re Red Hot”. “Well,” the frontman considers. “I think it’s because we’re all just fans of great music and ROBERT JOHNSON was just someone who we were feeling very inspired by at the time. It’s fun to play covers too, there’s no complex mystery as to why we do it, it’s fun, and it’s also kind of like paying your respects to someone who deserves it.”

Although the band seems to get away with it a lot easier than many who try it. Why does he think that is, because they give a song their own sense of identity or what? “No,” says the singer. “It’s because we don’t just do it for the sake of doing it, but because we mean it and we love these songs. It isn’t any scheme to try and be clever or anything, we just love the tunes and I think people are able to see the sincerity behind the way they’re done.”

Having toured extensively with the last album it’s reasonable to assume that, come October, the band embark on what’s likely to be yet another mammoth world tour. But, I wonder, what new territory’s would they like to break into? “Well, for a start,” says the singer. “I think that these songs should really work in the live environment, I’m really looking forward to that. But, obviously, there are millions of places we haven’t been to yet, and one of them is Australia, which is kind of a shame because Flea was born there. I’d also like to go to South America, and from what I hear, Brazil is like a hot bed for RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS activity. We’ll go anywhere and play though.”

On old London town, meanwhile, the singer enthuses about how a few days sunshine has totally changed his perspective on the normally drab city. “The last couple of days that I’ve been here,” he says. “I’ve been walking around and it’s great to see the sunshine hitting these buildings. It just adds that much more character to this place. John and I also had the greatest time when we were in Holland, going around places like the Vincent Van Gogh Museum, just soaking up these paintings that were so full of life.”
“I really love paintings,” adds the frontman. “Right now I’m collecting them at my house in Hollywood. I don’t know if you’d call it a hobby, more of an indulgence, but I also love playing basketball and also going to tropical climates. I just got back from spending two weeks in Costa Rica, which is like being in paradise on Earth as far as I’m concerned. It’s all inspiration though, and all that stuff gets funnelled into the music through some path or another.”

No plans to leave Hollywood yet though, I ponder? “No, because I feel stifled by the place,” he adds in closing. “Because I spend time with my friends. The whole place is a massive contradiction, Hollywood is one of the most polluted places in the world, but it also has these beautiful desert winds that blow in, and the Hollywood Hills, the ocean, all that stuff, so it can as much of a great place as it can be a disaster of a place. But that’s the same wherever you go to me.”
I’ll second that…

– Rob Clymo

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