Red Hot Reunion
“There were times when we were playing,” Flea admits, wincing a bit, “I’d be thinking, ‘Man, I hurt so bad.’ I was saying these mantras to myself. ‘You really hurt right now. But play this music, because it’s good.'”
Even choosing a producer for the new album was more hassle than necessary. The Chili Peppers immediately went to Rubin — who promptly said yes — then, just as quickly, decided to look around. Rubin graciously made some recommendations; the band, staring the magic Blood Sugar combination in the face, came back to him.
“They had been writing a lot,” says Rubin. “They hadn’t made a record in a while, which was a positive thing. There was a lot of energy there; they were ready.”
Rubin points out that he was first approached about producing the Chili Peppers long before Blood Sugar, when Slovak was still alive. “They were really in bad shape, drugwise,” Rubin recalls. “I walked into the room thinking, ‘This is bad.’ I didn’t want to do it. Then when I met them for Blood Sugar, they were like a different band, completely in control, ready to do something good. This new record — it’s the closest they’ve come to that same energy.”I don’t know if they’re in exactly the same place,” Rubin adds. When the Chili Peppers made Blood Sugar, “they’d never really had any success. They hadn’t broken through and dealt with all the bullshit that comes with being a big band. They’re more grown-up now than they were then.”
The Chili Peppers’ attempt to make an album big enough to accommodate old-school jollies like “Phfat Dance” as well as recent lessons learned is reflected in two of Kiedis’ favorite new songs. The title suggests otherwise, but “Californication” is not a sex-funk romp — it’s a bittersweet thing about bright possibility and broken promises. “It’s about California and Hollywood having such a profound effect on the planet,” Kiedis explains, “of the good and the bad of that. Of how people dream of this weird, magical place that is really kind of the end of the world, the Western Hemisphere’s last stop.”
It was in California, though, that he, Flea and Frusciante wrote a shot of acoustic bonhomie provisionally called “Road Trippin’,” a song that came out of a surfing trip and that opens with the line, “Road trippin’ with my two favorite allies.”
“We’re all pretty much on the novice surf tip,” Kiedis says, “but nothing is better than getting up with the sunrise and paddling out, even if you’re not a great surfer.” In a break from playing last year, the three loaded Flea’s truck with snacks and music (David Bowie, the Germs, the Cure) and drove up to Big Sur to ride some waves. “As soon as we got there, we started a fire; they started playing, and I started writing,” Kiedis says. “By the end of the day, I had this song about our trip — that we were together after all this time and doing something as pure as surfing and writing music.
“If I’ve learned anything through the freaky tribulations of this experience,” Kiedis says of the Chili Peppers’ new life and music, “it’s that all of the setbacks, all of the losses and all of the gains — it’s all for a reason. You never get sick for no reason. And things turned out just the way they were supposed to. I don’t think we would have what we have right now if all that messed-up stuff hadn’t happened.”
– David Fricke
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