Infectious Grooves

Starting from Hillel Slovak, the band from California had a great number of guitar players and each one was more original than the other. Now it’s up to John Frusciante, who left the band during the success of “Blood Sugar”, to take this role. This is the right opportunity to run through the guitar players who made the story of the Peppers.

HILLEL SLOVAK

Hillel Slovak was born on April 13, 1962 in Haifa, Israel.

He was the founding first guitar player of the Peppers. He turned Michael Balzary (aka Flea), who was a jazz trumpet player, into the funkiest bass player in rock music. “Hillel changed my life. If he hadn’t been there I wouldn’t be the person I am today. He made me discover rock music”.

Coming from Fairfax High School, at the age of fifteen, the four Peppers (Jack Irons, Flea, Anthony Kiedis and Hillel Slovak) tried different musical experiences other than the RHCP (named after Louis Armstrong’s quintet in 1920): Flea played with Fear, a hardcore band, while Jack Irons and Hillel Slovak played with their band called What is this? That’s why Jack and Hillel couldn’t record the debut album of the Peppers.

They were replaced by Jack Sherman on the guitar and Cliff Martinez on the drums. Hillel will rejoin the band in 1985, followed by Jack Irons in 1986, to record “Freaky Styley” (produced by George Clinton).
While the band was beginning to grow, even if the sales were not at the top, Hillel Slovak became such a heroin addict that concerts weren’t always assured.

Unfortunately, this sad habit belongs to the story of the band.

When Hillel Slovak died of an overdose on June 27, 1988, the three Peppers were shocked. Jack Irons even left the band as he couldn’t stand it while Anthony and Flea finally got over it “We understood that the RHCP were all our lives, and we had to go on”. So they started looking for another guitar player.

Afterwards, James Slovak, the brother of Hillel Slovak, published a biography about the first guitar player of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He looked through his brother stuffs finding some pictures, paintings and a diary. Anthony Kiedis and Flea helped him with some little testimonies too.

The biography was out on July the first in USA and it should be interesting for some nostalgic collector fans.
Behind The Music (Slim Skinny Publishing)

JOHN FRUSCIANTE

John Frusciante was born on March 5, 1970 in New York.

The current guitar player of the Peppers is what we can call a wild guy. For John, a premature fan of the band, the death of Hillel is the opportunity to join his favorite band, which is also the first he’s ever played with.

He used to be a turbulent adolescent and he passed all his youth masturbating and playing the guitar.
Frank Zappa was his guru and he also tried to join his band but it all waned eventually.

Afterwards he became a big fan of the Peppers going to their crazy concerts.

When Hillel died, Anthony Kiedis asked him to join the band and replace his idol. To join the band he didn’t just have to sign the contract but he also had to do a striptease. “They insisted that I showed them my hard penis”. But that wasn’t enough to destabilize the young Frusciante. In fact he introduced them to some different and weird pleasures like sticking the nose on the butthole when someone was farting in order to breathe the intact smell of the fart unaltered by air molecules.

When he started with the Peppers he was the perfect clone of Hillel, he acted and played like him, copying his solos almost perfectly.

During the wide success of “Blood Sugar Sex Magik” he remembered the question that Hillel Slovak asked him “Would you still love the Red Hot if they would become so popular to play in a stadium?” Frusciante’s answer was “no”. That was crucial for his desertion and for his heroin addiction too.

Following a bad relationship with Kiedis, he left the band. The Peppers were chosen to be the headliners at Lollapalooza and so they had to look for another guitar player.

Meanwhile, Frusciante began to paint and went to rehab.

Today he still say that he has never listened to “One Hot Minute” (Is he jealous?). He will rejoin the band with “Californication” which is considered by Frusciante as the true Blood Sugar’s sequel.

DAVE NAVARRO

David Michael Navarro was born on June 7, 1967 in Santa Monica (California).

The most Goth-like guitar player of the Peppers seems to be on a constant search for new musical sensations.

Leader of Jane’s Addiction, he has also tried different musical experiences: Deconstruction, Red Hot and Spread, his current band, which are something more than a classic rock band.

Without any doubt he’s been the one with more sex appeal in the band, an element that is an essential feature for the band. But this is not all about him, his music career may seem a little unstable as he has changed a lot of bands. A big shock happened during his adolescence. His parents divorced and afterwards he saw his mother and his aunt being killed by an old jealous (and maybe a bit mad) ex-boyfriend.

This is not so surprising if we consider that his house is decorated with morbid stuff (pictures of Vietnam War, human skeleton in his bedroom painted in black). While the Peppers love the funk, the style of Navarro is inspired by the English gothic bands of ‘80s like The Cure (Robert Smith is his favorite guitar player) and Bauhaus (he worked with their guitar player, Daniel Ash). His musical training is very classic as a beginner he started playing Jimi Hendrix (Voodoo Chile is his first musical love) and then Van Halen and Cream.

We can find this variety of musical genres in Jane’s Addiction’s albums which can be appealing for both metalheads and Talking heads fans. With the Peppers he left his recognizable mark. Apparently One Hot Minute is a less funky album than Blood Sugar Sex Magik (named after some love potions prepared by a true Witch from Salem “Love Magic, Sex Magic”).

This last album is marked by his musical virtuosity, and he brought a new musical sensibility that express itself in a most brutal way by adapting his style with the style of the Peppers. Unfortunately he officially left the band after five years on April 3, 1998. According to some Dave ‘s statements, he didn’t really feel comfortable with the band except for Chad Smith, and during concerts he always stepped a bit aside on the stage.

Together with Chad Smith he founded Spread in 1997. At the beginning this band was only a way to kill the time, but then it soon became a real organisation “Spread Entertainment”: a band, a web site, a book and a label. But when Chad Smith left the band at the beginning, in order to work on the new Peppers album, Dave remained the only member of his ghost band where he plays all the instruments helped by some electronic. His web site, www.6767.com, logs all the Spread activity. On this web site you can also buy the reprinted version of “Metal Machine Music” an old album by Lou Reed (the most unlistenable album of his) available only on Vinyl. If you like to know more about Dave and Spread we suggest you visit the web site which is always carefully updated.

Others Chili Peppers guitar players:
Zander Schloss (ex-Circle Jerks) for the Lollapalooza II tour (1992), followed by Eric Marshall (ex-Marshall Law) and Jesse Tobias (Mother Tongue) just for a month in 1993.