The Maturity Of Four Illuminati

The undergrounds of a whole in Los Angeles, Grand Café, year 1983. Four kids, surf, drugs and punk lovers who meet once in a while to make some music, offer their second live show. The audience does not stop bouncing, dancing, total ecstasy, they’re going nuts. Anthony Kiedis, the singer, a watch out dude who wanted to be an actor, just nods his head in the air while he raps.

Time freezes, everything stops: the beer’s jet draws a perfect circle in the air; a magic ring is above Red Hot Chili Peppers heads. That’s the moment when Flea, the bassist of the Californian band, realizes something big is gonna happen. The ring sign.

“For a second, I knew God was speaking through us, I knew we were getting all the energy in the universe; it wasn’t our instruments, it wasn’t the notes, it wasn’t the people, we had an energy bigger than anything, and that energy picked us”, he tells sitting on a green couch, with the sandwich’s crumbs he just ate, fighting to stay in his lips. “It was magic, I never felt something like that creating music, it was pure and magic”, he says, almost possessed, with his incredible blue eyes, almost transparent, looking up at the sky. “I’ll never forget that second with the beer drawing that circle in the air”. Flea stands up again like possessed, but this time is to find a place to urgently spit. The ashtray of the Chateau Marmont room plays the victim, and the noise and the dimensions of the operation are quite notable. Wow with the flea. “you never! have to swallow that”, he finishes off.

It’s been 23 years since the beer’s ring moment, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are one of the biggest super rock mega-bands. Who would have told this Californian guys that at this time of the game, they were gonna have their place in the music Olympus next to bands like U2 or REM, with perspectives of keep on growing in the stages kinda like the Rolling Stones. They’ve sold 50 million albums (according to their record label). The tickets for their Spanish dates sold out in 48 hours. They had to add one more date for Barcelona.

The Chili Peppers reappear with a singular bet: a double album that would be in stores on may 9th, something not usual these days, a 25 songs collection born in a creative incontinence period, a river of ideas named Stadium Arcadium. They say it’s the best they’ve ever done, winch is what the artists usually say when they have something new out. And them, who survived at massive drug abuse are here to tell. Here, in Los Angeles. Happy and mature, daddies and inspired, loving and clean.

“We’re Mister mommies right now”, says Chad Smith, the drummer, motorbike boots, street urchin look. “It’s the first time while recording that all four of us are having happy and healthy relationships, and I guess that has to do with the music you make: John with Emily; Anthony with Heather, Flea with his girlfriend and I, just got married in May”.

They started to record their album March 20th 2005 and, six days later, Nancy, drummer’s wife, gave birth to his fourth child (other three are from previous marriages). Flea also became a dad in October.“ The record is an exact picture of the live we’ve had this year”, Chad says, “the relationships subject is there in the songs”.

The story of this Californian band is marked by the goes and returns of John Frusciante, the genius of the band, a privileged guitarist marked by his heroine addiction. At his 36 he has false teeth and his arms badly scarred. Obsessive man, excessively talented, changed his drug addiction by compulsive creation, and in 2004 before getting in the studio with the peppers he released 6 albums by himself. Yes. 6.

“Doing heroin just gives you some sort of mental peace when you’re high, but when you wake up the next morning you just feel like shit all day”, he says staring at the ceiling, lying in his hotel bed, in a great mood. The interview is just at his nap time.

His mind flies and it doesn’t take long until he starts a monologue about the heroin years: “ It happens the same in a long term: if you do heroin every day for three years, to be healthy again, you have to work for it three more years. I had three years of fun and misery… and after that I was so happy of not being attached to anything, of being able of eating fruit, salads, play music with people…. I went from having money, to not having any, from being what people call rich, to not having where to go; the experience is tough, I didn’t have money for food many of those days… In 1996, I was home expecting someone would come to visit me so they would give me 10 bucks for a burger. I had to get 50 bucks for not being sick, there were lots of dealers offering me drugs all the time…. I got money every six months [royalties], but in between, I would starve to death, the dealers gave me the drugs and I would pay them once I got the check… Those were incredibly tough days… I had a girlfriend who used to beg people for money, or she used to go out to the street and do anything needed to get me the drugs…”

The Frusciante runaway is one of the main points in the band’s story. He left the band in 1993, in the high spot, he was unable to deal with the success of the band. 9 years younger than their colleagues, he just found himself surrounded by a huge success and awful amounts of money. He, the one who always said that good bands never sell too much. “ The interviews, the fans, and the tours damaged my creativity, and the only way to get it back was being home and drugged all the time”, he remembers.

While touring, in Japan, mid-1992, he just walked away.

The end of the inspiration and the sales arrived with the Frusciante runaway. A dull era started with an irrelevant album (One Hot Minute). And his way back in 1999, it’s the other huge episode in the Chili Peppers: it meant the creative resurrection and millionaire sales, the biggest of their career: Californication sold 15 millions albums.

In the short distance, you can tell Frusciante is a weirdo. When he was five years old, he started to hear voices in his head; voices that told him he was going to be a musician, he explains. In his infant brain were projected images of an harmonic future. It’s not that he wanted to be a musician, he didn’t even know what that meant, but he knew (being five! He assures) that he would end up being one.

“I had a lot of experiences like this when I was a kid”. That old rock and roll compilation his dad had in the living room, allowed him to give shape to those images. He listened Louie Louie and he knew he would be a guitarist. He moved to Santa Mónica; he got into the skate world; he adored Kiss, Alice Cooper, Led Zeppelin… And the land of punk allowed him to say to himself: I can do that.

When he got into the Chili Peppers he would walk on the walls. Literally. And trusting his words, hygiene, at that time, was not in his priority list: “ Just after hanging up the phone, I climbed the wall. I wasn’t wearing shoes, and I left the mark of my dark feet on the wall, five marks climbing up”, he reminds smiling. He didn’t wash the wall. Every day he found there his historical moment. But today, with his nice jersey and his Diesel trainers he looks clean. He’s 36 now and his life has changed. He assumes he’s in a popular band without making a big deal. And he even allows himself to take some holidays, he’s finally able to park his obsession for music. Last summer he went to Hawaii for two weeks. And he’s wanting badly to go back there. Frusciante is a guy who today searches for peace through meditation and philosophy, surrounded by a legion of cats and his huge vinyl collection.

He says this is the most experimental album the peppers have ever made. And he’s proud of his work in it: he kept doing research in curious sounds, treating his guitar with a synth, promoting weird sounds, mistakes, happy accidents. Trying to catch up with the hippie spirit of the sixties. Even so, the Peppers are being critized by going into the mainstream road. Flea, the bassist, says: “If what we do is easier to sell, it’s not because we’re doing something we don’t like. We’ve just refined our energy, but we keep the rhythmic intensity. We don’t lose what we already had, we just grow and give more. Our music is totally honest, and, if you don’t like it, you don’t like it, but there is our heart”. Stadium Arcadium is, stylistically , an extension of his previous work, By the way, funk pop, melodic voices, Frusciante’s flip outs and as always, the outstanding solvency of the rhythmic section.

Anthony Kiedis bio, the singer, is also worth a read. Raised in the Midwest, he went to Los Angeles when he was 11 to live with his dad, Blackie, a Hollywood elite dealer. When he was 13, age he says he lost his virginity, he assisted with cocky pose to parties with girls and drugs in wich you could easily see Jimmy Page or Alice Cooper, two teen heroes from his buddy Frusciante. He met Flea, at Fairfax high school and there the band was born. Recognised showman, famous for walking on the stage with a sock in his noble parts, today is an art collector who recreates himself with the use of his own language, listening carefully to himself. “It’s pretty funny to compare two characters. I forgot how annoying and vulgar I was: I’m lucky for having a time in my life when I was happy of being like that; I was a completely asshole, but I didn’t have the information or the tools to know that wasn’t right, I wasn’t mature, I was a completely son of a bitch… I tend to forget and suddenly I see someone who’s like : “Man, you’re that dude who puke on my shoes”. It’s important to change, and moving forward like a human being; if it’s not like that, life’s boring, stupid. And as a musician or artist it’s important to reinvent yourself and explore new territories”.

His bio, in fact, is marked by the relevance of the addiction. He’s another survivor: “Since now, I’ve been blessed with the gift to recover from really hard situations with drugs and learn from that, growing up with them, and take benefit of them. I’ve survived to a maniac experience and I’ve tried to share it with people who was in the same fight”.

Kiedis rises softly his cup of tea. He breathes in and out deeply.

Who has the biggest ego in this band?
(laughs) That’s a really weird question. If you had asked me three months ago, I would have said mine, but my ego was hit by a meteorite a couple of months ago and part of it it’s been burning in the ground from a while.

Why?
It would be really tedious to explain. It’s because of a personal experience, that, on one hand, was wonderful, and on the other, really painful. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced inside you a house burning for a month and a half, it’s pretty painful; I know this is worth it, that my life will be better later, but while on, I keep on working with the debris… The ego is a weird thing: sometimes you just wake up and stay humble, wich is better than waking up in the self fear your ego takes you… In the band, any of us can have a massive ego day and behave like a completely retarded.

How’s a normal day in your life?
Well, if you’re rehearsing, you start the day in a little San Fernando Valley room, with instruments and a mic. You feed the dogs, take them out for a walk, it’s great; check the mail, go to the rehearsal place, you have a massive creative experience and the energy flows, you drive back home listening to the music you’ve recorded that day, you go for dinner with friends, spend the rest of the day with your girlfriend… If you’re on holidays, you go to visit your family to Michigan, or go to Hawaii, to swim in the ocean… If you’re recording, you work out, you joke, you play basketball… you can also go to see the Lakers or you can go surfing… And then comes the tours and you wake up in hotel rooms for a year… The important part of being away from home is stay focused in growing up as a human being; because, if you’re a year away from home and you come back, and you’re the same, something did not work. You have to keep growing and expanding yourself.

You have a biography full of experiences that help to learn from life. What did you lear from yourself?
I hate what I learned, what I learned from me is terrible, but I learned it.

Why?
I’ve been soo many years of my life not being aware of my defects… there are certain qualities in my personality that I love, and I’m aware of: I’m goodhearted, I love people, I’m generous; but there’s a part of mi wich I’ve never liked to know it’s there and it’s my egoism, my greed. Those defects can build barriers that won’t let you be authentically open and intimate in your relationships with family, friends, with other meaning people; so you walk through life thinking you’re good but, at the same time, you want more, you want people being different as how they are and that stops you from commiting yourself 100% with someone else. Having a foot inside and the other outside in a relationship is a mistake: I like this person, I’m gonna give 80% and the other 20% can go anywhere, that’s what stops you from living the experience of creating more light with another human being. It’s brutal to realise about this, but I’m glad I did. Next time I’m in this situation, specially in a relationship, I think it will be better. And with friends also, you have to compromise unconditionally. That’s what I learned from my lust, greed and egoism.

And how do you see the world we’re living in?
I tried to reduce it to a simple principle, because the chaos can be blinding. Confusing. There’s a reason for anything that is happening, sometimes some things might go wrong so then can go right. I see horrible governments operating from an abuse of power position, like in America, when you see wars in places where shouldn’t be any wars, you see climatic disasters, nature destruction… Probably all of this is happening for a reason we can’t understand, and this is how we’ll learn the lesson; there’s a song in the album that talks about that, 21st century. It’s about the chaos and why everything’s so wrong… I have faith in the fact of there’s an explanation for all that.

So, you’re an absolute optimistic…
Basically I’ve been optimistic my whole life: even facing desaster I’ve been a complete optimistic, I don’t know why, maybe cos when I was a kid I went to this “Optimistic Camp”. Even when I’ve been dying, I’ve been optimistic somehow.