Out On Their Tree

Two years ago, RHCP went to Europe to play in front of the largest crowds of their 20-plus-year-career. After surviving numerous personnel changes, drug problems, erratic recording, relationship dramas, and assorted crises that have broken up countless bands, the Peppers had released back-to-back multi-platinum albums—1999’s Californication and 2002’s By the Way. Against all odds, they had reached genuine superstar statues, and this jaunt saw them headlining three nights at London’s massive Hyde Park. But for Flea—from day on, the bass-playing yin to singer Anthony Kiedis’ yang—these looked like the last shows he would ever perform with the group.

“To tell you the truth, I really didn’t think I’d be here right now doing this,” he says, sprawled barefoot on the floor of a sun-dappled practice room—lined with books and classic punk-rock photos and posters—in his idyllic, rambling Malibu home. “A multitude of things had built up, and it just wasn’t a comfortable time. The band had always been a sanctuary for me—no matter what was going on in my life, the band was a place where I could just be myself and rock. All of a sudden it didn’t feel like that, and I just thought it was time for me to not do it anymore.”

Flea, born Michael Balzary in Australia 43 years ago, is truly the pivot point of the chili peppers. With guitarist John Frusciante, he forges the riffs that are the basis of their songs. Alongside drummer Chad Smith, they make up one of rock’s most versatile and powerful rhythm sections, the backbone of the band even at its lowest points. And with his high school friend Kiedis, Flea gives the Chili Peppers a style and soul that has come to symbolize the spirit of latter-day LA. So while the band has preserved through lineup changes that resemble a game of rock-n-roll musical chairs, Flea’s departure would be serious business indeed.

Eventually, that could lifted, the Chili Peppers got back to work, and the result is their ninth studio album, Stadium Arcadium—a 28 song, double disc set that adds up to some of the best work of their career. Working once again with longtime producer Rick Rubin, the band returned to the Hollywood house where they recorded their 1991 breakthrough, BSSM, and emerged with a record that mixes old-school Chili Peppers funk with mature melodicism—plus a supersize dose of Frusciante’s flamethrower guitar. From the zeppelin—esque crunch of “Readymade” to the delicate slink of “hey”, it’s a powerhouse statement of purpose, an album that Flea describes as “the sum of everything that we are as a band.”

The making of SA was as notable as the outcome. During the almost yearlong recording process, this notoriously fractious gang of four was able to put aside their differences, their competitiveness, and cohere better than ever. “This time,” says Kiedis, “those egos—and when I say ‘those egos,’ I mean all of us—were feeling decent and confident, respectful, as excited about the others guys’ stuff as we were about our own. If someone came in with a great chord change for a song or a great rhythm or a great groove, by the time it was finished, everybody had jazzed all over it, and it had become a real community piece of property.”

In John Frusciante’s house in the Hollywood Hills, the living room has one piece of furniture, an L-shaped sectional sofa in front of a purple-painted fireplace. The rest of the space is given over to dozens of guitars, thousands of CDs and LPs, and scattered recording equipment. Sheet music for Charlie Parker’s bebop classic “Ornithology” lies open on the floor. (When I enter Flea’s house a few days later, he’s practicing the same song on his trumpet.) Many of the guitar effects, background vocals, and assorted sonic treatments on SA were recorded in and around this room.

After years of heroin and cocaine addiction, Frusciante, 36 looks clear-eyed and healthy (he runs and meditates every day). And his excitement about the new album is palpable, even overwhelming. Since the previous Chili Peppers record, he’s been unable to slow the music the music pouring out of him—during the band’s time off, he recorded and released no fewer than seven solo albums, and he brought that cascade of ideas back to this project. “The last few [Chili Peppers] albums had, like, 15 songs, and there were maybe four songs with guitar solos,” says Chad Smith. “This time he solos on pretty much every song. When we go out on tour it’s gonna be the fuckin’ John Frusciante Rock Show!”

Frusciante certainly operates in his owns universe — he casually brings up “that which existed in negative existence” or says, “I just resent going through life having my brain telling me what to do all the time.” Dressed in a black T-shirt that reveals his needle-battered arms, with black sweat-pants and olive socks, he acknowledges that it was his all-too-human relationship with Flea that almost torpedoed the band. “BTW was a tense time for me and Flea together,” he says. “We just weren’t really seeing eye-to-eye, and we weren’t really understanding each other.

“Every time we make a record,” Frusciante continues, “I have sort of a concept, and my concept for BTW was kind of selfish, because it didn’t have a lot to do with where we come from. I wasn’t really into doing stuff that was funk cased or blues based. Things I would describe as not having that would be the Smiths or Siouxsie and the Banshees or the Cure—I wanted to do something along those lines, and I wasn’t very open to things outside of that framework.”

Flea says it wasn’t the musical direction but rather the attitude Frusciante struck that was so problematic. “I felt that what he was doing didn’t warrant any input from me,” he says. “It’s not like I didn’t like what John was doing, ‘cause how could I not like what John’s doing?’ He’s a great musician. But I didn’t feel welcome to express myself naturally. And once I started having that feeling, I just shut down and kinda withdrew from the process, and it wasn’t a happy feeling.” (After our interview, Flea calls to emphasize that “I don’t blames John for that time I was unhappy in the band. It takes two to tango, and it would break my heart if that’s how it came across.”

Kiedis notes that creative tension is something of a constant for RHCP, which is perhaps predictable for a band of strong personalities whose songs grow almost exclusively out of in-studio jams. “Sometimes there’s a bit of confrontation chemistry, which is good for the creative process,” he says. “Sometimes it’s a dark energy in this band, the mental illness that we all have a touch of, that drives us crazy and makes us hurt inside and makes us have to go bad on something until we find a cool beat. There are a lot of different levels to the chemistry—it’s not like there’s this great sense of constant brotherly love. Sometimes it’s the antagonism that really gets the ball rolling. But it’s a fine line between letting that create rather than destroy.”

After playing the 2004 Hyde Park shows and other huge European festivals, Flea remembers sitting in an airport with Frusciante and “feeling a cloud lift between us.” Right then, he knew he wasn’t leaving the band, and the rabid LA Lakers fan (Flea blogs about the team for NBA.com) could get back into the game.

“Did you see that Woody Allen movie ‘Match Point’?” Flea asks. “There’s one classic line where this chick is talking about some couple, and she goes, ‘Oh, yeah, they’re really doing great—their neuroses really interlock just perfectly.’

“I think that you can get settled into something, and everyone knows his place, and that’s cool,” he continues. “But if you didn’t go through the emotional pain, it wouldn’t be growing and changing, it’d be staying in one place, and we’d probably be a very boring act. We could have made the same record five times in a row, but to have growth, you gotta go through it. Like George Clinton said, if there weren’t any humps, there wouldn’t be any getting over.”

In Nov, Flea and his girlfriend, model Frankie Ryder, had a baby girl they named Sunny Bebop. The new parents asked Frusciante to be the godfather.

The recording of SA, took awhile. Smith’s son Cole, who was born when the sessions started, celebrated his first birthday March 28. (“By the time we go on the road, he’s going to be our tour manager,” says Smith.) An album that was supposed to be a quick hit, 11 or 12 songs blast took on a life of its own. The RCHP ultimately completed 38 songs and considered releasing three separate albums—the 28 songs chosen will be spread over two disc titled “Jupiter” and “Mars.”

“I remember when we were, like an adolescent band,” says Kiedis, “and I heard that Metallica was going into the studio for a year, and then taking another six months to finish, and I was like ‘What freaks! What could you possibly do for that long?’ But I get it now.”

What caused the marathon? Credit an unexpected outpouring or material and the ambitions of mad scientist John Frusciante. First came the songs. “It was kind of like Christmas every day” says Kiedis. “I’d get in the car at the end of rehearsal and I’d stick in the CD that we’d recorded and be like, ‘Wow, I’m not exactly sure what we’re going to do with this, but I know it’s going to be great,’ Every day it was like that, like one gift after another.”

The RHCP’s recording methodology goes something like this: Frusciante, Flea, Smith jam every day in the studio, working up bits that any one of them might bring in. “We were getting two and three musical ideas a day,” days Smith, “and most of them were pretty consistent, high-quality stuff.” Once those raw grooves take on a more defined shape, they get a title—written down on a whiteboard—and then Kiedis takes them, tries to fit a melody and lyrics, and works with Rick Rubin to construct a real song.

At this point, the affable Smith’s part is basically done; he finished with this album almost a year ago. Since then he’s played on other projects like the new, Rubin-produced Dixie Chicks album and a solo disc by former Deep Purple bassist Glenn Hughes, recorded in Smith’s living room. (Only in the upside-down world of the Chili Peppers would the drummer be the band steadiest member. “It’s all relative,” says 44-year-old Smith, “but I’m sort of the normal guy.”)

Meanwhile Frusciante is adding layers of guitars, effects, and background vocals—and this time, he aimed for the stars. The guitarist rattles off inspirations for his work on SA—from the Wu Tang Clan to Electric Light Orchestra, from Jimi Hendrix to…Brandy?!

“I realized she’s not really a hip person to mention because of the TV show or whatever, but I’m crazy about the album Aphrodisiac,” Frusciante says with absolute sincerity. “Her singing is just so awesome. A lot of the blues things in my playing were coming more from singers like her and Beyonce than from guitar players.”

Despite Smith’s striving for a dense, constantly shifting sound, Rubin says he doesn’t find the album excessive at all. “I don’t feel like it’s challenging the way SOAD is,” he says, citing another band he has produced. “Even when it’s complicated, it’s really digestible. And there’s wildness to it, a certain live quality in the air that’s different. Things were kind of musically a little out of control. We realized it was going past the edges, but there was something exciting about that.”

The RHCP, Smith reminds us, “started as a joke band,” best known for songs like “Party on your Pussy” and for donning socks on their dicks. “We did not have longevity written all over us,” says a deadpan Kiedis.

But somewhere along the way, the group turned into a rock institution. As they approach the quarter-century mark, they’re in rarefied company. Which bands can claim that kind of endurance while still making new music that anyone cares about? There’s U2 and REM and Metallica, and…Well who else?

Kiedis resists the comparison with those monolithic groups. ‘When I look at those bands, they seem like elders,” he says. “When I was like 20 years old I was aware of all those bands and they seemed like they were in a different world than us.” The alt-rock luminaries he felt more kinship with—Nirvana, Jane’s Addiction, Smashing Pumpkins—were simply unable to keep it together for the long haul.

Flea says that he feels a certain affinity for anyone who’s still out on the road after so many years. Still, he say, “it seems like those guys know what they’re doing, like they’re really smart, and it always seems to me like we’re kinda bumbling along.”

But Rick Rubin counters with a simple, and fairly unarguable, statement. “U2 and REM aren’t making better records now than they were broke,” he says. “The Chili Peppers feel like they just get better.”

And why shouldn’t they? It seems as thought they’ve finally found the lives—and the sound—they’ve always wanted. Gatherings of the band now feel like family affairs, with significant others, babies, dogs. Frusciante recently bought a beach house to share with his girlfriend, Emily; Smith has his wife, Nancy and Cole, and teaches drum clinics for young players; Flea continues to devote time to the public music school he helped found five years ago and is practicing his trumpet with new direction. Only Kiedis—most recently linked to a 20-year old model Jessica Stam—remains not settle down, through the specter of drugs, so long his band’s true nemesis, seems buried for now.

“I’m feeling pretty good today,” says the six-year-clean Kiedis, “and unless you pull out a huge bag and put it on the table, I’ll probably be just fine. I have no interest in going back to fear and confusion of my life during the last time I was using. I’m wearing life as a more loosely fitting garment, which fits me just fine.”

And as the band gear up for a lengthy tour—European dates in the spring, then the States starting the late summer, possibly with opener Kayne West—even the most reluctant Chili Pepper is fired up. “I’m definitely ready to get out there in the world,” says Frusciante with a smile. “I don’t have a problem with touring, because now we get along. Sometimes those guys feel like we’re not friends, and I’ve definitely gone through phases with Anthony and Flea where they think we’re not friends. But the narrow-mindedness that comes from me needing to occupy my brain all the time sometimes isolates me from the people around me.

“When we toured for BTW and Cali, I kept my headphones on all the time,” continues Frusciante. “I think this time, I’m going to take the headphones off.”