The Cavern
Rock & Words
RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS
"My friends are so distressed
And standing on the brink of emptiness
No words I know of to express
This emptiness."
“C”
Main Decade: 90's
Main Eras:
Alternative I: The Underground 80's
Alternative II: The Big Bang (1990-1999)
(Post)-alternative III: The Dispersion (2000-???)
Key Members:
Anthony Kiedis, Vocalist
Mike “Flea” Balzary, Bass
John Fruschiante, Guitar
Chad Smith, Drums
Key Songs:
Breaking The Girl, Under The Bridge, Californication, Give It Away, Scar Tissue, By The Way, Aeroplane, Can’t Stop, Soul To Squeeze, Otherside, Higher Ground, Universally Speaking, Road Tripping, Dany California, Coffee Shop, Behind The Sun, Around The World, Taste The Pain, Snow (Hey Ho) The Zephyr Song, I Could Have Lied, Wet Sand, My Friends, Suck My Kiss, Easily, Knock Me Down, Dosed, Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Pretty Little Ditty, Naked in the Rain.
I get asked a lot if I don't like the Red Hot Chili Peppers… Yep. The truth is, I'm convinced that every good bassist should not only admire, but also enjoy Flea's virtuosity and inventiveness. I don't think he's the best bassist in the world, not by a long shot, but I'm convinced that Flea might be the most creative in crafting and executing his lines. And it's not like I'm a great bassist myself, but I love the way the Peppers combine funk with alternative, touches of metal, mixed with a dose of audacity. Considering that my first encounter with them was the cover of the Abbey Road EP and that I spent a couple of years refusing to listen to anything by them because of the bad parody of my all-time favorite album, my opinion of them has improved considerably.
There are bands that spend years working incredibly hard, playing in bars, honing their style, writing great material, and building a solid fanbase. By the time they get the one-in-a-million stroke of luck that lands them a record deal, they're a mature band with quality material, and their debut album is an international smash hit. The second one is too. Subsequent albums will show good quality, but they'll never reach the heights of their early work. Take The Doors or Led Zeppelin, for example. Then there are the groups that release good material, decent for the time, but their masterpieces come later, when the band reaches its peak. U2 or The Beatles, for instance, or 98% of famous bands not considered "one-hit wonders." And finally, there are the bands that take a lot, a whole lot, a looooot of effort and years to achieve even a decent level. After a few years, when they reach glory with quality albums, they realize that their first records (which they never took seriously and never thought anyone would listen to) are an embarrassment. For example, Nirvana with their Bleach. Or the Sex Pistols, only their twenty-one album is considered a cult classic for reasons I still don't understand.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers fall into this category. Their first three albums are some of the biggest jokes in rock history. Utterly pathetic. I think even they were amazed that a label like EMI would have released them. They're an ode to audacity, shamelessness, and creative laziness. The problem is, there's no way to sound cool in the '80s. And frankly, it would have been cheating of me to skip this formative period of the RHCP and go straight to the addition of Chad Smith and John Frusciante, who took the band to another level.
The Peppers' problem wasn't a lack of quality per se. Flea shone brightly from the very first album. More than half the value of those early records can be attributed to him. The problem was that the core lineup of Anthony Kiedis (vocals) and Mike Balzary (bass) took a long time to find the definitive rest of the band, experiencing a huge turnover of drummers and guitarists. When they finally found it, the RHCP would go on to dominate the 90s, but in the meantime, the 80s were dismal in terms of musical quality and the blows life dealt them.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the band during the 80s is their tragic story. The Red Hot Chili Peppers formed in L.A. in 1983 at Fairfax High School. Kiedis and Flea signed up for a festival and asked some acquaintances who played in another band (What Is This?) to help them out for the gig. So they brought in Hillel Slovak on guitar and Jack Irons on drums. The band was a joke, but somehow people liked it and asked them to play again at a party the following week. Slovak and Irons had another band, which they considered a serious project, but somehow this side project dragged on for more than six months (almost 30 years to date, in fact), and God only knows how, they landed a recording contract with EMI. Irons and Slovak decided to leave the band because it wasn't their priority and they didn't want to take it any further since their other group was "more serious," so they left Flea and Kiedis to their own devices with a recording contract. Instead of canceling it, they found the first musicians they could find, Cliff Martinez on drums and Jack Sherman on guitar, and with almost no rehearsal, they went into the studio. The lack of understanding between the musicians is evident on the Peppers' self-titled debut album. A real sonic insult. Even so, the album got significant airplay on college radio stations and began to build a fanbase for the band within underground circles. Miraculously, this collection of disjointed noises with a remote punk influence managed to sell 300,000 copies. There are bands a thousand times better that don't sell half that much in their entire discography! The thing is, during the tour, they ended up having a falling out with Sherman, and Slovak returned to guitar when he realized they were more serious than his other band.
The second album is Freakey Style, released in 1985, which incorporated more punk sounds, but it's equally disastrous. At least you can hear a guitar, and the band sounds slightly more cohesive. During its recording, the band was already struggling with serious heroin addiction, and that heavy sound seeps into the music. The Peppers were happier with the result, since George Clinton, the producer, didn't push their sound or demand a potential single, unlike Andy Gil, the producer of their debut. This time, the album didn't sell at all.
In '86, they decided to try for a new album. EMI, more skeptical, gave them a meager budget of $5,000, which, if it wasn't enough, dropped to $3,000 when Slovak used the rest to buy heroin. Shortly after, they fired Martinez from the drums, basically because he had become a zombie, incapable of playing, and Jack Irons returned to the group, reforming the original quartet to attempt what would be their third album. Kiedis was so lost in heroin addiction that he was also fired after having to cancel the end of their tour because of it. But he went to rehab and after a month, they took him back.
With Anthony rehabilitated and brimming with energy and new ideas, the Uplift Mofo Party Plan finally emerged, a more concise and creative work where the seeds of what we know today as RHCP were already evident. While not a masterpiece, it was at least a tolerable album. In his enthusiasm, Kiedis relapsed into drug use "to celebrate the most beautiful album they had ever recorded." The album was a success and made it onto the charts. This relative success caused Kiedis and Slovak to lose their footing, culminating in Hillel's death on June 25, 1988. Shortly after, Jack Irons left the band due to depression and because he feared ending up the same way. After a while, Irons joined a Seattle band called Pearl Jam.
Once again with half the band gone, they seriously considered doing something else. Possibly dealing drugs. This is where one of the biggest twists in the story comes in. When the natural thing to do would have been to give up, Kiedis and Flea clung to their dream and decided to continue what Slovak had helped them build as a tribute to him.
That's how John Frusciante joined on guitar and Chad Smith on drums, completing the band's most iconic and successful lineup. Mother's Milk, released in 1989, would be the first album with the new lineup, and John's guitar work would become fundamental, giving the band much greater texture and power. Likewise, Chad, a veritable octopus on drums, meshed perfectly with Flea, who finally had a worthy partner in the rhythm section, becoming one of the most impressive duos of the last 20 years. Mother's Milk can already be considered the first album that marks the band's maturity.
The rest would be a slow climb. They switched record labels to Warner Music, which opened the door to working with Rick Rubin as producer on all their subsequent albums. They had already tried to work with him, but he had rejected them, and he would become a fundamental part of the Peppers' sound. Rubin took them to an old mansion, where the magician Houdini had lived, to record their next album, and it turned out to be haunted! The experience of encountering strange things throughout the recording process helped the group bond and develop a strong camaraderie very quickly. This resulted in Blood Sugar Sex Magik, from '91, becoming the first great gem in the RHCP's discography, with more polished songs and a more polished style, and featuring killer tracks like "Under the Bridge," "Give It Away," "Suck My Kiss," and "Blood Sugar Sex Magik." The band's sonic evolution and maturity were remarkable. The album sold over 15 million copies and catapulted the RHCP to superstardom, headlining major alternative festivals and placing them at the forefront of the alternative movement that was emerging from obscurity.
Ironically, success overwhelmed Frusciante, who couldn't handle the pressure and preferred the band's style when playing in clubs rather than stadiums. In 1992, he abruptly left the band mid-tour. To complete the tour, they hired Arik Marshall, who stayed for only a few months before being fired for not being up to par. Finally, Dave Navarro, former guitarist of Jane's Addiction, which had recently disbanded, took over.
The band headlined Woodstock '94. The following year, they released One Hot Minute, which, with Navarro's guitar work, shifted towards heavier, more psychedelic riffs that didn't quite fit with the band's funkier style. The album sold very well and is also good, featuring tracks like "Aeroplane" and "My Friends." Despite the criticism, the Peppers were at the forefront of the Alternative movement, which had exploded and become a huge phenomenon in the 90s.
In 1998, Dave Navarro left the band, supposedly by mutual agreement and due to creative differences. The Peppers then turned to their old friend, John Frusciante, whose guitar playing had given them their definitive sound. The problem was that John had been struggling with heroin addiction since leaving the band, so they paid for his rehabilitation to get him clean and help him return to full strength, since behind the scenes, that had been the reason for Navarro's departure.
With John back, they returned to the studio to record what would become their second masterpiece, Californication, a flawless, well-rounded album that would serve as the culmination of that alternative explosion. Californication would sell 15 million copies, with singles like the title track, "Otherside," "Road Trippin'," and "Scar Tissue." The following year, they headlined Woodstock '99.
In 2002, they released By The Way, which is a kind of continuation of Californication. Even though it's a great album, they no longer maintain that tremendous level, and the group sounded somewhat formulaic. It still has a good quality and another handful of great tracks, like "Can't Stop," "By The Way," and "Zephyr Song." It's just that compared to its predecessor, it's overshadowed.
It wasn't until 2006 that they released another album, the double album Stadium Arcadium, where they seemed incapable of proposing any change or evolution, and due to its length, it has a lot of filler. The album obviously didn't do very well, or at least not as well as they had hoped. After the tour for this album, the band took a long break.
The band reunited in 2010 to get back to work. The surprise was that Frusciante didn't return, and to take his place they called on Josh Klinghoffer, with whom they returned to television appearances and festivals. Their tenth album, I'm With You, is set to be released on August 30, 2011, featuring Josh on guitar. On the first single, "The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie," the guitar work is a caricature of its former self (the attempted solo sounds like a motorcycle drag race), and Chad and Flea shoulder the entire musical weight.
In short, they are a great band that went through many problems, many changes, deaths, ridicule, and more. But it's an almost soap opera-like story of perseverance and struggle, until they reached the pinnacle of world rock and became leaders of that generation that lived through the 90s. Since then, they have declined, without reaching lamentable levels, but I doubt they can present anything truly new and of the same quality.
All things considered, no one disputes the great heights they reached with at least two perfect 10 albums and another couple at least a 9, making them arguably one of the last great bands of our time. They displayed virtuosity on all their instruments, innovated, and defined an era.
Ladies and gentlemen, with you, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers!!!
By Corvan
Aug/18/2011
