Funkin’ Up The Milky Way
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Flea: “Ten elephants.”
Anthony: “Ten elephants on a rampage.”
Flea: “On steroids.”
Anthony: “Chad is 10 elephants on steroids.”
Flea: “I just had a good idea for our backstage passes for the next big tour. Not the sticky things but the laminates. They’re like joke passes; instead of ACCESS ALL AREAS, have stuff like NO ACCESS BACKSTAGE; DEFINITELY NOT ALLOWED ONSTAGE…”
If you are a major Red Hots maniac, a year ago you would be excused for not knowing who was in your favorite band. MTV’s 120 Minutes ran a video of the band playing some club called Alcohol Salad with former Dead Kennedys drummer D.H. Peligro and Blackbird McKnight from the mighty Funkadelic family. Several months later, on some syndicated program called 2HIP4TV, McKnight was replaced by some scrawny kid named John Frusciante, who liked to yell, “Muscle flex!” while everybody piled on top of one another. There were more line-up changes in Pepperdom than there are underwear changes at A.P. Headquarters. And Beinhorn has been the band’s longest-lasting producer’he’s survived two full records.
So when asked if line-up changes and producer switches might have cost the Peppers some momentum, neither the Flea nor the Swan stumbles around the word-mincing machine.
“That’s just conjecture because what happened is what happened, and that is what we’ve produced,” proclaims Kiedis. “It’s impossible to speculate as to what would have happened. We’ve continued to improve and change, and the idea of having a different producer… well, it’s given us a variety of records.”
“I don’t think it hurts, either,” adds Flea. “We’ve made changes, but everything we do is towards the good of making music. I’m sure we’ve made mistakes and we’ve done dumb things that were right, and we’ve made mistakes that we don’t even realize were mistakes.”
Anthony: “And the line-up thing’that’s just the way the ball bounced through our court. I think we’ve made great use of all the musicians we have played with at all times. We never let it bum us out. We’ve made the best of each situation, and there were some tough situations, but I think we’ve done an incredible job keeping this ball rolling. And not crumbling, but picking up steam.”
Okay, fair enough. So if you two aren’t total and complete bastards to play with, where did everybody go?
Flea accepts the A.P. challenge: “Okay, let me tell you what happened…”
“No, I’m gonna tell him what happened,” Anthony butts in.
Flea perseveres: “No way, uh-uh. I’m telling him.”
“Blackbird didn’t work out, so we got John,” summarizes Flea.
That’s it?
Flea nods.
Anthony?
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