Can The Red Hot Chili Peppers Live Through This?
Asked if he's worried about getting hooked again, Frusciante turns philosophical. "As opposed to taking something and putting inside myself to make the world a better place for me, I'm more about putting something out in the air from inside myself that can take other people somewhere if they want to go there. The more I devote to my art, I don't even consider the possibility of taking drugs. It would be ridiculous."
Not so for Kiedis, who dodges a question about how long he's been clean. Shockingly, though heroin has roughed him up several times, he's not able to completely wear it off. The closest he comes to answering the question is asserting that right now the band, not drugs, is tops.
"I kind of envy the certainty John has that to do drugs again has no appeal for him," says Kiedis. "I know that for me, what he described, drugs definitely stopped working. I was no longer receiving any benefit from going to that place, and it just became a purely destructive and evil energy for me. My acute awareness of the fact that I could go back to that is present. It is not a worry or concern, beacause at the moment I have no compulsion to go there. But I just know from my history of going back and forth that I do have that tendency and that capacity to fall into that."
Smith and Flea also say they don't worry that the band will be torn apart by drugs again. "We don't have the crystal ball," quips Smith, and the two go on to tout the gains of the past year. They seem obvious to the volatility that has always lurked around them. When confronted with the idea that they are about to be huge again-or litterally die trying-they seem unable to fathom the latter.
"The last year has been one of the most sane, together times this band has seen in the last few years," says Smith. "Recently, knock on wood, thi is the best I have felt about all four of us in a long time."
"All I can say right now is it feels really good", adds Flea. "Is someone going to get stung out on dope? I don't feel that happening. I really don't. I think we're really emotionally and spiritually fulfilled by this band right now, and I think it feels really good. I don't see that happening. I see us giving and receiving great things."
