Why I Had To Go Solo Again
Did you work with any kind of click track on these recordings?
“No. I have a very good sense of time. It’s not a problem for me to speed up or slow down. If I do it’s usually because I mean to. I like the way human beings move. Even in the Chili Peppers we use click tracks as little as possible. Sometimes [producer] Rick Rubin suggests it, and we’ll play with a click track just to feel what it would be like to play exactly in time. But we never like the way it sounds when something has been recorded with a click track. So we usually switch off the click when we go for a take.
“But I’m not saying my tempo didn’t fluctuate when I was recording Curtains. When the bass player and drummer did their overdubs they had to memorise the spots where the tempo sped up or slowed down. But, to me, that just sounded realy good. That’s the part of the music where the human being really exists. I really don’t like recordings that are absolutelt perfect.”
Did you sing and play guitar simultaneously when you recorded the songs?
“All but two of them; Hope and Time Tonight. The guitar parts in those songs are a little more intricate. And when I played the guitar without sings those songs, my timing was much more in the pocket. So for those, I recorded the acoustic guitar first and then overdubbed the lead vocals.”
Did you play the aforementioned Martin acoustics on the album?
“Yeah, and on Ascension I also played a Martin acoustic 12-string, and an E12-36, which was also from the 1940s. I really love David Bowie’s Hunky Dory album, and there’s a few songs on there where there’s a 12-string in one speaker and a six-string in the other that are basically playing the same thing.”
A lot of the songs are in keys like G sharp and C sharp. Are the guitars either capoed or detuned for those? Or are just playing barres in standard tuning on the songs that are in sharp and flat keys?
“I’m never in any alternate tuning. It’s always standard. I’m a fan of capos, but in this case I didn’t use one. To me, every key has a different feel to it. So I try not to stick to the normal keys that people might use. Because I feel there might be some interesting ideas waiting to happen in keys that people don’t noramlly use.”
Did your fingerpick the intro to Control - the C minor arpeggio?
“No, that’s not fingerpicking, that’s a plectrum. I’m just doing a pattern that’s like a fingerpicking pattern and I’m playing really softly. That’s the thing about that song. When I originally wrote it, it was pretty much one volume all the way through. But when I did the recording I just came up with idea of going back and forth from loud to soft really fast. Every line starts out soft and then gets real loud at the end of line. The song really seemed to come to life when I did that.”
The B7 to E minor chord change in the chorus to The Past Recedes imparts a real Beatles, Rubber Soul-era feel to the song.
“I definitely put a lot of time into studying the Beatles’ music in the past few years. It might come through sometimes I guess.”
That song uses simple open chord shapes. Yet there’s a kind ofd magic to it. That’s what most songwriters want - to do something new with a couple of G, C and D chords.
“I know! I’ve been really excited about that recently - using familiar chords and even familiar progressions, but using them in ways that are so in tune with the current of life that the resulting song has a deep emotional feeling to it. Or to use familiar chords and progressions with rhythms that never have been apllied to them before. All this is completely opposite to how I was when I recorded By The Way. On that album I was trying to make the songs harmonically unique by usng interesting chords. I was studying Charles Mingus and the Beatles - anything I could get my hands on that used abnormal chords. I learned a lot from that and I still use unusual chords here and there, but I’ve regained an excitement for the possibilities that can happen with just an A minor, a D minor, a D and a C. Sometimes it just takes your life a certain way to be able to open yourself to the rhythm of the cosmos, to the point where you can use those familiar chords in the same way you might speak a few simple words of love to someone. A few of the most basic words in the language might be the most meaningful thing someone can hear, and it’s the same with basic chords.”
New Chilis’ Album!
The latest on RHCP’s next CD…
With the Chili Peppers revealing recently that they’ve finished writing their ninth studio album - the follow-up to 2002’s By the Way - rumours are rife as to the direction the band have taken in their sound. According a band spokesman, the Chili’s were due to go into the studio in March to record the new record with long-time producer Rick Rubin, and that they have upwards of 35 songs written. No release date has yet been set.
Anthony Kiedis seems chuffed with the work so far. He told mtv.com: “We’re so in love with the songs we wrote. We’re working really hard.” Bassist Flea said of the songs: “They rock! We played a wide variety of music arranged into song format that is among the most diverse and dynamic good feeling stuff we have ever done. We gave it no thought. We just rocked and it worked well, it is the fastest we have ever recorded so much material. It was the way to go, I can’t wait for y’all to hear it. No thinking just rocking.”
Rumours on the Chili Pepper’s official German website (www.redhotchilipeppers.de) state that the new record could be a double album, ore even two albums released independant of each other in a System Of A Down style.
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