The Entertainers
Struggling to find a new line-up that could coalesce, Flea and Kiedis enlisted guitarist John Frusciante and drummer Chad Smith, and the Chili Peppers as they exist today were born. With California continuing to serve as inspiration, the Chilis released Mother's Milk, and the line-up bonded as the band began to rise up the ranks. Meanwhile, acts like Jane's Addiction and Guns N' Roses were feeding from the breast of that same mother muse - that California junkie surf sound - melodies that seemed at once pounded by ocean waves and pierced by the hypodermics strewn across Venice Beach. Like Jane's Addiction, the Red Hot Chili Peppers gave that Cali sound a bouncing, funk undertone, an energy and enthusiasm that was utterly contagious. By the mid-90s, California was again basking in an economic boom, and the Peppers were grappling with massive mainstream success. Albums like Mother's Milk and Blood Sugar Sex Magik captured a particularly defiant optimism, a joy to play that quickly made the Red Hot Chili Peppers everyone's favourite. But it was Kiedis's lyrical soul-searching, and the unexpected "sensitive side" of their smash track "Under the Bridge" that truly thrust the band into the big time.
"I have never had such an incredibly intense reaction to a song," remembers Kiedis. "There was something about that track that really got to pêople. And it helped me since, as I try to keep myself open to emotion and not be afraid to be true and honest."
"With 'Under the Bridge', we suddendly became a mainstream band, when in fact all we were doing was exactly what we'd always done," remembers Smith, "and it has continued to be strange to reconcile that."
"We were just these funk-punk idiots," says Kiedis. "Who could have known that we would end up sticking around for so long?"
On their upcoming double album, Stadium Arcadium, the band continue their relationship with producer Rick Rubin whohas produced every Peppers album since 1991's defining Blood Sugar Sex Magik. A twin shot of vibrant pop rock and unabashed funk, Stadium sees the Chili Peppers continue in a tradition that has become entirely their own. And, as always, underlying Flea's mind-popping basslines, Chad's throbbing backbeat, John's lilting guitar and Anthny's alternately plaintive and exuberant vocals, there remains that homage to their state - California dreaming, at the edge of all they do.
The Chili Peppers' early work was predictably defiant - frenectic and uncontrolled, the sound of boys revelling in the freedom that comes from having nothing left to lose. And with this new album, the band, now millionaires and celebrated rock demi-gods, have somehow maintained that same degree of passion, a fire that bums in the guts.
"We haven't always been perfect, we haven't alwyas been nice, and we haven't always been smart, but we've always been honest to who were are," says Flea. "It's hard to have a rational perspective on our music, but what I'm the most proud of, is that none of it is contrived. From the beginning, when we were writing an album, there was no 'weel, what are people going to think ?' We just do what we love and put it together and make a record, and, this time, we've done that better than we've ever done it before," he continues. "This album is the best of us together, the best from all four of us, without one of us trying to pull a power move. Our band has no real leader, and we all contribute to the process. This is the record that we can be truly judged by, because I think we've touched the core of what we're about."
